Hey guys, I’m programming the foes and I’m working on some interesting behaviour for some of them. I don’t want them to be smart, just a bit smarter than in previous games, so that more strategies can be opened up. Here’s some behaviours I’ve got so far:
• Smarter-looking foes can target players who are weak against a given element. For example, Frost Wraiths won’t bother using ice magic on players who are resistant to it, which means leaving one player unprotected is very dangerous against them.
• Beast-type foes can be aggroed and will attack whoever hit them last. Normally this wouldn’t be a huge problem, unless you use an attack that hits all enemies and has them all angry at one player.
• Similar to the above, some boss helper foes could target whoever is dealing damage to the boss.
• Sniper-type foes (like Laser Turrets!) will try to finish off any player that’s at low health, but otherwise act normally.
Most foes will still be pretty dumb, you’ll just have to be careful with your strategy against some groups. And I’ll make sure enemy behaviour is pointed out in the dialogue and bestiary info, so it doesn’t completely catch you off-guard either.
Will bosses themselves have any different AI now?
The AI won’t be changed on harder difficulties either, will they? :stars:
Haven’t done any bosses yet, but they probably will be slightly smarter on hard mode.
Defo a good idea, random enemy attacks are never fun or interesting :smirk:
…I have a very cheeky suggestion: A specific one of this game’s ‘side dungeon’ bosses should be really frickin smart and do things like tagging your elemental weaknesses, debuffing your attackers’ attack, defenders’ defense etc. , getting characters wet then freezing them and so forth, and wearing down all characters evenly, then trying to wipe them all with a massive attack.
Even if they had far less raw power than say, the final boss, they’d still be a respectable opponent at any point that you might find yourself putting off until later in the game when you had more experience with the mechanics.
Said suggestion was made with “the enemies will still be predominantly dumb” in mind, this being a unique exception (hopefully not so painful to code as such?)
kinda like how the glitch in EBF4 required a complete shift in strategy and some people found it harder than Godcat
:love:
harder
:stars: :stars: :stars: :stars: :stars: :stars: :stars: :stars: :stars: :stars: :stars: :stars:
“Beast enemies will aggro onto the last attacker”
Excuse me, is Matt finally going to be an actual tank/meat shield? He always technically had that role since forever but he never actually protected others, which actually was a bit of a disappointment for me as there was no reason to give him more defense than other characters. Heck, you can even easily make him a glass cannon with revenge + auto-life, which can be suprisingly effective. Maybe the spell that buffs one player’s defense stats will be more handy than all team defense buffs that way, so far it was only used for backup characters.
EDIT BUT NOT REALLY EDIT CUZ I CAN’T: Actually, now that I think about it, that’d be a nice way to buff that single-player buff since team buffs will affect players in back-up now. Neat.
Some battles will go down that way, yes.
Sounds like this EBF game is shaping up to be either for pro players, or a bloodbath for all. I love it. :love:
Thought I’d share this with you, because the thought occurred to me after your Baby’s First Vlog on Youtube. I already shared this on the video, but being reminded of the Attack of the Black Mages videos, and my suggestion regarding maybe making little EBF animated shorts, my mind wandered farther. I always thought that the Black Mage Leader was an awesome fight in that animation, maybe it would be cool to see him returned in a future EBF title as a secret boss or main villain? He could easily have multiple forms ranging from Winged Black Mage, maybe get more grotesque in a third form (something akin to castle crashers came to mind). He could have that Meteor spell from the end of the AotBM5 animation as his limit break, AH it’d be cool!
It’s just a thought, but I would so down to clown for that. :stars:
No way. Animation is a lot of work.
Aw boo. Really is a shame I have no talent then. I’d be happy to help where I could, if I could. 😥
I really like the idea :yay: Can’t wait to see it in game
I assume that the harder the difficulty, the harder the AI?
And will there be greater rewards on higher difficulties-money, exp, etc.?
There are no greater rewards, the point of hard mode is that it’s just harder.
Oh no, now I actually gotta think about what i’m fighting! :scared:
I’m looking forward to smarter foes, it’ll make for some interesting strategies and boss fights.
That’s pretty dope.
Damn, you’re making the game way more complex now. I love it! I’m excited to see how much more strategy based the fights will be.
I’m all for more interesting/exploitable foe behaviour. A big part of the frustration in these games is unpredictable enemies throwing attacks seemingly at random. Being able to control enemy attack patterns (to an extent) would be fun, and would probably make harder difficulties a lot more interesting.
Perhaps throw in some player skills related to behaviour? A simple taunt, or a skill that caused an ally to be untargetable for a round, for example.
There’s a status effect called “Loved” which players can have. It makes them untargetable by single-target attacks.
Ahh, so that’s one of the “mysterious new statuses” that you’re introducing. Exciting stuff!
counter to beasts, stick matt at the end, he will tank all of it can only single target
BTW SO FUCKING COOL
That’s a new feature to look forward to!
This way it will be more strategy based, rather than stat-based.
This means though i can’t just give all the honeycomb to matt 🙁
Matt has said that permaboost items will be unique to each character in this game.
Nice to see that we’ll have to think a bit harder when it comes to battle strategy.
How will these behaviours differ between difficulty settings, if at all?
How do you upload a profile picture?
No idea, I don’t have one either.
Set your avatar at Gravatar.com (identification is done via the e-mail address you post here with)
They probably won’t. Or not by much. I don’t want to rewrite the enemy descriptions.
1. How to understand if the foe is smart?
2. Can the smart foes use other element to attack them,for example frost foe can use fire to attack?
3. Does the boss helper attack all the players if all players attack boss?
PS.Sorry for my bad english 🙁 .
That looks really neat! What about making them also react to how you played last turn? For example
– If the foes see that you’re overbuffing Natt, presumably for some big spell, they will try to her to block her next action
– When foes see that you haven’t removed that wet debuff, they’ll be more likely to use ice or electric attacks in order to make use of this (unless you’re resistant to that element, that is)
– As player charges a powerfull move (Lance’s Hyper Beam, for example), foes will try to buff their evade or defence in order to lower the damage of the next, powerfull attack.
That’s just a few ideas that came to my mind. By the way, what’s your stance on people wanting to translate your games into other languages ( in this case, Polish)? I’ve wanted to do that for Bullet Heaven 2 IIRC, when your FB fanpage asked about the translations. When I asked the question about translation to Polish, they said it was already too late to do that? So, is that an option now?
I’n the first example, I meant to say that foes “will try to siphon her”. I wasn’t sure if I had the name right or wrong, so I wanted to check, but then I forgot and send the message, and I don’t see any edit button here.
EBF5 will have better infrastructure for adding translations, and there will be more languages. My other games don’t allow more languages to easily be added.
that’s great to hear! How hard will it be to insert a translation to game? And what is approximate amount of text to be translated for each translation?
Dunno yet.