We use Battle Events to animate battle actions like abilities or items – in this tutorial we’ll focus on the attack ability.

We’ve encountered Game Events (and Move Events) before – Battle Events are another type of events. They may lack some of the event steps available in game events, but in contrast offer their own event steps specifically for battle.

While you have to add Actors to game events yourself, battle events have them added automatically – the user of the action, and the targets. Also Waypoints are added automatically in battle events – the user base, target base and battle center.

One of the most crucial battle event steps is the Calculate step – this step is used to calculate the outcome of an action (e.g. the damage of an attack, the healed amount of HP or the escape chance). You can also use this step multiple times to do multiple damages in a single action. You can learn about doing damage in this how-to.

Items and abilities can have multiple battle events – they’ll be performed in sequence and can optionally perform only in selected battle system types. We will split the things we want our battle events to do in multiple smaller events to make them reusable and modular.

Open the ORK Framework editor and navigate to Events.

Animating: Attack

We’ll start with animating the ability Attack. For our attack, we want the user (i.e. the attacker) to run to the target, attack it (i.e. playing the attack animation and calculating the outcome), and return to the user’s previous position. Since we might reuse some part of this, or don’t want to use parts of it in other battle system types, we’ll break this down into tree separate events:

• running to the target
• attacking the target
• returning to the base position

Let’s get started! Click on New Battle Event to create a new battle event.

Running to the target

This first battle event is quite simple – we will move the user to the target.

Change Position

Add > Movement > Movement > Change Position

Moving Object

These settings define which object will change position.

Target Position

These settings define the target position of the object.

Movement Settings

These settings define if and how the object will move. If this settings aren’t used, the object will be set to the target position immediately.

That’s it for this event – click on Save Event and save it as runToTarget in Assets/Events/Battle/.

Running to the base position

This event is very similar to the first event, so let’s just edit the already opened event and save it as a new event. Change the following settings.

Event Settings

Change Position

Target Position

We’ll change the target position to the user’s base.

That’s it for this event – click on Save Event As … and save it as runToBase in Assets/Events/Battle/.

Attacking the target

Now things will get a little bit more complex. We’ll play the attack animation, calculate the damage and, if the attack hit the target, spawn some sparks and play a damage audio.

Click on New Battle Event to create a new, blank event.

Event Settings

We’ll need two prefabs for our spark effects (which effect is used will be decided randomly).

Click on Add Prefab.

Click on Add Prefab again.

Combatant Animation

Add > Animation + Audio > Animation > Combatant Animation

Calculate

Add > Battle > Action > Calculate

This will calculate if the attack hits and how much damage it will make.

Play Sound

Add > Animation + Audio > Audio > Play Sound

This step is connected to the calculate step’s Next slot. We will play a sound type – they work similar to animation types and bind a audio file to a type in the combatant’s settings.

Random

Add > Base > Random

Now it’s time to randomly spawn a prefab – for this we’ll create two paths.

Click on Add Step once to create a 2nd path.

Spawn Prefab

Add > Game Object > Prefab > Spawn Prefab

Let’s spawn the prefab on the target.

Emit Particles

Add > Game Object > Component > Emit Particles

Stop emitting the particles of the prefab. If we would destroy the prefab right away, it’ll generate an ugly cut.

Spawn Prefab

Copy the already added spawn prefab step and connect this one to the 2nd slot of the random step. Change the following settings.

Emit Particles

Also, copy the already added emit particles step and connect it to the 2nd path’s Spawn Prefab node. Change the following settings.

Wait

Add > Base > Wait

Connect the calculate step’s Miss slot and both emit particles steps to this wait step.

We’ll wait for the remaining duration of the animation (stored in the Combatant Animation node) before the event ends and the spawned prefabs are destroyed.

That’s it for this event – click on Save Event and save it as attack in Assets/Events/Battle/.

Adding the events

Now it’s time to add the events to our Attack ability. Navigate to Status > Abilities and select the Attack ability. Change the following settings.

Battle Animation

This ability’s animation consists of three battle events. Change the already added battle event settings.

Click on Add Animation to add another battle event.

Click on Add Animation to add the last event.

That’s it for this ability. Repeat the same settings in the Mug Attack ability.

Don’t forget about the sound!

We’ve added a play audio step to our attack event and used Sound Types. Let’s look into that!

Sound types, like animation types, bind audio files to a type – but this binding is defined per combatant. When playing a sound type on a combatant, he will play his audio file assigned to this type. This way we can share events across combatants, but always play individual sounds.

Sound types are defined in Base/Control > Sound Types. There should already be some standard types defined:

• Damage
• Evade
• Death
• Use 1
• Use 2
• Use 3
• Attack 1
• Attack 2
• Attack 3

We don’t need other sound types for now, so let’s set up the damage sound on our combatants (the one we used in our event). Navigate to Combatants > Combatants and change the following settings on all combatants.

Base Settings > Sound Settings

Click on Add Sound to add a sound type binding.

That’s it – click on Save Settings and close the ORK Framework editor.

Let’s test this!

Open the main menu scene (0 Main Menu) and hit Play. Walk outside of the town and into the battle. You will notice that the player and enemy now use the attack animations we just defined – cool!

Combatants moving around, particle effects and sound … we’re on the right track, but still a lot of battle events to do.

And that’s it for now – the next lesson will continue with animating the battle.