Color Coding Food

[Kaleidozombie]

I was thinking that besides labeling food as (Fresh) or (Rotten) you could color code them, adding a colored dot before, after, or even on the icon somewhere. Green would be for fresh items, yellow for normal/stale items, red for rotten items, and blue for non-perishable items. Not needed as much, but you could add a grey dot for other items indicating that they're not items you need to worry about their freshness levels, and perhaps to keep the UI uniform overall. It would also be nice if there was some visual indicator to tell you how much is left of a particular food item, especially for when choosing which items to select for cooking.

 

Edit: I was thinking the other night and thought that maybe blue would be used for frozen foods and another color could be used for non-perishables. What color do you think would fit best? Maybe purple, grey, or white would work? Or white for all non-food items and grey for the non-perishables? Perhaps white for all items that are non-consumable and grey for consumables that are non-perishables, including food, but also items like painkillers, vitamins, matches, etc.

 

Edit: I was thinking too that clean, dirty and bloody clothes could have markers to denote their status as well. Is there any other items that have multiple states that could be kept track of using these visual cues?

Edited September 25, 2018 by Kaleidozombie
Updating the idea with a little more info.

[EnigmaGrey]

The sprite changes for most (all?) food items and does incorporate color? 

 

Not saying it's a bad idea by any means. Just curious if the different sprites were unnoticed or missing.

[Kaleidozombie]

The sprites don't change between fresh and stale/normal. Just when the food becomes rotten.

Edited September 20, 2018 by Kaleidozombie
Typo.

[TheWraithPlayer]

I thought at first you meant the color of the text/font, not the picture. I personally would go for font as it would A be less work to add and B would get the point across fairly easy.

[Kaleidozombie]

I don't want to colorize the food icons themselves. I was thinking of adding a color dot between the icon and the text. Or it could be placed in the corner where there are already icons to indicate the items is broken or if it is frozen. Maybe they could add small icons to indicate the freshness of the item. But I like being able to see the icons so I was thinking of having a visual indicator that didn't obscure the icons. At any rate I'm just throwing ideas out there and whether the developers do anything with them is up to them. They may like the idea but decide to do something completely different with it because they turn it into something even better.

[nickodemos]

Not a bad idea. Could be hooked into the cooking skill as well so that a higher level cook would be able to make better calls on the quality of the food. This way a higher level cook can easily see food is bad for you where a person who never cooked would still might eat the food.

 

Most of us can tell when something is rotten. What would get most of us is the iffy stage. Give a high level cook a very small iffy stage. Get rid of the actual numbers and go color code. This way it is blind luck for a low level person it can still be yellow where as the high level cook would know it is red and drop it.