This week, I started on the next milestone, abilities. Abilities include special attacks, spells, utility skills, and passive effects. I have a list of around 90 abilities currently and expect the final count to be between 120 and 150. Each actor (player classes, NPC’s, enemies) will start with zero or more abilities. Players can gain more abilities over the course of the game. I haven’t worked out all the details, but the ability acquisition will be integrated into gameplay (i.e. they can be found like items, or learned from an NPC) as opposed to a skill tree. Like items, the abilities placed on the map get stronger the deeper the player goes. The abilities available to the player depend on the player’s class. Each class has a set of attributes and a maximum proficiency level for each attribute (basic, intermediate, advanced). Each attribute proficiency level is associated with a set of abilities. A class is able to use the abilities defined for each of its attributes, at or below the proficiency level defined for that attribute. For example, a Ranger has a Weapons (Intermediate) attribute that allows use of the abilities associated with the basic and intermediate proficiency levels of the Weapons attribute.
- Reworked abilities and attribute classes. Basic ability and attribute functionality was already in place to display attributes on the class selection screen and display abilities available to the player. To fully support the ability system, the underlying code had to be extensively reworked. Most of this week’s time went into this rework. Active and passive abilities were split into separate classes inheriting from a common base class. Relationships between attributes, attribute proficiency levels, and abilities were rewired. Attribute ScriptableObject assets were condensed from one asset per combination of attribute and proficiency level to one asset per attribute to directly group abilities for each proficiency level (this is useful because classes have access to abilities for a maximum proficiency level and all proficiency levels below the maximum).
- Improved Abilities Panel. The Abilities Panel previously displayed all available abilities in a single grid. Now the panel has a tab for each Actor Attribute and the abilities for the selected attribute are grouped by proficiency level.
- Miscellaneous ability-related enhancements
- Starting abilities automatically added to the hotbar.
- Abilities can be inspected like entities and cells.
- Contemplated replacing abilities with items. This is more of a side note than an update, but midweek I stopped development and seriously considered implementing abilities as items. The origin of the thought was my struggle to determine how resource consumption will work with abilities (I still haven’t figured this out, by the way). One option was to simplify and consolidate resource management to inventory. Players would find items that did the same things that abilities would do – a scroll to cast a spell, lockpicks to pick a lock, etc. This idea appealed to me because clever use of what you find is key to success in the game, and it avoids using time as a resource (waiting to regenerate mana/stamina). But, there are drawbacks: 1) the desired player behavior is to frequently use abilities, but having a finite number of uses and uncertainty about how many future uses the player will have encourages hoarding 2) it’s difficult to allot uses of large quantities of items over the course of the game. Because of the drawbacks, I rejected the idea and resumed work on abilities as planned.
Next week, now that the abilities system is complete, work will begin on the abilities themselves. The big challenge here is implementing many abilities in a scalable manner. I want to avoid creating a separate class for every ability, and I want to leverage existing objects like actions and effects as much as possible.
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