Code driven attacks mostly serve as basic skills. Like Fire-Fira-etc for fire spells.
I'll tell how I see it, not sure how much can be done without too advanced coding. Depending on equipped weapon the function takes attack sprite from \content\gfx\be, such as axes.png, and uses it in the animation.
1) Multiple hits one after another, when every weapon sprite uses random angle and random position (within reasonable limits, they still should be near the target). Each hit uses usual weapon sound. Like, for example instead of one single arrow attack a character unleashes multiple ones in quick succession.
With parameters such as how many hits animation has, how quickly alpha of each attack spite drops to 0, how many time passes between hits. This will allow to create multiple skills based on one animation function.
2) Single, but enlarged version of normal weapon attack with a flash or small distortion, for powerful attacks skills. We have full screen distortion for cataclysm if I'm not mistaken, I mean something like it but much smaller.
3) "Shadow Slash" you proposed in that thread. The problem here is to make it suitable for any weapon type, without the need to make it manually for every weapon. Maybe use weapon attack sprite as a mask to cut the target sprite with it?
4) Making screen black except the attacker sprite, then throwing it for some time from side to side like in pinball, with every change of movement direction accompanied by another weapon attack.
5) Back attack, when attacker sprite instantly moves behind target back (probably via a cloud of dust) and attacks with normal animation (maybe mirrored since position is mirrored too), then returns to original position.
Another important thing is issue 170, without it things are quite chaotic:
- "Since we have different weapons, these skills should be tied to base attack types. Like, some ranged skill could require BowAttack or ThrowAttack available to be used."
If character had a sword equipped, s/he should have basic sword attack available, not like atm when they have all attacks in the game. Moreover, even if s/he knows all weapons skills in the game, only skills allowed for sword users should be available inside BE. Meaning weapon skills should have lists of available weapons.
- "We have base attack type in characters jsons that should be used if they are unarmed. Equipping a weapon though should add a basic skill provided by that weapon (like swordattack for a sword) to attacks list, meaning we should carefully handle cases when a character already has swordattack, just like with traits."
It starts from
my post and continues. The idea is how to handle characters which sprites already have weapons of some kind.
- "Support for absolute values"
Done by me, just like health and vitality cost