Hacking is impossible for some color blind people

[sakodak]

This is really disappointing. It's an integral part of the game, and I can't use it.

Please, please provide a patch for this. I propose a quick color selector for the various existing color levels; this is because "color blindness" isn't necessarily the same between two color blind people. There are some who can see the shades of red and green used in the hack tool just fine, and there are others (like me) that can't. If you just change it arbitrarily then you may fix it for me and break it for someone else.

For the record, I'm playing on the PS3. I also tried to search the forums to see if anyone already posted about this, but the search keeps giving me a database error.

[doomed]

You are lucky because there have been at least 3-4 other people who mentioned it and I know that the support have read their threads. So who knows, maybe they'll do something about it.

[sakodak]

Thanks for the support. I don't know if I'd call myself "lucky," though.

[rubberkidney]

you could always mess with the display settings and make it shift the colors enough so that you can tell the difference, not the ideal solution but imagine it would work...

[lordkraken]

I can manage the red and green ok, my problem lies with the blue and the white, the blue used is to light and I can't tell it apart from the white. And before anyone chips in with "just go for the green" I have pretty good reflexes/reation time so if I could see the blue I could hit it, just cause i'm color blind doesn't mean i'm not entitled to my free healthkit, or item.

A note to 2k there are indeed many differnt types of color blindness and just rejiging the colors isn't really going to help, chances are any 'stock' change will cause issues for people who can use the curent system or fail to help others who are experinceing problems.

I would reccomend some sort of pattern texture be used instead of the colors as a way of adressing the issue, as opposed to messing with the color scheme. Like I said at the moment i can't tell the white from the blue, because the blue is too light, but if the blue is made darker or replaced with brown, or another dark color I would then experience issue with darker colors and the red, as I have difficulty recognising darker colors. I cant pick yellow from green either.

I hope this helps with fixing the issue

[Inkerone.]

Hi im color blind in red and green,i messed about with the first hack and nearly gave up then i ajusted the brightness a little and looked for the difference in color tone and applied that to each hack.hacking is easy now.

Inkerone.

[Kleetus]

You guys have my sympathy, it shouldn't be like this.

As a workaround, have you tried the auto hack darts?

I know it's not ideal, and I don't know if it works for all hacks (it works for safes), but it's better than nothing.

[Derangel]

Unfortunately this is a major issue with video games. Its an issue that has been known about and discussed by gamers and the press alike for years and that developers don't seem terribly interested in taking note of. Very few studios seem to care to take the time to create a color-blind mode for the rather significant number of color-blind people in the world. While I am not color blind I know people who are and have talked with them about the difficulties of playing some games.

[sakodak]

Yeah, it's not just games either. Magazine, newspaper and website charts and graphs are difficult to read for some of us too. I've seen very little done to accommodate the color blind. I'm barely even color blind (I passed the FAA color blindness test for night flight) but the particular colors chosen for red and green in this game look identical to me.

[Mike T]

This is really disappointing. It's an integral part of the game, and I can't use it.

Please, please provide a patch for this. I propose a quick color selector for the various existing color levels; this is because "color blindness" isn't necessarily the same between two color blind people. There are some who can see the shades of red and green used in the hack tool just fine, and there are others (like me) that can't. If you just change it arbitrarily then you may fix it for me and break it for someone else.

For the record, I'm playing on the PS3. I also tried to search the forums to see if anyone already posted about this, but the search keeps giving me a database error.

Just found this thread after starting another about the same thing. I've given up on Bioshock 2 on PS3 because I can't see the difference and constantly set off alarms. Have messed about with colour/brighness settings etc... – no good. I enjoyed the pipe game in Bioshock 1 and after waiting so long for Bioshock 2 am so disappointed that I can't play it. Will continue with System Shock 2 on Win7 for now and ditch Bioshock 2 in a week or two if it's not patched with a texture/colour modifier for this - there must be a lot of people similarly disappointed by this.

[bangpow]

I'm actually really glad this was posted because I am red/green color blind and it's hard to tell the difference when hacking. Granted, I've been doing fine with it, but I would love to see a better contrast in that meter.

[P-Dude]

I only died 4 times in a playthrough of the game, and two of them were from early on when I set off the alarm because I couldn't see the difference between red/green in the hacking minigame.

EVENTUALLY I used tonics to prevent this from happening: shorten alarms, the hacking ones that slow the needle down and remove the last stage, and inviso-tonic just in case I did set it off they wouldn't spot me. Regardless, I shouldn't HAVE to do this. I do hope a patch comes eventually.

[Huge Daddy]

To all the colour blind guys out there I say "You are entitled to that kind of Options configuration feature"

As an Australian I know the extent to which our boys and girls in the industry are trained at the college level, and to those people at 2k Australia I say "How could you have possibly missed this"?

We are educated at a level that is almost second to none worldwide.
This kind of consumer base variant as insignificant as it might seem to some, has a dramatic impact on how you are either seen to be the "Deep Thinkers" of the Industry, or the "She'll be right" kind of Developers.

[beetlefeet]

All you need to do is add a texture or underlying pattern to blocks of colour and/or make the brightness of the selected colours different enough and the issue is solved. As a colourblind games developer myself I'm peeved when it's not taken into account.

It's not hard!

[Nastadon]

Well I didn't have problems when I was playing in HD, but I just played in SD(can only record SD) and I couldn't tell the difference in the colors at all.

[jake233]

This is really disappointing. It's an integral part of the game, and I can't use it.

Please, please provide a patch for this. I propose a quick color selector for the various existing color levels; this is because "color blindness" isn't necessarily the same between two color blind people. There are some who can see the shades of red and green used in the hack tool just fine, and there are others (like me) that can't. If you just change it arbitrarily then you may fix it for me and break it for someone else.

For the record, I'm playing on the PS3. I also tried to search the forums to see if anyone already posted about this, but the search keeps giving me a database error.

i too am also colorblind and i trigger the alarms almost every time i try to hack! i am very saddened by this because it makes me feel retarded/ visionly impared :/

[haadurin]

I feel your pain, people. I am mostly colorblind to red/green, but only in my right eye for some reason. When I just look through my right eye, I can still tell the difference in the hues, but not with as much ease as my left eye. If 2K were to just put, say Xs on the texture for the red/white parts, and circles or crosses on the green and blue parts, it would be much better. Granted, this isn't a problem for me, since I have two eyes (one of which works perfectly)... but I still feel the pain. I can't believe that more game companies don't hire colorblind focus testers... they really should, then problems like this could be avoided.

[Tech Chris]

We are looking into this issue, We have passed this to our development team today. We apologize for the inconvenience and we are taking the matter seriously. If I have any updates during the course of my shift I will post it here and let you all know as soon as I have it.

[SlowRider305]

I was considering this game but now that I hear about this issue I will put that idea on hold... there are serveral games out there that make it hard play when you are color blind (partial or full) and the developers don't seem to care in most cases....

it is great to see Tech Support actually looking into possibly providing a patch. Even if a patch does not happen at least they looked into it and responded. That is more than I can say for several other developers/publishers.

[BeatlesGeorge]

Just found this thread after starting another about the same thing. I've given up on Bioshock 2 on PS3 because I can't see the difference and constantly set off alarms. Have messed about with colour/brighness settings etc... – no good. I enjoyed the pipe game in Bioshock 1 and after waiting so long for Bioshock 2 am so disappointed that I can't play it. Will continue with System Shock 2 on Win7 for now and ditch Bioshock 2 in a week or two if it's not patched with a texture/colour modifier for this - there must be a lot of people similarly disappointed by this.

I enjoyed the pipe game too, I wish it would have came back

It was fun

[landaishan]

i too am also colorblind and i trigger the alarms almost every time i try to hack! i am very saddened by this because it makes me feel retarded/ visionly impared :/

lol. you are visionally impaired. being colour blind would SUCK

[Mike T]

We are looking into this issue, We have passed this to our development team today. We apologize for the inconvenience and we are taking the matter seriously. If I have any updates during the course of my shift I will post it here and let you all know as soon as I have it.

Chris, can you please update us colour blind gamers on what's going to be done about this problem? Impatiently waiting to hear whether it will be patched (PS3 version) - will ditch the game if it's not going to be patched. Alternatively please advise whether the PC version can be hacked manually, I’ll get my hands on a PC copy and modify files myself to change colours in the hacking game.

[BioCr*p2]

2k games need you to use "the force" luke.

[Tech Chris]

We are looking into it but I havent received any further information. As soon as I recieve an update I or one of my colleagues will let you know.

[Kleetus]

Alternatively please advise whether the PC version can be hacked manually

Use the autohack darts as a workaround if you're desparate to play the game.

You can also pay to bypass the hack, I think, although I never used it so I can't say how effective it is.

[Mike T]

We are looking it but I havent received any further information. As soon as I recieve an update I or one of my colleagues will let you know.

Thanks for getting back Chris. I do not want to spoil the experience by using auto hack tools in the game so will hold off until some sort of fix is put in place. Regards, Mike

[Catfish666]

I'm really glad this topic is taken into discussion here, as I find it an surprisingly often appearing issue that severely hurts the gameplay in many games (red-green teams in minimap and certain puzzle games' tiles being the worst ones I've came across).

In this case, me being only slightly red-green colorblind, I've taken a habit of saving every single time when coming across a hack opportunity and also having brought a chair closer to TV than usual.

And I know that to many people this issue is much more severe, I really hope game developers would collectively wake up to realize to what extent this sort of issue hurts the fun of gameplay of this group.

[leecope3]

im 27 now and have been gaming most of my life, i dont think there are any games out there that support us colourblind folk, it sucks tbh and should be something that games developers should think about, using red and green so close to eachother is a blatant obvious fault to us colourblind people but im guessing the "normal" folk at 2K and other places dont process this tought (or many others by the looks of it) this basically boils down to discrimination.

small extract from wiki:
Color blindness affects a significant number of people, although exact proportions vary among groups. In Australia, for example, it occurs in about 8 percent of males and only about 0.4 percent of females.[21] Isolated communities with a restricted gene pool sometimes produce high proportions of color blindness, including the less usual types. Examples include rural Finland, Hungary, and some of the Scottish islands. In the United States, about 7 percent of the male population – or about 10.5 million men – and 0.4 percent of the female population either cannot distinguish red from green


in america thats potentially 10.5 million gamers that cant see your damn hacking bit properly this needs to be addressed quickly and sorted asap

[grinomyte]

i dont think there are any games out there that support us colourblind folk

Just an FYI, valve actually has colorblind mode for I believe most of their source games, I'm not 100% sure, but i'm positive TF2 does. They aren't perfect based on what I've heard from colorblind friends, but they try to make icons on your hud appear etc for color effects so you can tell what's going on.

I feel your pain colorblind folks, it's really hard to believe considering how prevelant colorblindness is amongst males that not a single person on the development team noted that hacking would be an issue.

[crunchyfrog555]

It makes me sad to still see this sort of thing happening in this day and age. I'm sure most of you are aware that anything up to 40% of the male members of the population have colour-blindness to some degree, so that just compounds the issue more.

As a disabled gamer myself (I'm not colour-blind, as it happens), I'm also a Disabled Access Auditor (basically ensuring shops/businesses/etc conform to the UK's Disability Discrimination Act, and if they don't then I take action). I'm sure that it'll only be a matter of time before somebody takes the stance of legal action against a developer for discrimination (and yes, that is entirely possible under the terms of the DDA).

But, I digress...

I wholeheartedly applaud you for making a stand on this issue. Why shouldn't you be able to play the game(s) that you hold dear? But, rather than making a stance on your own, you might be interested in a US-based disabled gamers group - www.ablegamers.com. They cover just about everything disability wise in gaming, and they're VERY active. They were responsible for getting World of Warcraft colour-blindness options implemented, amongst other things.

It might not be your thing, but hey, you'll not lose anything by checking them out. I have no doubt they'd be interested in helping you with your cause. You may even make some new friends - I have.

Hope this helps - and I really hope you get this matter dealt with appropriately. You deserve it!

[Mike T]

Perhaps we can get an update from 2K / tech support on whether this problem will be dealt with in a patch. I have waited now for nearly a week since finding it impossible to play BS2 as it was meant to be played. If it is confirmed that it will not be dealt with - so be it, at least let us colour blind folk know NOW so we can ditch the game and get some money for it on the second hand market. Very disappointed since BS1 is my favourite game and unable to continue with BS2. Regards, Mike T

[QCJLo]

Any updates?

[KevTech]

I was thinking just change it to numbers that randomly appear and you have to focus on certain numbers while others are bad.

Say like 1 and 3 are good while 2,4,5 are bad.

Still have large and small spaces you can target but numbers in them instead of colors.

[skitz470]

World of Warcraft does support colorblind players actually. They have an option where if you select it it will display what each of the coins are in your bag (I want to say it shows like c,s,g but using a bag addon so not sure) This might be something 2k can look at. When the meter shows up have like W, R, B, G display above each of the bars.

[lordkraken]

So are we gonna get any updates on this or are 2k going to ignore the issue and hope we get bored and go away?

[lordkraken]

Well a week and no official responce. Seriously I know tech support is busy fixing all the problems with the game but is a "Yes, we are working on a fix for the problem" or a "No, we arn't going to bother, try and get a refund" too much to ask.

Come on 2k I want to know! Are you going to do anything to adress the issues colorblind people are having with the Hack system or not. I would really like to know either way.

[MagnusReich]

Ran across this looking for info on it. Another red-green person here. Mine, however, is just at the edge, I suppose, because if I scoot toward the TV when hacking I can just differentiate between the red and green. There also seems to be a finite number of patterns as well, so I've sort of memorized those.

I'm a hardware designer, but I do my own GUIs at work to control my equipment, and the red/green issue arises there a lot- things switched on or off, equipment parameters in or out of a desired range, etc. I found that if I use pure red (#ff0000) and green with a little blue (#00ff40) that seems to solve most issues. It's a trivial matter. You don't need to offer special settings or redesign anything... you just select the red and green shades a tad more thoughtfully.

My beef here isn't really with 2K so much as the responses some of the articles about this issue have gathered in the various comment sections. My goodness! You'd think we were paraplegics demanding every staircase in the world be converted to solid gold escalators! The antagonism and nastiness is amazing even for the internet. And there's always at least one comment comparing colorblindness to *complete* blindness as if that comparison makes any sense in this or any other possible universe. Or there are comments about how "defective" people should be bred out by Darwinism- just some real sick people.

They sound like a bunch of 12 year old Andrew Ryan worshippers, and that's from someone who lives in California where I feel we could do with a light dose of Objectivism as our state is in a full bore Dr. Lamb progressive/collectivist meltdown.

[derelix]

It makes me sad to still see this sort of thing happening in this day and age. I'm sure most of you are aware that anything up to 40% of the male members of the population have colour-blindness to some degree, so that just compounds the issue more.

As a disabled gamer myself (I'm not colour-blind, as it happens), I'm also a Disabled Access Auditor (basically ensuring shops/businesses/etc conform to the UK's Disability Discrimination Act, and if they don't then I take action). I'm sure that it'll only be a matter of time before somebody takes the stance of legal action against a developer for discrimination (and yes, that is entirely possible under the terms of the DDA).

But, I digress...

I wholeheartedly applaud you for making a stand on this issue. Why shouldn't you be able to play the game(s) that you hold dear? But, rather than making a stance on your own, you might be interested in a US-based disabled gamers group - www.ablegamers.com. They cover just about everything disability wise in gaming, and they're VERY active. They were responsible for getting World of Warcraft colour-blindness options implemented, amongst other things.

It might not be your thing, but hey, you'll not lose anything by checking them out. I have no doubt they'd be interested in helping you with your cause. You may even make some new friends - I have.

Hope this helps - and I really hope you get this matter dealt with appropriately. You deserve it!

I understand that it sucks but what your talking about is childish and unreasonable. The people that worked hard to make this game are not obligated to create it, let alone make it accessible to everyone. It sucks when your forced to be left out of something, but suing is the most immature response to this.
Can I sue a lesbian bar because they won't let me in to drink?
Can a blind guy sue because he can't play a game?
The problems are limitless, and you can't just say "that's not the same" because it is. Yes it can be fixed, but saying they are obligated is insane. They are not your slaves, they are not obligated to make the game at all let alone make it for everyone with every imaginable disability.

Lets try to use common sense here. I have certain problems that prevent me from doing many things that I would like to do, most of us do. This is not discrimination, if you believe it is then you have no concept of what discrimination is.

I can't stress this point enough, these people are not your servants, it would be nice if they made a patch but your saying that they should be sued if they refuse to do this. It's entertainment, you can't sue the makers of a movie because your blind and you can't sue the makers of a game because your color blind.
I don't understand what twisted moral system your working on but your talking about game designers as if they are your property or like they are under your employment. Certain people are unable to do certain things, live with it.

What's next, having a movie with subtitles is discrimination because illiterate people cannot enjoy the movie?

[Relight]

Not sure why you bumped a 5 month old thread, but it does make me curious as to how this issue was resolved, because I've forgotten.

I thought Xbox360 and PS3 already received a patch that resolved this issue?

Did PC receive one?

[derelix]

Not sure why you bumped a 5 month old thread, but it does make me curious as to how this issue was resolved, because I've forgotten.

I thought Xbox360 and PS3 already received a patch that resolved this issue?

Did PC receive one?

It started with an article on cracked. Followed a series of articles and links that lead me here, sorry I didn't pay attention to the date. I usually buy everything a little late so bioshock 2 is brand new from my point of view.