Using the colours configuration screen you can completely customise the way that colours appear on the screen, in response to:

* ANSI colours sequences from the MUD; and
* Your selection of colours for triggered items, user input, and so on.

By clicking on one of the 16 colour buttons, you can adjust the actual colour that is displayed for a given colour "palette".

Colour swatches

Next to each colour button is a rectangular "swatch" which shows what the current setting for that colour is. By reviewing the swatches you can see your overall colour scheme. Click on any swatch to open the colour picker for that colour.

Colour Palette

To understand how the program handles colours, it is necessary to discuss the concept of a colour "palette". MUSHclient recognises 8 ANSI "normal" colours (black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan and white), and the same 8 colours in "bold". The codes to change colours may be sent by a particular MUD if the appropriate function calls are made by a room designer. The normal colour is white text on a black background.

However, the actual colours that are displayed depend on the colour palette for a particular world. For example "black" might actually display as grey, and "white" might actually display as green.

Changing colours

To change the normal text colour click on "white" in the "normal" column (the button with "T" on it). You can then use the colour selection dialog box to choose another colour. There are various ways of doing this...

The easiest way is to choose a colour from one of the "basic colours" on the left-hand side of the dialog box.

Or, you can move the mouse over the big coloured box on the right (holding down the mouse button) until the desired colour appears in the "Color/Solid" box.

Or, you can enter the actual "red/green/blue" or "hue/saturation/luminence" values in to the appropriately labelled boxes.

You cannot change colours if "override with default colours" (below) is checked.

Copying and pasting colours

You can right-mouse click on a colour swatch and select "copy", and then right-mouse click on another colour swatch and select "paste", to copy and paste colours from one swatch to another.


Lighter

There are three buttons labelled "lighter" on this screen. Two are under the "normal" and "bold" columns, and the third is on the right.

These let you quickly lighten the colours in the column (or in the case of the button on the right, all colours), so you can quickly adjust the "feel" of the colour scheme.

Darker

There are three buttons labelled "darker" on this screen. Two are under the "normal" and "bold" columns, and the third is on the right.

These let you quickly darken the colours in the column (or in the case of the button on the right, all colours), so you can quickly adjust the "feel" of the colour scheme.

Swap

Click on this to swap the bold and normal colours. You cannot swap colours if "override with default colours" (above) is checked.

ANSI colours...

Click on this button to reset all 16 colours to their ANSI defaults. This is useful if you want to see how the world would look to people with "standard" colours set up.

Load...

Click on this button to load a previously-saved set of colours. You can set up a colour scheme in one world, save it (using the "save" button) and then load the same colours into another world by using the "load" button.

You cannot load colours if "override with default colours" (above) is checked.

Save...

Click on this button to save your current set of 16 colours, plus your custom colours. You can then load them into another world if desired, so that each world has a consistent colour scheme.

More colour

Click on this button to increases the colour saturation of all of the ANSI colours, thus making them look "brighter".

Less colour

Click on this button to decrease the colour saturation of all of the ANSI colours, thus making them look "greyer".


Copy to custom...

Click on this button to copy all 16 colours to the 16 custom colours.

Invert

Click on this button to invert each colour (that is white becomes black, black becomes white and so on). Mathematically, each colour component is subtracted from 255 to give the new colour. eg. new_red = 255 - old_red

Random

Click on this to make all colours be chosen at random. You can also make individual colours random by clicking on its swatch to open the colour picker, and then clicking on the "random" button in the colour picker.

Use Custom Colour 16 as default

If checked, the default background colour is custom colour 16. If not checked, the default background colour is the colour selected for "normal black".

Override with default colours

If checked, the colour file specified with Defaults is used instead of the colours here, the next time the world is opened, or when Reload defaults is selected.

See Also ...

Command

Dialog

(Help topic: dialog=IDD_PREFS_P5)