In this update I will discuss hunting, hunger and sleep mechanics, as well as a little about family.

To satisfy hunger, the tribe can harvest fruit from trees/bushes or hunt animals for meat. Foraging is simple, you designate trees to be harvested and tribe members will go and collect any available produce. To hunt, you designate a target animal, which your hunters will attack and attempt to kill. If they are successful, the animal dies and a carcass appears. You can either drag this carcass back to the main camp or butcher it on the spot. All food types decay and will eventually disappear, but putting the food in a pit will allow it to last much longer.

Hunting a group of deer

Hunting prey is the safer option, but you can also hunt down predators. Predators roam the map and may cause trouble for your tribe or kill off prey, so it’s a good idea to deal with them. The only problem is, if they’re aggressive enough, the predators may fight back…

Fighting a predator

Satisfying sleep is pretty simple at the moment. When tribe members get sleepy they will try find some bedding to rest on, but if none is available then lying on the ground will do. I plan on implementing some sort of mood mechanic, but haven’t decided how to do it yet. A tribe member’s mood would be affected by factors such as whether they had a comfortable sleep, injured a body part or had a family member die recently.

Speaking of family, that has been implemented as well. Every tribe member is part of a “family” within the tribe. If there is a male and female within the family, they may produce a child. Currently the male walks up to the female, talks to her and she becomes pregnant… I’m still working on this part. Animals can be part of a family as well, and will tend to stick together (until you start chasing them around).

OK, enough blabbering. Here is a gratuitous in-game video of lions at an all-you-can-eat buffet:

This blog will be about a game I’m working on, Tribe of Pok. In essence, Tribe of Pok will be a paleolithic-to-neolithic tribal survival simulation game. It’s about a tribe of hunter-gatherers trying to eke out an existence in a savage environment. Tribe members will be fairly autonomous in satisfying basic needs, with the player giving instructions that members will carry out.

Some notes about the game:

• Written in C++ using CodeBlocks and SFML graphics library
• Playable map will consist of hexes viewed from a top-down perspective
• Art will be basic 2D sprites
• Seasons will be implemented, with Summer/Spring producing plentiful food, which should be stockpiled to survive the barren Winter
• Weather patterns will affect the difficulty of surviving in certain environments
• Water movement is implemented, with heavy rain causing water to pool in locations that were previously dry
• Wild animals have their own needs and move around the map trying to stay alive
• Dinosaurs and zombies, although completely historically inaccurate, may or may not be included

I have already done some work in my spare time, although it’s at least a year from being completed enough for release into the wild. I did say completed enough, not polished enough, because I intend to keep working on it and adding features until I’m satisfied after I set it loose.

I’ll aim to post about once every two weeks initially and spend most of my time working on the actual game. I do have a full time job so progress may be slow, but this is something I’ve wanted to do for a while and it WILL be finished eventually!

Thanks for reading,

PokingWater Games