Oh, so you were using "common sense" to mean "Interesting creature behaviour".
Anyway yes, I love polished enemy behaviour. <3
In a project of mine for instance, I'm making a boss that is initially unimpressed with your player character's threats and just stands there taking your attacks for a short time looking bored, until he actually starts his attack routine and calls you weak.
...Unless you actually do a significant amount of damage, in which case he starts right away and comments something to the effect of "Oh, so you're serious".
Yeah, you're right, but I still think those creature patterns (behaviours) should be "common sense" in their performance.
Now that we get right with the meaning of "common sense"...
I want to ask to others TIG fellows, what ideas they can come with that they think enemies should have.
I'll start, recentely I had the idea that in Shrumps (shoot'em ups) enemies could have diferent "behaviours" that work together, choosing them randomly when spawned.
Like this...
- MOVEMENT BEHAVIOUR:
- Just falling
- Moving from left to right and vice-versa, inversing their pattern when touching the screen edges.
- The same as before but from top to down and vice-versa.
- Moving in zig-zag (left to right) randomly.
- Moving in circles around the player or the screen.
- Chasing the player in near distance.
- Chasing the player but maintaining a long distance.
- Completely random.
- BULLET PATTERN:
- No bullets.
- 1 bullet.
- 3 bullets.
- A laser.
- A danmaku pattern.
- MOOD:
- Normal, shooting some then and now (random delay time).
- Angry, shooting many bullets.
- Shy, few bullets but avoiding player bullets.
- LIFE:
- 1 hp (die with bullet contact).
- 2 hp
- random 3 to 6 hp.
- FENIX STAT.
- Just simply a boolean value (random between 0 and 1) that spawn another enemie instead of the dead enemy.
I did that in a game maker demo, and It was like I expected, some complex and beatifull behaviours appeared, the game was challenging but no hard, and It became more fun, simply because the enemies were more "interesting" in their design.