Because the data is stored by colorname. If he switches to hex suddenly all colors would break, even NPC's and such.

I personally don't see how having color names and hex would be that difficult to implement, then again I'm not a programmer :P

Older clients not knowing wtf all the new colors are and how to handle them is the problem. It'll probably take a server update so they get sent a close equivalent to the new color and this will probably affect RC as well.

Not if he codes it to handle color names as well, like HTML does. He can probably easily make a conversion system, no?
white -> #FFFFFF
black -> #000000
and so on.

I was referring to an older client receiving player data from someone who has the new client and has decided to set their colors to hotpink as an example. The older client won't recognize this color at all and will probably default to like white or something like that.

Well I guess the problem is mixing beta players with the official v5 players. Which of course is no way to avoid that, but still. How is player data shared? Is it sent directly to other players or sent through the server first? If the latter he could easily set up special circumstances for v5 players. Still screwed however, as v5 players will never view v6 players the way intended so even if it bugs out what will happen, v5 players will see other players as all white or something(depending on if failsafes are in place)?

Just another reason Graal should go back to microupdates instead of these major version updates. Stuff like this could be avoided.

Or the client may not default to white and say wtf to these new colors and crash.

If he REALLY needed to he could take the v5 source and actually patch the damn thing.

why does it matter if v5 players cant see it? isnt v6 the future?

Because v6 and v5 players play together lol. Like I said if v5 players see white then that's fine, but more major things may be problematic. I currently play with v5 because the new version won't work in my old Graal folder and I can't be assed to start another Graal folder.

how, when v6 is out of beta wont v5 be disabled like v4 and v3 and v2?

Probably, but right now that's not the case. If Stefan upgrades v6 tomorrow with new colors then there's still a lot of the playerbase out there running v5 at the same time.

so make it work on v6 but dont include it in the update patches until v6 goes final???????????????????????

That'd suck for us :(

v6 isn't even released yet. I think the current beta version is v5.3 or something like that. And of course they should only keep v6 in mind since it's the future and v5 will eventually be disabled completely. From a programing point of view it's very logical.

It's still a beta, meaning players shouldn't HAVE to update to a beta, thus shouldn't be stuck with broken features because of features a beta client is getting. Being stuck without new stuff is fine, being stuck with a broken "official current" client because of the beta client is not.

Also, regardless of the version name, we all know it's v6. Why'd you even bring that up? Even the thread is called "v6 beta." It's just not going to be named version6.0 until it's complete.

how? you cant actually expect worthwhile updates to come out for v5. this is stefan and team we're talking about.

but if it's possible for v6 then go for it, since they will eventually release v6 and it will be the only client available. :/

Because I'd like to see it before v6 final... because who knows when that will be?

As far as compatibility was concerned, I meant compatibility with the old colornames, not with v5. As far as I'm concerned as long as it doesn't break v5 players than it's no big deal. But if it DOES crash v5 users for some reason, I think v5 should be patched just enough to not crash, so we can actually enjoy the feature before 2020.

why u care, world ends in 2012 anyway

Ya it's not an original idea. It's been suggested so many times over the years.

I know, it's just a shame it took this long to finally get put into motion. :(

Just gonna leave this here...
http://threadbomb.us/com/gallery/1_09_12_07_9_25_23.gif

That was the cutest bump I've ever seen :blush:

Based on Stefan's previous response I'm pretty sure it's going to be added, but not until the changeover from v5 to v6 is completed, because he can't add it while both versions are being used concurrently as it might cause problems for the v5 users.

i dont know why anyone is expecting this for 5, ofc it's going to be on 6 if it's being added