Implement Enemies' Energy Display

[64kramsystem]

In beat 'em ups, there are two common ways of displaying enemies' energy:

1. display a small panel structured like the player one (photo + bar) below the player energy panel
2. display a bar immediately above the enemy's head

There are pros and cons for both, which differ when multiple enemies are hit:

• for strategy 1, the enemy panel will change quickly (but visibly) between enemies; only the energy of the last enemy persists for a while (try Final Fight to see what I mean)
• for strategy 2, the enemy bars will be crowded and overlapping

There's no best strategy (unless some innovation is applied 😉. I don't think one as inherently better than the other (I'm personally used to Final Fight's style, which is 1.).

[erlend-sh]

The Final Fight style is better suited to just 2 players and fewer enemies. No bar is also a common option; we’ll default to that for starters.

Castle Crashers for instance has no bar (except for bosses) but instead shows a damage counter:

I suspect this will be the best fit for us as well, because we will sometimes have larger waves of enemies and big AoE attacks that might affect a dozen enemies at once.

Even this approach can get messy though:

I suggest we only show damage counters on critical attacks and other such special hits.

[odecay]

I also like the display damage counter but no healthbar style.