Timeline for dynamic, non-cutscene gameplay sequencing?

[gamedevjake]

I was wondering if anyone could recommend whether Timeline is worth using for dynamic, non-cutscene gameplay sequencing.

I am working on a turn-based 1v1 game where units can perform scripted actions via commands. I could configure the timing of sounds, positioning, animations and vfx of the units involved in the action-command via scripts, but I was wondering if Timeline might be appropriate here too?

The units can be in many different positions within the scene, so I would need some programmatic API to tell Timeline what positions the units are in, so that it can then play a sequence asset I had previously created. I suppose I might even need to adjust keyframes programmatically too? Not sure on that yet.

What do you think? Is this not what Timeline is really built for?

[gamedevjake]

I found this discussion which seems relevant, and makes it looks very feasible to do what I want to do:

Runtime modification of bindings

Hi, I need to do some sort of Ability System for my game. I think Timeline could be a really cool thing to use for that. In the big lines I need for instance: - Play animation - Play Fx @ time x - Move Fx to Target - Play Die animation on Target Works fine in editor, but of course, you can fire an ability on any target in the game. I was wondering if it's possible to instanciate a Director with the right Timeline asset, and being able to modify a reference. In my case, I would ne…