Okay, so following onto my previous thread, I, along with the other devs on LSPDFR are going to create a standardised list of colors for use on blips and routes in LSPDFR API development.

Devs, if you have a scenario that isn't covered by the list, please post below and I'll add it in. If you have any suggestions or ideas, please also post.

 

GPS BLIPS AND RADAR COLOURS

---

BLIP SIZES
Blips sizing should be as follows:

• Vehicles: 1.0
• Peds: 0.75

PEDS + VEHICLE BLIPS

ZONES

Primary search areas (prior to accepting a callout) (Drawing.Color.Yellow)

ROUTES
All routes should be Yellow (Drawing.Color.Yellow)

---

NOTIFICATIONS, HELP PROMPTS AND SUBTITLES

• Ensure that all blips are the same colour as they are when highlighted in any on screen text. For example, suspects are red, and should be highlighted in text as red too.
• Minimal colour should be used within on-screen text. Color should only be used to highlight key information or to highlight the colour of a particular person or object on the map. Examples:

Spoiler

"Dispatch any units available for...?"
"Paramedics We're on route standby!"
"Tow Truck We're nearby. Hold on."
"A Representative from the Insurance Company is on the way."

• Exactly the same should apply to subtitles at the bottom of the screen. Use color to only highlight the key information.

---

As plugins get updated to follow the above, we'll have a much more immersive plugin system that doesn't have strangely mismatched colours. 

 

@fiskey111, @Albo1125, @Straysify, @Stealth22, @alexguirre, @goigle, @Trinyx, @Darkmyre, @TitanSloth, @Patrinus, @w35, @DemNinjas, @LukeD, @Nutt, @Livia, @Luigi4518, @TheUniT, @Athsro

@FinKone, @DCP1293

 

Edited February 18, 201610 yr by AlconH
Added table for clarity.

Great idea! Perhaps all plugins that follow these optional standards could be listed here?

If you feel that this topic has been pinned in error, please report this post.

 

A nice idea, but generally speaking there are a few rules that GTA follows, and I personally try to stick as close to GTA blips and LSPDFR blips as possible. Perhaps incorporate this into your list.

Yellow
• GTA - Primary objectives, search areas and route guidance.
• LSPDFR - Primary search areas (prior to accepting a callout)

Red
• GTA - Enemies or targets. (they use size to depict vehicles or peds)
• LSPDFR - Pursuit suspects. (combined with blue for flashing search area of pursuits (I think))

I wouldn't bother with multiple route guidance colours. Stick with yellow if going to a callout, it's cleaner to match GTA imo.

Also seeing as we're discussing colours and how they should be used....

Additional advice on the use of colours (this may be my personal taste here, take with a pinch of salt)
• Strip notifications of too much colour, highlighting a cop unit number or name is fine but the rest should be the same colour. I recommend using colour to highlight key info. eg. "Dispatch any units available for...?", "Paramedics We're on route standby!" etc. Especially if it's your callout start notification, they should be standardised with LSPDFR's.

• Try not to go overboard with colours in text overlays either (the subtitles for example). Again use them to highlight key info eg. "Ped", "Witness", "Cop", search the "area" for...

• Make sure blips correspond with colours used in any text. Eg. "look for the suspect at the place" in which the word suspect would match the blip he has. (this was common from LCPDFR)

 

And yes, I will be adopting the changes that come about from this thread when I have plenty of time to actively develop my plugins. Damn university sucks the life out of coding and gaming these days :/

I agree with @LukeD. I use a color scheme that is fairly close to Vanilla GTA V. I use green in my subtitles for general, important info (like a hotkey) and red for other information (like specifying a hostile target or a committed crime).

I am all for standardizing colors though - it will make all plugins look a lot more professional. If I am correct, Federal Callouts should already be abiding by these standards. Blue for security guards/backup, red for enemies / targeted suspects. The only exception is the drug deal which marks the seller as "green" currently when the player should not move in, and then "red" when he should. I'll change it to yellow now as it's not a big deal.

As for routes, I personally prefer keeping them as yellow.

 

 

What if we created a library with a bunch of default stuff, like colors and such, maybe some commonly used extensions & methods. I feel like I am a library salesman and I realize it's kind of an unpopular idea due to users having trouble with installing libraries and yadda yadda but you can just put the library in your library,

I don't remember what the proper term is in .NET but you can merge assemblies together (they have to be the same .NET version which shouldn't be a problem)

So,

PublicLSPDFRExtensions.dll

YourCallouts.dll

 

becomes

YourCallouts.dll

 

Edited February 17, 201610 yr by goigle

@goigle and @LukeD, I've thought about the route colours and I definitely agree on yellow being the better choice. 

Could you guys do me a favour and grab me the hex codes for the colours you use so we can ensure devs use the exact same colour please?

For the color before accepting a callout, I propose to left in blue because blue is already in default by LSPDFR ! :)

For hazardous areas or there are shot as my terrorist callout, I propose to the activity area in dark red with transparancy.

Edited February 17, 201610 yr by Trinyx

1 minute ago, Trinyx said:

For the color before accepting a callout, I propose to left in blue because blue is already in default by LSPDFR ! :)

The colour of what exactly?

It could also just be a static class on GitHub that everyone uses.

@AlconH, any chance we could use Drawing.Color.LightBlue for police officers? I may sound stubborn here, but I really hate the standard Blue, when it comes to blips. Maybe its just me, but I hate how it looks on the map, lol.

EDIT: It also matches the 'blue' used by RPH when you use "~b~" to change the text color.

EDIT 2: One more thing! Can we all use a scale value of 0.75 when it comes to Ped blips? The larger/normal ones crowd the map quite a bit, IMO. I believe GTA V uses smaller blips for Ped enemies, like if you attack a gangster in Grove Street. Scale 1.0 is fine for vehicles or routes.

Edited February 17, 201610 yr by Stealth22

7 minutes ago, Stealth22 said:

 

@AlconH, any chance we could use Drawing.Color.LightBlue for police officers? I may sound stubborn here, but I really hate the standard Blue, when it comes to blips. Maybe its just me, but I hate how it looks on the map, lol.

EDIT: It also matches the 'blue' used by RPH when you use "~b~" to change the text color.

That would definitely make sense, I'll add that in now.

I've also added the sizes in too.

I will definitely implement these changes once I go to release a fix for Secondary Callouts.

8 minutes ago, Stealth22 said:

It could also just be a static class on GitHub that everyone uses.

@AlconH, any chance we could use Drawing.Color.LightBlue for police officers? I may sound stubborn here, but I really hate the standard Blue, when it comes to blips. Maybe its just me, but I hate how it looks on the map, lol.

EDIT: It also matches the 'blue' used by RPH when you use "~b~" to change the text color.

EDIT 2: One more thing! Can we all use a scale value of 0.75 when it comes to Ped blips? The larger/normal ones crowd the map quite a bit, IMO. I believe GTA V uses smaller blips for Ped enemies, like if you attack a gangster in Grove Street. Scale 1.0 is fine for vehicles or routes.

Lol I want to make every blip I use that standard blue now, ahaha.

As for the sizes for peds I've never thought about that!  I like that idea- it's perfect!  Is 0.75 what GTAV uses normally?

For my callout GangRiot, I put colors for each gang, to make the difference, similar to the Terrorist and bomber, I keep it or I change? And how to change the blip size ?

Great idea, will definitely update Agency Callouts as soon as I have a chance.

On a somewhat related note, the latest version of Agency Callouts I've broken the officer profile (for my purposes this is officer name, and beat/division/unit codes) into a separate file from the rest of my settings. Been a bit busy to write up a post like the OP, but the general idea here was if we're all using something like this, referencing the one file, the user can simply set their officer details once, and have it apply to all callout plugins that use it... with the added advantage of not having to set it again as long as they dont copy over the myOfficer.ini (in my case) file again.

Great idea!

52 minutes ago, fiskey111 said:

As for the sizes for peds I've never thought about that!  I like that idea- it's perfect!  Is 0.75 what GTAV uses normally?

I'm not sure if they use precisely that size, but it looked pretty similar. I don't recall for sure though.

42 minutes ago, Trinyx said:

For my callout GangRiot, I put colors for each gang, to make the difference, similar to the Terrorist and bomber, I keep it or I change? And how to change the blip size ?

Its up to you, but its just best practice to use what we've established. You can change the size with the Blip.Scale property.

22 minutes ago, Darkmyre said:

Great idea, will definitely update Agency Callouts as soon as I have a chance.

On a somewhat related note, the latest version of Agency Callouts I've broken the officer profile (for my purposes this is officer name, and beat/division/unit codes) into a separate file from the rest of my settings. Been a bit busy to write up a post like the OP, but the general idea here was if we're all using something like this, referencing the one file, the user can simply set their officer details once, and have it apply to all callout plugins that use it... with the added advantage of not having to set it again as long as they dont copy over the myOfficer.ini (in my case) file again.

I definitely like this idea.  Maybe LSPDFR 0.4 (or whatever) can include this next round so it's only from the main plugin that all of ours require?  (Just an idea!)

1 hour ago, AlconH said:

The colour of what exactly?

I think he's talking about the translucent blip showing the location of the call, when its dispatched. But that's managed by LSPDFR...we display it by caling ShowCalloutAreaBlipBeforeAccepting.

@AlconH, just to clarify, are we using Color.Green for the "green" color, or Color.Lime?

I don't mind one way or the other...I use Lime now, but I don't care if I have to change it. I originally picked Lime cause it stood out more than Green on the mini-map. Red and Yellow are quite bright compared to Green, so Lime sort of matched that.

I'm just using Color.Yellow for the routes, looks close enough to the GTA V ones if you ask me.

@Stealth22 - I'll switch my callouts to use LightBlue instead of blue. I agree, Blue is too blue.

I'll change the ped size scale too.

Edit:

Federal Callouts 0.44 now matches the current specification

I haven't decided whether to include this in Code 3 Callouts 0.6 yet...I was thinking of doing it in the next release, just cause I'm done all the other code changes...

I might incorporate some of them.

Code 3 Callouts 0.6 has been released, and it conforms to the above standards.