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[Mechanoid]

After looking at the dwarve's status icons on the wiki page linked below, i realised that there arn't any for dwarves who are on their break, or for dwarves who are partying!
http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Status_Icons

I suggest that status icons be added for:

- Partying
- On Break
- Harass Animals
- Off Duty

That way we can tell at a glance wether or not:
- The dwarves gathered in the dining hall are idle, or are actually throwing a party (so we dont have to press the u or j keys to check if they are)
- Same goes for dwarves on break
- Military dwarves will throw themselves at a herd of elephants if they come close enough together
- You have to go into the military screen to turn your soldiers to "On Duty"

I suggest the following icons /colors:
- Party - ¶ symbol (pilcrow) in random color (no greyscale) forground /black background (random colors scream "PARTY! / OVER! / HERE!")

- Break - * symbol (asterisk) in random greyscale forground /background (it looks like a puff of smoke; assuming dwarves smoke (abstract) pipes on their breaks)

- Harass - ~ symbol (single tilde) in white forground /blue background (reference to the Perry Bible Fellowship comic strip which has a character use the same sybol to infer mischevious intent; FYI the comic name is "weaboo")

- Off Duty - ˇ symbol (inverted exclaimation) in light cyan forground /dark blue background (because off duty dwarves [like to waste time to] fill their waterskins)

[ October 23, 2007: Message edited by: Mechanoid ]

[Turgid Bolk]

Haha, I like the Party symbol.

I'm not sure about the Harass animals symbol, since it would be constant for a lot of dwarves. Same with the On-duty/Off-duty symbol...either one is gonna have a lot of blinky dwarves all the time, and would interfere a little bit with seeing which profession they have. It would be nice to see at a glance, but those are near-constant states. Something to consider, I guess.

[Yag Alone]

quote:Originally posted by Turgid Bolk:
<STRONG>Haha, I like the Party symbol.

I'm not sure about the Harass animals symbol, since it would be constant for a lot of dwarves. Same with the On-duty/Off-duty symbol...either one is gonna have a lot of blinky dwarves all the time, and would interfere a little bit with seeing which profession they have. It would be nice to see at a glance, but those are near-constant states. Something to consider, I guess.</STRONG>

Don't forget those 3 symbols are only applicable to the military dwarves, so they won't be used that often.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

¶arty, ¶arty, ¶arty! The party status icon sounds fun. Is it that important to tell whether a dwarf is partying or on break though?

quote:Originally posted by Yag Alone:
<STRONG>

Don't forget those 3 symbols are only applicable to the military dwarves, so they won't be used that often.</STRONG>

Well, that's not necessarily the case. Personally, I tend not to use trap corridors or lava floods to fight off enemies, so I like to have a substantial standing army, but that I keep mostly off-duty during normal operations. In this case, I'd have a lot of blinking to communicate information that, at least for me, isn't really needed most of the time.

If there were some of these symbols, I would prefer was an option, or even an init file setting. In that case, I certainly wouldn't mind.