how to use a parent class that exports variables set in child classes

jackhen

I have a parent class called Ability that contains properties and methods used by all attacks. each individual attack sets and exports properties such as damage and cooldown. how can I set this up so I can write functions in the parent attack class with the property "damage", but set damage in the classes that inherit this parent code? in my example my damageAllTouching method doesnt work because damage is only defined in the child classes. ########################################################################################### Ability class: extends Node2d

onready var player = get_tree().get_root().get_node("battlefield").get_node("player")

func _ready(): pass

func damageAllTouching(): for i in get_node("Area2D").get_overlapping_areas(): if i.get_name() == "enemyHitbox": i.get_parent().hp -= damage i.get_parent().flash = 2 ########################################################################################## fireball class: extends "res://ability.gd"

export(int) var damage = 3 export(int) var cooldown = 60 export(float) var energy = 2

Azedaxen

It seems that what you're asking for simply isn't possible with how OOP works. Here are some other things you could try:

Make damage a parameter in your damageAllTouching() method. This would also allow for some more flexibility in this method, such as doing double or half damage under certain circumstances.

Or, you could make another class called "Attack" that inherits from Ability, then have Fireball inherit from the Attack class. The Attack class can then hold the damage variable and damageAllTouching() method. This would be a nice way to de-clutter the Ability class, if you also plan on adding abilities that aren't attacks.

cybereality

Yeah, like @Azedaxen says, you can have "damageAllTouching()" take in a damage parameter. This would work because any time you'd be using inheritance, you'll also have access to the child (such as the fireball class object) meaning you have access to damage.

fireball.damageAllTouching(fireball.damage)

But you can actually get it to work your original way (though it seems like sort of a hack, I would recommend not doing this, but it's cool to know it can work).

Father class:

extends Sprite
var life_bar = 100

func take_damage():
	life_bar -= get("damage")
	print("Life is ", life_bar)

Son class:

extends "res://Father.gd"
export var damage = 12

Make sure to change damage in the editor so you can see it works. But, like i said, it's a hack and not advisable. Mainly because you will not get type checking. If you happen to call the function on something that is not a Son (in my case) bad things will happen.

Megalomaniak

The setters and getters via the setget keyword might maybe allow you to do something along the lines of what you want, perhaps. But I'm not sure.

Also don't forget to consider signals.