This brings me an idea though: wouldn't it be possible to make a shooting sprite spawn other sprite's rather than bullets? I mean the elite/robot now shoots sprite X but could that nr be changed to make it shoot (spawn) say for example grunts? Then you would have an elite than constanly generates new grunts until you kill it.
That would be neat...
Ezjay wrote:This brings me an idea though: wouldn't it be possible to make a shooting sprite spawn other sprite's rather than bullets?
It'd be possible, but not necessarily straightforward. Remember that there's a limit to the number of sprites that can be in a map at once; if a robot was generating lots of long-lived sprites (like grunts) instead of short-lived sprites (like bullets, that "die" once they hit something), then it'd be very easy to use up all the available sprites, which, in the worst case, would cause Keen to crash (In the best case, no new sprites *at all* would be generated -- this would include Keen's shots, so you couldn't shoot these grunts). An appropriate level design could ensure that most of these new grunts (or whatever) would fall off the bottom of the map before long so the sprite limit was not reached.
Yeah i know, that sprite limit would be the issue. But remember you can use all borders to get rid of em, not just the bottom. Levelbuilder could set up onewaytrough traps for the enemy (keen cant enter them - there's an invisible door in the way) to force them to go off screen or into a death chamber (where there's contant shooting by a robot/wall gun).
How about a game in wich you can't shoot but have to spawn scrubs to get further. Or spawn robots that kill the gargs for you, or a vortimom that spawns those red balls. What about enemy's that duplicate themselves...
Some of you may remember a lil game called chips challenge. My favourate level was 'jumping swarm' where a whole lot of duplicating walkers would slowly fill a level and kill you if you didn't hurry. Duplicating enemies could be diabolical.
Self-replicating sprites are the bane of many otherwise good games. Tough sprites (like guard bots, l337s, tank bots, vortimoms; oh wait, that's all the shooting sprites... =) become absolutely evil when they self-reproduce.
I like Xky's idea of l337s or guardbots shooting vortikids, though. Firts they immobilize you, then they come for you...
Imagine if vortikids' existence time could be set to finite.. *drool*
First elite shoots a vortikid ammo, the ammo comes at you but you might be able to avoid it. Anyways, the ammo will vanish automaticly in couple of seconds. :)