I'm talking like a familiar in SOTN or an option in Gradius, for instance. In SMW terms it would be a non-hostile sprite, which follows you, and attacks enemies - if it's not easy to aim at foes it could also just be a traveling hitbox that they can run into, or spawn the occasional fireball in a random direction.
Stivi had a hack with a purple fella that followed you (I just don't recall it having an attacking enemies functionality), but that may have been discontinued?
This is a good idea for a level, I might try to pull it off.
Dtothefourth has made the Poochy sprite from Yoshi's Island.
I started working on one for my hack which I'll post for review separately once I work out the kinks. The movement code is still very wonky, so that's what I have to do next (it's originally based on the Stalking Goomba and I'm still figuring out the movement patterns I can get it to perform - the bit at the end where it flies all over the place because I moved a little bit is what I'm working on reducing)
Seems nice so far!
Here are some ideas I have in mind for pulling off such a concept, maybe they can be useful to you:
- Home at a point near the player - maybe on top, and shifted a bit to the right or left depending on facing direction - rather than right on the player
- When going in "eating mode", change the moving pattern to aim at a sprite instead. (Something more complex than just moving straight to it would maybe be even nicer, but I don't know any non-straight aiming calculations off the top of my head. Could be worth looking up playing around)
- Definitely add speed limits
Okay NOW it's really fun to play with. Turning down its aggression even slightly unfortunately sometimes causes it to indefinitely orbit sprites, so I'm trying to find a way to interrupt that, maybe just with a random movement. Tinkering with the speed settings even in small amounts can cause REALLY erratic results, such as going off screen and wrapping around to the other side with even a slight boost in speed (to catch up to Mario) or moving too slowly to even stay apace with Mario at all.
I could see this general concept being useful in casual hacks as well as some devious kaizo situations (like it eats a sprite before you can jump on it)
So far the customization options are:
-Amount of time it takes to "swallow" a sprite (so it will hold it in its mouth and go back to following Mario until it does so)
-Amount of frames it waits between updating its speed (which controls its movement accuracy)
-Whether it can eat inedible sprites (anything Yoshi can't swallow)
Both are depicted below as set to 00 which results in very aggressive behavior.
I also would like to set up a progressive reward system for eating - like it eats five things and then pops out a powerup like a Yoshi berry scenario. And I'll probably see if I can incorporate a timer or an "eats a certain amount then dies" setting.
