Seeds of Simplicity: Streamlining Farming Sim Interactions with Epic's Gameplay Ability System

Today marks a significant milestone in the development of our beloved farming simulator. We've taken a major step in simplifying the player's inventory management and interaction system, making the gameplay experience more intuitive and enjoyable.

Initially, we implemented the player inventory using a struct array. This approach was functional but quickly became cumbersome as the complexity of item interactions grew. With a diverse range of items on the action bar—seeds, tools, harvested crops, gifts, and crafting materials—each item required additional information in the struct and more branching paths for interactions. This complexity made error tracking and maintenance a daunting task.

The breakthrough came with the integration of Epic's Gameplay Ability System. By transitioning each item into a class carrying a `TSubclassOf` of our `UGameplayAbilityBase`, we've dramatically reduced the complexity of item interactions. Now, when a player selects an item, they are granted the ability associated with it. Selecting another item simply replaces the current ability, streamlining the interaction process.

This change has not only made our codebase cleaner but also made it easier to maintain and scale our game. The encapsulation of interaction logic within specific Gameplay Abilities assigned to items means that we can now focus on enhancing gameplay features rather than getting bogged down by intricate interaction systems.

We're excited to see how this improvement will positively impact the player experience and can't wait to share more updates as we continue to cultivate our farming sim.