Cooking Mechanic

Creating the cooking mechanic required creating the following:

• Fire mechanic

  • Detecting the area where you can create a fire

  • Detecting the relevant items needed to create fire, i.e., lighter, twig, and branch

  • Picking up relevant items

• Cooking mechanic

  • Detecting whether a fire already exists

  • Detecting the relevant items needed to cook, i.e., filled water bottle, empty billy can, 5 leaves

• Temperature & Hunger bar

  • Temperature text changes color as it changes

  • Upon eating the green stew, thirst, hunger, and temperature bar increases

The initial set up of the code took the longest, but adding on these mechanics was a lot easier, given that I’d already seen the code earlier. Additionally, I’m now able to better understand how the code logic works, allowing me to debug it when the LLM isn’t giving me working code.

Here’s where I’m currently at now:

This video shows the cooking mechanic, and how the cooked food impacts hunger and temperature.

Next up, I’ll reorient myself to the next steps in the vertical slice, and then determine the next priorities up ahead. My general feeling is that I should start looking into developing the art concept and reading game design documents.

But perhaps before that, it might be worth adding in audio to just improve the experience...or maybe I’ll do that later.

Will keep you guys updated.