Random values in NPCs

[Lx Xzit]

This NPC is extremely unfair and frustrating. It takes about 1 second to emerge and can immediately fill the screen out of fireballs which is impossible to react. And look how big their range is:

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plants.png (3.21 KiB) Viewed 596 times

People also often use it in irresponsable designs, by placing then in high areas and making them throw lots of projectiles. But even a small number of fireballs can be unfair because of their completely random trajectory.

My suggestions are:
a. Make it act like the Walking Piranha Plants fireballs, so you can expect fireballs to reach certain height and follow certain trajectory:

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b. Make the fireballs be fired in order, and not all of them at the same time.

c. Set the maximum number of fireballs to 6. 100 it's just crazy.

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I noticed that in SMBX38A, NPCs that uses random values tend to be very frustrating overall. For example, Hammer Bros can throw two hammers, jump and change facing direction at a very little interval of time, making them completely unpredictable, and unpredictable means frustrating. This also happens with Walking Piranha Plants, they turn randomly to the other direction.

Please set these random values (changing facing direction, jumping and throwing npcs from hammer bros) a minimum and a maximum range. So for example you can expect Hammer Bros to throw hammers every 3-4 seconds (with a 3 seconds of cooldown guaranteed). Also for hammer bros, it seems there are two counters to make them throw hammers, if so please remove one of them (the random one, I think the other is associated with the animations).

Remember that a good AI must be predictable.

[NESTED ERNEST]

In Mario Forever they are thrown randomly but not all at the same time and have a little less gravity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj0Ngy0ocys

[Lx Xzit]

Yes but it's Mario Forever. It's not a good example to fix the piranha plants. They are fairer in Mario Forever, but they're still bad.