next »

[Kren]

Yeah, I have been wondering how important enemy design is for some people ( of course as long as the game contains enemies )for example, what patterns do you use? how do you design how they look? what colors do you use and why? and how important enemies design is for you and your game?

For me enemy design is really important perhaps one of the most important aspects of the game itself, If I play a game with similar enemies but with different patterns I get easily bored, for example Bioshock, I started playing it a month ago, and gor pretty far I think, but I gor bored easily, all the enemies are humans, and it is really hard to differentiate between them color wise they are nearly the same D; making it really monotonous and boring atleast for me. I like to make enemies with different shape and try to make different color so it's easier to recognize that it's a new enemy, pattern wise. Most important there is always the easiest enemy, the one that you kill with one hit, ( for example gombat) I tend to make this enemy or atleast try to make him unique and distinctive since it is the enemy that the player will see the most.

So what do you do to make your enemies be different and unique?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

well the sd creatures aren't really "enemies" per se but komera (my creature designer / creature artist) and i have spent a lot of time designing them. their initial designs / sketches are here: http://komera.deviantart.com/gallery/#_browse/scraps -- we went so far as to decide how closely different creatures are related (having creature families with similar features), the creatures' roles in the lake's ecosystem, and so on. this is probably overkill but maybe it'd be interesting to players (although much of this information won't actually be in the game).

usually we'd make the "bosses" related to "normal" smaller creatures, like here:

[Montoli]

Obviously very different for different genres of games.  For the game I've been working on lately, all of the enemies are differentiated by minimalistic icons, but more importantly, have dramatically different movement and attack patterns.

I think it's interesting though, that as far as Shmups go, nearly all of the TouHou games recently have had the whole game with basically like four sprites for enemies (little generic fairies, and some spinny yin-yang things) and differentiated them entirely via hp, movement and attack patterns.

I guess what I take from this is that the different enemies need to be recognizably different from each other, but it's more important that they act differently from one another than that they look different from one another.

[SundownKid]

I think Metroid Prime's a great example of good enemy design - not only is the scan visor a "beastiary" of sorts that gives you the morphology of the enemy and information about them, but it forces you to actively seek them out - even when they're trying to kill you. Or not - some of them are just off doing their own thing, which makes the world more believable as you would expect them to be protected against predators. Also, the idea of the bosses being larger versions of normal enemies is there too, which is why I was reminded of that game. Scanning a rare enemy is a jump-for-joy moment that you usually don't have when finding enemies in most games. 

Of course, in games where you're not trying to make a believable ecosystem, I think Noitu Love is a good example as Konjak basically made all the enemies have a crazy grinning face, making them instantly distinguishable. A stand-out color from the environment also helps, whereas if you are trying to be realistic, the enemies should be similarly colored to the environment.

[RCIX]

I think Metroid Prime's a great example of good enemy design - not only is the scan visor a "beastiary" of sorts that gives you the morphology of the enemy and information about them, but it forces you to actively seek them out - even when they're trying to kill you. Or not - some of them are just off doing their own thing, which makes the world more believable as you would expect them to be protected against predators. Also, the idea of the bosses being larger versions of normal enemies is there too, which is why I was reminded of that game. Scanning a rare enemy is a jump-for-joy moment that you usually don't have when finding enemies in most games. 

Of course, in games where you're not trying to make a believable ecosystem, I think Noitu Love is a good example as Konjak basically made all the enemies have a crazy grinning face, making them instantly distinguishable. A stand-out color from the environment also helps, whereas if you are trying to be realistic, the enemies should be similarly colored to the environment.

In contrast to this, there's Pokemon -- each and every one of the 500+ pokemon is highly distinctive. You end up fighting any one that you want to capture, so it counts

[walrus]

I think it can be really useful to not only give each enemy a strong visual distinction from each other but also to tie their appearance to their abilities. If an enemy has a special ability, make it as clear as you can just by looking at it (or by looking at it after you've already been told/shown what that ability is the first time.) That way, a player doesn't have to feel like they need to consult the bestiary every time they play or encounter a monster.

I feel like my current game MageMaze does this well in some places: The SkjellyJellies are green blobs of acid with skeletons inside, and they dissolve anything on the ground that they pass over. They look acidic so that works. The Stone Golems can only be killed with a giant hammer, and seeing them there, huge and made out of stone, that visually makes sense too. Someone recently playing the demo pointed out, however, that the Kobolds - who steal gold - just look like another monster and that you can't necessarily tell that's what their ability is. It would work better if they carried around sacks on their back or something like that. So a Fail there...