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Submitting new enemy ships and modder questions

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Hearteater:
So I just made up my first enemy ship last night and I'm finally happy with it. My goal was a "simple" Attacker_3x3 ship that fits well in early levels. I think it fits that role well. I've got some sister ships that follow a very similar idea that I want to put together tomorrow, thinking 3 or 4. Which brought me to a few questions:

1) How/where should I submit them? Here or mantis? I'm not convinced I haven't screwed anything up, so feedback is desirable.
2) Is there any default scaling on difficulty, or is it only what ships have explicitly?
3) What are good enemy non-boss health targets at Normal?
4) I'm really uncertain about damage to the player, specifically amounts and what happens with a tightly packed pattern. It appears the first bullet triggers immunity, so the rest hit for no damage?
5) Can math be used in the XML for variables? Like: <wait time="[DURATION]/[COUNT]" />, or when calling a variable like: $SomeVar DELAY=[DURATION]+10

Also, so I can brainstorm tomorrow, are there any specific holes in the enemy ship lineup that need filling?

PokerChen:
1) A rar file here would be okay for feedback. Probably less likely to obtain feedback on Mantis, but is reliable to submit there.

2) There is default scaling of health and shot velocity on difficulty (and maybe other things). The specific tags in enemy folders is usually for additional/alternative shot patterns. You'll see that many enemies don't actually have any difficulty-dependent patterns.

3) Have a check with the existing folders. The standard faceripper pursuers are 25HP, 3x3 attackers range 100~200 or so, and more for the fearsomes. Your best bet to limit power creep on the enemy side is to pick the bog-standard enemies to base off (i.e. the easiest of the lot except for Misery's), and not the other submissions.

4) The player gains immunity to damage for a fraction of a second when being hit, so a tightly packed pattern can potentially hit multiple times or once depending on where they run.

5) Not as far as I can tell, or at least I haven't tried because others said no. If you do it and it actually works, let us know... :P

Re: Ship lineup - check the other thread. https://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,18342.msg198129.html#msg198129 note that ptarth and I have a couple of pursuers and deadly pursuers lined up.

Note that the 1x1 localguards, pursuers and jumpscares are rather hard to balance because you can face anywhere between 1 and 4 of them in a constrained area (up to 6 in a mixed bag). There are definitely default rooms that are now already impossible to beat without damage because of the additions, but we're finding that it's not easy to make them interesting while dumbing down the challenge further.
(So, the way forward may be to change up the default rooms to give players more breathing space)

ptarth:

* Hi. Welcome to the clubhouse.
* I believe zharmad answered most of your questions.
* One addition is that your ships will probably be tweaked a bit, regardless what you do, so get them to 90-95% and go from there.
* Getting feedback from players of all skill levels is important, so don't be afraid to post your code early to the forum to get some opinions.

Pepisolo:
Yeah, I would say that if you're looking for feedback then you're better off posting your designs here. Once the designs are as complete as you want them to be, that's the best time to upload them to Mantis as a submission. Cheers!

ptarth:
And then Pepisolo will cry, tell you how messed up your ships are, and then fix them.

At least that's what he does to me.

 >D

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