Moderator: Mod Janitor
J1M wrote: ↑ January 22nd, 2025, 22:19TLDR: I figured out how to implement Dwarven Second Wind, multiclass feats, and other effects that alter a property of a power.
In terms of characters, the primatives I have in place largely come down to these types: Powers (things you do on your turn), Talents (feats, racial traits, class features, other passives), and Effects (conditionally evaluated snippets of code that track a specific stat).
There are a lot of stats. In addition to the 6 ability scores and meta currencies like action points, there are resistances and immunities to damage types and effect types. But also all sorts of hidden stats that are highly conditional, like how many times you have used each power.
Monsters and Players use the same math for their stats, but have different Effects that produce the calculation. Monsters have a Bestiary entry applied whereas Players have a series of AdventurerChoices for each level.
Enabling all of this are over 50 enum types defined in Excel sheets that get exported into generated C# files to act as a strongly-typed in-memory database.
For stat bonuses, even those that are conditional, Effects are the right tool, because they are evaluated at the time that a stat is calculated and return not just a value, but also the bonus type and associated game element in order to facilitate the complicated stacking rules.
I did not want to rely on Effects for something like "Second Wind is now a minor action" because that would imply making a new stat for every property of a Power (Stat.Power_SecondWind_ActionType, Stat.Power_SecondWind_TargetType, etc). This approach could have worked, but I worry about eventual performance problems given how the number of Effects on a character might scale.
Partial classes allow for a C# class to be defined across multiple files. The solution I landed on is to use partial classes for the generated Info objects associated with these enum types and mark a specific field (in the case of Second Wind, Power.ActionType) so that it doesn't receive a generated accessor. This prevents me from forgetting to use the ".GetActionType(Creature)" function because ".ActionType" doesn't exist AND it allows the export pipeline to continue to function as it does now, which involves deleting all previously generated code each time it runs AND keeps the code for these overrides in a well-organized and uncluttered place.
Powers are not instantiated as objects on a creature, they are just looked up when they are referenced. The getter needs a Creature passed in now in order to test if that Creature has the applicable talent or not. It would have been easier to have a mutable Power object that has its ActionType changed when the player selects Dwarf as a race, which appears to be how a lot of roguelike games work, but I think that would have created a real mess when it came to partially unwinding choices as part of retraining on level up. Perhaps a better approach would have been to discard the entire creature and apply choices in-order each time a change occurred? It sounds elegant, but I wonder if it would run into issues when referencing creatures from combat effects, such as which creature was the source of a marked condition.
The screenshot below isn't particularly exciting, but you can see that the same Second Wind power that all characters share only requires a minor action for the Dwarf.
Aren't most of them just "ability does damage" tho?J1M wrote: ↑ January 29th, 2025, 06:33Starting to wonder if the real reason we never saw a 4e CRPG is because every class has what are essentially ~17 spells to choose from by level 3.
As an example, at level 1 the fighter can choose these at-will powers:rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 29th, 2025, 06:41Aren't most of them just "ability does damage" tho?J1M wrote: ↑ January 29th, 2025, 06:33Starting to wonder if the real reason we never saw a 4e CRPG is because every class has what are essentially ~17 spells to choose from by level 3.
To be clear, I've never played 4E, I'm just guessing.
They get more interesting at higher levels too. Here's an example for level 7 for a fighter that targets Will defense instead of AC. Keep in mind that due to class features every enemy will also end up "marked" which is a mechanic like taunt which imposes penalties when the creature chooses to attack a character other than the one that marked them.rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 29th, 2025, 22:15I actually like that 4E gave abilities to martial classes, being able to do more than "fighter attacks" is an improvement.
Code: Select all
public partial class ConditionalAbilityBonusEffect : FixedEffect {
private ConditionalAbilityBonusEffect() { } //required by Godot
public ConditionalAbilityBonusEffect(EffectType[] effectTypes, Power power, Req condition, Ability abilityMod, Stat stat, BonusType bonusType, GameElement gameElement, SrcId srcId)
: base(effectTypes, Dice._0d, stat, bonusType, gameElement, srcId) {
Power = power;
Condition = condition;
AbilityMod = abilityMod;
}
public Power Power { get; protected init; }
public Req Condition { get; protected init; }
public Ability AbilityMod { get; protected init; }
public override void GetBonus(Creature host, Stat stat, List<Bonus> list, BonusContext bc) {
if(IsStat(stat) && bc.Attack_Power == Power && Condition.IsMet(host)) {
Bonus modBonus = Bonus.Create(Bonus);
modBonus.Value = Dice.Parse(host.GetAbilityMod(AbilityMod));
list.Add(modBonus);
}
}
public override string ToStringBbcode() {
return $"[b]{Condition.ToStringBbcode()}[/b] +{AbilityMod.Info().ShortTitle}{base.ToStringBbcode()}";
}
}
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(srcId) => new([
new ConditionalAbilityBonusEffect([], Power.ArmorPiercingThrust, new WeaponGroupReq(){ EligibleWeaponGroups = [WeaponGroup.LightBlade, WeaponGroup.Spear] }, Ability.Dex, Stat.Combat_Attack, BonusType.UntypedHidden, GameElement.Power_ArmorPiercingThrust, srcId),
new ConditionalAbilityBonusEffect([], Power.ArmorPiercingThrust, new WeaponGroupReq(){ EligibleWeaponGroups = [WeaponGroup.LightBlade, WeaponGroup.Spear] }, Ability.Dex, Stat.Combat_AttackDamage, BonusType.UntypedHidden, GameElement.Power_ArmorPiercingThrust, srcId)
])
Code: Select all
(srcId) => new([
new ConditionalAbilityBonusEffect([], Power.CrushingBlow, new WeaponGroupReq(){ EligibleWeaponGroups = [WeaponGroup.Axe, WeaponGroup.Hammer, WeaponGroup.Mace] }, Ability.Con, Stat.Combat_AttackDamage, BonusType.UntypedHidden, GameElement.Power_CrushingBlow, srcId)
])
