Dev Log 09.10.25

Continuing on with the crafting benches in Reel Life, we’ll go over what crafting will look like in real time today.

Crafting may change slightly in practice between the different benches. For example, with the carpentry and cooking benches (the benches you’ll initially have access to), badges will differ. If you recall, badges determine which recipes you have the skill to craft (inspired by the Sims 2 crafting capabilities).

Badges in the carpentry bench range from woodworking to sewing, and some projects in the future may require more than one badge for completion. Meanwhile in the cooking bench, badges (or skills) are limited to cooking and baking. Some recipes require the cooking skill and some require the baking, but for right now, they never cross over.

Here’s a look at the cooking process:

In the crafting bench you can also refine materials (for instance, logs into lumber). You don’t need any skill levels to refine materials and you don’t need to spend any extra time crafting them. Materials are created instantly according to the quantity you want to produce.

If you want to craft anything else, though, you’ll have to invest materials AND time. Time to completion is measured in minutes and that time can be hefty sometimes. To make this a little less tedious, we added a fast forward function when crafting – up to x 4 speed.

Now here’s a look at the crafting process:

The stamina bar is placed in the crafting menu GUI so that you can be sure your player won’t faint while doing all this work. If you’re running out of energy when crafting and need to take a food break, just press the Esc key to exit the crafting process. After eating (or doing anything else, really), you can come back later and finish your project!

Next week we’ll start looking at the machines you’ll have access to, so stay tuned!