The past two days I've been upgrading skills to a much better system.
Skills themselves are now handled using a Unity type called a scriptable object. Rather than writing a script for each skill, the scriptable object approach lets us define the skills settings on a single asset and let the system handle the rest. In other words I can copy and paste an ice spell, rename is to ice2, up the damage, and it's good to go in 5-10 seconds. Of course we want our skills to have different names, icons, effects, and so forth, but the system is really that easy now that it's all setup and working.
To go with that, I have upgraded the skill unlock interface so that almost everything is now automatic. This is important for how many skills I plan to get into the game over time, but also for mod support. This way anyone with a copy of Unity (which is free) can download a script package I will make available in the future, create some skills, and just putting them in the right folder will make them accessible in-game.
Generally most skills will fall into one of several categories: single target, projectile, aoe, buff, heal, etc. There are a few expections however such as the basic attack skill or strong harvest skills which check to see what you are weilding or what you are harvesting and performs the appropriate action. Setting up these special cases has used up all my time for today, but I'm hoping to get at least 10-20 new skills in tomorrow. Just wanted to chime in rather than let another silent night go by.
Looking forward to lightning and explosions!
