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 Monday at 22:59 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 Monday at 23:04 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 Monday at 23:11 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 Monday at 23:47 by Thalatta

[Gurken Khan]

55 minutes ago, NiRa Muso MIOZOTO said:

teaching our children to avoid meat

I just hope when expecting and raising them you'll get them their nutrients.

[guerringuerrin]

36 minutes ago, Thalatta said:

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.

I don't think it's necessary to represent the different types of food sources. Quite the opposite, one food item in the icon is enough. People understand it perfectly well and it makes the icon much easier to read at small sizes, which is far more important than representing all the different possible food sources in a 16x16 px space.; there's no need to overcomplicate things. 

 

1 hour 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 .
 

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 ! 

Your lifestyle choices and the way you choose to raise your children are entirely respectable. However, I don't think appealing to veganism is a sufficient argument to justify this change. It's difficult to determine where to draw the line when deciding aspects of the game based on specific ideologies. Not long ago, a user suggested that Mauryan maidens should be covered up because, based on his own moral beliefs, this was wrong. And there are many similar cases. That's why I mentioned the historical aspect as a more consistent basis for arguing in favor of this change.

[scr0llbaer]

14 hours ago, NiRa Muso MIOZOTO said:

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

More like, zombies?

Speaking of which, a zombies mod could be nice.

[NiRa Muso MIOZOTO]

14 hours ago, Thalatta said:

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!

It gives one the impression that one is eating meat even if they never hunted. I'm not gonna lie and say the ancients were vegetarian (except the Buddhists and the Jains). But I'm also not gonna lie about them pursuing pacifist or strictly self-defense based victories. 

16 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

A mod would do nicely for this. 

Is there already a mod for this ?

[Stan`]

There is a non violent mod which swaps those icons IIRC

[guerringuerrin]

@NiRa Muso MIOZOTO This is the No Violence Mod. All attack abilities are removed. You can't even kill animals, so it seems perfect for what you're looking for.There's also a link to the version uploaded to mod.io, unfortunately, it's outdated. It will need some work to make it compatible with the current version. You could also take the opportunity to change the icon.

mod.io link: https://mod.io/g/0ad/m/noviolence-mod

Edited 22 hours ago by guerringuerrin

[Thalatta]

2 hours ago, guerringuerrin said:

You could also take the opportunity to change the icon.

I wanted to tinker a bit with that, and managed, but maybe not in a clean way (in Win11):

Went to AppData\Local\0 A.D. Empires Ascendant\binaries\data\mods\public.

Unzipped public.zip, and renamed this one public.zip.old, just in case.

Went to art\textures\ui\session\icons\resources.

Pasted a lettuce on top of the meat in food.png.cached.dds.

Renamed that file food.png (this step took me a while to figure out, and why I think I'm not doing things cleanly).

Zipped all contents of \public in a public.zip file, and moved that up alongside public.zip.old.

Result (you would need to take care also of other meat icons @NiRa Muso MIOZOTO, like the ones indicating food cost):

[Obelix]

Regarding the slavery/naturalization debate:

On 13/10/2026 at 1:10 AM, NiRa Muso MIOZOTO said:

On 13/10/2026 at 12:59 AM, Thalatta said:

On 13/10/2026 at 12:52 AM, NiRa Muso MIOZOTO said:

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

Aha you want slavery then!

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 !

There is the ten-and-a-half year old Issue #3873 (Slavery system) that awaited discussion till today.

[Perzival12]

39 minutes ago, Obelix said:

Regarding the slavery/naturalization debate:

There is the ten-and-a-half year old Issue #3873 (Slavery system) that awaited discussion till today.

This deserves it's own thread ngl

[Thalatta]

4 minutes ago, Perzival12 said:

This deserves it's own thread ngl

That person did start a thread (different username, but same day): 

 

Other threads dealing with the same thing (just by looking at the first two pages of a search, I think both duplicated issues and threads should be closed as soon as they appear, or ideally merged, but it seems that's not possible).

And mentioned in the more recent:

 

I'd say, choose the most complete one and continue from there

[NiRa Muso MIOZOTO]

19 hours ago, Thalatta said:

Result (you would need to take care also of other meat icons @NiRa Muso MIOZOTO, like the ones indicating food cost):

Thank you xD

The no violence mod sounds great except a lot of units become useless . Can you still capture buildings ?

It’ll be a while before I can look at changing the other icons. Do mods have a special git repo ? How does one push a change ?

Edited 42 minutes ago by NiRa Muso MIOZOTO
Added response and a question