Game Development

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Alexandre Vaillancourt

14:24

Hello chat!

Jimmy

howdy

The Masked Rebel

doppelgreener

ahoy! o/

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Summer is slowly going away :'(

doppelgreener

it's migrating to australia

Garan

14:37

Good. It's been way too humid.

doppelgreener

it's been getting practice in for the southern hemisphere

doing a warm-up, if you will

Garan

@doppelgreener -_-

Alexandre Vaillancourt

That will be pretty odd for me when I'll celebrate Christmas and new years day in the summer..! I'm not there yet, though!

I used to watch this guy mix while the sun was raising at my place, and setting at his place, it was pretty fun!

genaray

15:10

Are there any good concepts for a component / modular based monster/item system in java ? How would you guys do something like that, without coding a own class for every single item / monster ?

Garan

@genaray How are you going to make different functionalities without different classes?

doppelgreener

@AlexandreVaillancourt for me celebrating christmas in the winter is pretty unusual :)

i've only done it twice so far!

genaray

@Garan Honestly dont know what you mean...

doppelgreener

@Garan genaray isn't talking about using no classes at all, just using composition so that different game entities ("skeleton" vs "stronger skeleton") don't have a 1:1 relationship with class definitions

Jimmy

why would you need a class for every item / monster?

doppelgreener

15:15

You wouldn't

genaray

@doppelgreener Exactly ... an example is unity... you can just attach other classes to existing objects which call themselves to modify game data

Jimmy

i imagine a lot of items are just blocks of stats with a list of attached Effects

doppelgreener

@genaray This guide was recommended to me a short while ago and it's been very helpful at filling in the blanks: gameprogrammingpatterns.com/component.html

Jimmy

and Monsters are also blocks of stats and attributes with possibly a list of attached behaviors

Garan

If the only difference between skeleton and stronger skeleton is the values of their stats, why not just have different values for stats?

genaray

15:16

But what if you want each item to have a unique ability ? One does spawn monster, other one is used to open a door... next one destroys monster around you... but those abilities could be apllied to many different items

doppelgreener

Also, Evolve your Hierarchy was the basic introductory guide to the concept & why we have it that didn't tell me the implementation details that the Game Programming Patterns site tells me.

Garan

@genaray Then at the very least you'll need a different class for each.

Or, you use a long list of flags a given item has.

Jimmy

you don't know that "each item has an unique ability"

doppelgreener

@genaray You would compose an item and also give it a behaviour component suitable for the ability you give it. One might be a spawning behaviour, another might be an AOE component, but e.g. the fire sword and ice hammer might both share the normal damage component but with elemental capacity.

Jimmy

for example, you could have have 15 different swords that "set things on fire"

and one of those swords also "lights up the room", and it can't inherit from both FireySword and BrightSword at the same time

which is why people stopped using inheritance to model this stuff in the first place

doppelgreener

15:18

@Jimmy all my weapons likely have a "deals damage to things it hits" component, with various damage or element types set -- for the normal weapons the element type is always 'none' or 'normal' or whatever i call that

genaray

@doppelgreener Thats what i mean... should i use generics for that ? :P

doppelgreener

so all my 15 fire swords are using the same component as all those other swords, but with a "fire" configuration set for the damage, and a "fire" particle effect added to the graphics

Garan

@Jimmy What you'd probably then want is an "on hit" object that is called whenever the weapon deals damage. Most might have an empty class for that but the ones that set things on fire have an object that applies the "on fire" status to what was hit.

doppelgreener

@genaray you will likely be using generics for part of this. you should check that games programming pattern thing i linked, and the evolve your hierarchy article.

but it is not a thing where "you use generics" and solve the whole problem, there's lots of things you'll do for this and generics is one of the tools that you may use.

genaray

@doppelgreener alright thanks :D

Garan

15:20

I feel like your best bet would be interfaces rather than classes. You can mix those, but the key here is ensuring that your components have a definition for things even if that definition is defined as "do nothing".

So everything has a "use with" function, but only the Key will check if the target is a door and if it is, will open the door.

doppelgreener

@Garan that sounds like a viable way to do it, interesting. so i could add SFX for using a weapon that apply at various points of using it.

Jimmy

yeah typed event handlers seems like a good way to model that

genaray

Also found this here : codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/163215/… seems to be pretty good too :)

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@doppelgreener Yeah, that's why I did not say "weird" because that's the "usual" for some. But you're lucky to have "tried" Christmas during the "other season".

doppelgreener

e.g. in Dead Cells, there are...
- swords that throw a potion when you first swing them
- shields that shoot an arrow when you first pull them out
- weapons that burn/poison enemies that get hit by them
- shields that do something special when you successfully parry
- weapons that do something special when an enemy specifically dies from a hit by that weapon
So you could define "onActivation", "onHit", "onParry", and "onKill" events. To create a weapon you assign it a number of SFX, and almost all melee/ranged weapons have an SFX that listens for the "onHit" event and deals damage to whatev…

Jimmy

15:30

I haven't had summer christmas, but I've had equatorial christmas, which I imagine must feel similar

doppelgreener

@Jimmy equatorial regions are generally just summer all year round, so probably yes :)

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Yeah, that's most likely what will happen to me some day. Go celebrate Christmas in an all inclusive resort or something.