Gameplay Tags

Gameplay Tags allow you to manage the state of a character in your game through their absence or presence. They are typically applied by Gameplay Effects and Abilities. For example, an Ability can check for the presence of some ability-specific cooldown tag to infer if it should be on cooldown or not. The number and structure of Gameplay Tags in a game are highly game dependent.

Gameplay Tags can be given a parent Gameplay Tag, allowing a hierarchical strucutre of tags. This strucutre allows checking not only if two Gameplay Tags are equivalent, but also if one is a descendent of another.

Gameplay Effects and Abilities have multiple sections for defining Gameplay Tags, and these control how they interact with other Gameplay Effects and Abilities.

Gameplay Effects

The types of tags that can be defined for Gameplay Effects are:

1. Asset Tag - the tag that defines this Gameplay Effect. Typically unique for each Gameplay Effect
2. Granted Tags - the tags that are considered to be on the character this Gameplay Effect is applied to. For example, if the character is magic immune due to a Gameplay Effect, one of the Granted Tags might be Status.Magic.Immune, and other Abilities would look for the Status.Magic.Immune tag, and cancel application if it is found on the target of the Ability.
3. Ongoing Tag Requirements - If all of the Required tags are present, and none of the Ignore tags are present, the Gameplay Effect is considered to be active. If any of the Required tags are not present, or if any of the Ignore tags are present, the Gameplay Effect is considered to be temporarily suspended. If a Gameplay Effect is suspended, any effects due to the Gameplay Effect (such as attribute modification or Gameplay Tag application) are temporarily removed. The Gameplay Effect will still count down.
4. Application Tag Requirements - These tags control if a particular Gameplay Effect can be applied. If any of the Required tags are not present, and any of the Ignore tags are present, then the Gameplay Effect will not be applied.
5. Removal Tag Requirements - if any of the Required tags are not present, or if any of the Ignore tags are present, the Gameplay Effect will be removed.
6. Remove Gameplay Effects with Tag - any Gameplay Effects which grant any of these tags (through their Asset Tag or Granted Tags) will be removed when this Gameplay Effect is applied.

Abilities

The types of tags that can be defined for Abilities are:

1. Asset Tag - the tag that defines this Ability. Typically unique for each Ability.
2. Cancel Abilities with Tags - any active Abilities that have an Asset Tag matching this list are cancelled.
3. Block Abilities with Tags - any Abilities that have an Asset Tag matching this list are prevented from activating.
4. Activation Owned Tags- These tags are granted to the character that this Ability is activated on.
5. Owner Tags - the ability will only be activated if the Owner has all of the Required tags and none of the Ignore tags. The Owner of an Ability is usually the character activating the ability (the Source), but it could also be a third party activating it on behalf of a character.
6. Source Tags - the ability will only be activated if the Source has all of the Required tags and none of the Ignore tags. The Source of an Ability is the the character that the ability is activated through.
7. Target Tags - the ability will only be activated if the Target has all of the Required tags and none of the Ignore tags. The Target of an Ability is the character the Ability is affecting.