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[Girlinhat]

So, I'm thinking about my battlefield, namely a large swathe of land in front of my fort that I've covered in orthoclase.  It's plentiful and magma-safe.  Will be moving to another material eventually, but I'm tired of dark forts.  Obsidian is nice, but dreary.

Meanwhile, my food stockpile is underground, in the soil layer that's yellow sand.  As fat gets stored there, I can't help but say to myself, "Hey, where'd my stockpile go?" because fat and yellow sand are identical.  After a moment I realized that I could make a huge fat stockpile and make the ground uniform.  Or use tallow, as it's produced in single units and thus spreads out much better than simple fat.  My battlefield could be a large brown plain.

What about the rest of you dirty dwarves?  Ever used a strange material to cover a floor or decorate an area?

[ashein]

A pseudo-encrusted corridor or something. Put one stockpile, then remove some tiles in a chess-like pattern, then put another stockpile. Assign cut gems to both stockpiles, and choose particular gems for each.

I generally try to use lighter stone blocks (marble, cinnabar etc) for impassable stuff like walls, statues etc, and dark ones for floors and other walkables, but such restrictions together with the current relative scarcity of minerals leave me without many color options.

[Sphalerite]

Make a lot of cloth ropes.  Dye each one a different color (as limited by the available palette of dyes).  Build them on the floor in a pattern making a picture.  Pretend it's a gigantic tapestry.

[Girlinhat]

I considered this for my battlefield floor, but no matter how I painted it, it'd just end up being red...  I may do some gems, I like those...

[HoffaSaurusX]

Huh? My floor coverings are interesting? vomit, corpses, blood, x-pigtailed socks-x, broken crossbow bolts, limbs...

[Root Infinity]

Ash

Magma FTW!

(Could you "pave" with lignite and create a !!FUN!! burning trap?)

[Girlinhat]

Road yes, floor no.  Floors are invulnerable.

[Lectorog]

MICROCLINE!

And a full-size chessboard. 1x1 or 2x2 tiles, alternating red and black colors. It makes for a nice dining room or statue garden.

[Girlinhat]

I have some microcline, but not really enough.  Orthoclase is a lot more common on this map.

[kotekzot]

Take goblin blood, vomit, and troll blood. Try to mix them until you get cyan, magenta, yellow, black, and white.

[Funburns]

After a moment I realized that I could make a huge fat stockpile and make the ground uniform.  Or use tallow, as it's produced in single units and thus spreads out much better than simple fat.  My battlefield could be a large brown plain.

If you do decide to go with the lard based variety of astroturf, remember that disarmed soldiers might choose to grip a slab of the stuff and swing it sloppily at their enemies. If there's magma in the area (and why wouldn't there be?) it might also ignite and cause a massive, all-consuming ground fire over everybody. With the current vanilla DF bugs, aren't dwarves obese enough? Do you really want your sweaty, fat-slapping grease battles to end smelling like the floor of a McDonalds? In Calcutta? The poor section? On New Years morning during a soccer riot?

Well, maybe you do. At least your dwarves would grow up with well-trained immune systems. I've been mulling over ways to heavily pixelate and then force photographs into the colors Dwarf Fortress can display, so I can turn all the floors, walls and furniture into a massive, multi-Z-level, possibly NSFW, flip book made of thoughtfully colored stone. Does anyone know if there's a Photoshop tool for that?

[elf-fondling human]

I often use red, white, and brown to make 8-bit video game sprites. I've had mario in my dining hall and Pokemon Trainer Red in my dormitories. Next: Samus. Being attacked by a metroid.

[Montague]

I made an outdoor 'battlefield' like you described in the pattern of an American flag, made from bauxite, cobaltite and limestone.

It was impressive, since I even had the scale correct and all 50 stars in the field, but I felt bad when it inevitably became encrusted with oceans of blood, vomit and broken bolts.

Plus I had a hard time getting enough cobaltite to finish it, since to get the scale close enough I had to make it huge. I think I'll use some easy and less sentimental next time, like the Belgian flag.

[elf-fondling human]

Go with the Confederate Flag. The confederates (according to the north) were bloodthirsty anyways, and the flag isn't all that hard to make. The colors are relatively easy as well.

[Girlinhat]

Make a large archery target.  Bonus points for dropping single-tile cast obsidian blocks on it like darts at a bar.