Q & A

[Dizzard]

I think it may have been mentioned before but I'm unsure of the answer.

Will there ever be physical weapons in the game? Or is it going to be all fuelled by magic?

I was thinking it would be neat to have a system where you could apply spell effects to weapons. (Like having war hammer that also causes a rock slide when swung (or maybe only charged up attacks)

[zebramatt]

I think the major limitation on non-magical weaponry is animating it - so we'll definitely see more traps, and projectile weapons; but melee weapons, guns and the like will almost certainly not be a part of the game for the foreseeable future. That's not to say it'll never happen, mind you - although I think Chris wants to shy away from guns in general, so that's less likely.

But being able to augment physical traps and projectiles with magical effects sounds like a winner. (I'm put in mind of Link's various magical boomerangs in the later games.)

[x4000]

Yep, no plans for any weapons that require physical new animations for characters.  Something like a sword that you summon and it fights away from your character would be a definite possibility, but the chance of us adding sword-swing animations for 120 planned character sprites (and growing) is vanishingly small.

[Professor Paul1290]

What sort of AI can we eventually expect out of normal enemies?

I noticed that you mentioned a new AI behavior system and described some of the new behaviors being applied to bosses and higher level normal enemies. Now that I think about it, behavior for most enemies in 2D platformers tend to be really simple even in ones that people regard as difficult.

It seems like an area where the game could make quite an impression for new players.

[x4000]

Well, for "normal" enemies that varies quite a bit.  By normal I presume you mean non-boss.  But in that sense, there's still a lot of kinds of enemies, such as those that swarm you, those that are simple and for newbies, those that are rarer and tougher and smarter, etc.  You should see a pretty good variance, but bear in mind that when the number of abilities an enemy can use is limited, the options for making them amazingly smart-seeming are pretty limited, too.  Aside from bosses, you won't see many multi-ability enemies until a couple of dozen levels into the game for the most part.

For me, AI in a platformer can only be so good.  My goal isn't to make stellar AI here, because I feel like there's only so much that you can do with that.  Rather, what my goal is is to make varied and interesting AI, especially with the bosses, and I think that's definitely attainable with the new AI behavior system that the game now runs on.

[Professor Paul1290]

A lot of that pretty much does fit what I would think is pretty good for a 2D platformer.

When I say AI in most 2D platformers is really "simple", I could say it's often almost non-existent. Most normal enemies in 2D platformers don't do much other than charge straight at you or move back and forth and hurt you if you happen to run into them.

Even for a simple one-ability enemy, little things having it so certain projectile throwers try to keep their distance or perhaps even try to take cover behind something would be a significant improvement over what you'd normally see.

[x4000]

Oh yeah, I quite agree.  A lot of the simpler enemies here already do things like that, such as having the skelebot snipers kite you a lot of the time, etc.  But there's only so much of that sort of thing so far.

[Professor Paul1290]

I suppose if there is an opportunity for something rather interesting it would be in maze rooms. I think since maze rooms aren't pleasant if they occur too frequently anyway, so it could be interesting to make them more difficult and hide some even nicer goodies in them.
I'm kind of picturing maze rooms filled with a large number of somewhat over-leveled enemies that are capable of navigating the whole room (going up and down ladders and such) and if you do nothing they would path-find in a way so they tend to surround you and come at you from all sides. There would be quite a bit of opportunity to use traps and such as well.

Think Pac-Man except vertical. 

[x4000]

That seems like a great suggestion for mantis.

It would need to be a maze room with all loops instead of dead ends, but it could be really fun.

[TNSe]

What language is AVWW written in? Any chance of getting hooks so we can implement our own AI's and submit?

[x4000]

It's in C#, and modding support is unlikely due to the complexity of doing that; more or less the whole world structure would have to be accessible in various fashions for the hooks to be of any use.  My thoughts on modding, as opposed to community submissions of other kinds, are at length in some of the other threads.  Sorry!

[TNSe]

I knew I recognized the C# icon on the game this one time. Too bad tho, as I code C# myself!

[x4000]

It's definitely a good language!

[TNSe]

If you ever need an external programmer for anything lemme know

[x4000]

Much appreciated.