Article: The Best Colour in Island Defense

[Emu]

There are three purposes for a players individual colour in Warcraft III;

• Dividing the player's units as an easy way to distinguish them
• Aesthetical value
• Camouflage on the minimap

To decide what is the best colour in Island Defense we much take use of those three tools of measurement. The first is a non-factor and leaves the different colours on equal standing in a competition. The second is far too subjective to measure. That leaves us with our third tool, camouflage. The best colour in Island Defense is the colour with the best camouflage.

The method I've chosen to find the best camouflaging colour of Island Defense (Also known as the best colour of Island Defense) is to find the average colour of the Island Defense Minimap and then find which of the available colours are the most similar to the minimaps average colour.

IDMM.png (115.42 KiB) Viewed 1745 times

I have taken the average colour of this image. Which resulted in the colour of this font

Next I used a colour picker to determine what colour the player colours are, you can see the results in the spoiler below.

Spoiler!

Red#FF0303
Blue#0042FF
Cyan#1CE6B9
Purple#540081
Yellow#FFFC01
Orange#fe8a0e
Green#20c000
Pink#355bb0
Gray#959697
Light Blue#7ebff1
Dark Green#106246

The next step is to compare the colours. I'll be using this tool to get a value of how similar each colour is to the minimaps average colour. Results of this below.

Code: Select all

Dark Green 84%
Purple 78%
Green 72%
Gray 68%
Orange 66%
Red 63%
Pink 62%
Blue 60%
Cyan & Light Blue 54%
Yellow 50%

Note: The reason for colours like Red to be above more tropical themed colours like blue or light blue which might blend better on some places is because Red is more similar to the tree colour which is more abundant on the minimap.

Conclusion; The best colour in Island Defense is Dark Green, followed by purple, green, gray, orange, red, pink, blue, cyan & light blue, and yellow. This isn't such an surprising result and could probably be guessed, but now we know for sure.

As with most articles, there are flaws. This article isn't an exception there are two issues with it, firstly; different screens and lightning values results in different hues of colour thus possibly making the result inconclusive. Secondly, some colours camouflage better at some areas better than others making the best colour situational to a specific area. A future project for the interested would be to lay-out a grid over an image of the minimap with the best colour of that area on top, but perhaps that is too much work for something of this usefulness.

Thanks for reading! Discuss in the comments about the results, possible flaws, and suggestions to the article etcetera.

[pep]

lmao gray masterrace

I also advice builders to turn colors to teal(allies)/red(enemy). This way you will notice titan on the minimap way quicker, for example when he walks past a seeded worker.

[ShadowZz]

Yeah grey is the least noticed to be honest. That's the entire reason a bunch of people play grey. I second what pep said about turning titan to red and legit can't play with him as dark green anymore lol.

[Remixer]

Indeed as a builder I'd go for gray. Yes, it is impossible to see the dark green, but that is not because what color the map is, but instead of because it's so dim and neutral color, just like brown (it is also really hard to see).

I don't think your tools worked very well - green, orange, red and pink are just way off - sure, they have the same hues as the map has, but they are a lot brighter and richer (as a team colors), meaning there is no problem seeing them.

Also I think it varies depending on builder. E.g. if I play Satyr I like to purple, since it reduces the amount of definition and colors of the builder itself. I also like using Light Blue as any builder, since it does not stand out very much (other than in the mini map).

[Dehumanchum]

Wait as a builder you guys don't change team colors to have everyone teal and the titan pop up as red?

[ShadowZz]

I was surprised by that before as well lol. There's quite a lot of people who don't and I have no idea how they always see titan when he nukes etc. I can barely see him when he's dark green lol.

[Burn]

I used to pick green/yellow/orange because it spawns you closer to burnbase.

Then it sorta just became a thing, green = masterrace.

Nowadays, it takes me 100 years to pick a builder not already picked, so I don't care as much about colour.

-Burn

[Lynx]

Neco please balance colours

[Dehumanchum]

even as tit being red I have to sometimes black out the terrain to see him.

[Cardflip]

Try taking the average color excluding areas where builder can't reach, such as the water tiles. I bet this is why purple is skewed to be the "best color" for camouflage.

[Burn]

Purple is such a complete shit colour, it's the hardest colour to read when they type, I just recognise players by purple instead of their username.

-Burn