For Vegan Gamers: The Food Supply Icon

[NiRa Muso MIOZOTO]

Some people like to play their games as if animals were real and as a challenge to have fun with.
There appears to be an icon for farming,

and a separate icon for hunting,

but the icon for hunting is used for the supply the hunting icon is used instead of the farming icon. 
Could we change the default icon for food supply to the one used for farming ?


It's a small change but one that would make vegan gamers feel more comfortable.

I don't know who to tag for this but I'll tag @Stan`since we're making friends .

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

A mod would do nicely for this. 

[NiRa Muso MIOZOTO]

39 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

A mod would do nicely for this. 

Did you have anyone in mind ? : d 

[Thalatta]

3 minutes ago, NiRa Muso MIOZOTO said:

Did you have anyone in mind ? : d 

Not a moderator, but a modification: optional changes to vanilla (the base game) people can install if they want.

In any case, this thread is a duplicate:

First I'd like to be convinced on why some would feel uncomfortable by that icon while at the same time feel comfortable exterminating other civilisations. In any case, dietary preferences of the ancients would be a more convincing argument, but I don't like the wheat icon since its colours are not that different from the wood icon. Red is quite distinctive there, and maybe cherries could be used, but it's not representative. In conclusion, I don't think this will change in vanilla (unless there's a decision to make all resource icons more "complicated", and many things on each could be represented).

[Perzival12]

Perhaps simply a more inclusive food icon (I don’t mean inclusive of specific groups of people, I mean of all food groups), ie a apple/cherries, the hunk of meat, and the grain icon. Not sure how they would look merged into one, icons are @wowgetoffyourcellphone’s area.

[Thalatta]

4 minutes ago, Perzival12 said:

Perhaps simply a more inclusive food icon (I don’t mean inclusive of specific groups of people, I mean of all food groups), ie a apple/cherries, the hunk of meat, and the grain icon. Not sure how they would look merged into one, icons are @wowgetoffyourcellphone’s area.

If so, I think the same should be done for the other icons, for consistency. For example, wood could include more vine-like types to account for ropes and such, stone could display a few types or even small ones used for ammo, and metal could include coins, since that's also its supposed role, and people keep asking about that (just last week: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/9303). After all, one can melt metal and go back and forth between those (I mean theoretically, not necessarily profitably or legally, unless the state does it ).

[Nicolaus_von_Kues]

21 minutes ago, Thalatta said:

comfortable exterminating other civilisations

Some contradictions of the modern world.

I honestly don't interfere with other people's beliefs unless it means the destruction of my lifestyle.

 

It's more useful to include a health bar option for people with color blindness.

[Nicolaus_von_Kues]

1 minute ago, Thalatta said:

more vine-like

There was a beautiful pointer in AoE III with a bunch of grapes.

[NiRa Muso MIOZOTO]

I think bread and wine are the most historically famous foods because that is what was eaten in the last supper .

@Thalatta

I'm pleasantly surprised !

I thought vegan gamers were too much of a minority to prompt a thread already .

To answer your question , when I was a child playing AOE2 my father taught me to always use the monks to convert enemy units . To this day , I prefer pacifist win conditions in any game I play and 0 ad also already has relic and wonder victories !
 

0ad doesn’t have monks but a mechanic were units are taken prisoner would be nice . Perhaps you could do that by letting healers revive fallen enemy soldiers as villagers !

Edited 57 minutes ago by NiRa Muso MIOZOTO
Context

[Thalatta]

16 minutes ago, Nicolaus_von_Kues said:

There was a beautiful pointer in AoE III with a bunch of grapes.

That would look too much like food, I meant fibrous vegetation used to make useful stuff. I proposed the "Fibres" resource some time ago in fact ("Fibers" now that I've learned US EN should be used), but that could just be included in wood in a… non-edible vegetal way.

 

10 minutes ago, NiRa Muso MIOZOTO said:

Perhaps you could do that by letting healers revive fallen enemy soldiers as villagers !

Aha you want slavery then!

(I'm not vegan though).

 

Edited 53 minutes ago by Thalatta
Ugh... wrote twice Fibres, as the King commands.

[NiRa Muso MIOZOTO]

10 minutes ago, Thalatta said:

Aha you want slavery then!

(I'm not vegan though).

 

That’s up for interpretation !

Who is to say the villagers are unpaid and have no property ?

The idea is just they aren’t allowed weapons !

It would also be interesting and fun if soldier units could capture/convert villagers immediately instead of killing them !

Edited 45 minutes ago by NiRa Muso MIOZOTO
Typo

[guerringuerrin]

1 hour ago, NiRa Muso MIOZOTO said:

Some people like to play their games as if animals were real and as a challenge to have fun with.

I don't fully understand this point.

1 hour ago, NiRa Muso MIOZOTO said:

It's a small change but one that would make vegan gamers feel more comfortable.
 

I think there are more important things to address than vegan sensitivities in a real-time strategy game about ancient civilizations. But perhaps, from a historical perspective, agriculture could be considered a foundational milestone in the rise of great civilizations. I'm not sure whether it played a more significant role than animal husbandry in this regard, but that would be a valid (and strong) argument in favor of changing the icon.

 

25 minutes ago, Perzival12 said:

Perhaps simply a more inclusive food icon (I don’t mean inclusive of specific groups of people, I mean of all food groups), ie a apple/cherries, the hunk of meat, and the grain icon. Not sure how they would look merged into one, icons are @wowgetoffyourcellphone’s area.

Ideally, it looks good, but from a design perspective, I don't think it's a good idea. Keeping the iconography simple is important to avoid making things unnecessarily difficult to read. It’s also worth considering how this would look on smaller monitors.

Regarding the design of resource icons in general. Personally, I think they are quite consistent with the actual resources players gather from the map. Wood for wood, stone for stone, metal for metal. I don't think there's much to gain from overcomplicating these kinds of GUI elements. It sounds like a good fit for a specific mod aimed at creating a simulator of ancient civilizations.

[NiRa Muso MIOZOTO]

5 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

I think there are more important things to address than vegan sensitivities in a real-time strategy game about ancient civilizations. But perhaps, from a historical perspective, agriculture could be considered a foundational milestone in the rise of great civilizations. I'm not sure whether it played a more significant role than animal husbandry in this regard, but that would be a valid (and strong) argument in favor of changing the icon.

I plan to teach my future kids it’s bad to kill whether human or animal. I would like to play all major free culture video games with them. But while farming and building a wonder I couldn’t possibly explain why the food icon is of flesh if killing animals for their flesh is bad. The game does not offer a reasonable choice .
 

People still eat meat for a variety of reasons but I hope we can all agree that teaching our children to avoid meat if possible is for a better future ! 

[Thalatta]

33 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

I'm not sure whether it played a more significant role than animal husbandry in this regard

It certainly did, it's hard to get a significant surplus just with husbandry, that happened when in synergy with agriculture (crops to feed animals, their manure to fertilise crops). That's why I think Field and Corral dynamics could be less dull.

 

33 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

I think they are quite consistent with the actual resources players gather from the map. Wood for wood, stone for stone, metal for metal.

So is food for food, but if one is going to represent that icon with many types, not doing so for the others might look inconsistent as a design choice. Of course wood still refers to wood, stone to stone, and metal to metal, just that there are (currently) many sources of each.

 

15 minutes ago, NiRa Muso MIOZOTO said:

I plan to teach my future kids it’s bad to kill whether human or animal. I would like to play all major free culture video games with them. But while farming and building a wonder I couldn’t possibly explain why the food icon is of flesh if killing animals for their flesh is bad. The game does not offer a reasonable choice

What do you even mean by that you "couldn't possibly explain why the food icon is of flesh if killing animals for their flesh is bad"? Are you going to tell your kids all ancients were vegetarians or vegans? It's not the game that is unreasonable!

Edited 9 minutes ago by Thalatta