I've been doing some research on Dye and Dyeing and how it can be better represented in DF.
Their is currently a rather limited system that's narrowly focused on cloth, what we should be thinking of is an all encompassing PIGMENT system which covers all color altering practices. Cloth dyeing would be a part of that system but other things that can be colored would also be included. I've been brainstorming on this and narrowed everything down to four categories. All Pigments would have the ability to be used in at least one of these ways but some could be used for multiple categories.
Animal Fiber - Any thing that is protein based animal hair such as wool, protein tends to bind with other molecules well and a wide variety of things can color it, not presently in the game but expected to be included some day (resent improvements in creatures raws should facilitate this). Wool was in fact the primary source of cloth in the medieval Europe.
Plant Fiber - Anything that is cellulose based like cotton, presently in the game and the dominant type of cloth. This category also includes whole wood for purposes of staining and varnishing. Cellulose tends to be harder to stain with fewer possibly dyes that require stronger chemicals.
Skin - Anything that is or was skin, bone or horn, Tattoos on living creatures or staining leather fall under this category. Parchment was the dominant writing material of the middle ages and is a form of skin thus falls in this category. Plant based paper might also be included here just for simplicity sake of having all ink be interchangeably, most ink was in fact used on on parchment and paper interchangeably.
Hard Surfaces - The final category is not based on a single material because the defining property here is that the material dose not bond with the pigment. Stone, metal glass and other inert materials can only be colored by mixing pigment with something that will stick to the surface of the material aka Paint. Various binding ages have been used such as egg yoke (tempra paint), oil, wax, gum and in the case of Frescoes the plaster itself is the binding agent. Most mineral based pigments fall in this category as they are chemically stable and can't attach without a binding agent.
Some of you may have noticed that silk is missing and this is intentional, my research shows that silk is able to 'dual-class' and accept anything that would dye either Plant or Animal fibers making it superior to either.
For the first three categories a number of additional chemicals are needed to dye most things and these chemicals are called mordants. My research shows at least a half dozen such chemicals and I'm still sorting through how they were historically used and made but its clear that some abstraction is necessary to make something that the player will have any hope of using. More on that stuff some day in the future, for now what do people think of the 4 categories as a basis for the dying and coloring of all things?
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Topic: Thoughts on Dye (Read 1525 times)