Stats & Skills
Implemented factories methods to create instances of monsters and items (food at the moment) to put on map. This is where character abilities come to an actual use.
Character struct has gained some new attributes too, like an array of skills and stats values. I forced myself to keep this simple, putting only what is needed at the moment. Since I have monsters now, I have to manage their AI and a kind of combat system, and therefore I'm in need of, at least, hitpoints and attack/defense/damage values. These have become my character's stats.
As for the skills, I made the same. I have two character classes: one that is able to recognise and grab plants, and one that is able to fight things and obtain meat to eat. I don't want to bind these skills to the classname (if you are an "harvester" you can grab plants), so I translate that into a skill system (if you have the skill "gather plants", you can do it). These lead to a more flexible design, in which advanced classes can do more than one special action, and (better) I don't have to hardcode things. In effect, I'm trying to put all in a data-driven way as soon as possible.
Living monsters: AI and combat system
As said, I implemented a basic AI for monsters too. They stay at their position until you enter in a certain range. At this point they start to chase you. If you go far enough from them they stop chasing. Obviusly, if they come to bump into you, they attack. You can attack also. I have implemented the melee combat system too. Nothing fancy: everyone has an attack and a defense value. For every point of attack a d6 is rolled and the sum is made. Same for defense value of the defender. If attack > defense, attacker hits and fixed damage is done. This way I don't have a fixed random range with some bonus, like in the d20 system, and I feel I can change things later.
Again, at this point also I had to remember myself that I was working at the prototype: stop thinking at putting a visual effect for wounds, please. I plotted in the bottom status bar character's stats: you can see your hitpoints decreasing over there.
This bring to the fact that there's also another way to die, obviusly . So up to now you can die for starvation and wounds.
If you kill something and you have the right skill, that thing become a piece of meat in the map.
RE: Your approach to skills, I like it! If you could have a tangible effect on the world (have schools built) you could start with hybrid classes afterwards which allow you to do more than one thing, which is pretty cool.
Currently, I feel the map lacks a lot of direction, but I'm assuming that it to be expected since this is an early prototype.
Any plans for "landmarks"?