Floor textures are a strong migraine trigger (high contrast grids)

[ZeroGravitas]

I think quite a few people find strong grid patterns visually 'uncomfortable' to look at. For me, the first 2 times I was playing (and enjoying!) this game, I felt this niggling discomfort before it went further. I got full blown migraines after about 3 hours in game, the both evenings I played.

(This was almost 2 years ago, now. Sorry it's taken me so long to get around to reporting this. The topic recently came up with respect to another game, Rise to Ruins, with a less strong grid pattern that can mostly be avoided.)

I have ME/CFS (chronic fatigue), which has probably made me more sensitive (due to the reduced cellular energy production, perhaps). But I'd never had anything like this before. Also keep in mind that migraines might manifest differently, for each person. For me, it started as a small spot of partial blindness in the centre of my vision (both eyes), that I barely noticed. Then it expanding out, over ~30 minutes, somewhat alarmingly(!), making reading, etc impossible. Culminating in a bad headache and needing to go lay down (as vision mostly returned). I checked with an optician (and my GP), confirming this is a typical migraine.

This manifestation would fit with a theory of migraines being due to a spreading wave of cortical depolarisation of neurons in the brain. EEGs of people looking at strong grid patterns show very strong, synchronised gamma wave patterns. So it seems likely that grids/stripes may set up resonant standing wave patterns of neural activation, at a higher amplitude than normal, tiring out neurons.

I expect that other players will have had the same issue with this game, but either not made the exact connection, or (more likely) just avoided the game, considering themselves to be very rarely unfortunate... (As I did.)

This phenomenon appears to be pretty well known, now, as you can see from a quick Google search: https://www.google.com/search?&q=grid+pattern+migraine+trigger

Certain radiator/building designs might even trigger epilepsy!: https://headaches.org/2017/08/21/stripes-may-trigger-brain-activity-responsible-migraine/



So, I'd respectfully request the developer might consider adding in a visually comfortable option setting for the game. I see, from a search of this forum, that there are already alternate floor textures in the game (for specific contexts): https://steamcommunity.com/app/591370/discussions/0/3561682880015651600/

... It looks like this tiling might be more gentle than the default, which has small, bold, black spots, in addition to stronger tile outlines. More variated and lower contrast tiling seems less problematic, but it's difficult to guarantee exactly what will feel fine.

[Electric Donkey]

You can use GIMP (dds plugin required, you can find the link at the end of the Wikipedia article for "DirectDraw Surface") to edit the floor textures, found in:
steamapps\common\Production Line\data\bitmaps\floors

I tried making one of them a flat grey, while preserving the isometric shape. Another one I changed to fill the entire rectangular sprite area. Maybe it's possible to preserve the isometric shape and at the same time reduce the visibility of the grid lines separating tiles by having them overlap each other at the edges a little bit.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2416712754

[ZeroGravitas]

Originally posted by Electric Donkey:

You can [...] edit the floor textures

Thank you very much for your concise instructional reply.

I've just tried reducing the contrast right down, of the main "floor_metal_01.dds" and 02 floor textures. They had all those high contrast black square dots and were the most obvious thing to me, before. Result: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2417239529

But looking at that scene (an old save) still makes my brain very uncomfortable. There are a lot of sub-elements with similar patterns, then also strong stripes (not sure if a problem) and strong outlines...

Not sure about thin, grid seams, between tilings. Might be light enough to not be a problem. More *random* detail in textures seems to be better than plain expanses (with sharp, regular transitions). Such a dumb health issue...

Bottom line, I don't feel the game is going to be salvageable for me. But at least I learned a few things and you've got me to finally (re)install an alternative to my ancient free copy of Photoshop Elements 6.