Boss behaviors in shooting game
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This week I implemented the behaviors of the Boss in our game. Though we already have a draft about some basic ideas and patterns, we still encountered some detailed problem which made us to abandoned several previous thoughts. In general, the boss is a giant fish with high health point and powerful attack. I divided boss behaviors to three parts. One is the entering state, after a player cleared the final wave of enemies the boss spawning logic triggered. It be created and dashes from the left side to the right side, then slowly appears from the right side. After the entrance, the boss will switching from the idling state and attacking state. On the idling state, boss does nothing but flies to random position. Idling will last certain seconds which gives player some times to rest and damage the boss. When it ended, the boss will enter attacking state which will perform one attacking pattern randomly selected from all attacking patterns. After the attacking behavior is over, the boss will idling again which becomes a loop. We settled three kinds of attack. First one is dash, the boss will flies through the screen in a super fast speed and deals damage to player when hit them. Second one is firing projectiles all around the map which requires player the basic dodging ability. The last one is summoning minions, which creates several small enemies to the battleground.
At first, we designed the boss to shoot shoot-gun bullets 60 degree forward, but it make the player 100% safe while staying at the top right corner. In this case, you can just stay there and wait until the attack is over then shoot the boss on idling state. Definitely, we don’t want a invincible position in game. Therefore, all attacks should require player to move or it’s not count as an attack. We also speed up the boss when you it under 20% health. Because, we don’t want to player having the same experience as process going. However we planned to make a second face to boss like dark soul, due to time limit that plan been cut off. Combining things I mentioned above comes our boss. Once the behaviors are settled, the last thing is the balancing issue. Neither abuse the player nor making the boss a giant cotton. I have to admit, it takes time to settle all of the decisions, but every seconds wroth it.
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