Ability Cooldowns?

Unity Engine
1

Hi, Unity Community! My question today is not too much of “what” to program, but a specific way of “how” to program. In the game I’m working on, the player will have abilities and ultimates that’ll have cooldowns within them such as games like Heroes of the Storm. Right now, in my script, I have multiple timers and timeStamps for each ability, and this gets my code a bit confusing. I figured that there has to be some simpler “object-oriented” way.

Lets say I have the following variables:

abilityTime = 4f;    //The time the ability last
abilityCooldown = 12f;   //The time you'll have to wait until you use the ability again

Right now I have Couroutines and IEnumerators everywhere which makes it a mess. I’d like to use functions in simple ways like:

Ability(); //Use ability
Cooldown(abilityTime); //Ability timer starts
Cooldown(abilityCooldown); //When timer ends, the cooldown starts
//From here, the player will be able to loop back up and use Ability() again

Depending on the character/ability, the cooldown may start as soon as the player uses the ability

Ability(); //Use ability
Cooldown(abilityCooldown); //Start cooldown for next time

Ultimates or special power abilities may work a bit differently. Unlike abilities, when the game starts, players will have to wait a certain amount of time before using the Power for the first time.

ultTime = 8f; //The time the power last
ultCooldown = 90f; //The time you'll have to wait until you can use the power

//When the game starts...
Cooldown(ultCooldown);
UltimateAbility();
Cooldown(ultTime);
//From here, it'll go back up and wait ultCooldown

Is there anyone who can guide me in structuring the functions like this, or what to have in the cooldown functions? It’s pretty tough in C# since you have to use Couroutines and then continue the abilities within those. It gets messy and confusing. I get that this question is pretty vague, so please reply with questions so I can provide more clarity. Thank you for any help!!

2

Here’s how I’d do it.

Have a class that serves as a container for abilities instances. For your particular case, It should hold the ability’s index, its initial cooldown time(for ults), its regular cool down time and then whatever the hell you want. Duration time possibly? You stated you might want that.

Anyways, Start your coroutine. Feed it the container instance of the ability that’s cooling down, along with an enum parameter, or whatever design you fancy, as long as you’re able to differentiate what cooldown type it should fetch.

At launch, I’d just feed all the abilities to the coroutine. All of those that have an initial cooldown time of 0 will refresh right away and the ultimates that have an initial cooldown will trigger it.

//Enum to pass to the coroutine so it knows which cooldown type it should fetch
enum CooldownType
{
    Initial,
    Regular
}

IEnumerator CooldownAbility (Ability instance, CooldownType cooldownType)
{
    DeactivateAbility (instance);
    //Wait for the proper cooldown then reactivate the ability
    yield return new WaitForSeconds (GetCooldownTime(instance, cooldownType));
    ActivateAbility (instance);
}

float GetCooldownTime (Ability instance, CooldownType cooldownType) {
    switch (cooldownType) {
    case CooldownType.Initial:
        //Get the initial cooldown time that you set in this specific ability's container
        return instance.GetInitialCooldownTime ();
    default :
        //Get the normal cooldown time that you set in this specific ability's container
        return instance.GetCooldownTime ();
    }
}

void DeactivateAbility (Ability instance)
{
    //Deactivate ability based on its index stored in the Ability class
}
void ActivateAbility (Ability instance)
{
    //Activate ability based on its index stored in the Ability class
}

Edit : Additionally, you should label the types of abilities to differentiate which ones the cd should start as the ability is activated, which ones should wait for the ability duration before cooling down, whatever else you want them to do. Then segment your coroutine to be able to process different logics based on what the label of the ability is.

e.g. In a case where you need to wait for the ability’s duration before cooling down, your coroutine should get that information from the ability’s container, then proceed to wait for the duration time conveniently stored in the ability’s container, then trigger the cooldown.

Basically, you want a coroutine that can process multiple logics based on the information stocked in the abilities you feed it.

1 Like
3

I would actually use state machines for abilities. You don’t HAVE to use couroutines in C#, it’s just that most people do.

public class Player_Base() {

public State { Idle, ActivateAbility }
public State state;

   switch (state) {

   case Idle:
      //wait for user input
   break;

   case ActivateAbility:
      this.gameObject.AddComponent(Abilities_FlameThrowerAttack);
      state = State.Idle;
   break;

   }

}

public class Abilities_FlameThrowerAttack() {

public State { Start, Run, Cooldown, End }
public State state;
public int cooldownTimer;

void Update() {

  switch (state) {

  case Start:
     cooldownTimer = something compared to players stats
     state = State.Run;
  break;

  case Run:
     //Start Animation Here
     //Animation itself will do
     //Abilities_FlamThrowerAttack.state = State.Cooldown;
   break;

  case Cooldown:
     if (cooldownTimer <= 0) {
        state = State.End;
     }
     cooldownTimer--;
  break;

  case End:
     Destroy(this) //destroys the script
  break;
  }

}

And for the cooldown timer you’re gonna want to multiply by Time.deltaTime. I THINK that means you do like:

cooldownTimer = cooldownTimer - (1 * Time.deltaTime)…

4

Thank you guys for your help! I’ll be trying some of these out and report back what I have.

5

+1 for state machines. You could also use a mix of state machine and coroutines, where you use coroutines to “fire and forget” stuff like particles, etc.

1 Like
6

Just remember when you use AddComponent, you can add an infinite amount of instances of the script to the game object. It creates a copy of your script and attaches it to your object. Using addcomponent then you can make scripts that get depleted or count down or whatever, just make sure it destroys itself aftewards if it’s something you’re gonna have an infinite amount of instances of.