How to create a resource that can lead to different actions?

kitfox

I'm having trouble trying to figure out the best way to design my code to handle this problem.

Basically, I want to create a simple card game (kind of like magic the gathering) where the user has a hand of cards and can play them to advance the game. To simply things, every card will have an image, some text describing it and an action that should be carried out when the card is played. I think it makes the most sense to model my card as a Resource that has a Texture field for the image and String field for the text. I'm having a really hard time trying to figure out how to implement the action field, though. Somehow, each Card resource I create needs to link to a different custom script that implements its action. I've thought of several ways I might do this, but they all seem to have problems:

I could extend my Card resource class for each new card, but then each card resource I create will have a different class. It would be neater if there were some sort of 'action' field that I could add to my resource that would allow me to assign a code pointer to it in the inspector
I could make the action field a String and then use the string as a lookup in a table to find the action method at runtime. The drawback here is that table would quickly get very big and hard to keep organized.
I could create my own scripting language, so that the 'action' field would actually run interpreted code when called. This seems like overkill, though.

These solutions all seem messy to me and I'm wondering if I'm missing a more elegant solution or if Godot already has a way to handle this situation. What's the best way for my Card resource to have a different action for each type of card?

GlyphTheWolf

Hi,

I would create some base class for card action like:

extends Resource

class_name CardAction

func handle_action():
    pass

Then add to your card resource:

export(Resource) var action

You need extend CardAction for any new action you want and then assing as "Action" to your card resource. That should let you use it later like:

var someCard = preload(someCardPath)
someCard.action.handle_action()

I guess that should work.

Script is also a resource, so you can also assign script directly as action.

PS I'm not sure if script doesn't have to be somehow instanced before use, like maybe:

var someCardAction = someCard.action.new()

That need to be checked.