Castable from a Healing Stack of Wood (On the TODO list: create a few more icons), the Healing Aura is a ranged effect targeted on the mouse cursor that creates a pulsing blue ground aura and does periodic healing damage to any friendly units in a radius, then vanishing when it's duration is up. By creating test spells like this, I am working out a list of commonly used components. For example, this spell creates an object with 3 components, all of which are reusable for other effects: TimedDestroyComponent, which will merely listen for AddFrameTime messages and decrement a Time To Live counter. When it hits zero, it's curtains for the object; GroundAuraComponent, which is just a simple proxy for an animated entity that sits on the ground decal/shadow layer; and PeriodicAreaHealComponent, which, of course, listens for AddFrameTime messages and pulses a heal out to all friendly units in range when its counter rolls over.
Slowly but steadily I'm hammering out the requirements for these various effects. In the works, I've got an idea for some kind of PartyMemberComponent, which will integrate into the NPC mob AI system as a means of tying specific monsters together into a group. It will act as a proxy for relaying messages between party members: "Help, I need healing!", "Help, I'm being attacked!", and so forth. Should facilitate communication between groups in planned, challenging encounters. More on that as the NPC AI is fleshed out some more.
