Yeah I too was wondering what would be the best way going about making enemy attack patterns/formations in a vertical shooter- kind of like Galaga (in that the screen doesn't move), but where streams of enemies come in at different formations.
Would the sine behavior and custom movement be the way to go?
nonetheless, thanks for the .CAPs, procrastinator, as they will prove very useful
in my mad mad quest to make Darius III
.
SIN behaviour helps a lot and makes a lot of movement almost look dynamic to the untrained eye. Most enemy patterns are basically just move to point A then to B then to C etc. My 2nd cap I believe, used this path movement, but as a test I only used it as targets for the real movement to make it smoother. I mean, it had a dummy sprite (this would be invisible in a game) move in the A->B->C movement, but had the real sprite rotate towards that dummy sprite for a smoother movement.
Like you I strive for the perfect shmup game (Darius III for you, Salamander for me ) with perfect formations etc.