Blue spheres are the actual NPCs, green spheres are the custom FSM scripts I use to control them. 1 red, 3 white, 2 yellow?ДЇor the sake of keeping things simple, IвЂ™m just going to focus on the first encounter.Д®ncounter 1 looks like this.

1 White dragon enemy, hostile when approached, very slow and weakД®ncounter 2 вЂ“ Same as 1, but with Yellow Dragon, an enemy which sprints at the player.Д®ncounter 3 вЂ“ Mixed white and yellow introduce red dragon (tank) 1.Between encounters might be a bonus/challenge wave. First encounter will start off with very slow and easy enemies then we will introduce faster and tougher enemies enemies with weapons (possibly including firearms) and finally mixed sets of enemy types. Each wave will throw an increasing number of enemies at the player, in accordance with the Fibonacci sequence (1,2,3,5,8,13вЂ¦). The fight is broken down into several encounters, focusing around an enemy type and each encounter will be broken down into 5 waves. Testing under the hardest difficulty possible should highlight problems with difficulty, fairness, balance and flow (unexpected, random deaths hitbox tuning damage per move).Дesign approach: IвЂ™m reusing the Dojo level for speed and simplicity вЂ“ itвЂ™s a small-medium sized arena, suitable for combat with a small number of enemies (guessing 13 вЂ“ 21 before it gets crowded/laggy). Lastly, efficient use of Bullet Time is encouraged to slow down time to concentrate on defensive movement and attack.ДЄn additional purpose is to expose any flaws or bugs in the combat system. In other words вЂ“ hit attackers before they have the chance to attack you move defensively to avoid being swarmed position yourself so that you can attack without being hit time your attacks, so that you are not left vulnerable prioritise which adversaries to take down first. Player should quickly realise that survival relies on a balance between defence and offence as well as range, timing, movement, prioritisation and positioning.

While called вЂdefenceвЂ™ training, there is a strong emphasis on interception - those who wait for their attacker to hit them dodge or guard the hit and then counter risk getting hit (especially when attacked from all sides by multiple attackers). Controlling the positioning and movement during a fight is also encouraged (i.e. In particular, this level is designed to raise the playerвЂ™s awareness of actions/moves which have invincibility frames вЂ“ both defensive sidesteps, twists, and rolls, and special attacks. Inspired by the principal of Darwinian Difficulty and Hotline Miami, as well as the challenge maps in the Batman Arkham games, my reasoning is that allowing players to practise in an extreme (but fair) scenario should help them refine their fighting ability to the point where regular encounters in the story mode are trivial. The individual enemies are easy to defeat, but unlike the main game, one hit kills the player. Overview: Simple encounter against an increasing number of enemies in a martial arts dojo, with a catch вЂ“ 1 hit kills the player.Дesign Purpose: This optional challenge map is designed to encourage players to practise fighting defensively against multiple melee attackers. While IвЂ™m using MaењЋD, the Max Payne level editor, the basic ideas and approach are quite general and will work in any action-adventure game focused around melee combat. Most of the work (including the write-up) took a day, but IвЂ™m still fine tuning it.

What follows is an outline of a level from start to finish.

Max payne 1 kung fu mod