To that end, I am starting this discussion to decide if this enemy ought to be added, and if so, what kind of gameplay situation we should develop.Enjay wrote:I don't know if Ed has come up with anything but the problem I've had with water based enemies in the past is keeping them in the water.
I know that you can do a water level check in their code and force them down if they start to rise above the water surface. However, if they have also been given a lost-soul-like charge attack, I found that they could move so fast that they could throw themselves out of the water onto the shore and then they would end up stuck on the beach because their code was then trying to push them down into a solid floor. No matter how I tried to tweak it, I couldn't come up with a combination that would keep them in the water in any and every mapping situation.
If you are prepared to forego allowing them in any body of water and only use them in areas of a map where rising above the water is impossible (e.g. underwater tunnels) or where stepping onto a beach cannot happen, then it's easy to use them.
I think the 2 key issues are: Is Ed the Bat willing to create the behavior for this creature, and can we adequately address the limitations identified by Nigel. As for the limitations, we can address them via map-specific constraints - refer to Map21 of Paranoiac, where the "pools" are mostly covered by a layer of shale or rock. In any new maps we'd need to provide some underwater cover - either rock pillars, or alcoves where the ichy can't enter.