Unreal Engine Campfire: Build a Healing Zone With AI

A healing campfire in Unreal Engine is three small ideas: a sphere that knows when the player is inside, a timer that adds health every second while the player is inside, and a text so the player understands what is happening. The easiest way to build one is to ask an AI for the whole thing in a single request, with its flames, light and healing zone.

In this walkthrough, Ultimate Engine CoPilot builds a flickering campfire that heals the player while they stand close. You get the exact prompt, the bug the first test caught and a plain explanation of how a healing zone works.

What the finished campfire does

You walk across the snow toward a small campfire. A warm orange glow lights the ground around the stones. The flames flicker, and when you step close, the text “Warming up” appears at the top of the screen. Stand there and your health climbs, 5 points every second, until it is full. Step away and the text disappears and the healing stops.

The campfire with its flames, logs and stones, and the Warming up text at the top.

The prompt

Copy this, change the heal amount or the radius, and see what the AI builds:

Make a healing campfire. Create BP_Campfire in /Game/Series/EP28_Campfire, a campfire made from engine basic shapes: a ring of 6 grey stones, three crossed brown logs, and two or three orange flame cones that flicker by scaling up and down, plus a warm orange point light that flickers. While the player stands within 400 units of the campfire, the player's Vitality goes up by 5 every second until it reaches the maximum, and the text Warming up appears in the top centre of the screen below the existing Blizzard box. When the player leaves the radius, the text disappears and healing stops. Keep the radius, the heal amount and the heal interval as variables. Place the campfire on the snow about 500 units from the player start. Then play test it: lower the player's Vitality to 50, move the player into the radius and check Vitality rises by 5 each second and the text appears, check it stops at the maximum, move the player out and check the text disappears and healing stops, and fix anything that does not work.

Look at the end of the request: it says to lower the health to 50 first. That is a very good habit. If your health is already full, a healing test proves nothing. Start from a state where the effect has room to show.

How the AI builds it

The AI starts by reading the project and finding where the player’s health lives: the Vitality bar in the existing HUD. Then the assets appear: three materials (stone, wood and flame), the campfire Blueprint and a small widget for the “Warming up” text.

The flames flicker by scaling every frame. The light’s brightness wobbles around its starting value. The healing is a looping timer that adds the heal amount at every interval and never goes past the maximum.

The campfire graph. The stones, logs, flames, light and healing sphere are all inside one actor.

A clean test trick

The AI cannot set the health directly from outside the game, so it builds a small temporary helper Blueprint to set and read the Vitality, and deletes it at the end. Use a helper, then remove it.

The first test catches a bug

The text showed up at 500 units, which is outside the radius. The cause was the first stone. It had become the root of the Blueprint, so the healing sphere inherited its squashed scale and offset. The AI added a neutral root and moved everything under it. It also found that the campfire already placed in the level still had the old offsets, so it deleted it and placed a fresh one.

Then it ran the test again:

• Health is lowered to 50. At 500 units, for 2 seconds, nothing happens.
• Walking in does not heal instantly: it is still 50 half a second later.
• Then 55, 60, 65, about a second apart. The text appears.
• Near the top: 93, 98, 100, and it stays at 100.
• Walking out, the text disappears and the healing stops.

The report

The checks pass, and the report explains the root bug and the helper Blueprint.

The report is honest about what it did not see:

• It never looked at the campfire itself, because the editor camera was pointing elsewhere. The shapes, colors and flicker are confirmed from numbers, not by eye.
• The radius is measured to the edge of the player, so healing starts about 40 units before the center reaches 400.
• The player was moved by teleport (200 units from the fire, then back to the start), not walked.

How a healing zone works, in plain words

The campfire has a sphere. When the player enters it, the campfire shows the text and starts a looping timer. When the player leaves, it hides the text and stops the timer. Every time the timer fires, the campfire reads the player’s health, adds the heal amount and clamps it to the maximum. Then it writes it back.

Because the radius, the amount and the interval are variables, you can make a gentle camp or a fast healing fountain by changing numbers.

Ideas to extend it

• A crackling sound that gets louder as you get closer.
• A fire that needs wood and goes out after a while.
• A save point at the campfire, so the game remembers where you rested. See the Unreal Engine save game system.

Four tips for healing zone prompts

1. Give the radius, the amount and the interval as numbers.
2. Say that it stops at the maximum.
3. Say where the text goes on the screen.
4. Ask the AI to start the test from low health.

Frequently asked questions

How do I make a healing zone in Unreal Engine 5?

Add a sphere that detects the player. While the player is inside, run a looping timer that adds health at an interval and clamps it to the maximum. Stop the timer when the player leaves.

Why did the Warming up text show outside the radius?

The first stone had become the Blueprint root, so the healing sphere inherited its squashed scale and offset. The AI added a neutral root and re-parented everything.

Why start the test at 50 health?

If health is already at the maximum, a healing test proves nothing. Starting low gives the effect room to show.

Try it in your project

See what Ultimate Engine CoPilot can build on the product page, or get it on Fab.

More builds from this series: the Unreal Engine health pickup, the Unreal Engine spike trap and the Unreal Engine day night cycle.