I personally have basically no experience working on an existing code-base and restructuring it. However, Kab seems to already have his own ideas in mind for how he is considering doing this.
So I figured a way I could hopefully make myself useful in this process would be to list some functionality that myself as a modder would desire for use in their own future projects, in relation to the skill system atleast. So this thread is intended to be an open discussion for others to discuss what features they would like to see as well, and hopefully this could make the end implementation of this redesign as useful as possible to the most mod creators, and maybe even general users as well.
With that in mind, here I will list a few features I'd like to see for the skill system:
- Ability for a mod to add entirely custom skills, that would be tracked and integrated into the game the same as the "vanilla" skills, and hopefully also able to be interacted with by other mods as well. (Maybe even the inverse if feasible, of removing existing skills, if say a mod wants to replace an existing skill with their own? More niche use, but hey it's a wish-list after all.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Ability to alter when skills trigger for gaining XP, hopefully with more customizable events of sorts. With custom skills as well, the ability to add triggers for these skills to gain XP as well.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Ability to override any existing formula for how much XP is gained from actions/events that trigger them. For example, having mercantile gain more XP based on the value of a transaction, rather than the volume of individual transactions completed, or more spell-school XP from how much a spell costs to cast, rather than how many times you cast it alone.
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Hopefully this starts some discussion about this topic. I would get more into listing various things that need to be considered when working on this rework. Basically just stuff to keep in mind, such as needing various elements that assumed a specific number of skills, now needing to be redesigned to accommodate a variable number of skills, such as the "Misc" skills pop-up window, and many other little details like that.
But for right now, that's all from me, thanks for reading.