Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
It's important for us to remember that we are not the only one with a gun. The
Dudes are armed as well. Other than the accuracy modifiers that we identified
above, the Dudes' weapons perform identically to ours.
Did I Mention the Detonator?
The above information helps us determine what the optimum weapon is for each
range. That goes a long way toward helping us make our decision. If we know the
range to each Dude, his health, and what weapon he is carrying, we can determine
which Dude to attack first and what the optimum weapon is for us to attack him
with. The solution is to determine which Dude is some combination of the biggest
threat and the easiest kill. However, before we go further, we are going to add one
last wrinkle to our example.
We will now assume that there is an important point in the area. In true epic
James Bond style, we will say that it is a detonator for a large explosive device.
(On second thought, this could be in Austin Powers style, too. Or Jack Bauer style.
Or Jedi Knight sty-… never mind.) We now have two goals to address.
First, as before, we need to avoid allowing ourselves to be killed by a Dude. That
is what we were addressing above when we were going to dispatch the biggest
threat-easiest kill combination. However, our second goal is to prevent someone
from triggering the detonator. By adding a parameter to each Dude “range to goal,�
we can determine who is the most dangerous target in that respect. The two priority
systems may not yield the same answer. For example, a Dude who we may have
judged as the lowest -priority target before may suddenly become extremely impor-
tant to attack if he moves close to the detonator (Figure 14.7).
FIGURE 14.7 The poor fighter (Bad Dude) with a poor weapon (shotgun) at long
range would normally be the lowest-priority target. If he is standing next to the
dreaded detonator, however, his priority as a target increases significantly.
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