40d:Color

Color is used to express various information, from a dwarf's profession 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 color schemes.
• If looking for the different colors used to represent different dwarfs, see Skill categories.)
• If looking for colors of items listed in the z-stocks menu, see Stocks.

Wall vs. floor color

phyllite (to the left) has COLOR:0:7:1 and BASIC_COLOR:7. 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 stairs, floors, ramps, and constructions (in the case of stone). When stone is engraved, 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 color scheme 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.

There's also a one-argument form of the COLOR flag used to define the color of gems. In that case the argument is the foreground color, the background color is variable and the brightness of gems is always 1.

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 SILVER 192 192 192 MAROON 128 0 0 BLACK 0 0 0 VERMILION 227 66 52 RUSSET 117 90 87 BURNT_UMBER 138 51 36 SCARLET 255 36 0 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 COPPER 184 115 51 DARK_PEACH 255 218 185 SEPIA 112 66 20 PALE_BROWN 152 118 84 BRONZE 205 127 50 DARK_BROWN 101 67 33 LIGHT_BROWN 205 133 63 BROWN 150 75 0 CINNAMON 123 63 0 OCHRE 204 119 34 RAW_UMBER 115 74 18 TAN 210 180 140 ORANGE 255 165 0 PEACH 255 229 180 GOLDENROD 218 165 32 DARK_TAN 145 129 81 AMBER 255 191 0 SAFFRON 244 196 48 FLAX 238 220 130 GOLD 255 215 0 BRASS 181 166 66 LEMON 253 233 16 CREAM 255 253 208 YELLOW 255 255 0 BEIGE 245 245 220 OLIVE 128 128 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

Token RGB MINT_GREEN 152 255 152 GREEN 0 255 0 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 AQUA 0 255 255 CERULEAN 0 123 167 MIDNIGHT_BLUE 0 51 102 AZURE 0 127 255 SLATE_GRAY 112 128 144 COBALT 0 71 171 BLUE 0 0 255 PERIWINKLE 204 204 255 LAVENDER 230 230 250 DARK_VIOLET 66 49 137 DARK_INDIGO 49 0 98 AMETHYST 153 102 204 VIOLET 139 0 255 INDIGO 75 0 130 PURPLE 102 0 153 HELIOTROPE 223 115 255 LILAC 200 162 200 GRAY 128 128 128 PLUM 102 0 102 FUCHSIA 244 0 161 MAUVE 153 51 102 WHITE 255 255 255 LAVENDER_BLUSH 255 240 245 DARK_PINK 231 84 128 DARK_SCARLET 86 3 25 CRIMSON 220 20 60 CARDINAL 196 30 58 PINK 255 192 203 CARMINE 150 0 24 PALE_PINK 250 218 221 PALE_CHESTNUT 221 173 175 RED 255 0 0 CHESTNUT 205 92 92

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