Custom Guys

[Saffith]

Well. This has generated a lot more discussion than I would have thought.

I'm really not sure how hard this would be. Thing is, guys are actually enemies. You ever notice that enemy IDs start at 20? The guys are 1-10. So, most likely, you'd create new guys in the enemy editor. That much is fairly easy to do.
Here's where it gets difficult: the code was written with the assumptions that guys and other enemies could be distinguished by their IDs and that guys' IDs would never be greater than 255. Neither of those would be true anymore, and I don't know how hard it would be to deal with that. It can certainly be done, but it's not trivial.

[CJC]

Well. This has generated a lot more discussion than I would have thought.

I'm really not sure how hard this would be. Thing is, guys are actually enemies. You ever notice that enemy IDs start at 20? The guys are 1-10. So, most likely, you'd create new guys in the enemy editor. That much is fairly easy to do.
Here's where it gets difficult: the code was written with the assumptions that guys and other enemies could be distinguished by their IDs and that guys' IDs would never be greater than 255. Neither of those would be true anymore, and I don't know how hard it would be to deal with that. It can certainly be done, but it's not trivial.

I figured that guys were actually enemies because so many of the rules surrounding them is to make them NOT seem like enemies. Would it be easier to remove the 'guy' distinction completely and just advise players to use Walkers with no animation and insurmountable defenses, combined with an enemy placement flag?
...But that wouldn't work with strings and their fireball retaliation, would it? Or with caves for that matter. Ugh, this really is a knot made out of snakes, isn't it?


EDIT: Successor explained in chat that my suggested workaround is fundamentally no different than the current 'use none and a guy-looking combo' alternative. So I guess it's back to the drawing board.

Spoiler: show

In the meantime, to get around this hold in the program, I recommend that players use the Empty guy in dungeon screens and place an enemy spawn flag roughly at the center of the room. Use one of the empty enemy slots to create a walker with no animation or step rate, and presto! Improvised custom guy, no scripting necessary. You can even set the walker to not count as a beatable enemy so that--on the off chance you're one of those mean quest makers who puts enemies in string rooms--you can still trigger secrets. This can even trigger fireball retaliation... provided you place the enemy flag in the exact center of the screen (where the invisible 'none' guy sits) and set its defenses to Ignore. The only thing this can't achieve is an altered guy in an overworld cave.