Original Post
Alright. I'm currently building a game (described on my blog if anyone is interested). It's a 2D, sidescrolling action game with a focus on tactical combat in a sci-fi setting. The problem I have is the visual design of one of the enemies I have. The enemy is a hovertank, which is meant as a tool to force the player to move from wherever they've dug in. It's mean, slow, and durable, so it (should) win any head on encounters, but it doesn't recharge health like the player does, so it's vulnerable to hit and run. On that blog post I linked, there's an image with the current hovertank enemy at the top right corner (link for those who don't want to dig through that huge blog post). The image does the job decently enough, but it is rather jarring when the tank wants to pull a 180 and flip around. On the player characters, that's not an issue as they're thin and agile already, but the tank flipping around like it does is very obvious and very ugly. I'm trying to figure out the best option for redesigning it. The obvious solution is symetry, but that's not the look I want the tank to have (it'd end up looking like a flying saucer, or some kind of floating platform). Alternatively, I could keep it assymetrical, and then just not allow it to turn around. While that might have neat gameplay implications, I'd prefer to have the tank be more manueverable than that, able to follow and engage the player in any direction. Since I don't have any options so far as prerendering a turn animation or using a 3D model, what else could I do to reconcile those two design goals? Are there any other options here that I've missed?
