Adding Meat is "easy" ! (Patreon)

How much work can it be to just add meat to the game? Not much at all, actually. It's a very simple process. I hope I have enough content to even fill the post this week...

prefix: there's a new feature on Patreon called Weekly Newsletter! which seemed like it organized posts into weekly, dated newspaper-style pages! however, upon further examination, it turns out it's actually more like a marketing tactic sending unsolicited emails into peoples' inboxes... so, I'll be sticking with posts. On to the meat of this entry.

Firstly, why even add meat? Well, the best food so far is Kale Salad, which requires traversing the entire map to find the ingredients, with pine nuts being somewhat rare in the Balanced map type. Originally, it replenished 30 food, but once I added the follower it was an endless loop just trying to feed the two people, so I raised Kale Salad's nutrition to be 45 Food, but Meat will be an even higher food item. Cooked meat starts at 50 Food and I'll add a meat meal too giving likely 75~100 food.

Secondly, How to forage meat? After extensive research, I learned Meat doesn't grow on trees... You need to catch an animal to get meat. It turns out Meat is actually inside of animals! So, I needed to add Snares. The simplest survival trap is the "Spring Snare" comprised of 2 sticks and 1 twine ( finally a use for twine ) which must be placed on a small pine sapling in the game. Great! So, then the animal will will just walk into the snare and-

Thirdly, you need to bait the snare to catch specific animals. Kale attracts Rabbits, Pine Nuts attracts Squirrels, and Blueberries attract Ptarmigans ( A ptarmigan is a medium-sized, hardy arctic grouse [ A grouse is a ground-dwelling, game bird { a Bird is a warm-blooded theropod dinosaur -thanks! wikipedia... for this, I donated $3 last year. Money well spent. } ] ) You'll notice the baits are the same as the Kale Salad ingredients. This is on purpose, because it makes my brain feel good. Anyways, time passes and eventually the snare will catch the animal, so you can collect it to your inventory and just nom-nom that meat-

Fourthly, the yummy meat is all covered in fur and stuff... and you can't cut it up on the same board you're making your salads on... cuz pathogens ( more research learned me that ) so, you need to build a Butcher's Table and butchery tools... but tools need metal blades... so you need to mine metal first... and melt it, so you need to build a Smelter out of stones... to cast the metal in... Molds that you created out of... clay that you dig up and separated from the... Dirt and Sand... and...

Uh, Let's just skip forward a bit...

Fifthly, You have the raw meat now but you still can't eat it... It needs to be cooked over a Firepit! This Firepit requires 1 Log, 2 Branches, and 1 Resin to craft and is placed on the ground like the Tent. The Firepit also has 2 other uses.

You can use it to optionally sleep through the night, which moves time forward 7 hours, refills you and your companion's Energy, and consumes a little Food and Water.

You can make Soap, with the Ashes and animal Fat, which is used to clean up your companion's clothing if it got... messy, somehow.

So, adding meat is easy. Here's a composite image:

In the top image there is a bunch of things.

A snare was placed on this small pine sapling by combining 2 Branches and 1 Twine in the Inventory screen. This snare is empty and catches nothing.

When the player presses SPACE on an empty snare it bring up a selection menu which, if you have the food, baits the trap using the keys 1, 2, or 3. ( I might add mouse later ) Now, the snare will eventually catch the desired animal.

An animal has been caught. If the player presses SPACE on it, the animal will be added to your inventory and the snare resets to Empty.

The Firepit also has 3 options controlled by keys 1, 2, and 3. The first moves time forward 7 hours but can only be used between 9pm and 4am. The second cooks the meat and adds it to your inventory. The third checks your inventory for Fat and if the fire has Ashes it creates and adds Soap to your Inventory.

I also added 3 stone formations to the game but they don't do anything yet. One stone is Copper for making primitive hammered-copper tools. I think Iron is too complicated...

Smelter -doesn't exist yet- I might skip this entirely and just use hammered-copper tools. I will likely also combine the Butcher Table and the Tool table into one Crafting station.

The second image just shows the inventory screen with Logs at the top, and animal placement on the left. Animals are not clickable so can be underneath other icons. Animal parts ( Meat, Fat, Fur, Bone, Feathers ) would be collected from the Butcher/Crafting station.

Next week will be finishing this up. I still have to create the Crafting station, all the animal parts, code the meat cooking and soap making, and make recipes for the meat. I also need to add copper and the related tools... but, not sure how I'm going to set tools up yet. I want to keep it as simple as possible, so I'll think on it some more.