Learning.

[Imzogelmo]

I thought that's what you were talking about earlier?
----:
"I don't think we can discuss this without further noting that spells/skills/etc. always "belong" to a certain super-set, which determines the command and menu that the are called from.
To use a FFVI example, Pummel belongs to the Blitz category. Quadra Slice belongs to the SwdTech category. Pummel can't appear in SwdTech's list--it just can't happen.
Sure, it's my favorite, but this is not limited to that game. Several games have separate Black and White lists. It's the same idea essentially. "
:---
Or did I misunderstand?

There I was illustrating the skill-belongs-to-skillset idea, yes. And within that, skills would often have a %-learned attribute to them, as you've noted.

But what I'm not quite understanding is how the skill sets, spell books, abilities, etc. get attached to a given character. How can multiple such sets be attached to one character? I know it's getting off into the weeds a bit, but I'm just trying to understand; when I look at a skill set's code, will it be within a character's scope, or will it be within its own scope? Surely the data for how to execute the attack would be within the actual skill's scope, but ownership of that skill would not-- Two character's both know Blizzard, but the data for how to do Blizzard doesn't belong to either of them.

I think I just answered my own question, actually. It would end up looking something like this:

Character{
...
SpellBook[Max_spells]
SkillSet[Max_skills]
}

When issuing a command, we need to know what abilities the character has, for menus at the top level but also for building any submenus.

for (int i = 0; i < Max_spells; i++)
{
if SpellBook[i].isKnown() MasterSpellList[SpellBook[i].GetID()].DisplayName();
}

Executing a spell is gonna need to know caster and target, for damage calculations, so at that point, both of those things are known:

FigureSpellDamage(Entity caster, Entity target, Spell spell)
{
return caster.GetPower()* spell.GetEffectivity() - target.GetMagDef()
)


I guess my only real question here is how to have characters with open-ended lists of ability sets?

[Gleeok]

Yeah. Abilities are on my todo list. I suppose my question with these is whether passive abilities and assignable abilities should belong to the same list, and, if battle commands are seperate. ..I guess "commands" represent equipped abilities..

Also did you mean #1 or #2 here:
Character{
list<SpellBook> spellbooks //spellbook for white/black, or all
Spellbook mySpells; //all spells in the game
}
I was thinking #1 where in the case of FF1 or 6 you just use only one book.

I guess my only real question here is how to have characters with open-ended lists of ability sets?

What do you mean by open-ended lists? ..I must be thinking of something completely different.

[Imzogelmo]

I was just making some pseudocode there; I meant #1 for SpellBook, and #2 for MasterSpellBook, though.
But when I say "open-ended lists of ability sets", I'm referring to the possibility of having more than one list. Think of young Rydia in FF4; she had a white, a black, and a summon list. If characters only have one list, that wouldn't be possible; if they all have 3, that's just too much. Clearly, it has to be open-ended, i.e. dynamic. And the question is how to design it to be dyanamic (so that it can handle 0, 1, 3, etc. separate lists of abilities).

And that was before I thought of the possibility of an ability that belongs to more than one list--but I think it would be best to have them always belong to exactly one list (and you can make a duplicate in another list if you just had to).