Castle Paradox

[msw188]

Okay, I have an issue where I want an enemy (a snake) to behave normally if there are less than 3 of its kind around, but if there are 3 or more snakes, I want them to use a combined group attack instead.

I'm at a bit of a loss as to the best way to do this, so I thought I'd open it up to suggestions. Right now in my mind, here's what I've got. I'll make 2 copies of the snake, one without any speed. Then I'll also make an invisible, untargettable enemy that uses the group attack. Then any enemy formation with 3 or more of these suckers needs to use the speedless copy of the snake, plus include the invisible guy. The issue now is, how should I handle giving speed back to the snakes?

All I can think of at the moment is to have the invisible guy have a stat like Ctr set to the number of snakes at the start of the battle, and then I'll have the speedless snakes set to spawn (on death) ANOTHER invisible enemy that hits the Ctr guy and decreases his Ctr stat by one before dying. Then the group attack has a stat check to chain to a snake-speed-restoring attack if the Ctr stat is less than 3.

Some issues that I've already considered:
-I can't use HP for the invisible guy to track my snakes, because there's a chance another enemy in the formation will try to heal my invisible guy.
-I need to only restore speed to the snakes, no other enemies. I suppose I'll have to do an area attack that cannot target non-snake slots. Which means I'd have to make a different invisible guy (and different area attack) for every possible # of snakes 3 and up... can anyone think of something more clever?
-If the heroes stun a snake, or put it to sleep, it shouldn't count, but I can't think of anyway to track this, so I'm making these snakes immune to status spells
-I'd love for the snakes to sometimes act normally, and sometimes do their group attack, but I have no clue how I'd manage to pull this off without them getting more attacks in battle than they should
-I'd also like for the group attack to be more powerful the more snakes there are. This doesn't seem too hard - the invisible guy could have his attacking stat start accordingly, and have it decreased along with his Ctr when a snake dies, I think
_________________
My first completed OHR game, Tales of the New World:
http://castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=161

This website link is for my funk/rock band, Euphonic Brew:
www.euphonicbrew.com

[Spoon Weaver]

I suggest using a spread attack that targets MP and divides the spread damage. Make the attack be a specific number of damage, that when divided by 3 or more leaves enough MP for the group attack to be performed. And of course have this attack be completely invisible to the player.

Then have that attack chained to your chain group that makes up the group attack, and have it fail if there's not enough MP to perform it.

Then have the chain end in an attack that restores MP.


I think this is possible, but I haven't tried it myself. Leave me know how it goes if you try it out.

[Bob the Hamster]

I don't know any good way to do that either. I would wait for 'Plan for enemy AI improvements'

[msw188]

Hm, that's an interesting idea Spoonweaver. Unfortunately I already went ahead and did what I described above because I wanted this in my HotOHR game, but it's totally untested anyhow, so I might end up changing to this in the grace period of my idea didn't work.

You idea has some issues though:

-Who is using this group attack? If it is the snakes themselves, how do I make sure they don't have the ability to use it 3 times in quick succession? Maybe if the attack succeeds, it should chain to an attack that targets the snakes and cancels their current attack? And reset their battle-ready meter?

-If there are other enemies in the formation, does 'divide spread damage' only divide amongst those that it hits, or does it divide amongst the whole group? Because I can set the attack up to only target the relevant slots, but will it still divide amongst all the filled enemy slots?
_________________
My first completed OHR game, Tales of the New World:
http://castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=161

This website link is for my funk/rock band, Euphonic Brew:
www.euphonicbrew.com

[Bob the Hamster]

[Spoon Weaver]

[msw188]

I don't know if you guys were interested, but I did manage to finish this up using the method I originally outlined in the first post. It worked almost perfectly from the start, except for an engine bug that I have promised to supply a test case for; in the meantime I managed a workaround.

Thinking about your idea, SW, I think it's essentially the same. You'd have to do the same kind of checking and would have to restore the snakes to their normal behavior in the same sort of way, I think. In any case, thanks for the discussion everyone!
_________________
My first completed OHR game, Tales of the New World:
http://castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=161

This website link is for my funk/rock band, Euphonic Brew:
www.euphonicbrew.com