Add Skills

Skills are the abilities a player triggers from the hotbar — a punch, a heal, a charged shot. This page shows how to define a Skill, wire it to the actions it runs, list it on an actor, and build a skill that charges while you hold the button.

Introduction

A Skill is an entity that connects a hotbar button to an Action. When the player presses the button, the skill runs one action; when they release it, it can run another. Each skill carries the display details the interface needs — a name and an icon — and optional fields for charged or animated abilities.

Skills are how players act on the world. An actor with no skills can move but cannot attack, heal, or use any other ability. The hotbar holds at most nine skills, mapped to the keys Q W E R T Y U I O by default.

Prerequisites

This page assumes you have already:

• Created an actor — see Create an Actor.
• Defined the actions a skill will run — see Define Actions.

What a Skill points at

A Skill does not contain game logic. It points at one or two KeyRefs — references to Action entities by their key:

• start runs when the player presses the skill button.
• end runs when the player releases the button.

Either may be omitted. The example skills set both to the same action, so the ability fires that one action on press and again on release.

The remaining fields describe the skill to the player and the engine:

No field is required. In practice you give a skill at least a name, an icon, and a start action so the player can see it and use it.

Define a Skill

Skill entities live in their own file. The example defines both of its skills together.

The attack skill is the simplest useful shape: a name, an icon, and a single action wired to both press and release.

Skill:
  attackSkill:
    name: Punch
    start: attackAction
    end: attackAction
    icon: /assets/icons/sword.png

attackSkill shows as "Punch" with the sword icon. Pressing or releasing its hotbar key runs attackAction, an Action defined elsewhere in the campaign. The icon path starts with a leading slash and points at a file inside the campaign's assets.

Note: The start and end values must be the keys of real Action entities. Validation rejects a Skill whose start or end points at a missing action. See Define Actions for how those actions are written.

The other skill, healSkill, has the same shape — it shows as "Heal" with a health icon and runs conditionalHealAction on both press and release.

Skill:
  healSkill:
    name: Heal
    start: conditionalHealAction
    end: conditionalHealAction
    icon: /assets/icons/health.png

A skill can run different actions on press and release — set start and end to different action keys. The example keeps them identical because a punch or a heal is a single instant action; there is no separate release behavior to model.

Add Skills to an actor

A skill does nothing until an actor lists it. An actor references its skills through the skills field: an array of Skill keys, in hotbar order. The hero declares both skills.

Actor:
  heroActor:
    name: Hero
    base: 8
    speed: 75
    skills:
    - attackSkill
    - healSkill

The order matters: attackSkill takes the first hotbar slot (Q by default) and healSkill the second (W). See Create an Actor for the actor's other fields, such as base and speed.

Warning: An actor may list at most nine skills. The tenth and beyond are ignored — both the campaign validator and the runtime cap the hotbar at nine slots.

The default hotbar keys, in order, are Q W E R T Y U I O. They map to the inputs action_1 through action_9. You can rebind them; see the CLI reference for how keybinds are configured.

Build a charged skill

A charged skill builds up power while the player holds its button, then releases it. Set the charge field to a number greater than zero to turn charging on.

While the button is held, the charge builds up, capped at the charge maximum. Switching to a different skill mid-hold resets the charge to zero. When charge is 0 — the default — the skill fires immediately with no build-up.

The following skill reuses the attackAction but charges up to a maximum of 10 before releasing.

Skill:
  chargedPunch:
    name: Charged Punch
    start: attackAction
    end: attackAction
    icon: /assets/icons/sword.png
    charge: 10

Here start runs attackAction on press to begin the ability, charge accumulates while the button is held, and end runs attackAction again on release. A skill's cast visual comes from its start/end action's own animation field — see Visuals: Sprites and Animations.

Note: Neither example skill uses charge, so the values above are illustrative. The start and end actions (attackAction) are real keys.

Tip: A charged skill reads best when start and end run different actions — start begins the cast and end releases the stored charge. Wire end to an action that consumes the built-up charge for a payoff that scales with hold time.

Show a skill's values in a dialog

A dialog can display live actor values next to a skill's effect using templating tokens. Use these only inside a Dialog entity's text field.

HP: {{@health}} / Your luck: {{$luck}}

{{@health}} reads the target actor and {{$luck}} reads the caller. This is useful for a heal skill whose dialog should show the target's current health.

See also

• Create an Actor
• Define Actions
• Conditions and Logic
• Visuals: Sprites and Animations
• CLI Reference