Inside Abilities Daniel Kline and Lauren McHugh

Table of Contents 1.What are Abilities? 2.Architecture 3.Postmortem

What is Darkspore?

Darkspore Video

What Are Abilities?

Games with lots and lots of different "attacks" and "spells" and "buffs".

Every Interaction in World of Warcraft is an Ability.

But… Abilities are Ubiquitous

What's the most basic ability?

Fireball Video

Target Validation Warmup Animation Lag Detection Cast Animation Cooldown Power/Mana Costs Projectile Creation "Muzzle" Effects Release Animation What Does a Fireball Do? Caster Projectile Projectile Targeting Projectile Locomotion Impact Damage Impact and Hit Effects Explosion Targeting Explosion Damage Explosion Impact Explosion Hit Effects

This is our simple example!

Our Challenge

How do you make 100 different Fireballs?

(or buffs, debuffs, auras, melee combos, novas, teleports, taunts, stuns, roots, traps, shields, or simple behaviors?)

Our Architecture

Requirements

1.Easy to Create Abilities

Requirements 1.Easy to Create Abilities 2.Easy to Iterate Abilities

Requirements 1.Easy to Create Abilities 2.Easy to Iterate Abilities 3.Variety, Variety, Variety

Requirements 1.Easy to Create Abilities 2.Easy to Iterate Abilities 3.Variety, Variety, Variety 4.Build System Quickly

Requirements 1.Easy to Create Abilities 2.Easy to Iterate Abilities 3.Variety, Variety, Variety 4.Build System Quickly 5.For Engineers

One Abilities vs. Modifiers Many

Ability Lifetime != Agent Lifetime

“Requires Agent”

Animation and Movement

Abilities own their data

Fitting It In

Simple AI Definition

Behavior Tree

AI Definitions

Postmortem

Fireball Video with Debugging

Code DATA

while(bCondition == false) bCondition = test1(); bCondition &= test2(); Wait(0.5 seconds); end Multiple Wait Conditions

Sounds Good

Wait, aren’t you just writing yet another scripting system?

How complicated could we handle?

Boss Video

Abilities… 1.Are ubiquitous 2.Are independent 3.Own their data 4.Require heavy iteration 5.Require code for variety

Questions? slides available at Game Of Design Gameplay Video