Cyan?

[Talon]

Having an issue with tracking, for two reasons... one I hope (REALLY hope) the devs will look at.

Firstly, I read in the codex that tracks have two colours, cyan for active and white for inactive. With the help of my wife, I still don't understand how this system works. I'm following a bloody trail, all the tracks in front of me are the same colour, and when I examine the ones in front they all end up as the active and turn cyan... so what am I missing here? I lost a trophy simply because the track seemed to dart around endlessly and ended up splitting with 4 possibilities.

Secondly, cyan really is an odd choice to make. It's WAY too light and far too similar to white. I'm colour blind (and I know this will affect quite a few other people too) and the two colours look identical to me. I'm wondering if there's a reason that either it was chosen deliberately to have such a similar colour and they couldn't have chosen something far more obvious like yellow?

It would be nice to change track colours in the options to one that suits the user, but even then with my wife next to me we couldn't actually figure out how the system's meant to work!

[Ramsickle]

Cyan is the one you're currently tracking, white is another animals tracks. Sounds like you clicked on a white track which made you end up tracking a different one.

When following a trail pay attention to the cone, that's the "general" area the next track will be, sometimes it will be a tad off to the side, always look at your Hunter mate, if a deer is running in circles it will basically let you know if you are hitting an old track by not registering that particular track onto it and still using the newest one you hit.

I can't speak for the rest as I cannot relate to the colorblindness to see how it would effect my gameplay, sorry. Hopefully someone can provide more in depth information on that.

[Talon]

Thanks Ramsickle, that does make sense, but that's not the issue I was facing. Let me think of the easiest way to put it.

Okay, imagine a herd of 5 deer. You hit one, it was a reasonable shot, hit it, but it ran along with 4 others. Two split off to the left, three carry straight on.

(a) Which trail do you follow? The two left or the three straight?

(b) After that, because of the distance, they started getting mixed with a whole load of other deer footprints as it was near a feed zone, so tracking it became almost impossible... is that where the colours come in?

[Talon]

Or... are you saying that the bits that float up above the tracks are different colours? The only different colours my wife could see were the cone...

[Bugs Bunny]

One thing to consider is the fact once you focus on a particular track, you will see ALL the tracks this animal created, before and after being shot. If you shoot an animal in a spot where he's been hanging for a while, you'll obviously find a maze of tracks and it will be quite a challenge to find out where he went.

Other than that, I didn't have issues with tracking... The fact you are colorblind probably is the biggest factor here. I do agree support for colorblind people should be a base feature of games where color has importance!

[Bugs Bunny]

Originally posted by Talon:

Or... are you saying that the bits that float up above the tracks are different colours? The only different colours my wife could see were the cone...

The whole track should be different not just the cone.

[Talon]

Ahh.... now that actually makes sense... picturing it in my mind, if (for example) the tracks, so footprints etc, were in red for the tracked animal and blue for non tracked, then I could understand the logic behind the tracking system, so it is obviously just a colour issue that I'm having!

That said, I'm curious to know if other people are having a similar issue as my wife has no colourblindness and she couldn't tell the difference, although I didn't tell her to look for different coloured footprints.

Even if it's not implemented in the game, it could be a fairly simple mod for someone to knock up to be able to manually change the colours used...

Much appreciated Deicide666ra!

[Ramsickle]

Originally posted by Talon:

Okay, imagine a herd of 5 deer. You hit one, it was a reasonable shot, hit it, but it ran along with 4 others. Two split off to the left, three carry straight on.

(a) Which trail do you follow? The two left or the three straight?

If you hit one best thing to do is look for its blood, track that and all of that deers tracks will turn the same color (cyan in this case) and that is all you will be looking for (the rest of the deer will remain white tracks). Now that should at least help her where she can more easily distinguish the color and hopefully she can help you track it as well :)

I do hope they add an option for those who are colorblind as some games do to help you in your hunts.

[Talon]

Thanks Ramsickle! Yeah, I'm really enjoying the game itself, and to be fair, I've now tracked down 7 kills, it was only one that I got completely lost on although I think I've been lucky that the others have all been single animals so there weren't a huge amount of tracks to follow!

Really appreciate the advice :)

[Bugs Bunny]

Maybe your wife just learned she's colorblind... :P

[Talon]

I think it could have been more to do with her watching soaps on TV at the same time and only half heartedly paying attention to what I was asking her ;)

[xOEDragonx]

I believe your question has mostly been answered, but the directional cone wasn't really touched on so I'll summarize. If you hit an animal, the absolute best thing you can do is find the blood from it. Clicking the blood will make all of this one animal's tracks light up blue. Tracks from other animals (the one's you didn't hit and don't care about stalking) will be white. So only pay attention to cyan/blue tracks. Hopefully you saw the direction the animal ran when you shot but if not, start looking for the next cyan track. This is where the cone becomes your friend. When you click on an animal's track, you will see ALL of that animal's tracks in cyan, even tracks made before you shot it. If you click on a cyan track and do not see a new directional cone pop up on the huntermate or ground, then this in NOT the next track you need to find. Keep looking for cyan tracks. When you find a cyan track that produces a new directional cone, you know you've found the next, sequential track after the initial blood track. Keep following tracks in the cone's general direction. If you ever pick up another track without a cone, you're looking at old tracks again. Keep following the correct tracks and the blood, and use the cone to let you know you're on the right track and which way you should be going.

[Talon]

That's really interesting, but one question I do have (and again, the answer might seem obvious but it's confusing the hell out of me... is what happens if I inadvertantly click on the track of something else? I have noticed that doing that then tracks a different animal, but clicking back on a blood spot doesn't seem to put me back on the original trail...

It would probably make more sense if it was in a visible colour to me to be fair, I'm just using luck to find the next one at the moment lol :)

[Ramsickle]

Originally posted by Talon:

That's really interesting, but one question I do have (and again, the answer might seem obvious but it's confusing the hell out of me... is what happens if I inadvertantly click on the track of something else? I have noticed that doing that then tracks a different animal, but clicking back on a blood spot doesn't seem to put me back on the original trail...

It would probably make more sense if it was in a visible colour to me to be fair, I'm just using luck to find the next one at the moment lol :)

Sometimes it glitches and a trail will stop working, happened to me twice today actually, if you're clicking on a trail and it's not highlighting anything even on the Hunter mate you may have encountered that bug.

[xOEDragonx]

Originally posted by Talon:

That's really interesting, but one question I do have (and again, the answer might seem obvious but it's confusing the hell out of me... is what happens if I inadvertantly click on the track of something else? I have noticed that doing that then tracks a different animal, but clicking back on a blood spot doesn't seem to put me back on the original trail...

It would probably make more sense if it was in a visible colour to me to be fair, I'm just using luck to find the next one at the moment lol :)

I have not yet encountered this bug, but I also don't have nearly as many hours as others in this game yet. The way it's supposed to work (I imagine) is if you click on another animal's track by accident, you should just be able to click on your injured animal's track again for it to become the highlighted/cyan track once again. But if it is glitched, the best thing you can do is try not to click on any other animal's track until you find your injured animal. I agree, I wish the highlighted tracks were a more obvious color. While white and cyan aren't too difficult to tell apart at quick glance, a more obivous color like red would make it even easier. In THC, there was an option to change track color and this made seeing tracks easier on some maps. Perhaps it's not entirely out of the question that this feature may end up in the game eventually. But probably not.

[Tanktyr]

they are still alot easier to see here then on classic imo, since they blink