Randomizing enemy/boss attacks and movements.

[UltraJMan]

Currently I have a boss running entirely off of timed events. It makes it dull and uninspired and I was wondering how to randomize attacks and possibly movements too.

It's not meant to be AI, I don't believe I'm good enough to work on that yet but currently I need enemies that aren't stationary, same with bosses.

Thanks in advance for the help.

[DavidN]

My bosses (and many of my usual monsters) have an alterable value called "State" that is used to decide what movement pattern or behaviour they should use. If you base your boss's movements and attacks on a value in this way, you can control their patterns just by setting that value - including introducing random behaviour by setting the value to random(x).

[UltraJMan]

Ah I see, I tried something similar to that before as a friend reccomended it. I must've botched it up as it didn't work right, thank you though. I'll keep at it.

[Dave]

I'm doing something related

I generate a random number, say in an active object's alterable value.

then I have an action based on that random value, maybe I put that in an inactive group

then when as numbers 'pop' up it goes something like this:

val = 1
do a thing ( by activating group 1)

val = 2
do a different thing (by activating group 2)


val = 3
do still anotehr thing (by activating group 3)


lather, rinse, repeat

Dave

[Chaos]

Yes, DavidN's method is generally the best and easiest way that I've bumped into myself.

What I do for my bosses and baddies, is give them an alterable value for state, or command such as David suggested, and then do something similar to this:

Every 3" (three seconds) --> Alterable Value ("Command") to "Random(3)+1" --(I use the +1 to ensure that a command will always be a positive number, whereas a 0 means to do nothing at all, or to reset the event trigger)

and then just assign commands to numbers:
If Alterable Value "Command" = 1 --> Shoot slime + set Alterable Value "Command" to 0 ;
If Alterable Value "Command" = 2 --> Move in direction of "Player" at speed 20 + Alterable Value "Command" to 0;

It takes some tweaking and changing but it's easily modifiable and you can apply it to almost any bad guy. Movement can be a bit tricky, as in platformers you need to add in the fact enemies can bump into walls and fall off edges, but there are ways to handle that as well. (Personally, I use hidden sensor objects that change the direction of enemies I don't want falling off ledges to head back onto land)

[Chaos]

Ahh Dave beat me to it

[00J]

All of this is called A.I. Whenever the "Monster" does things based on a set of choices or circumstances it is making an intelligent decision based on it's knowledge, how many parameters you program into the Monster determines just how smart it is. Hence A.I. Artificial Intelligence... [smile]
Now you COULD have a Monster that understands and responds to it's entire environment, and every state of the player, but it's your time.

Most game designers don't bother making Monsters/Enemies TOO complicated when it comes to their A.I. because they will only exist for a very short amount of time, once the player encounters them... Now you could theroretically have an Unbeatable A.I. but then the player would always lose. The trick is to make the game fun by making the Monster "seem" intelligent, but not too intelligent as to make the game impossible to play...