Well, after a long hiatus, I'm back to working on Fists of Justice. I'm drawing some new enemy sprites so I can actually make a complete level. Coding a beat em up is easier than I thought, but doing the graphics is...well...hard.

Plus, before I could get back to work, I had to beat Mega Man 9. If you were considering whether to buy it, just know that it is good, like really good, like Mega Man 2 good. I can only hope Sega will do the same with Sonic and make Sonic 4.

So anyway, let's talk about Beat em up AI. I'm pretty satisfied with the way that the game's AI works right now, the enemies attack quickly and use items effectively (in other words, they throw trash cans and have pretty good aim with them). The problem is that there is individual AI, but no group AI. The result is that the enemies will bunch up together when attacking, which doesn't work well.

The current AI works well with small numbers of enemies, like about 1-5. With larger groups, the enemies essentially line-up to punch the player in the face. So obviously, I need to have group AI that governs how the enemies spread out when attacking, and limiting the amount of enemies who can attack at one time.

In my next post I'll explain the game's current AI in detail. I'll get some graphics drawn to show the enemies' decision tree, and what I plan to add to it. I was going to do that today, but as mentioned before, I've been playing Mega Man 9 for pretty much the entire day.