Rogues’ Rendezvous: Vertically Sliced - The Game Maker's Companion: Game Development - page 289

Figure 12-5. Flynn begins his ascent of Rogues' Rendezvous starting from the beach
Pretty Useful Polly
Archie is not just your average sidekick that simply follows you around offering advice; he is a
central part of the core game mechanic for Shadows on Deck . That's because Flynn is actually
pretty defenseless when it comes to dealing with angry skeletons—or any other kind of foe, for
that matter. Enemies will be encountered relatively infrequently compared to an average
platform game, but each will require quite a bit of thought and maneuvering in order to get past
them. That's the style of game play we're after to compliment the storyline aspects we'll add
later. Archie is Flynn's secret weapon, as he is completely invulnerable to enemy attacks, but
can lure them into precarious situations where Flynn can dispatch them. We will also allow
Archie to perform useful tasks for the player without the risk of ever getting hurt—in fact, it's
almost like the enemies aren't trying to harm him at all. . . .
Follow the Leader
Archie's default behavior will be to follow Flynn around the level, hovering just behind his
shoulder. We've already created a constant for this state called ASTATE_FOLLOW , which along with
ASTATE_COMMAND and ASTATE_DISTRACT are the three states we'll be implementing for Archie.
Archie's behaviors aren't complicated enough to justify multiple state objects, so we'll create
just one object and use a switch statement to handle his state machine within its Step event.