[Tutorial] Enemy Placement & Special Intros

*Original tutorial by Don Vecta with contributions from CajNatalie

Well, let's start this gig.

In the general tips thread there was some discussion and explanations in how to work with the special intros of certain enemies and it's been an issue going on in there, but we don't want to make these explanations lost in a sea of other questions, so we decided to open up a thread about it.

Shiva and Mr. X Boss intros.

Okay, intros for Shiva and X you must put all your enemies in Round 1. All of them.

Let's say you put all your mooks first and then a strong mook and then keep waiting Shiva and X. Shiva will jump when you only have one mook left. So, no matter if you put 3 or 100 mooks, Shiva will jump until the last one stands still.

Haven't tried X in the same room with Shiva, though. Might give it a test.

Not sure about the texts, probly the texts are shown only when you approach the boss battle.


EDIT: It's very interesting, I put this set up for test:

Max enemies 5.

X = Boss, Boss intro
Shiva-2 = normal, Boss intro.
5 Codys = normal, 3 of them standing, 2 drop down.
Rudra = normal, shadow intro.

Okay, this was the order. I started whooping the ass of the Codys, beat the first two and the other two dropped down, then beat the third and Rudra showed up. One interesting thing, when Rudra knocked me down, X laughed so he acknowledges everything.

I beat Rudra and then X called out a pair of Galsias and Donnies, even though I never put them in the map. After I beat them, Shiva jumped out and beat him and then X throws his cigar and fights BUT... he has automatic mosquito mooks with him, means you'll get Galsias and Donnies infinitely attacking you too.


I'll see if it happens the same by putting X as normal.


EDIT: Well, it seems that Boss intro X works completely different from any other intro.

Is it possible to combine the many boss layers intro with Shiva and X so you can get a SOR2 type of battle (and mentioned above with the example). I tested without Shiva and he'll still call Galsias and Donnies after you beat all but one of the first round enemies. Then he throws cigar, stands up and fights but with the auto-mooks.

In Boss intro, he'll ALWAYS have automatic mosquito mooks, no matter if he's normal or boss. If you beat him as normal character, you must beat the rest of the mosquito mooks on screen to continue.

About Barbon and Electra (barman intro and singer intro respectively).


Both characters are completely linked to work on. Or most likely, Barbon depends 100% on Electra to work on.

Barbon's intro should be in "barman intro" and you'll notice he'll be only halfway shown, so wherever you position him, please try to make sense he is under a counter.

Then you need an Electra in the same screen with him, in the "singing" intro.

Now if everything's going well, while Electra is in the mic, Barbon while be shakey shakey all night long until you get close to Electra so she throws her poncho and mic away and gets ready to sort out our candy ass. Right in that moment, that's cue to Barbon to exit. Now please algo notice something: Barbos is still only showing half way and he'll walk out from the scene but his legs won't show up, thus you still need a counter all the way to the exit to justify his exit. He usually leaves walking to the right, but by putting the stance position tab in reverse, he can walk to the left as well.

Same, both has to be in Round 1 since both are stationary stances and you don't want them to pop in out of nowhere.

So yeah,if in the scene there's no Electra and you set Barbon as a barman intro, he'll continue shakey shakey forever and ever and ever... and the scene won't go on. You'l be stuck forever since there's no interaction with him whatsoever (he's 100% invulnerable so no police or special or projective cause any damage to him, however, he's still counting as a physical enemy for the engine so he needs to move on in order to you move on).

Another way to place him without Electra is to put him as a background element in a boss fight. So when you beat the boss, the game will move on.

...and Electra is a stand alone intro, you still can put her anywhere and her intro gets triggered when you are too close to her.

About Yamato.


Yamato has two special intros, named Boss Intro 1 and Boss Intro 2.

Boss Intro 1 it's pretty much the first two iterations of Yamato in SOR3/BKIII which fights with the jump back slash, throwing shurikens and the teleport splice slash. His K.O. animation it's just fading away.

Boss Intro 2 it's the third and last version of Yamato in his boss fight, he'll do the same moves from the boss intro 1 but also he'll do now the shinobi dash that only this version will perform. His K.O. animation will do his ninjitsu pose and explode in flames.

If you place two Yamatos with both intros, intro 1 version will jump first while intro 2 will wait until you're done with him, just like his original appearance, so it is possible to recreate his 3 Yamato fight and fight them one on one.

Also, if you pair up say two Yamatos (one in intro 1 and other in intro 2) and an enemy with boss intro like, say, Robo X's fake intro or Mona & Lisa disco intro, first Robo X will jump while the Yamatos wait in turn. when you're done with Robo X, then Yamato intro 1 will jump and then when done with him, Yamato intro 2 will close the match.

Would be interesting to match these intros with other waiting bosses like Shiva or X and see what happens.

Now, let's get started on the Biker's Truck Intro.
I've not done extensive testing with these guys, but here's what I've got so far. Others can feel free to contribute what they've learned that isn't included here - thanks in advance!
First, put some bikers with the truck intros in your scene, all in the same wave, and place them at the upper horizon so you don't walk through them or other weird things like that.
The intro bikers need to all be Round 1.

For Round 2, put the enemy or enemies they're supposed to be cheering on - in the same wave as the bikers.
When playing the stage, once there are 5 enemies left (including bikers), the bikers will quit cheering and attack. So make sure your total is 6 or more.
Set your 'less than x' enemy spawn setting to make sure at least one enemy of Round 2 is placed in the stage with the bikers.

Note that you can switch Round 1 & 2, but only if all truck intro bikers and enemies being cheered on can be generated at once, with none left in 'queue'.
In fact this is what I'd recommend, just to make sure the bikers have someone to cheer on before they're generated by SoRR.

Want to get the bikers to attack once you're down to a specific number of Round 2 enemies?
For example, you only want them to attack when everyone gets their ass kicked.
Solution 1 (Basic): 5 or more bikers cheering.
I'd expect that if every enemy remaining is a truck intro biker they attack no matter what.
Solution 2 (Advanced): Make Round 3 (again, in the same wave as the bikers, of course) and set them to an intro that has them enter the screen in a sensible way and not pop out of nowhere. Now check your 'less than x' setting to make sure that nobody from this round can appear until Round 1 is down.
Now, it doesn't matter if Round 3 is on screen or not... the game will still count them. You know in SoRMaker Test Mode there's a 'Total Enemies' at the top? They're counted in there.
As long as 'Total Enemies' is 6 or more, the bikers won't attack, so if you have 4 bikers, and one dude with 'drop down', then once Round 2 is defeated, the bikers will attack and mr. drop down will appear and join in with the bikers.


Below I go through how I made Stage 2b from Streets of Rage 2...

All bikers and the guy they're cheering on are in the first screen.
In the original, there's also an extra guy in green who drops from the ceiling when you get close enough, but it's just not possible to have him do that in SoRR if you're replicating the level exactly.
Why?

Number of Enemies needs to be 6 or more, or the bikers will attack!
Funnily enough, it's not number of enemies spawned in the stage... just the number of enemies registered by SoRR at the moment the bikers spawn.

My Attempts
Sticking Green Pants-san in a screen further to the right, instead of the first one, means only the 4 bikers and the first martial artist are generated - 5 enemies. The extra guy doesn't appear unless you walk forward enough.
Bikers attack immediately - Fail.

Sticking Green Pants-san in the first screen in Round 1, will keep the bikers at bay, but he'll drop down immediately and attack... what's worse is that the bikers will attack when either he or his buddy go down, instead of waiting for them both to get their arses kicked.
Fail.

Closest Solution
Without adding more enemies than in the original, here's how I had to do it...
Maximum Enemies Spawned at a Time: 5
Maximum Enemies per Screen Position: 5
More Enemies When: Less than 5
The main martial artist is Round 1 - he is generated first.
The bikers are all Round 2.
There are now 5 enemies. Not enough, but we have all the priorities in play and the player can see them while playing the stage.
Green Pants-san is Round 3, and drops down. He is beyond the 5 enemy limit, but he's still generated in the game, waiting in line to get dropped in ASAP and hopefully kick someone in the face while he does.
As far as the bikers are concerned, there are 6 enemies.
Nobody attacks in the beginning.
Bikers don't attack until their main man is down.
The guy in the green pants drops in the moment the bikers attack.
Success... sort of.

Note on SoR3 Ninja Jump-In Intro: It is relative to screen position!
So wherever that green box with Axel is, imagine that as the screen. If you put a jump-in outside that box they will jump in off screen - always.
If you put it in the middle, they'll jump in from the middle - always, no matter whether the player walks forward some more or not.

To have a ninja jump in from a specific point in the scenery, you have to put their jump in at a camlock, or at the beginning of a section in the very first Round 1 enemies (and you've made sure they're guaranteed to appear regardless of difficulty & 2P mode).

Also, don't ever stick a jump-in ninja in a green zone. You can try putting them above an upper horizon in a no-collision scene (probably? you'll have to test it), but their intro doesn't seem to ignore collisions. They hop down through blue a specific distance then land.

Also a bit late to the party here but some interesting warnings about certain intros in diagonal stages (actually, it's related to the Troll-3 Jump-in intro).

Signals-2 and 3's Zoom in intros will land right over the Axel's icon in SORmaker too (relative to screen position too).

Let's say you play in a SOR2 Go Straight-like diagonal stage and after reaching the bottom you placed a Zoomed-in Signal-2 intro. IF you scrolled down the screen completely, this won't be a problem.
But it will be if you didn't scroll down fully and kept walking. Signal will zoom-in right on green area and get stuck there forever.
So best advice, avoid Zoom-in intros or Jump-in intros in diagonal stages with green walls above.

Also, speaking of screen relative intros: YOUR police car intro also makes the character jump in the center of the screen, which, if you are in a rather narrow area with a green (let's say the scene 1 of the Lan Dao area of my mod H.U.N.T.E.R.), if I do a police car intro, the character will jump inside the car background element, which is behind green, thus causes game breaker. So be careful.

Oh, and if you guys didn't notice, putting guys on sleep/sit/jump-in intros above the horizon line AND with map, will cause them to get stuck on green as well. The enemies won't jump down to blue level. You can do certain comical effects using this bug if the enemies are still vulnerable (say an explosion or within reach to be hit) but otherwise, they'll remain stuck, so mind these intros on green.

Found a rather interesting bug regarding Barbon/Electra intro.

Electra is almost completely invincible while she's singing: not even Murphy's call will harm her as she's in the mic. Now, the almost part comes with Murphy's police car intro, where it DOES hit Electra!

Now what happens with Barbon?

He keeps shakey-shakey forever since the trigger of Electra removing her poncho will not happen, even if 1) she's awaken by the car ram and becomes active or 2) she's dead due of the car ram. Regardless, the script trigger won't happen and Barbon will continue preparing a perpetual Martini.