Guarded Behaviour

Blocks work again. I spent last night making that happen. Getting hurt too. I found that when you hit an enemy they stayed hit for all of 1/30th of a second, and the proceeded to beat the hell from you again (metaphorically speaking – combat collision for the new combat system forthcoming). So after some tweaking it seemed that the specific variables that were set by the Hurt AI function were the exact same ones that triggered the Let’s Do Something Else ™ Function. So hitting the enemy told it to do something different, which is almost correct. In any event, I’m thinking of handing off the remainder of the enemy combat states to the new programmer. They almost exist in a vacuum, so he should be able to work on those without worrying too much about it conflicting with other pieces. Then I have to start bulding the Last Level, tweaking the AI to behave in a “natural” way that’s fun and find somebody to write all the music and do all the sound effects. Oh, and convert the controls to XBox, something The Programmer can’t do since he doesn’t have one. So much to do.

-I had an idea floated my way that’s great, awesome, would very likely improve the game and I can’t do because I don’t have the time. It was posited that there could, and probably should be things you can push off of platforms that could fall on enemies to defeat them quickly. Vases, chandelliers, small crates that kind of thing. It would make combat more optional, provided the levels were constructed in a way to facilitate that. It’s a good idea and I considered it seriously, but we have 4 months left to get the game working in a semi-final (if un-polished) state. So implementing that idea would be destructive to other work. It kind of sucks, but what else can I do?

– Producer Me needs to write up a list of needs and a rough outline of when those needs are, um, needed. Yeah. I’ll do that. I may even stick it over there =>

-Finally, I’ve been playing some Samurai Shodown (sic). I remember that game being A) Easier and B) Better. When I saw SamSho Anthology come out, I bumped it to the top of the GameQ. Fond memories of wasting my allowance at the local arcade as I pumped dozens of dollars into the gaping maw of SamSho II (SamSho is what the cool kids call it, and me). So I loaded it up and sat to play and, I was disappointed. The game I remember, the fluid game of cat and different cat with samurai swords was less so. In this case, nostalgia had made me stupid. Turns out, the game that SamSho is trying to be, is Soul Calibur.

-Oh, and where’s the blood? Seems stupid but I used to bisect assholes in that game when I hit them hard enough. Fountains of blood anybody? Is there a code? Or am I playing a Nintendo censored version? Or am I just trying to find a reason for my disappointment that isn’t gameplay based?

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