Another useful function included within Godot are “set” and “get” functions, not to be confused with the built-in setter and getter functionality which I made extensive use of as well. The way the action lists were meant to work was to create a generic “action” to procedurally modify the position, rotation, scale, transparency, and other properties of an object instead of having the object handle all that behavior itself. Usually, this kind of implementation would require having a base “action” class that could interpolate the values, and would require inheriting that base class for different properties. With Godot’s “set” functions, I circumvented having to create multiple children to the base class, as I could simply insert the name of the property I wanted to change as a string. Given GDScript is a dynamically typed language and has the ability to linearly interpolate between most types, my implementation of actions uses an array of values to interpolate through to modify the inserted property. Alongside Bezier curve implementation and Godot’s built-in easing functions, my cards now move, rotate, flip over, and scale cleanly and smoothly; I can make subtle changes to the movements and timing without having to delve deep into code.

Actions weren’t only used to manipulate variables, they could also call a varying number of functions upon an action’s activation or completion. Godot’s ability to use callbacks allowed the system to call functions with a delay or at a certain point along an action. I used this feature alongside Godot’s signals in order to implement the pause menu, resetting the game, and game progression in general; for example, when a player plays a valid card and after it reaches its destination, a function gets called to begin the next player’s turn. All of these actions can be viewed in detail, paused, and time-scaled in a debug panel implemented into the program.