koobas.hobune.stream
Shmup style enemy behavior
Hi Bit of a best practice question(s)
I'd love for the Art in Games, guys to weigh in. I'm working on an arcade vertical shooter. (Air Attack HD, Jamestown) What is the best way to handle enemies that are currently off screen?
Currently, I'm creating a scrolling background, and attaching all enemies to that. My issue though, is the enemies aren't really behaving, they are just stuck in a loop.
If I use a spline, or animation event, the enemy will appear in a loop, which looks kind of silly. If I set an enemy to follow a path at the start of the level, it will be off screen, by the time the level scrolls down, that enemy has left the play field.
I also like that the enemies in modern shoot em ups do some type of animation before they follow a spline. For example, enemies in Air Attack do a barrel roll, fly toward the player. and the fly off screen.
So my question: Are these animations? Is it best to use animation events for this type of behavior. Splines 'work' but they are very linear.
Also, what do you do with the enemy if they aren't on screen yet? Right now, I have a trigger, when the player enters the trigger, that trigger instantiates the enemy unit(s) is this the best way? Or is there a better option?
If anyone has any best practice examples for SHMUP level design, I'm all ears. Thanks!
well the barrel roll would just be an animation yeah. then you'd probably write a little code, a behaviour to make it fly towards the hero. I think that's key to the question you're asking. it is not splines or an animation, you must write a little script to make the enemy behave (whether it's pretty simple or complex behavior). I would not attach anything at all to the background. regarding the enemies entering the game .. just have a timer (use InvokeRepeating() ) to have them come in say once per second or however your game operates. Use CancelInvoke when enough have come in for that level !! you must get in to attaching a small script to an enemy, to give it behavior. yes that script might call say a barrel roll animation at some point if it wants to, but it's all done w/ a script on each enemy
