Multi-target Boss?

[TriceratopsX]

Hello! So quick question, how do you make a multi-part boss? Not like the boss transforms and has different "Stages" in the fight itself, but where there are multiple targets ON/IN the boss itself. For example the Dragon Tank in Chrono Trigger,

The boss has three "parts" that the player has to destroy in order to beat the boss, and each "Part" plays a different role (ex. In the above example the head healed the other parts, while the other two dealt damage to the player)


Sorry if this question is kinda dumb/simple!  :

 

[Pierman Walter]

You could create three different enemies based off the body parts of the boss, such as Head, Tail, and Claws, assign different stats and skills to each, and editing the battle sprites so that they are layered over each other. Although it appears as if you are fighting a single enemy, the game processes it as three enemies at once. 

 

[Wavelength]

Right, pretty much like @Pierman Walter said - just create three separate "enemies" and position them so that it looks like it's one entity.


The one bit of weirdness would be the fact that once you "defeat" a part, it will disappear, and you'll be left with two-thirds of an enemy.  If you want that... great!  You're done.  Stop here.  If you don't, you'll need to get a bit creative to solve that problem.  Here's are two ways I might approach it:


1) Give every part, at the beginning of the battle, a state that resists KO.  Have troop events that trigger when each part is reduced to 0% HP; these events should transform the appropriate part into a "Destroyed" version that has no Enemy Actions (in other words, can't do anything).  Use a plugin like Yanfly's or Hime's to make these Destroyed enemies untargetable, as a convenience to the player.  When all three enemies are KO'ed (you can check this using switches or conditional branches), remove the KO protection from all the enemies and the enemy will die.  The cool thing about this approach is that you can visually represent each part being destroyed during the battle.


2) Use a battle background that has the (large, complete) enemy's sprite pasted onto it.  Make the actual enemies completely invisible and (if you're using a sideview battle system, or HP bar plugins, or anything else that's relevant to enemy positioning) position the invisible enemy sprites where they'd belong on the monster.  This makes things really easy as the invisible enemy sprites won't try to "fade" (you can use Troop events to show animations if you want when each part is KO'ed to indicate it's been defeated) and will remove themselves from the target list automatically when KO'ed.  When the whole boss is KO'ed, you will need to do something to remove the enemy's picture from the background - the best way I can think of to do this would be to use a "Show Picture" command (a Change Battle Background might also work but I'm not sure) to show a picture of the "empty" scenery (the background minus the monster) over the real battle background.  Alternatively, you could just fade out the screen, play a loud sound effect, and have dialogue to indicate that the party destroyed the monster.

 

[ashikai]

If you want the different enemies to stay visible after they're dead, you could alway try using Yanfly's animated sideview enemies to show sprite even with dead, or attempt an enemy transformation that would swap the battler image after a certain enemy dies