Destiny’s next update adding proper ‘Colorblind Mode’

Recognizing that not all players "see the world the same way," Bungie will be implementing a "proper" Colorblind Mode with Destiny's next update.

"Destiny relies on color to communicate some pretty important information to the player, particularly in the user interface. You may not have trouble distinguishing the red blips on the motion tracker from the red surface of Mars, for example, but chances are you know someone who does. Our solution for this subset of our community is a proper “Colorblind Mode” for Destiny," Bungie User Interface Engineering Lead Brad Fish said in today's blog post.

As the man who led the effort to make Destiny colorblind-friendly, Fish explained, "Adapting the existing user interface to support various color blind modes turned out to be a fairly complex challenge, but we managed to build a flexible toolkit for our designers that helped them do just that with minimally-invasive surgery and no negative impact to existing functionality. I’m extremely excited for players to get their hands on this!"

Acknowledging that how you view colors may mean the difference between life and death in Destiny, technical artist Nate Hawbaker went into a bit more detail. Bungie has increased the contrast between the colros we do have in the perceived palette. "We hope the new modes enable more players to make quick decisions about the elements in the game that are most important. Since there is no such thing as a blue ammo drop, prioritizing the difference in shades was easier," he said, adding that Bungie has also increased the size and brightness of the loot bauble to match the Grey engram.

And lastly, Bungie has also made some upgrades to the transparent user interface for use by players equipped with different visual spectrums. It's easier to just look at the changes than try to explain them.

From left to right, you can see Standard Mode, a simulated Dueteranopic View, and Dueteranopia Mode.

In addition to an improved colorblind system, Bungie's weekly post also consisted of previewing the audio changes coming to Destiny. You can read more about those here.

Bungie doesn't yet have a release date for update 1.1.2, but did say that it will arrive sometime between now and the release of Destiny's next DLC, House of Wolves. In the meantime, keep an eye out as Bungie also promised to talk more about the increased Vault space, presumably as part of next week's blog post.

[Bungie]