It's only a couple dozen sprites (or sprite elements) as far as I can think of. It's not trivial, but it's definitely feasible. Considering how often you encounter clothed people in the game, whether in fort mode or adventure mode, I'd say it's well worth it.
It's a couple hundred sprites, because the same clothing sprites that fit dwarves wont fit humans, wont fit kobolds, wont fit legless animal men, wont fit very large or small animal men. ^^
Yeah, I should clarify that I doubt it will be worthwhile to fully support every possible combination, just the four civilization-building races and whatever low-hanging fruit (say, if animal men have similar torsos to humans) take little extra work. Considering that, and considering that the racial variants are modifications rather than whole new sprites, I think that it should remain similar in magnitude to doing the hair sprites.
most posters aren't in favor of profession-based icon
From my 2 year experience in running a tileset, most players are in favor of seeing professions. Of course I could be wrong.
I don't think that's really a meaningful point of reference, since the tileset you made was for Dwarf Fortress without any new graphical capabilities. Certainly, if profession is the only thing you can show, you may as well show profession. But Toady is going to be working on improving what the game can show, so there's no need to remain bound by what has been possible in the past.
I assume that we'll make a big poll at some point, with all the undecided, rather binary design choices and see what is more popular. Even then the popular vote might not help much, because players are not designers. ^^
Yeah, Toady is the designer. Nobody's contesting that. But as it happens, lots of DF players know a thing or two about design. I agree that going by raw numbers isn't meaningful, which is why I only mentioned that with regard to whether something could be considered obvious. But the content of posts shouldn't be disregarded solely on the basis that the person making it isn't Toady, there are plenty of good and meaningful arguments made in this very thread, which should be read on their own merit.
To sum up, based on my perception of those arguments, the main points in favor of coloring by profession:
1. Because profession information is sometimes a useful approximation of a dwarf's intended role in the fortress, that should be always visible; otherwise new players may be confused
2. Because the use of dyes and other forms of attention to color and to uniform or type of equipment is some degree less than total, dwarves depicted in their actual clothing would be homogeneous, as seen in Japa's screenshot where most articles of clothing are one of five colors*.
And arguments for representing clothing accurately:
1. On the general principle that people are specifically paying to have graphics that represent what's happening accurately, rather than symbolic graphics as in the ASCII version, the contents of the fort should be represented as accurately as is feasible.
2. People like to care about how their dwarves (or adventurers) look, and their choices in this regard should be respected.
There has been a counterargument to the second of those, that people rarely color their dwarf clothing now because the UI is not convenient to do so. Despite being numeric in nature, that counterargument has not been supported with data.
Arguments for representing clothing accurately also include counterarguments to the notion of profession-based representation:
1. Because profession information is often misleading with regards to a dwarf's potential role in the fortress, making them always visible will confuse new players
2. (Applying both to the second argument for profession iconicism, above, and the counterargument to the second argument for accurate representation): People do set uniforms and outfit their adventurers with aesthetic concerns in mind, including the use of dyes. Intuitively, it can be supposed that if these aesthetic choices were made visible, more players would be interested in making them.
Regardless of whether these arguments were made by designers or not, they can be examined on their own merits.
If I have missed any major arguments, I apologize, please feel free to re-levy them in that case.
What he said.
Feedback like this always has to be enjoyed with a bit of erring on the side of caution. Have a look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle It wouldn't surprise me if the loudest 80% with the strongest opinions make up about 20% of the player base. 
Hang on now, a moment ago you were saying that players are not designers; that the backing of the majority does not imply that an option is the correct one. Now you're implying that an option can't be correct unless it's backed by the majority? The fact that the people in this thread are not sampled randomly from the entirety of the population that will play the Steam release is not a bad thing. Didn't you yourself say in another thread that the steam forums, for example, are a mess of ignorance (or something to that effect)? This thread biases towards those with a greater level of interest in the game and its presentation, who therefore will have a more solid understanding of the game and of game design both with regards to presentation and otherwise. That makes the posts here more worthy of consideration, not less.
*Note, though, that his screenshot doesn't do a complete job representing the diversity of clothing options since the robes and dresses look very similar in that art style, and the fact that they're all the same profession may have some importance there too. It's probably most representative of colors.
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Topic: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Ironhand - Discussion and Suggestions (Read 461509 times)