Before we get started with the construction, let's define what a boss enemy is: In classic arcade shooter games bosses are typically huge and overpowered enemies which can only be defeated by skillfully dodging their attacks and by exploiting weak points in their defense.

In order to capture this essence, bosses in BossConstructor have different phases, each using a different attack pattern which allows the player to approach and defeat the boss by analysing its behaviour and eventually identifying its weak point. Don't worry, it's easier to accomplish than it sounds, so let's get started!

In this guide, we will build a simple boss enemy based on the alpha ship which comes with the game.

1) So, in order to get started, let's go to the hangar and make a duplicate of the Alpha ship and open it in the editor.

2) In order for the game to recognise the ship as a boss ship, we need to do two things:
a) Replace the command center by an AI command center. It is called AI CC: Boss and it is usually obtained by destroying boss ships in the exploration mode.
b) Rename the ship so that the name start with "Boss" - this is required for ships to be recognized as boss ships when they are uploaded to the Steam Workshop.



3) In order to demonstrate the phase concept, let's add a few more weapons. In this guide I'm adding two front facing weapons and two side facing missile arrays - but you can use any weapon you like. (You might also want to add some more solar panels as this ship's energy generation is a bit too low. )

Setting a ship to be a boss ship (by making its name start with Boss) changes its AI behaviour. The normal AI will shoot only if an enemy is in range using only weapons which face the enemy. The boss AI fires regardless of whether there is something to hit or not. To be precise, the boss AI fires its weapons based on an internal timer which causes it to cycle through 8 phases each lasting 8 seconds. So a full cycle is 64 seconds long.

Let's use BossAlpha as an example. The weapon pattern for this ship will be:

• Phase 1: Fireball
  
• Phase 2: MissileArray
  
• Phase 3: Fireball & Laser
  
• Phase 4: MissileArray
  
• Phase 5: Fireball & Laser
  
• Phase 6: Fireball & Laser & MissileArray
  
• Phase 7: (no weapons)
  
• Phase 8: (no weapons)

Phases 1-5 alternate between front and side facing attacks. Phase 6 is the most dangerous one as it combines both attacks. Phases 7 and 8 provide 16 seconds in which the ship recharges its energy storage and is therefore pretty vulnerable. (You might want to add a lot of battery modules to your boss ship in order to take advantage of this.)

The different phases are assigned using the custom key bindings 1-8. Before continuing with this guide you might want to check what these keys are assigned to in your input settings. In the following, I will assume that they are assigned to the keys 1-8, which is the default:




(For the following steps you should go to the key view mode.)

4) Begin by disabling automatic keybindings using the respective toggle button.


5) Next, select all the weapons and delete their automatically generated key bindings by clicking the clear key bindings button. Your ship should now look like this:

6) Now let's do the assigning. Select the fireball modules and press the keys 1, 3, 5 and 6 (according to our pattern above). Next, select the laser modules and press 3, 5 and 6. Finally, select the missile arrays and press 2, 4 and 6.

That's it! You can review what happens in the different phases by going to the key view mode and hovering over the custom commands boxes which highlights the weapons active in the respective mode.

Phase 4:

Phase 5:

Phase 6:

In order to test the ship, you can use the test sector which can be accessed from the editor. Note that you will not be able to control your ship directly as it is controlled by the boss AI.

If you want to challenge your boss ship, you can do so using the skirmish mode. Just add a few instances of your boss to the enemy list and hit start. (Using this method, you can also have multiple bosses fight each other.)



Sharing
Unfortunately there is no convenient way of sharing ships yet. If you want to let other players fight against your boss, the best way is to upload your boss ship (which is stored in My Games/BossConstructor) to, for example, Dropbox and post a link in a forum thread. I will create a forum thread dedicated to honoring and celebrating the most awesome boss designs. :)

Things to keep in mind.

• Bosses are supposed to be frightening but fun to fight against. Boss shouldn't be totally overpowered.
  
• The player should be able to learn the boss's attack pattern. You can assist this by changing the ship's lighting pattern based on the different phases.
  
• You can activate most of the modules using the custom commands, not only weapons.

If you have trouble following a part of this guide, please let me know in the comments! Also, since this is a new feature of the game, if stuff ends up behaving in a buggy way, please let me know.

I'm really looking forward to see you design many original and awesome bosses! In fact, I would like to include player designed bosses in the game later on. Maybe I will also do a boss tournament in which I have your submitted ships fight each other and put it on YouTube. Let me know your thoughts! :)

Update: Steam Workshop
Boss ships that are named correctly are listed as boss ships in the Steam Workshop. When a player subscribes to and downloads the ship, it will randomly spawn in both skirmish and exploration mode games whenever a boss ship is to be spawned.