Photosensitivity and accessibility sliders

[-Variant]

Hi, it's me, the forums local cyclops.

So, my latest post was this one below, asking for the latest Night Berry colorcube/overlay/whatnot to be changed to be less intense on the eyes. And thankfully, it was! 

However, even the new one is still very rough on my eyes. It's absolutely a vast improvement, but its honestly just making me miss the visual that was in the beta.

Spoiler

The more I thought on it, the less I wanted to make a second thread going over the same problem. I considered modding it out but then I actually went and looked and... I realized I'm kind of sick on relying on mods for stuff like this.

I'm making this post to hopefully see if there's any possibilities we could get some more options and settings to allow for us to manually config and change specific visuals in the game.
This would realistically let those who like the filters as they are go unbothered AND let the folks with more sensitive eyes have more opportunities to play with some of the latest content that makes use of these flashy visuals.

During the beta, I used to love the Night Berries. But as they are now with the bright blue filter, I'm quite literally unable to use them anymore.

Writing this up reminded me of another visual that's been tearing at me. I know not a lot of other people are bothered by it, but man does the Umbralla's bubble FX make me so incredibly uneasy. The distortion on it is insane!
There IS a config setting for distortion, but I quite like it everywhere else its used! It's specifically the Umbralla's case that hurts my eyes, and I'm sad there's no option to toggle it specifically. It's either deal with it or remove the effect from everything else entirely. Hoping this can be expanded a bit more.

I'm pretty tired, been a long week. I feel like I'm forgetting some other extreme, or even subtle cases, but TLDR: More settings to toggle specific instances of visual FX (Not just all or none.) and settings to dim or brighten the insensitivity of some filter, such as the Night Berry overlay, and Insanity. 

[Deactive41year]

Yeah, it's long overdue and would be a pain for klei to add (I think), but would benefit ALL OF US.

Like how in minecraft I turn off the distortion, fov, and darkness pulse effects just because I don't like them.

[Ridley]

I don't have eye vision complications that I know of or reason to suspect any, and yet the color drain from being insane becomes overwhelming to me after awhile. Its alright for short periods of time but then I burn out super fast. It's at its worst during winter when the screen is all white from the snow. It is a double whammy for me because I love the art and colors of the normal game. Insanity comes in and mucks it all up.

 

 

[viblym]

I was happy they changed the color overlay until I actually used it in game and went. Oh. it's not better. Still hurts a lot

[SapoLover]

It's kind of inevitable to have to mod the game for such specific things that bother you.  I could ask for a setting to make the darker grass turfs brighter because it's almost black on low sanity for me, making spotting shadow creatures incredibly hard. I could also ask for a color cube disabler because the summer filter is really unpleasant and tiring to me. The game greatly supports modding to make players able to modify the game to accommodate their needs and desires.

[Vixen Doe]

I sure do love opening my favorite game and risking a migraine or even possible seizure because of some out-of-control color coordination

[ADM]

Frankly Klei absolutely should take the time to make an accessibility update to introduce more visual and audio settings in the game.

I’ve only repeated it so many times for the latest but there are sounds that really anger me I had to cut them from mods which is something not everyone has the luxury to have. I have many more but prime examples are bee buzzing (more like takeoff) and the hovering UI sound. We need more configs to reduce and silence sounds in categories. As now, if you still want music and background ambient, the only option is really just saying : do you want to play with or without sounds ? Come on…

(oh and please longer lasting musics instead of play, cut, play, cut…)

But by all mean visuals are important too and we can only love to see it when a game introduces corrections for colorblindnesses and sliders for visual effects. This is something I don’t see asked too often on Klei games even DST that has so many heavy visuals especially now between screen overlays, colourcubes and post process effects… it’s something studios only develop and get the habit of it when they’re made aware of it by their community.

And as much as I don’t have TOO MUCH issues myself I definitely had to take a step back seeing the live version Night Berry effect. And I’m also one of many to have completely disabled the color change of insanity for years now because at times it really feels old and incomplete given how unfair it makes the game at time. I find it impossible to see shadows in winter or on forest turfs so I don’t want to force this on myself despite I like the direction of altering visuals, this is just too much and unplayable. More on insanity, I do like distortion and that I can reduce it in settings without disabling it. I wish I could do the same about the screen shakes instead of going all in or nothin'. And summer… when the Scrappy Werepig lens hat got first released if I wasn’t happy about it’s unzoom range I sure was happy to know we were getting sunglasses… it’s too bright in this season.

 

The more I think of the it the less surprised I should be if some of my friends have headaches after playing DST for little too long. But I’m sure it’s nothing te devs can’t do, only we gotta ask for it more.

[crushcircuit]

i also have issues with the insanity filters, and i really like eyestrain as a color choice but there should almost ALWAYS be a way to opt out for people who are photosensitive. this and the moonstorm filters could really hurt somebody, and i dont think it would be that difficult to put in some way to at least tone these things down

this game is very dear to me and it really pains me to see how inaccessible it can be, especially because i personally know a lot of people who would be affected by this sort of thing.

EDIT: do NOT forget the night vision filter either. i have a mod to tone it down because its a headache to look at, as a wx-78 main, but if your primary charlie-deterring method is moggles it just HURTS to look at so frequently. at least with wx-78 it automatically switches off before day. it's like a flashbang

[Evelo]

Klei is typically really good at accessibility stuff. I have faith it will be fixed. Eventually.

[NPCMaxwell]

I wonder if it was made intentional that under many circumstances one is almost guarantee to die from not seeing details enough or from exhaustion. If yes that's an odd choice of cruelty towards players. (dying ftom vision exhaustion is very common to me during most situations in which the colours are altered drastically [for Winter and dusk it's mostly getting exhausted to struggle to orientate / find stuff and then being unable to focus on danger] I got USED to it, but considering this is a minor problem while others can suffer serious health conditions I don't get why customizing settings for much of the game visuals and sounds didn't exist for long.

[_zwb]

snow + insane makes everything white, literally can't see anything and my eyes hurt :/

[fimmatek]

I never had any problem with such UIs in the game, but I absolutely support to have the options to make DST more accessible. 

[SilverSpoon]

1 hour ago, _zwb said:

snow + insane makes everything white, literally can't see anything and my eyes hurt :/

Seriously. This is especially horrible when fighting the Celestial Champion. Fighting the Celestial Champion in winter is practically hard mode because I can't see gestalt attacks. I can barely see them at low enlightenment, but the Celestial Champion keep scooping snow off the ground and rubbing snow in my eyes like stupid brat.

[-Variant]

I had a friend help me restore the old colorcubes.

For those finding the new one to still hurt their eyes, this ought to help!
Not a fix, since not everyone has access to this. But until Klei figures something out, this'll do.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3283692696 Go. Cleanse your eyes.

[Lovens]

2 hours ago, -Variant said:

I had a friend help me restore the old colorcubes.

For those finding the new one to still hurt their eyes, this ought to help!
Not a fix, since not everyone has access to this. But until Klei figures something out, this'll do.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3283692696 Go. Cleanse your eyes.

Thanks for making this and bringing attention to the topic! I can relate a lot to color/light sensitivity issue. I tend to get bad migraines when I have too much blue on screen. Whenever I get one, it always starts with nausea that is proportional to the amount of light I'm exposed to, and becomes stronger if I continue looking at the screen at all. Getting one absolutely kills gam sessions with friends and I have to take a break. 

Because of that I constantly have my PC screen in "night mode" which brings out warmer yellow tones and makes it easier on the eyes. I noticed it has less chance to trigger a migraine if it's set up this way. I also use dark themes anywhere I can set it up, and if I can't then I force a website to become dark through a browser extension. I always feel like cheating when playing DST with color cubes off but it's so much easier on my eyes, especially when I deal with lunacy or insanity in winter. Wish it was an official setting (maybe not remove them entirely but rather adjust to be less harsh on eyes). 

All that aside, another thought: it doesn't feel fair to be hit by a nightmare you simply cannot see due to extreme insanity filter (dark on dark forest turf in autumn, or nearly invisible when you are insane in winter). Same with being hit by gestalts and moongleams in winter with full lunacy. It's not a challenge to dodge something you are physically unable to see.