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Yellow Paint (thelemmy.club)
submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by cannedtuna@lemmy.world to c/comicstrips@lemmy.world

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I don't mind yellow paint as much as it is a sign of the broader issue of big games trying to be idiot-proof. If a game has yellow paint I expect it to be as easy as it can be outside of giving me literal god mode.

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[-] Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.net 12 points 5 days ago

The yellow paint was kinda necessitated by the advent of highly detailed worlds. With so much extra visual noise it's harder to see which objects are interactive.

We didn't need them before because everything had such little geometry that it was easier to tell what was what. People weren't smarter, games were just a lot more simple.

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

My kids recently got into Harry Potter, so I loaded up the old HP1 game on a playstation emulator. The whole game environment is made up from a single muddy low-poly mesh. Pretty much every object that isn't part of that background mesh is interactible. You really don't have to be smart to figure that out. So total agreement.

The yellow paint of the early 2000s was "object exists".

[-] Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.net 2 points 4 days ago

Oh man I know the exact game you're talking about. That game was ROUGH.

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

IIRC, there was a second HP1 game, that looked much better, but deviated massively from the story.

[-] Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 days ago

Not according to the wiki.

There was a PC release for the game that looked like ass though apparently. The PS version was developed with the aid of the movie production team and Head TERF herself, so it was more faithful to the books/movies than the PC version apparently.

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Ah, confused the two. The worse looking version (PS1, PC) is less book accurate, and the newer version (PS2) is more book accurate. Oh well.. Maybe I'll get the newer version then for my kids.

[-] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

Yeah, it's fine not having it back in the day, but also during the "everything is brown and moderately detailed" era of my youth it was rough if you missed the intro to a path or something.

I'll also concede part of why I've embraced the yellow paint is that I got older and my eyes are worse and I've got less time to dedicate to video games.

[-] Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.net 2 points 5 days ago

Yup, same. As another user mentioned during that brown era was the use of the "special sense" mechanic to highlight objects and paths. Sometimes it became so necessary that you saw it more than the actual world.

It's getting better though; with modern games there are new tricks with lighting and environment design itself to guide the player. So as devs get better at working with 3D environments it will lessen its needed use case so as to be less intrusive on immersion and artistic direction. Probably won't completely go away as a concept but it will become better incorporated.

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Tbh, I really don't mind yellow paint when its done well.

We use it in the real world too. We use yellow paint to mark trip hazards and ledges, we use red paint to mark medikits (first aid kits), we use blue or green paint to mark defibrilators and so on.

Color-coded context info is omnipresent in the built environment.

Would anyone complain about white paint marking lanes in racing games?

[-] Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.net 1 points 4 days ago

The problem people have is when it is forced into an environment. Like some games you're out in the wilderness yet this random ledge in this uninhabited waste has been painted up? It's immersion breaking.

Like, if you're going to break immersion just dial into the game-ification aspect and highlight interactive elements when near them or something instead of plastering everything in yellow paint.

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

I honestly don't see the difference between regular yellow paint, orange sparkles or highlights.

Sparkling loot is something that was common even back in the 90s and likely before that.

If it helps, you can imagine that yellow paint isn't there in-universe but only for the player, just like sparkling loot or highlighted interactive elements.

this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2026
780 points (97.0% liked)

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