Welcome.
At this point in the course, it's time for us to start thinking about a way to manage our abilities.
Now, for this game project, I've chosen to design a spell menu that makes a sort of compromise between
overly complex and overly simple.
I didn't want this spell menu to be too simple because this project is a bona fide RPG and an RPG deserves
the respect of having a good spell menu and by a good spell menu.
I mean it should have at least a set of minimum features.
Notice in the widget diagram here that we have an offensive abilities section.
Now this is a form of spell tree.
In this spell tree, we have three columns.
Now, it doesn't really matter how you organize the columns in this game project.
Each column will represent a type of offensive ability.
Offensive meaning attack abilities or abilities that harm the enemy characters.
These will be abilities that we typically activate, such as keyboard presses and mouse clicks.
Beneath it we have a passive ability section.
Now, this will be abilities that once active, they will remain active.
So things that will constantly give the character perks or strengths as opposed to the offensive abilities
which will be activated throughout the game by spending mana.
Now notice at the very bottom we have what looks like something that we have in our overlay.
This is our equipped abilities row.
This shows us which abilities we currently have equipped, including offensive and passive abilities.
Now, this is not exactly the same as what's in our overlay because this widget is going to have much
more capabilities.
You see, I'd like the capability of reassigning abilities to different inputs.
Switching from left mouse button to right mouse button and so on.
I'd like to be able to switch them around and change them.
This is an important feature that I thought would be worth covering.
So this row down here is going to have more features than appears at face value.
Notice at the top we have spell points.
Now we've been talking about spell points and how we're going to earn them when leveling up.
Now we're about to see how these spell points can be functional as our spell menu will have a spend
point button and the spend point button is going to allow us to spend points on abilities.
Now we will discuss more about what that means.
But when spending points, I want two main features.
One is I'd like the concept of locked abilities that we don't have yet, and as long as we're eligible
to meet the level requirement for a given ability, we can spend a point on it.
Then we can equip it to unlock it.
Another feature is that I'd like to be able to upgrade abilities so if we've already unlocked an ability,
I'd like to be able to spend a spell point to upgrade that ability to its next level.
So individual abilities will have their own ability levels.
This allows us to take advantage of gases built in ability level feature.
Notice we have an equip spell button as well.
So as spells are unlocked, they now become eligible for equipping and we can equip them to whichever
input that we like.
So we're going to need a way to select abilities by clicking on them.
And with a selected ability, we can then equip with our equip button and select from among our equipped
abilities row at the very, very bottom which input to assign it to.
Now what are these two boxes here on the right?
Well, I'd like a spell description.
Usually a spell menu has some way to inform the user what each ability is going to do.
Otherwise, there'd be no incentive to unlock or upgrade the ability.
So the spell description tells us a little bit about the ability.
Perhaps some of the stats involved such as mana cost and damage caused.
And I'd like a second description box that will describe what the ability does at its next ability level.
Again, this is incentivizing the user to want to upgrade the ability and not just ignore that ability.
If there's a temptation to spend ability points on one ability to upgrade it.
Then there now becomes a choice.
Does the user upgrade their current abilities or spend a spell point to unlock abilities that are now
eligible for unlocking?
I feel like these are all features for a spell menu that are relatively serious.
RPG must have.
Now of course, there are RPGs that have spell menus that are much more complex than this.
So again, I had to make a compromise without going too complex.
But.
It also giving this game the spell menu that it deserves.
Also, the features covered in this spell menu are expandable, so I feel like we'll be covering enough
information to equip you with what you need to make those more complicated spell menus for the RPG projects
you're working on.
So now that we know what our spell menu is going to contain, it's time to create the spell menu, widget
and all associated widgets that will go into it.
And then we'll work on making this spell menu functional so that we can handle our gameplay abilities.
And of course this comes with the need for more abilities, right?
We have one offensive ability, the Firebolt.
We're going to need more so that we can make sure our spell menu works and also to make our game more
exciting.
So we'll begin making the widgets for our spell menu in the videos to come.
I'll see you soon.