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Asked: 2025-02-06T16:14:26+05:30

How can I architect complex event sequencing and side effects in a turn-based game while maintaining separation of logic and animations?

anonymous user

I’m working on a turn-based game that’s reminiscent of XCOM, but I’m facing a pretty complex architectural challenge that I’m hoping someone here has tackled before.

I’ve structured my game’s design around keeping the logic and animations separate. When a unit takes an action—like moving or shooting—the game’s logic calculates the outcome first, and then I queue up the animations. The idea is to keep things tidy and ensure that the game logic isn’t intertwined with how animations are executed. It seems great in theory, but implementing a system that can handle multiple side effects in a clear and manageable way isn’t straightforward.

Take this scenario, for instance: A unit takes a shot and hits an explosive barrel. This causes a series of cascading effects: the barrel takes damage, reaches zero health, explodes, which then affects other units and objects in the area, potentially triggering more explosions and panicked reactions. The challenge arises because not all of these effects happen immediately or in a straightforward cascade—some require delays, while others are immediate, especially in scenarios involving chain reactions.

In contrast, if a unit fires a burst of shots at multiple targets, each shot causes immediate results: damage is dealt, morale drops, and some targets might even die right after being hit. But then I want to queue up the subsequent animations—like death rattles and panic actions—after all shots have resolved.

What complicates things further is that I don’t want to hardcode the system, as I can already see that leading to a massive tangle of code and potential bugs. Ideally, I’d like to find a more elegant and reusable way to architect this system. How can I approach this problem of sequencing various effects while ensuring the game logic remains separate from animations? Any design patterns, frameworks, or ideas you’ve encountered that could help me go down the right path would be incredibly valuable. Thanks!

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    2 Answers

    1. anonymous user

      Using a Queue System for Actions and Effects

      Okay, so I’m not super experienced, but I think I might have an idea for your problem! What if you create an action queue? You could put each action and its effects into a list that the game processes in order.

      Step 1: Create an Action Queue

      When a unit takes an action like shooting, instead of executing everything at once, you enqueue the action.

      actionQueue.enqueue(shootAction);

      Step 2: Process the Queue

      Then, you could have a loop that processes each action. For example:

      while(!actionQueue.isEmpty()) {
        currentAction = actionQueue.dequeue();
        currentAction.execute();
        // Here is where you'd handle any immediate effects.

      Step 3: Handle Cascading Effects

      For those cascading effects like the barrel explosions, maybe you could use events to trigger additional effects. Like when a barrel explodes, it emits an event, and any units or objects that are listening for that event would respond appropriately.

      barrel.onExplode(() => {
        actionQueue.enqueue(explodeEffect);
        // Add any additional effects you need
    });

      Step 4: Timing Effects

      For delays, you could include a timer that pushes an action into the queue after a certain period. So you could have something like:

      setTimeout(() => {
        actionQueue.enqueue(panicReaction);
    }, delayTime);

      Step 5: Keep Animations Separate

      After all the actions resolve, you could then check for which animations need to be queued up and handle them in a separate pass. This way, your logic and animations are still pretty separate.

      Design Patterns to Look At

      If you want to dive deeper, maybe check out the Command Pattern or Observer Pattern. Command Pattern can help in encapsulating the actions, while Observer Pattern is great for triggering events without tightly coupling the classes.

      Just a few ideas! Hope it helps a bit!

    2. anonymous user

      To tackle the architectural challenge of separating game logic from animations while handling complex cascading effects, consider implementing a system based on an event-driven architecture combined with a finite state machine (FSM) for each unit and object within the game. Begin by defining a centralized event system that allows different game components to communicate through dispatched events. When a unit performs an action, like shooting, it dispatches an event indicating the action taken and the target it affects. This event can then be processed by a dedicated system that determines the outcomes, triggering appropriate responses for damage, status changes, or environmental effects without directly invoking animations at this stage. This approach encourages loose coupling, allowing for flexible adjustments to the logic of each event without affecting the entire system.

      For managing the sequence of effects, consider creating a queue or stack where each action’s resulting effects can be added. You can utilize a coroutine or a similar asynchronous mechanism to handle delays between certain actions (like the explosion of the barrel) while ensuring immediate effects are processed without obstruction. Each effect can further define its own completion callbacks, allowing the next effects or animations to be queued only after all relevant logic has resolved. This not only leads to a more manageable codebase free from hardcoding and entanglements but also fosters reuse of effects and animations, as each effect is handled independently. Using design patterns like Command or Observer can enhance this structure, enabling greater flexibility and reusability throughout the game’s architecture.