Topic: Vegetable dyes, tanning material, inheritable color data  (Read 3643 times)


Galgana

« on: August 07, 2021, 10:45:35 PM »
After reading this post quoted below, I propose a new flora header tag for [tanning] that permits plants and plant parts to be used.
According to Wikipedia's page on heather,[1] "Formerly heather was used to . . . tan leather". So, how about adding it to "tanning material" along with animal fat and birch bark? For characters that are just starting out or scraping by or doing The Challenge, this would allow them to use heather for tanning and roast/eat the animal fat.
An associated [tanning:] property can specify which part of the plant will be accepted in the tanning process, with values of: plant (as the default), leaf, flour.
The flour idea comes from this accidental discovery:
I was about to tan a soaked elk skin with newly obtained bark. But I mistakenly chose birch-bark box of 'coarse grains' instead and, to my surprise, worked as tanning material. I had to fill the now-empty box and try it again to make sure. By not starting tanning but pressing escape during the pause when all conditions are met. Consequently, the birch-bark box, which was emptied when selected for tanning, did not refill when canceling. I repeat: I did not start the process.

Rye flour (made into sour mixture) can be used for tanning IRL, so initially I thought there was some purpose to all this.

But then, another thing was that I had a bag full of these same grains. That bag of coarse grains could not be selected for tanning.

So now I suspect it was the "birch-bark box of ..." that allowed the grains to be chosen in the first place. I have to test this with putting, say, dried meat inside a birch-bark container and try tanning with that.

I shouldn't even be reporting this, because now I want to use rye flour in this fashion in the future...

Color as a new flora property would also be a welcome addition. Now that we have fibres and yarn, clothmaking and tailoring seem closer on the horizon.
Dye plants could be designated by a [dye] header tag. Again, acceptable plant parts for the dyeing process should be specified.

I'm not sure about how color tinting for domestic animals is set up, but perhaps individual garments can also be tinted by the engine to give a visual indicator of being dyed.
I do know fur and leather clothing inherit defense values from the hides of both wild and domesticated animals, so why not colors from the individual animal as well? That could mean enabling tints for wild animals; I know I would be thrilled to encounter a herd of forest reindeer that all had different coat colors. But adding unique properties to pelts could complicate stacking them.
(An an aside: ideally, in animal husbandry the offspring will inherit traits from the parents - including color.)

I'm also thinking about color property being defined for textile plants to represent their undyed state, which could impact the intensity of blending the final garment color. But that may be extraneous to the dyeing process if it should incorporate lye from wood ash as a bleaching agent.
Bleaching would require (perhaps repeatedly) soaking raw cloth in a lye solution and then leaving it to dry in the sun. This means that bleaching will be restricted by the seasons; similar to retting, it can be accomplished quicker during the height of summer but takes more time during spring and autumn.
Dyeing would require a color fixative; I've read that salt or vinegar can be used. Salt already is present in-game, but vinegar could also be introduced as a product of brewing beverages. Cloth should be soaked in the dye solution, rinsed, then left to dry.