Question: player_2 vs. palette_swap

I'm having a little trouble understanding the difference between the player 2 and palette swap tags since they both convey the concept of a character having different colors than their default, whether it'd be for a fighting game or artistic license reasons. The wikis define them as follows:

Palette Swap: When it's specifically two versions of the same character in differently colored costumes.

Player 2: Videogame character color swap, or a parody thereof. Originated in fighting games, so that if both players chose the same character, they could still be easily distinguished.

I ask this because I was puzzled with tagging post #2446991 as either one, so I went with palette_swap for now. At the moment though, the definitions and image populations of both tags feel very vague to me. Would it be wise to tighten the definitions for both and clean them up, or merge them into one?

Speaking of which, is there a tag for when two characters' palettes are switched around? Like the above example or post #2157873.

EDIT: Found it -> color_switch

I'd favor merging to palette_swap unless someone has a compelling argument for keeping player_2.

Then if no one has any argument, I would like to propose the following alias/implication requests:

Solution 1

1. unimply player_2 -> alternate_color
2. alias player_2 -> palette_swap
3. imply color_switch -> palette_swap
4. imply palette_swap -> alternate_color

Specifically the following:

1. Remove existing alternate_color implication with player_2
2. Merge player_2 with palette_swap since the latter is a more concise definition
3. Imply color_switch with palette_swap since it's a subset
4. Imply palette_swap with alternate_color since the former is also a subset
5. Clean up palette_swap wiki

Solution 2

Alternately, we could nuke both palette_swap and player_2 and merge both with alternate_color. Color_switch would stay since it's a specified subset. So the request would be as follows:

1. imply color_switch -> alternate_color
2. unimply player_2 -> alternate_color
3. alias player_2 -> alternate_color
4. alias palette_swap -> alternate_color

I'll be voicing an opinon on possible retooling/retention of the tag, but I currently don't have time right now. I will edit it in here in a few hours.

The Player 2 concept could potentially work out (possibly renamed if necessary) as a specific form of alternate color for characters, particularly swapping characters between Red-Green-Blue colors, given that older games would swap between those colors for the second player character (particularly blue-red swapping).

The Player 2 definition causes confusion by mentioning fighting games, but as fighting games have a variety of different alternate colors it would give more the impression the concept is redundant to the alternate_color tag. On the other hand older games like Mario Bros, Contra, Double Dragon, and the like would simply swap colors between Red, Green, and Blue. This would be much narrower in concept than following alternate colors like in fighting games, and so wouldn't be seemingly redundant with the alternate_color tag.

Some other player 2 color changes are light-dark or inverting colors, but I wonder if those couldn't fall under a different concept and work better instead. It might unnecessarily broaden the tag definition and make the tag a bit too loose.

Sure thing.