Colors on the console


If you are having problems because the blue is too dark, or the brown is too gray, or you hate the orange(bright-red), then you probably want to tweak Window's color settings for consoles. How to do that? I'll tell you... as best I can.

There's the long way and the easy way. Both involve mucking with the registry, which is risky. The easy way also requires trust in my good-nature and competancy.

I have XP, so I don't know exactly how this all will work on other versions. It also relies on your comfortabiliality with the regedit and .reg files. PS: Follow my instructions at your own risk.
Starting with the assumption that you want NetHack colors for all console activity, because 1: you might start NetHack in varied ways, and 2: reasons for changing the colors for NetHack often apply for other applications.
First, the harder-but-more-satisfying way.
  1. Open up a console window of any kind. Run NetHack, cmd, whatever. In windowed mode. Hit [Alt]+[Enter] if it's in full screen mode.
  2. Right click on the title bar. Choose Properties.
  3. Click on the colors tab.
  4. Click on the color you want to change.
  5. Tweak the "Selected Color Values" until that color is the way you like it. (the color may not update unless you click on another "Selected Color Value" field.)
  6. Click on that same color again. If you don't, you will hose up the next color you choose.
  7. Click on the next color you want to change.
  8. Etc
  9. Make sure the foreground/background colors are how they started.
  10. Hit OK, and select "Save properties for future windows with same title" when prompted. Then hit OK for that.
  11. Remember the title of the console window. You are done with that window.
  12. Run Regedit, and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Console
  13. Look for the key that matches (closest) the title you are remembering. Select it.
  14. Right click on it and Export. Save as color.reg on the desktop.
  15. You are done with regedit.
  16. Edit color.reg with notepad.
  17. Find the line that says [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console\blah_blah_blah]
  18. Remove "\blah_blah_blah" from that line.
  19. Underneath it there should be 1-16 lines that start "Colortable##"=
  20. Delete everything that happens to be after those(the Colortable) lines.
  21. Save file. You are done with notepad.
  22. Right click on colors.reg and Merge.
  23. You are done with colors.reg, and your console should now always use your new colors.
Easy but lack of choice way
  1. Download nh/console_colors.reg.
  2. Double click on it and say OK.
  3. You can delete console_colors.reg, if you want.
These are the colors it will set:
                                                               

Dec 11, 2003