For the package survival meal, personally I would feel like it would be slightly more high tech, and heat/vacuum sealed meal packs. But what you had look really great.

Honestly if you make the texture look more paper I think this can be pemmican

Originally posted by Akarthus:

For the package survival meal, personally I would feel like it would be slightly more high tech, and heat/vacuum sealed meal packs. But what you had look really great.

Honestly if you make the texture look more paper I think this can be pemmican

Seconded. The survival meals look more like tribal food bindles than proper vacuum sealed meals. Maybe it would be more fitting if they had a more humanitarian daily ration-like appearance (you can Google it), tapering at the ends and whatnot. Replacing the strings with something like tape could also help, I believe.

Funny I'd thought people would ask to make the package even more rustic, just like in MO. But I see what you mean - and I agree - it'd follow vanilla much better if they were to look more MRE/HDR.

I also like the idea of repurposing the current asset for Pemmican. Maybe I could open one side of the bundle to show some of the stuff. Like that one[thethingswellmake.com]

For the (possible) Sauced Meals and Bakes compatibility, having different sauces on the food referencing the other condiments would be awesome! Smokeleaf butter melting on the Simple Bake, for example. Or maybe having the Fine Meal look like it's slathered with hot sauce.

Of course, it would always look like that regardless of what condiment is added to the meal. Just food for thought. Hehehehe.

The soup textures seem noticeably bigger compared to the vanilla meal bowls, also, the whole cake on the lavish dessert plate seems disproportionate to me, I think it would seem much better if there was a single slice on the plate (Medieval Overhaul pie style)

@chef garlic bread Looking at the mod assets, it seems this would require some extra code as they look to be the same assets with sauce drawn on them. I'll investigate further once I get there, but I don't think I can do much.

However that opens up some interesting idea (for a programmer at least) - what if meals were "stuffable" with ingredients, the same way equipment and structures are?

@Mac For the soup: Yep that's intended; I wanted them to look like sizeable, whole meal. It's also easier to distinguish them from standard meals. But they might be just a little too big. I felt the same as you while playing with them. I'll update them as I'm doing the stew (which currently have the same issue).

For the cake: Since the cook is making the whole thing, having just a slice felt weird to me. But I wanted those to be a single meal, and the current asset isn't really doing it. There's too many cherries and it fills the plate too much, making it feel like just a really big cake. It feel it should be halfway between a mini cake and a large cupcake.

Yet - that's probably one of the few that would look really cool if they were whole cake when stacked (double cakes when max stack) and slices when taken individually. Arggg. I'll think about it! XD

Thanks for the feeback guys! Please keep them coming!

Originally posted by Jelheb:

@chef garlic bread Looking at the mod assets, it seems this would require some extra code as they look to be the same assets with sauce drawn on them. I'll investigate further once I get there, but I don't think I can do much.

However that opens up some interesting idea (for a programmer at least) - what if meals were "stuffable" with ingredients, the same way equipment and structures are?

You're a fantastic artist and whatever you'll end up doing would be amazing! I greatly appreciate how open you're being, as well. :D

Originally posted by Jelheb:

@chef garlic bread Looking at the mod assets, it seems this would require some extra code as they look to be the same assets with sauce drawn on them. I'll investigate further once I get there, but I don't think I can do much.

However that opens up some interesting idea (for a programmer at least) - what if meals were "stuffable" with ingredients, the same way equipment and structures are?

@Mac For the soup: Yep that's intended; I wanted them to look like sizeable, whole meal. It's also easier to distinguish them from standard meals. But they might be just a little too big. I felt the same as you while playing with them. I'll update them as I'm doing the stew (which currently have the same issue).

For the cake: Since the cook is making the whole thing, having just a slice felt weird to me. But I wanted those to be a single meal, and the current asset isn't really doing it. There's too many cherries and it fills the plate too much, making it feel like just a really big cake. It feel it should be halfway between a mini cake and a large cupcake.

Yet - that's probably one of the few that would look really cool if they were whole cake when stacked (double cakes when max stack) and slices when taken individually. Arggg. I'll think about it! XD

Thanks for the feeback guys! Please keep them coming!

You could experiment around with different stacked texture ideas, the idea you presented sounds pretty cool. Could also mess around with making the larger meal stack sizes turn into a pot or something like that, but that could present some era-related problems if you used, for example, a clay pot (which suits tribals) or metal pot (which suits p much anyone but tribals).

Regarding the survival meal critique, while without context I would be in full agreement, the mod is called "rustic meals retexture", not "general texture".
As such I think the currently provided survival meal texture better fits the theme / original goal of the mod than a MRE-styled one would.

I guess you could add both and add a texture switch in the mod settings, but please don't remove the rustic look, it's the entire reason I subbed.

Thank you both!

@Mac Yeah I'm more and more tempted to do variations on stacks. However these takes a whole lot of time. If I ever get to do the Ideo Meals, I'll keep focus on the vanilla meals and spend more time on each individual meal, including the stacks. Using Ideos I could actually make a clay pot for Tribal, cast iron pot for Rustic, something cool and sci-fi for Tech, etc.

@Xeonzs Indeed, and I feel that's a point shared by a lot of folks. I'm wondering if there's a middle ground here - something that feels rustic while still fitting the industrial tech level. Maybe by having the packaged meal a little less round while keeping the strings. My initial ref was this - maybe I could try get a little closer to it.

Originally posted by Jelheb:

Thank you both!

@Mac Yeah I'm more and more tempted to do variations on stacks. However these takes a whole lot of time. If I ever get to do the Ideo Meals, I'll keep focus on the vanilla meals and spend more time on each individual meal, including the stacks. Using Ideos I could actually make a clay pot for Tribal, cast iron pot for Rustic, something cool and sci-fi for Tech, etc.

@Xeonzs Indeed, and I feel that's a point shared by a lot of folks. I'm wondering if there's a middle ground here - something that feels rustic while still fitting the industrial tech level. Maybe by having the packaged meal a little less round while keeping the strings. My initial ref was this - maybe I could try get a little closer to it.

You could split the more modern textures into another mod, or set up mod settings to allow people to pick in between the more rustic and modern variants. I am personally just starting to explore how mod settings work, so best of luck with that if you decide to do that.

Having a mod option to swap the textures seems like a reasonable compromise. I think this requires to decompile/recompile some code assets though, and I have no idea how to do that. Would you happen to know how or know someone who could help?

I notice that Simple Meal use same yellow texture for all meat / vegeterian / hybrid ingridients, while in vanilla it'll use red and green variant for meat and vegetable ingridients. I think you could make something similar by making only "soup" part of Simple Meal change color depending on ingridients.

Originally posted by Jelheb:

Having a mod option to swap the textures seems like a reasonable compromise. I think this requires to decompile/recompile some code assets though, and I have no idea how to do that. Would you happen to know how or know someone who could help?

Not too fluent in anything beyond simple XML patches, however, I believe the "XML Extensions" framework (https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2574315206) allows you to set up mod options pretty easily, they have an entire wiki and all. In case you need some code examples to analyze, the "Walls are Solid" and "FrozenSnowFox Tweaks" mods both use XML Extensions to manage their mod settings. I'd guess that you would need to find a way to switch in between different patches (which by themselves are pretty simple and quick to do) that route the "texPath" (dont recall exactly) to different folders with different meals from the menu. The Rimworld Discord is also extremely helpful. I won't blame you if you decide to give it a pass for the time being, though, learning this sorta stuff can be pretty time consuming.

A mod option would be nice, but honestly given this is just a texture mod its definitely not necessary. If you released a separate more modern survival meal texture then anyone who wants to use it would just have to make sure it loads after this mod so that its the replacer that gets used.

Personally I think a separate texture would definitely be a better solution than trying to find a middle ground though, because ultimately if people don't like the survival meal being a tied up bundle, they're probably not going to think a neater tied up bundle is much better. The current texture already suits the theme of the mod perfectly, and even though I would also prefer a more modern-looking survival meal, theme consistency should definitely be the bigger priority.