How to Build a Modular Ability System in GODOT 

Very good tutorial. Most tutorials focus on implemeting the ability, but not about scaling your whole game to implement multiple systems, and this is really lacking in most tutorials. Thanks !

Just a bit bigger text in editor would be great! :)

The "move" ability takes parameters for the movement direction, so the appropriate Entity needs to know that. If the Entity using the abilities needs to know how to call each ability, it seems like it's not achieving the goal.

also use relative file paths! so that line isn't dependend on where you put the ability folder 7:47 var ghost = preload("./ghost.tscn")

Dang Man. This is Amazing. Been looking for some thing like this for a while You could even go one step further and make the UI reflect the config options and have it be a system which go from code to no code and all be modular. Love it.

Really amazing tutorial! Created an ability shop where heroes can pick custom abilities. It's highly inspired by your method, thank you very much!

55:00 "a game where you start as a _primitive_ adventurer" @ player character is literally a square 🤣

A bit improved ability loading would be to export variables for a PackedScene type. Because that does the preloading automatically and you can pass it to AddAbility() function... But then again why not just have them already in the player controller scene, that's inherited from the Entity scene? This system works, but I don't like the fact that entities need to know about the ability. In my opinion, for the ability to be modular, it should work by itself and affect its entity. So when an ability is ready it should fetch the reference of its entity, then go it's way. Then entity doesn't need to control abilities and abilities could control their own cooldown.

Hi Andrew, very nice that youtube algorithm recommended your channel to me!

Cool tutorial, also sounds like a neat idea for a game, you should do Dev logs on it!

Nice, elegant approach. It would be helpful if this video was in your Godot playlist.

this system loses its modularity when you introduce any entity-wide state, for instance a can_move variable. this can be solved by a property accessor that looks for entries in a dictionary and initializes one if it doesnt yet exist and the entry is removed when all abilities that reference it are gone

Very good tutorial it is very interesting. I was wondering how you would handle animations. Do you play them from the ability with the self or not ?

Wow, that was such a great tutorial, thanks for your effort!

Subbed. Amazing. I am tweaking this for Godot 4 and if I upload a modified/updated version, I will credit you thoroughly. This was brilliantly done, and it curtails the hazards of making long switch case statements without any structure in how one organizes their overall project. For anyone interested in a poor example -> See Undertale for examples of how to NOT structure.

very well designed. excellent work!

Great system, will implement it right away thanks :)

nice - have you looked at resources files to do the same thing ?

you are the best

Thank you, this will be very helpful :D

Just watched this and a great introduction, one question how would you introduce temporary abilities rather than permanent ones through this approach. For example say I want to allow a weapon to have extended range for a number of turns?

How would you go about coding an ability that would require some functionality of the entity/player to stop functioning? For example a channeled ability that would stop you from moving/using other abilities while you're casting it.

Is there a link for your code?

A question: Why do you instance the abilities in script and not do a more dynamic instancing? As of now i i want to bar player access to an ability i would need to have it load in anyways and the use a bool or deactivate the node to lock access to it. But if i would create an array of attacks, i would only need to write a loop which iterates through the array positions and uses the load_ability function to instance the abilities as children. Thus i would be able to add key-value pairs to the array to extend the list of available abiliities and reduce the amount of code if i had something like 100 abilities that could possibly be used by the player. I wouldnt even need a hardcoded list of what abilities the player has since i could just add them to the players array when they interact with something for example. The only CON i can see here is you dont have an easy grab for the ability. Tho you have the array as a library anyways so not a problem i see. Do you think an alternative solution would work better? Thank you for the guide, it touches on many important design matters like factorys and inheritance which are crucial in designing a well functioning modifiable game

I have watched this video, as well as your scalable video several times and have enjoyed them both tremendously. I'm currently attempting to get better utilizing the godot engine to begin building games. I have already (in godot 3.4) created a completely separate dedicated multiplayer framework and am in the process of slowly trying to recreate it within the 4.0 alphas that are slowly being released. My goal is to build a "base", upon which I can implement "upgrades" which will expand upon the base. New characters, abilities, places, npcs, etc..., but I am wondering about the entity script. My game will be sci-fi based, and will have normal humanoid-based characters, it will have 4 legged, 6 legged, and 8 legged entities, all with different defaults. I'm thinking I will need to utilize a different entity base for each type of character and though this seems just too easy to me, would I only need to implement, for example, entity2.gd, entity4.gd, entity6.gd, and entity8.gd from which to inherit to different characters, then just make sure each character inherits from the proper entity script? This just seems like it would be too good to be true as it would appear, to be far too easy. Would it actually be that easy, or am I missing something entirely?

I know this video is very old but it would not hurt to try, I have a problem starting the physics of falling. I called the gravity project variable within entity.gd, but the method ,if not is_on_floor(): velocity.y += gravity does not work within the player or within move.gd :(

How do I package the modular abilities to load them in runtime...

How much more complicated will this get if the ability needs to invoke a certain character state? For example, if I want the ability to make the player jump on execution?

Hi. It is good video , but how i can do health and mana regen every 1 second? I not see game master .gd script.

How would you handle animations on the character with this system? For example, how would you play the idle animation since it's not an ability

What happens when you need things like pathfinding on a tilemap

is it working for godot 4 3d?

The font is too small to read in a phone's screen..i've been enjoying the contents of your channel but I can't do that using a mobile phone. Please kindly increase the font size in the text editor, thanks!