Bad Behavior
Now that you’ve determined size, ask yourself, what is the enemy’s behavior?
- How does the enemy move?
- What does the enemy do when in combat?
- What does the enemy do when he is hurt?
Answer these questions, and you will have the foundation to build robust enemies. When you are designing enemy behavior, the goal is to not have different enemy characters repeat the same behaviors. Even better, design your enemies’ behaviors to complement each other.
A patroller moves back and forth or up and down in a mechanical fashion. The path of movement can be more involved than this, but the movement is always predictable.
A chaser pursues a player if approached or some other condition is met. In many games, patrollers can turn into chasers when they see the player or the player attacks them.
A shooter is an enemy that fires a projectile. Shooting patrollers and chasers will fire at the player once they’ve been spotted. Due to the nature of the attack,...