It’s taken us an unexpectedly long time to get to this point, but after some issues (huge shipping delay from Poland to Scotland, and a slightly poorly Vectrex), we’re finally ready to get everyone to vote on what single colour we should use for the Vecribbon overlay background.
Yes, we’ve officially given up on gradient for this release. However, the colours we have to choose from are really pretty and don’t suffer from the diffusion issue of our gradient prototype.
All the colours are shown below. Each is captured in a dark environment (pink-numbered images) and with ambient light (hand-numbered images).
Many of the swatches look completely different when placed on the Vectrex, as opposed to holding the contact sheet up to light; in fact a few apply only a tiny amount of colouration to the vectors (eg 8, 10, 11, 32).
These samples are 200 micron polycarbonate; the final product will either use a 500 micron version of the chosen colour, or a thin film layer which will be permanently bonded to a clear polycarbonate backing.
If you’re a registered user you can vote in the poll below. In this poll, we’ll all pick our 3 favourites. Once enough people have voted, we’ll take the 5 most popular and have a second vote to decide the final colour.
Dark Surroundings
Click to enlarge each pic.
Colours 1-8 Colours 9-16 Colours 17-20 Colours 21-28 Colours 29-32
With Ambient Light
Again, click ’em to biggerise.
Colours 1-8 Colours 9-20 Colours 21-32
Contact Sheet
Finally, as reference, here’s the original contact sheet (in case you already fell in love with a colour). Do check how your preferred option looks on an actual Vectrex above, though!
Let’s Vote
Alright, let’s do this thing! Pick your THREE faves 🙂 The vote will stay open for a week or so.
Just to add, don’t pay any attention to the fact that in the ambient shot of Colours 21-32, some of the vectors appear blurred. That’s purely a camera artefact.
However, the camera correctly captures the fact that reds 21 and 22 do darken the vector significantly compared to the other colours. Red 5 doesn’t do that, and has a lovely cherry colour.
Orange number 31 is a little more diffuse than the other colours, which the picture shows.
Final note! If there’s a swatch that you like but don’t feel you have a good enough picture of, let me know and I’ll take a few more pics of it.
Fell, when you select Vote, it takes you to your WordPress login….I wanted to Vote for 20, 15 and 25 from the swatch chart….
Chris, you need to be logged in; if you go through the login it should allow you to vote!
Either I voted twice or somebody else has the same unique, exquisite taste as me. I clicked vote (on iOS Safari) before I logged in, then I logged in, then I reloaded the page, then I voted. I think when I reloaded it must have submitted my original votes?
I’ve checked the logs, and it looks like you were only counted once, and the overall number of votes so far tallies with overall voters 🙂
Thank you, Fell&co, for the status update for VecRibbon. It’s good to read that VecRibbon progresses and step-by-step comes closer to completion and a release. Also great that you let us participate in the voting.
Personally, I think a fresh, brigth, warm green would be a cool colour (14, 15)? As an alternative colour I could imagine a purple – but maybe this isn’t a good to idea because the game is (more or less) realistic and therefore colours that occur in nature should be used (green/yellow/blue).
I’m curious how many people actually participate and sure enough will join the second poll with three colours, only.
Best regards and greetings from Germany! Helmut
Hi Helmut, great to hear from you 🙂 I’m really emotionally invested in this poll; it’s awesome to see people checking in to vote! I agree that a green would look great, but I’m also thrilled to see pink and orange in the running. I think any of the popular choices (so far) would look lovely, esp with the green of Scarlet’s border design.
I went for a clean sweep on the three pink swatches, because we don’t have enough pink overlays… and you can be sure this overlay will be used to play other games as well. There are ton of blue overlays, which looks great… but pink is so neon and synthwave. I also secretly feel a bias towards pink with the numbers and this website 😉 #gopink
#gopink 😀
Pink please!
It certainly looks like it’s going that way 😀
Oh my goodness, I’m sorry for all the dead ladybirds in the pink-numbered pics. I’ll make it up to you, Liv..