A rocket chair for the Chairman
The Chairman is a boss in three forms who rides a rocket chair, and he exists today as a practice fight. His first smoke test said he was not aggressive at all, and the fix also changed how every boss handles being shoved.
Written up later from the repo's history and dated to the days it describes.
The Chairman is a new boss for Earfh, and he is not in a run yet. The story spec plans a fourth act with him at the end of it, and that act is a later spec. For now he is a practice fight, built in slices on October 19.
From throne to rocket
The first version stood still. The owner's reaction was to ask for a mobile chair, "like a rocket chair." The art for it took two attempts, and the first rocket was chosen over the second. The flames are baked into the sprite, and a rotation job at the pixel art provider returned "provider busy" once, with no charge.
A rocket chair is a movement design problem before it is an art one. The Chairman works on boost and coast. He boosts at 700 pixels a second, coasts at 220, and orbits the player at 210 pixels. His health is a placeholder 1,500 in the spec, which the boss scaling then multiplies.
Three forms
At 66% and 33% health he changes form. The first form has Ledger Lock, a tracking attack that follows you for a second and locks in for 0.4 seconds before it lands for 28 damage. It also has a Cable Whip for 22, a Monitor Flash for 20, and a curved boost pass. The forms have names, The Audit, The Overtime and The Closing Bell. The second form added vents and a staff call, and boosts in pairs. The third form's attacks have not landed yet.
Not aggressive at all
After the first slice, the smoke test said it plainly. "He is not aggressive at all. Also I think bosses should have a very high knockback resistance." Both points were right. The Chairman's attack pauses dropped to 0.5, 0.4 and 0.3 seconds across his forms, and shorter again when escalated.
The knockback note changed every boss. A boss now shrugs off 85% of any shove and ignores one under 40 pixels a second.
There was a second find in the same smoke. If the player was not at the controller the moment a boss level began, the room's mobs killed them. Boss levels now hold the start-room mobs for 6 seconds, and the Gulper and Chairman levels spawn them 320 pixels out.
What is next
The Chairman needs his third form, a real place in a run, and an honest tuning pass. The numbers in this post are first guesses.