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[Crossroads Inc.]

For many of us, we all know that, given time, our food stores become vast, endless seas of Barrels... Seas that, unless you want to to individually check barrel to barrel, look exactly the same regardless fo contents...

As such, I have begun to think of one, simple thing... Some sort of coloring of barrels that show them at Full, Half empty, and Empty...

Trees change color from winter to spring... How hard would it be to have Barrels change shades depending on how full or empty they are? While where at it, could we color code them for food as well? Brown for booze, green for plants, red for meat?

Anyone, Anyone?

[Karadan]

This would be kinda cool, but if you really want to know how much food you have you can always just use the stocks screen.

Still, it would be handy to be able to glance at our food stockpile and see that your almost out of booze or something similar.

[Silverionmox]

Looking at the actual stockpile full of barrels is much more satisfying than looking at a number. Good suggestion.

Would letting the contents of the barrel blink alternating with the barrel icon be a help, or would it just drive players crazy?

[Crossroads Inc.]

Blinking i thinkwould drive you crazy... My suggestion is just have them different colors, and have them turn different shades as they go from full to empty... The questionm is how hard is this to code?

How does it work for the trees? which go from greent to yellow, to red from spring to winter.

[Neonivek]

Heh

What if what the Barrel is filled with PLUS how full it is uses different appearances for Modders?

[Hectonkhyres]

My solution is a varient of the one proposed by Crossroads.
Make barrels defined by three different symbols: 'U' to indicate a totally empty barrel, 'O' to indicate a full barrel, and a zero with a crossbar to indicate a partially full barrel. Custom tilesets can do something different. Have the color of a full or partially full barrel change to indicate what is inside. Red for tasty-tasty elfblood brandy, green for raw sweetpods. An empty barrel can be the color of whatever the barrel is made out of.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Nah, thats waaaay too specfic, too many coplors would make us go nuts... We need very general things.

Green = ALL Plants, sweetpods, plump helmets, dimple cups, etc
Brown = ALL booze
Red = ALL meat
Blue = ALL fish
Grey = Seeds, Leaves, millable items?

Then you can go from Light green for full, green for medium, and Dark green for empty... or somethingf...

[Hectonkhyres]

Nah, thats waaaay too specfic, too many coplors would make us go nuts...

If you aren't insane, you haven't been playing enough Dwarf fortress. Its that simple.

[Puck]

3 simple color codes (for empty/half/full, no matter WHAT is actually in there) that get applied to the background of the barreltile would be awesome, I think. Or are those reserved for anything already?

[Hectonkhyres]

Ok... that brings us to four separate ways we can encode information in a tile.
1) The symbol itself.
2) The color of the symbol.
3) The color of the background.
4) Animation such as blinking.

I think most of us can cross off number four: Blinking would indeed cause most of us to gouge out our own eyes... and its damn hard to play DF without eyes. Number three would bug me personally but it would still be preferable to having to go 'k' every damn barrel in my inventory.

I really would like to be able to get some inkling of exactly what is in my barrels though. I will tend to have a separate stockpile for vegetables and so I want to have some clue whether a barrel is filled with glorious sunberries, staple crop plumphelmets  or dwarf-starving dimplecups and raw quarrybush. Such information is more valuable to me than the mere knowledge that they are vegetables. It matters to me. It really does. Not knowing might mean starvation or tantrumspiral.

I would ask, however, why Crossroads would care to know the difference between meat and fish. Once processed you treat them exactly the same and get the same products. Well, except for the glorious turtle and the equally glorious cave lobster.

And, if we are applying this logic to barrels, howabout bins? I really don't want to confuse my bin of giant cave spider silk with my pigtail cloth. Or my platinum bars with my pig iron bars. Yeah, they both are metal... but so what?

Edit: Sorry. Got a little bit hot under the collar there.

[sweitx]

Nah, thats waaaay too specfic, too many coplors would make us go nuts... We need very general things.

Green = ALL Plants, sweetpods, plump helmets, dimple cups, etc
Brown = ALL booze
Red = ALL meat
Blue = ALL fish
Grey = Seeds, Leaves, millable items?

Then you can go from Light green for full, green for medium, and Dark green for empty... or somethingf...

I would be happy with just true or false.  The color above if they contain even 1 of such thing.  Else be a defaul barrel color (I would suggest booze be yellow, and barrel be brown).
That way if you start seeing checkered pattern of stockpile with brown, you know you're running out of food/booze.