I worked on polishing up the abilities manual activation when in direct control of a unit. I really REALLY did very little today. I made hummus, which is good. I bought food, thats always nice. I went for a walk. Uh.. uh... thats about it. The functionality i have here is/was already present in the system. So i didn't have to extend it by that much. I think i put in an activation profile as an interface and that lets me then call the same function name when triggering for automatics abilities (when your not controlling them) vs the manual trigger.
I am going to play rimworld and eat sour dough today. until i get board of that, then i will come back and put in the same targeting/activation logic for ranged abilities and stuff. I'm getting close to being able to call this nearly done. Its no longer a matter of months and months, but weeks and weeks.
RoadMap :
Direct control gets polish/feels good
Dialogue controller generates xml/read xml dialogue modules
Room editor edits rooms
JSON 2 unity3d Object pipeline for mods/community content
[If people ask for it] Local Multiplayer/LAN play
Polish UI again, make stuff sparkle.
At that point i would be at Demo territory. Actually, at that point id be nearly done, lol. Let me pass this over to chat GPT for a breakdown on what we did today.
Dev Diary — Direct Control & Manual Ability Firing (Light Day)
Refocused on direct-control combat, specifically how melee abilities should behave when player-aimed instead of auto-triggered.
Identified a core issue: abilities were still governed by AutoTriggerPolicy, even in Direct mode, causing:
One-time firing
Silent failures on subsequent clicks
Confusing “manual activate failed” states
Traced the problem correctly to TriggerPolicy vs TargetingPolicy, not input or cooldown bugs.
Confirmed that:
Targeting policies were already modular and correct (Auto vs Direct)
Trigger policy needed the same treatment
Implemented explicit trigger switching for melee abilities:
UseAutoTrigger() → AutoTriggerPolicy
UseManualTrigger() → ManualTriggerPolicy
Wired Direct Control flow so:
Tactical mode = auto targeting + auto trigger
Direct mode = direct targeting + manual trigger
Verified manual fire path:
Input → TryManualActivate()
CanActivate() gate
Target resolved via DirectMeleeTargetingPolicy
Ability activates without AutoTrigger interference
Debugged why “manual activate failed” was firing:
Root cause was policy mismatch, not cooldown, MP, or targeting
Continued polish on melee slash FX orientation:
Identified Z-axis rotation issue (slash was flattened but rotated wrong)
Clarified need to align sprite rotation to aim direction, not hardcoded Z=90
Net result:
Direct melee attacks now fire intentionally, not automatically
System architecture is cleaner: TriggerPolicy and TargetingPolicy are fully orthogonal
Clear path forward for ranged, cone, and charged abilities under Direct Control