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40d:Color

From Dwarf Fortress Wiki
Revision as of 20:21, 16 August 2010 by Quietust (talk | contribs) (→‎Color tokens: reorder by HSL and force grays to the top)
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This article is about an older version of DF.

Color is used to express various information, from a dwarf's Template:L to the natural color of a terrain feature to the material an item is made of.

  • If looking for different colors for the game as seen on your computer screen, see Template:L.
  • If looking for the different colors used to represent different dwarfs, see Template:L.)
  • If looking for colors of items listed in the z-stocks menu, see Template:L.


Wall vs. floor color

phyllite (to the left) has COLOR:0:7:1 and BASIC_COLOR:7:0. The white sand present has COLOR:7:6:1 and so the actual floor color is 7:1 (white).

While the foreground, background and brightness shown in the MATGLOSS files will be applied to walls, the mineral's "secondary" color will end up different. Here is how it works:

  • If the BASIC_COLOR tag is specified, it will use that color. Note that the BASIC_COLOR tag only has foreground and brightness as arguments.
  • If BASIC_COLOR is left out:
    • The background color is forced to 0 (effectively stripping it).
    • If the foreground color is 0, the game will display it as dark grey, color 8 (in other words, color 0 with brightness 1).

This is effective for Template:L, Template:L, Template:L, and Template:L (in the case of stone). When stone is Template:L, it returns to the original color specified in MATGLOSS. The relevant matgloss files are the ones that begin with "matgloss_stone_".

Modding color

If you wish to change how a specific item appears in the game, you can modify what colors are associated with that item.* Various moddable files use one of the the two color definitions below.

Color flags

Colors are primarily defined using the [COLOR:foreground:background:brightness] flag. The three arguments are:

  1. Foreground color [0-7]
  2. Background color [0-7]
  3. Brightness of the foreground color [0 or 1]

The brightness of the background color is always 0.

By default*, the following 8 pairs of colors are displayed:

Col. Bri. Name
0 0 Black
1 0 Blue
2 0 Green
3 0 Cyan
4 0 Red
5 0 Magenta
6 0 Brown
7 0 Light grey
Col. Bri. Name
0 1 Dark grey
1 1 Light blue
2 1 Light green
3 1 Light cyan
4 1 Light red
5 1 Light magenta
6 1 Yellow
7 1 White
(* See Template:L for information about how to change the actual various colors as displayed.)


Sometimes the color numbers are part of another flag, e.g. the last three arguments of [EXTRACT:golden salve:6:0:1] express the color yellow on black.

Interesting Color Effects

Values 8-15

If the brightness value is 1 or another nonzero number, it adds 8 to the foreground color. If the final value of the foreground or background is 8-15, it appears as a "bright" color. As these values can be manually typed in instead of using the brightness value, you can also give the background a bright color with this method.

Values higher than 15:

If the foreground color is higher than 15 for any reason, the tile or creature will take the color of whatever tile was in that position on the screen in the previous frame. If the background color value is higher than 15, it also acts this way, taking the background color of the previous tile to inhabit that location.

Color tokens

Dyes do not use color flags, they reference color tokens defined in descriptor_color_standard.txt. Color tokens are simply referenced by the token name, e.g. [MILL_DYE:EMERALD]. However, the defined RGB values are never actually displayed in-game - instead, the game uses one of the above 16 colors, choosing the one with the closest RGB values.

The following colors are defined via tokens:

Token RGB
BLACK 0 0 0
GRAY 128 128 128
SILVER 192 192 192
WHITE 255 255 255
CHESTNUT 205 92 92
MAROON 128 0 0
RED 255 0 0
VERMILION 227 66 52
RUSSET 117 90 87
SCARLET 255 36 0
BURNT_UMBER 138 51 36
DARK_CHESTNUT 152 105 96
BURNT_SIENNA 233 116 81
RUST 183 65 14
PUMPKIN 255 117 24
CHOCOLATE 210 105 30
TAUPE 188 152 126
DARK_PEACH 255 218 185
COPPER 184 115 51
LIGHT_BROWN 205 133 63
BRONZE 205 127 50
OCHRE 204 119 34
BROWN 150 75 0
PALE_BROWN 152 118 84
DARK_BROWN 101 67 33
SEPIA 112 66 20
CINNAMON 123 63 0
TAN 210 180 140
RAW_UMBER 115 74 18
ORANGE 255 165 0
Token RGB
PEACH 255 229 180
GOLDENROD 218 165 32
AMBER 255 191 0
DARK_TAN 145 129 81
SAFFRON 244 196 48
FLAX 238 220 130
GOLD 255 215 0
BRASS 181 166 66
LEMON 253 233 16
CREAM 255 253 208
BEIGE 245 245 220
OLIVE 128 128 0
YELLOW 255 255 0
LIME 204 255 0
DARK_OLIVE 85 104 50
GREEN-YELLOW 173 255 47
CHARTREUSE 127 255 0
FERN_GREEN 79 121 66
MOSS_GREEN 173 223 173
GREEN 0 255 0
MINT_GREEN 152 255 152
EMERALD 80 200 120
SEA_GREEN 46 139 87
DARK_GREEN 1 50 32
JADE 0 168 107
AQUAMARINE 127 255 212
PINE_GREEN 1 121 111
TURQUOISE 48 213 200
PALE_BLUE 175 238 238
TEAL 0 128 128
Token RGB
AQUA 0 255 255
CERULEAN 0 123 167
SLATE_GRAY 112 128 144
MIDNIGHT_BLUE 0 51 102
AZURE 0 127 255
COBALT 0 71 171
LAVENDER 230 230 250
BLUE 0 0 255
PERIWINKLE 204 204 255
DARK_VIOLET 66 49 137
AMETHYST 153 102 204
DARK_INDIGO 49 0 98
VIOLET 139 0 255
INDIGO 75 0 130
PURPLE 102 0 153
HELIOTROPE 223 115 255
LILAC 200 162 200
PLUM 102 0 102
FUCHSIA 244 0 161
MAUVE 153 51 102
LAVENDER_BLUSH 255 240 245
DARK_PINK 231 84 128
DARK_SCARLET 86 3 25
CRIMSON 220 20 60
PINK 255 192 203
CARDINAL 196 30 58
CARMINE 150 0 24
PALE_PINK 250 218 221
PALE_CHESTNUT 221 173 175

NOTE: Often these number must be expressed in "hexadecimal" (base 16) - do a web search for key words "decimal hex converter", and you should find several. For further information, see this article.