Its doing it because they are all clones (instances) of the original and you need to separate out the instances you want to be affected by an event otherwise Construct2 simply tells them all to act. Read Ashley's advanced events tutorial and focus on "Picking": https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/292/guide-to-construct-2s-advanced-event-features. It will help get your head around it some.

Beginnerish

https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/533/for-beginners-custom-loading-screen

Advancedish

https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/318/how-to-use-loader-layouts-to-make-custom-loading-screens

https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/629/sprite-fonts-the-how-what-when-where/page-3

I think I understand what you mean... Give the bullets their own instance direction variable, update it with the direction when fired and they will act autonomous.

Unless you mean it sets the enemy instances firing direction the other way... in which case you would need to condition out enemies in LOS of of player by adding a condition to the direction change event that only allows non-sighting enemies to advance to actions.

In Capt. J. Doe saves the Universe I have a mini boss at wave 25, 50, and 75 plus a final boss at wave 100.

Since CJDstU is only one continual level I had to spawn them based on units of time, thus my wave system. Each "wave" is really nothing more than a timer that I can set that changes the wave (level) variable each pass.

My enemy spawners, and the wave clock are all set to shut off at those specific levels and restart when the boss is destroyed.

The key is finding what works best for your game and duct taping the heck out of it.

You should be able to tweak the physic object and blocks to correct most weird bounces.

Can you post a capx of what you have so far?

At its most basic a skill is nothing more than a variable you increment when it improves.

The skill tests would then use the higher (or lower, depending on system you devise) skill variable value and the test would be easier, and each success would further increment variable.

Your first step is to outline what kind of skill system and then go from there figuring out how to track/store them, as there are many ways.

I was going to add a cool capx I made with an incremental skill but Construct2 is not allowing them for some reason.

You can grab it from my Google Drive though: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bx-ufu2WID53Y1I0VzM2RVZqTWs (click the download arrow in upper right corner of screen)

NobalChase, I get that but my point in the above rant was that what your asking in such a generic way is a very large topic with lots of different methods of handling.

It like if Columbus prior to sailing to the Americas asked "How do you navigate?"

What you are trying to do is the FPS or MMO version of 2d game design.. as in everyone wants to do that to start with. What this means to you is there are TONS of tutorials and forum threads on how to do everything you asked due to others that have came before.

You will benefit yourself using them and learning your own style over having a dozen "How I would do it" or useless capx your never going to use posted here

That said (and rest assured it wasn't aimed at you alone.. but many, many, many Construct2 users...)

If you really want help, you can still keep it short but also to the point:

EXAMPLE:

Hi all, I am wanting to make a top-down shooter where my player shoots at enemies who are smart and hide behind cover and pop out to shoot at him.

I have already got my player moving and shooting and the enemies are destroyed when I hit them but I can't figure out how to make the use cover, or pop out.

Can anyone help me with this?

This is a very helpful community and will many time spend their valuable time making capx examples for peoples problems. However, it is you the budding game designer who is ultimately responsible for learning your craft and no amount of piecing capx examples together is going to do that for you. The question you asked covers a half dozen topics in and of itself and assumes we the reader know you are talking about a side-scroller, platformer, isometric, top-down, grid based, turn based, etc to infinity. Break down what you are trying to accomplish into parts and slowly piece it together yourself using tutorials and forum for specific help being detailed in exactly what you are trying to accomplish and exactly what roadblock you have encountered. Do that and you will find it much more rewarding.

Animation in Construct2 is pretty straight forward. You either drop in a sprite with multiple frames or you make your own via the in game editor. Either way you control the start/stop/frame/speed etc via event actions,

It shouldn't take you too long to get your head around it.

A simple exercise is open sprite editor (double click layout and select sprite) and color fill the image. Now find the small frames window that opens when editor is open and right click beside "frame 1" and choose "add frame", now color fill this on something different. Repeat until you have about 5 frames of different colors. You can use the animations window (that also pops up when editor open) to save this to a anim file you can call via event if you like. Now with a frame of the sprite selected look at the left side properties area and stop it from playing automatically. These properties control how sprites frames are "stepped through".. aka animated. Now place your cool sprite on the layout and open your event sheet. Add event On start of layout then select your sprite and choose start anim frame 0 and go run program.. voila you made an animated sprite. The principles are the same for any 2d animation outside Spriter type bone animation.

Nice, wish I had of thought of that when making my top scroll racing tutorial.. it uses the pinned left/right sprites as well to detect collisions with other racers to force player to side of road. Your new way is much more elegant and will allow Y as well for 4-point collision testing.

You are referring to AI

Do a tutorial search for AI (artificial intelligence) , several good ones to help you on this path.