Grimrock

So when I put in a skeleton commander for the party to fight he works great until you walk diagonally from him. When u do that the brain seems to panic and doesn't know which way to walk so it just sits there and allows u to beat the shit out of it. I need to stop this from happening what causes it?

I have the skeleton commander as a boss and needless to say if the player fines this as a method of fighting the boss it no longer is very hard.

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=8568&p=87073#p87073

Zarchtons and skeleton commanders appear to be among the monsters that will literally never move (only turn back and forth) if you are next to them on a diagonal and facing towards them. If you want less exploitable AI write your own monster brain.

I'm not sure how you expect a single monster to ever be challenging in the first place if you're allowing the party to move. Doesn't your boss fight have other monsters?

I would call it bad form to allow it (as a general rule) such that the party could routinely defeat a monster (or two) 1:1 hit for hit, and not have to move.

minmay wrote: I'm not sure how you expect a single monster to ever be challenging in the first place if you're allowing the party to move.

Is Grimrock the only game you've ever played? Cause there are plenty of games across multiple platforms that have legendary single monster fights. And in case you forgot, every single boss battle in your "Lost Halls" Mod is literally just one single monster. The Skeleton Commander aint too bad a single monster since he summons other enemies in to battle.

Azel wrote:

minmay wrote: I'm not sure how you expect a single monster to ever be challenging in the first place if you're allowing the party to move.

Is Grimrock the only game you've ever played? Cause there are plenty of games across multiple platforms that have legendary single monster fights.

Well this is a post on the Grimrock forums in the Grimrock modding subforum about a Grimrock monster so I assume it refers to Grimrock

Azel wrote:And in case you forgot, every single boss battle in your "Lost Halls" Mod is literally just one single monster. The Skeleton Commander aint too bad a single monster since he summons other enemies in to battle.

I don't think any of those boss battles are challenging. Lost Halls of the Drinn was intended as a preview of my larger mod that was pushed back to Grimrock 2. Due to time constraints (had to release at least a month before Grimrock 2) the full mod's combat system was not implemented in it. Unfortunately this left the combat portion of the mod looking pretty stupid.

Isaac wrote:I would call it bad form to allow it (as a general rule) such that the party could routinely defeat a monster (or two) 1:1 hit for hit, and not have to move.

My point is that in situations like the one the OP describes, where the party has perfect control and knows the basics of the game (i.e. the only time the monster not moving would matter), and the monster is not faster than the party, they can sleep on it no matter what its AI is like. I hope it is not controversial to say that making monster encounters that are not challenging is poor level design.

Even though we are confined to "Grimrock" by being here, we can in fact incorporate plenty of awesome ideas that allow a single boss to be quite challenging. I mentioned other games from other platforms since it is possible to use them as a source of inspiration in Grimrock Mod's.

Incorporating the environment and puzzle elements to defeating a boss is a great way to add unique and memorable challenges. Simply adding more monsters doesn't really achieve that. I guess that was more my point.

It would be nice if the Grimrock Dev's updated some of the AI, that way the default behavior of monsters doesn't end up being the weak link in uniquely designed environments and encounters. Or not, whateva

To the original poster... consider running a script that checks for the exploited positioning. If that position remains constant in the same x/y location for longer than a few short seconds, either force the boss to move (eg, using Knockback) or do something terrible to the party!

Thanks for the input going to see what all I can do to prevent this from happening during that fight.. and :s I didn't mean to cause a fight on here sorry about that..

Emera Nova wrote:Thanks for the input going to see what all I can do to prevent this from happening during that fight

If you want to prevent players from idling in AI-exploitable spots add
- more monsters to the fight i.e. something airborne with spells
- timed player-only-triggered traps i.e. spikes to the entire arena

A fun idea would be to make the Commander immune to Fire, and then either have Fire Bolts flying in the room (similar to my Usurper boss battle in Mystrock), or a burst of flame from the floor at random intervals. You could also have Portals that effect the Party-Only moving around randomly (or in a fixed patter).

Plenty of fun stuff to force the party to "move or die." If you need help with any Scripting I would be happy to lend my time. Just PM me

Just curious.. ok you can sit in that tile pretty much forever.. but how you are going to hit him ?

Honest question, as I find the skeleton commander to be very hard on its own exactly because it sits there forever waiting for me to come close, instead of moving so that I can strafe-hit him.