Have Secret Announcements use Native Text Color if Message Colorization is Disabled.

[OpenRift412]

As the title says. It's the only message type that is force-recolored, making it less consistent with the other messages. Recoloring only makes sense if message colorization is enabled.

[elf-alchemist]

In addition to this, is it possible to also add golden colorization to the new centered level announcement?

[OpenRift412]

In addition to this, is it possible to also add golden colorization to the new centered level announcement?

Personally I'd disagree since the level announcement doesn't need colorized emphasis, but I don't really use colorization so that's up to y'all I guess.

[elf-alchemist]

Personally I'd disagree since the level announcement doesn't need colorized emphasis, but I don't really use colorization so that's up to y'all I guess.

This is more so taken from Boom colorizing of the automap that makes the level label golden, and it affected to former (pre-SBARDEFS) level announcement.

Personally, I think level announcement should've been a standardized feature of SBARDEFS, but at this point that require proper community discussion to expand upon these specs cleanly.

[fabiangreffrath]

Okay guys. This has been a golden centered message for literally decades, starting with Hexen, then ZDoom, and even PrBoom+ (and Crispy Doom). It has never been an issue and people have never raised a concern about it being centered or colored, literally never.

Then comes an unannounced "official" port that nobody asked for that breaks with the decades old legacy, and now these details suddenly become issues?

[elf-alchemist]

Rift just likes to stick to vanilla as close as possible and the secret message being the only colorized message that can't be changed to the vanilla-only colors must be sticking out like a sore thumb to him, lol. I like all colorization features myself, so that's why I even mentioned colorized the level announcement.

[OpenRift412]

Okay guys. This has been a golden centered message for literally decades, starting with Hexen, then ZDoom, and even PrBoom+ (and Crispy Doom). It has never been an issue and people have never raised a concern about it being centered or colored, literally never.

Then comes an unannounced "official" port that nobody asked for that breaks with the decades old legacy, and now these details suddenly become issues?

Hexen doesn't even have tagged secrets like Doom does, and it doesn't use gold text for centered messages either (there's gold font graphics in the IWAD but I don't know what they're used for besides I guess the help screen?). ZDoom didn't even use gold lettering originally (it used the console font which was ripped from Doom 64), not to mention it was clear from the beginning that ZDoom never cared about design language, let alone polish. If I had to guess, PrBoom+ probably just copied ZDoom since by 2004 they had made it gold like it is today.

Also, a reminder: Kex wasn't even the first port to do secrets in the format that it does. It's been in the Unity port since 2020.

Rift just likes to stick to vanilla as close as possible and the secret message being the only colorized message that can't be changed to the vanilla-only colors must be sticking out like a sore thumb to him, lol. I like all colorization features myself, so that's why I even mentioned colorized the level announcement.

It's not even about being "vanilla", secret messages weren't even in vanilla. All I'm suggesting is a more consistent design.

[rfomin]

I did some digging on the old ports and OpenRift is right.
ZDoom 1.11 06 Mar 1998 (first release)

ZDoom 1.16 December 1998 (sixth release)

Hexen don't have secret messages. I think Quake 1 (1996) is the most relevant for us:

[fabiangreffrath]

Dammit, my memory was failing me. Apologies @OpenRift412!

[fabiangreffrath]

But Hexen had centered message when changing hubs, right?

[OpenRift412]

Dammit, my memory was failing me. Apologies @OpenRift412!

All good. Hope I didn't sound confrontational.

[rfomin]

But Hexen had centered message when changing hubs, right?

No idea, I just asked about secret messages.

[rfomin]

Hexen has messages like this:

[fabiangreffrath]

[rfomin]

Okay, I don't want to check Hexen to be honest 😄

I vote to decolourise secret messages by default. People have gotten used to it since 1998, but a little change would not hurt.

[fabiangreffrath]

We'll get toasted for this.

[elf-alchemist]

A possible suggestion, perhaps add "announcement colorization" as a separate option setting?

[rfomin]

A possible suggestion, perhaps add "announcement colorization" as a separate option setting?

We want to avoid such micro-options as we are trying to reduce/simplify the menus.