Posted July 07, 2018 by Multithreaded Games
When we first started developing Wellspring, there were several features that we knew would be incredibly difficult to figure out--for me, in particular, I imagined that the enemy AI system would be the biggest pain in the ass to implement. (spoiler: it actually wasn't)
So like the good little programmer I am, I decided to put it off for a really long time and focus on other aspects of the game--in the meantime, however, we needed a way to have the enemies do something, anything at all--so we ended up adding the ability for the player to control the enemies directly.
While incredibly entertaining (and somewhat unfair), this does serve a more practical purpose, allowing us to quickly test and balance enemies and their skills. It also allows us to turn on/off an enemy in the middle of battle--so if we need an enemy to do a specific thing (IE, for many of our combat-related videos/demonstrations), it's only a keypress away.
In theory, (I use the phrase 'in theory' when there's almost a 0% chance of it working) it should be pretty easy to go the other way, IE, have the AI control an ally. Even though this sounds pretty much pointless, this would have some benefit, say if we ever wanted to implement a "Confusion"-style status effect. Similarly, our upcoming playable character Elvali will be able to directly control or manipulate certain enemies on the battlefield, which is pretty much exactly what's being done here.
Plus, this has led to some really epic PvP fights where one person controls the allied side and another person controls the enemy side, usually the result of semi-introxicated bravado, inevitably flaring up into a "1v1 me, bro."