I threw together the system we used based on something I saw forever ago on the TL2 forums

was it this lol?
https://forums.runicgames.com/discussion/57868/guide-fully-working-toggle-skill-system

that was me when i came up with the 1st version using invisible pets and unit themes
then someone posted another version a day later using stats
i distinctly remember this since i got super hyped when i discovered it lol

i ended up learning from the other one and can do a super clean toggle skills now
there are some limitations though, like being unable to have them permanently from zone to zone(because of how normal skill re specs work)

this should work.. but it could be simplified by using the cast on kill effect, no idea why the convoluted it, cast on kill might have bugged when they were doing testing and they chose this way to fix it.

nice

@Anarch16sync
thanks for doing maintanace on the mod, cleaning up files and squashing bugs are probably the most annoying things to do when modding lol

eyyy long time no see anarch
im in on anything if ya need me

i actually want to finish all the alch skills in the minion/pet tree and give blighted effects to all the spells in the 1st tree, also give some juicy particles for the ones i haven't yet touched.

the new animations sound hype too.

what about a passive skill that adds/enables an active skill or something like that.

yep came to that conclusion too as stated in my OP, but it ends up having prolems, since the active skill cannot start at lvl 0, it has to start at lvl 1 to properly function, but... getting a skill from level 0 to level 1 with just effects is harder than expected lol, i tried the "learn skill" effect but it ends up adding the skill to your spell slots so RIP, i also tried using "set skill level" but it doesnt seem to work, lastly i tried to use "skill bonus" but that only applies to a skill that actually have levels in them, i planed to use skill bonus for leveling up the skill itself but... it needs the skill to already be lvl1

man you need some UI experience XD
the hard coded "hide" can be easily recreated with a custom text element (dont go the screenshot way, they are so badly to adjust later on...) I can help you with that when you get stuck!

yep lol
"hide" in this case is very specific because i have to hide the UI only when i reach max rank on that skill, but that requires the skill to be somehow tracked with stats, as previously discussed i would have to do a bunch of rerouting to get a stat that tracks that specific skills level, via assigning it with a custom button and somehow removing/altering those stats with a hidden passive skill so it doesnt get in the way of respecing

you level up a skill that gives you a stat that you dont want to have?/remove via UI?

nah i just want it as a hidden passive which clears/changes that stats i get from the UI, but specifically only when i respec out of the skill

hey @TwinkleToes for deeper understanding of particles and animation, how do they work?

heyo
thats kinda broad lol, they are two completely separate systems, but they are often combined to get a specific effect

I assume the character is linked to the weapon animations based on the weapon equipped and the animations use particles in a timeline?

yep, inside the PC's folder you can see a list of all the animations the "HUM_F/HUM_M" models can use, there is also a
.ANIMATION file which determines what hapens within the timelines of the animations, the original classes share a shared animation file but when making a custom class you can create a custom animation file and call it back from the unit file your custom class uses(so you dont mess with the originals) you can then specify all the animations you want to use in there (these animations have to share the same folder as the animation file)

and the different weapon animations have a chance to proc?

numerically yea, eg. if you have 3 animations for a basic attack they will all have a 33.3% chance

I wonder because sometimes I feel like my melee weapons tend to use piercing animations more often then swinging

you can simply delete the piercing animation lol, but if you want it to procc less duplicate your other animations and rename them

there is a hardcoded rule for basic attack animations, if they are named a certain way
for instance originally there are 3 staff animations (STAFF1, STAFF2, STAFF3) lets say STAFF3 plays a piercing animation
you can clone STAFF1 and STAFF2 and rename them to STAFF4 and STAFF5 and they will work as new basic attack animations for the staff, doing this will technically double the chance of STAFF1 and STAFF2 from playing since STAFF5 and 4 are just clones of them.

animations with have a different damage shape?

nope they are all the same hardcoded damage shapes, regardless of what animation plays, different weapons have different ranges and arcs, the exception to this would be missile firing ranged weapons(pistol, bow, xbow) their range can be modified via an effect called "MISSILE RANGE BONUS"

could we increase the damage of piercing attacks as a compensation?

technically yes, if you add two "HIT" events on that animations time line it will hit twice, doubling its damage, but you can only ever double, triple, quadruple etc. by adding more hits

@TwinkleToes

What about adding a tier level to 5 tiers rather than 3 tiers.
I think if you look at that mod you can find what you are looking for.

the result would be the same since the skill "maxes out" at lvl 15 and the 5 extra levels are there to make the animations change, but i had a look at the mod and got some useful hints, thanks.

I will have some time to look into this this weekend. What i thought of exploring was to somehow edit the value that is given to the skilltree and the skill tooltip layouts, to "trick" the layout to display what u want.

thanks phan, heres the whole skill code https://pastebin.com/wFwB9P78
in case you want to model the skill to better investigate.

The trick UI idea could work in a two possible way, one I can think of is to make a logic that changes the <STRING>WIDGET NAME: 's input (I don't if that will activate on the fly). The second one I can think of, is to have two skills registered in the UI and only show the x/15 thingy of the dummy skills, exactly on top of the actual skill's x/20 (Not sure how that would that look, though).

heyo doudley

clueless about the 1st method lol, all know is that widget names are hardcoded, so its hard to try anything with them
the 1st thing i tried was the 2nd method but it spawns a bunch of other problems, mostly with respecing