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[Meph]

If we do hide them, my idea would be using borders. Transparency makes both sprites (ground and stockpile) less readable.

[Schmaven]

I think opaque stockpiles are good because you can remove sections of them tile by tile and end up with some creatively disjointed patchwork stockpile shapes.  This is very easy to see when they are opaque.  I would concede as far as semi-translucent is still functuonal, but fully transparent seems like it would be confusing and unclear in these cases.  Considering the flagging, even a border outline would be confusing in the case of disjointed stockpile shapes.  I'm not sure what other options might look like.

Having options to change the views of various things would be nice.  But that seems more in the realm of modding.  Having no options, just the 1 stockpile look for the official tileset seems reasonable.

Edit: that being said, no matter what the the end result ends up being, I'm sure I will figure it out.  I generally don't go too crazy with stockpile shapes.  And with familiarity, just about anything can become second nature.

Why do you want to see what is under your stockpiles?  I've never heard of using them for sapling growth prevention before. 

[Uthimienure]

If we do hide them, my idea would be using borders. Transparency makes both sprites (ground and stockpile) less readable.

I love this idea!   

[bloop_bleep]

Why do you want to see what is under your stockpiles?

I think the issue is more, like I said, that opaque stockpiles would look like constructed floors, or some other physical construction that was built to cover the ground. But this makes no sense, since in the game stockpiles are abstract immaterial things -- you don't "build" stockpiles, you simply abstractly designate them, and they exist only in your dwarves' minds. The =s in ASCII vanilla DF are just the most convenient way to express where a stockpile is located in an environment restricted to ASCII graphics. But we're not restricted to ASCII anymore.

I think bordered stockpiles are indeed better than opaque stockpiles, but they're sort of less noticeable and less immediately clear designations for stockpiles than transparent stockpiles.

[Meph]

Why do you want to see what is under your stockpiles?  I've never heard of using them for sapling growth prevention before.

I use them to prevent sapling growths a lot. ^^

No idea why you'd want to see what's underneath, I think it was more a matter of principle. Stockpiles are player-assigned zones, not dwarf-constructed buildings.

If you see what's underneath, you can color-code them by building different floors underneath.

[Rekov]

With your flags, that's not bad at all... but what happens when you have irregularly shaped stockpiles that flow around stuff... LOTS of flags?

Yeah, I played around with mocking up something with multiple stockpiles bordering against each other and it very quickly gets enormously complicated to keep flags from overlapping in unreadable ways. Especially once you start having irregularly shaped stockpiles. Unfortunate, because I also really liked the little flags.

[bloop_bleep]

To keep the little flags and combine the two ideas, why not:

having a dotted line run between flags, so the shape of the stockpile is more clear

?

It'd make the borders be even more abstract, which I'd prefer.

[Uthimienure]

Why do you want to see what is under your stockpiles?  I've never heard of using them for sapling growth prevention before.

I use them to prevent sapling growths a lot. ^^

No idea why you'd want to see what's underneath, I think it was more a matter of principle. Stockpiles are player-assigned zones, not dwarf-constructed buildings.

If you see what's underneath, you can color-code them by building different floors underneath.

Well, with floors under them, it's not a big deal... but I build stockpiles outdoors, and just about everywhere. I hate having to use "k" to see the underlying terrain. Either your borders or Mike's transparency would help with that, although the borders are my favorite. They could be a bit less like mini stone walls and even be partly transparent themselves, then I would be on cloud nine.

[Rekov]

First I tried representing this arrangement of stockpiles with separate flags, which was a mess. Even combining flags onto the same stake, it's still a visual mess. You can read it, but it doesn't look as cool as a single isolated stockpile in the original mockup.



Maybe someone could come up with something better? At this point I'm leaning toward Meph's border idea.

And Meph, I think the desire to see what's under stockpiles is purely an aesthetic thing. Zones, traffic designations, etc don't show up in game as overlays because they aren't meant to exist as physical things. Same with stockpiles I guess.

[Uthimienure]

If we do hide them, my idea would be using borders. Transparency makes both sprites (ground and stockpile) less readable.

A thought... is it easy or hard (or impossible) to make the borders different colors based on the type of stockpile chosen when designated?
This isn't super important, it would just be the icing on the cake. You could see at a quick glance which pile is food, finished goods, etc.
Again, no biggie and not worth much time away from more important graphics tasks.

[Meph]

A thought... is it easy or hard (or impossible) to make the borders different colors based on the type of stockpile chosen when designated?

I thought about that, or adding a sign, icon or text to it. Made some mock-ups long ago. ^^

It's 18 types btw: 17 base + 1 for custom settings.

We haven't talked with Tarn about the stockpiles. So far they are just the normal stockpiles you now and love.

[Superdorf]

What if you had the existing opaque griddy-thing, but made it blink between stockpile and ground tile, sorta like how items blink over stairways now? Best of both worlds, or distracting mess?

[Schmaven]

That's a very good point that transparent stockpiles could easily be color coded by just building normal floors.  I think I'm leaning more in favor of just having outlined stockpiles now.  It does open up more creativity that way.  The blinking however would be a bit distracting.

[voliol]

I'm for experimenting with the outlined stockpiles a bit.
They look ok with items as well:

[MoltenIdol]

I'm sorry, but transparency results in something completely unreadable:

But... unreadable how? I like this a lot more, because it makes it clear a "stockpile" is an abstract thing, rather than a physical construction.

Gotta agree, this works for me as well, for reasons you described here. And beyond that, i Think it looks absolutely better that way as well, not as protruding from the terrain.

I like the Idea with the Sticks placed as a border for the stockpile Even Better, tho this might work well.

Edit: I didnt realize the discussion had moved on.
The border only, seems like the better solution. Maybe it could be made less of a "full/complete" Square, and instead just be dots or short lines, except for the corners.
And Maybe Also transparent?
The current design kinda looks like a "cut out" block of terrain (or as previously mentioned, like a thin stone/metal wall), and stands out in a Weird way. It almost looks "elevated". Maybe not. Maybe you got it right.