Some really interesting stuff here! How will items made of unusual materials be handled? E.g. artifact floodgates made of ruby? It seems a bit excessive to make sprites for every edge-case, but it would still be weird for them to have regular appearances when they're made of such an exotic material. Would applying some sort duocolor filter, with RGB values given in the raws work? For example, a "ruby floodgate" would look something like this:
As a bonus, maybe add a "PRECIOUS" flag in the material defines, with PRECIOUS materials possibly having a sparkle or two superimposed on the image itself.
Also, how hard/easy is it to make the appearance of specific items modular? For example, making the jewel on the crown actually change color depending on the gem used (if any)?
My current idea is sets for items of stone, wood, metal and glass. Gems would just use the glass version.
Modular colors: I only know how it works in TWBT, Toady hasn't coded anything in that regard yet, and I don't know if we will get such a feature. More control over color would be fantastic. I think everyone who ever made a tileset for DF would agree. ^^
Beak dogs: Ups, no. Mike made an updated version, somehow both ended up in the screenshot. But we could probably use one for male and one for female beak dog.
Color filters ARE automatically applied in DF. Which is actually kind of a problem.
I also made something completely different... the trade depot. I don't know if it makes any sense, but my reasoning was this: The trade depot is one large open area. Dwarves would surely decorate such an area, but they only have the floor. So they either do engravings or a mosaic... well...
The trade depot:
(I know already that we won't use that and I'll make one more fitting to the other workshops, but I thought it looks nice.
It's like a mini-version of the giant mosaics that people do with floor tiles. Pixelart in pixelart
)