Combat Presentation Cues And Transient Effects

Combat presentation cues turn authoritative combat feedback into local visuals, camera shake, material impacts, projectiles, damage numbers, sounds, and temporary cleanup-managed effects.

How It Works

Runtime action cue routing maps combat events into visual, camera, sound, projectile, and material impact profiles. Transient presentation registries dedupe events by owner keys, stack slots, and lifetimes. Damage numbers anchor to actor presentation roots and clamp to the viewport.

How To Use It

Add new combat feedback by defining the authoritative event first, then routing it through action cue presentation. Use transient owner keys for effects that must dedupe or expire. Keep projectile origins tied to actor presentation roots, not raw scene positions when an actor visual exists.

Invariants

Presentation must not apply combat authority. Duplicate cues should dedupe inside their intended window. Dead or despawned actors should clean up attached transients. Damage numbers should not depend on a soon-to-be-deleted child entity.

Debugging

Duplicated cues usually mean the owner key or dedupe window is wrong. Missing camera shake points to cue profile routing. Wrong projectile origins point to actor presentation root lookup. Damage numbers disappearing with dead actors usually means the anchor lifetime is too short.

Examples

For a new ranged attack, route the hit event to a projectile cue and an impact material cue. If the projectile fires from the target instead of the caster, inspect origin owner resolution before changing combat authority.