Rollings can be damaged?

Agh, sorry, just a quick (probably dumb) question.

http://www.cavestory.org/info_monsters.php

According to the above, a rolling has a health of 2 HP, which implies that the player needs to damage it with a minimum of 2 HP in order for it to be destroyed. Yet in all my playthroughs of the Sacred Grounds, I have never been able to kill a rolling, yet alone damage it. I blasted at a couple with direct level 3 Spur shots when I was trying to bust through Deleet doors and surely, the spur does a lot more damage than 2 HP.

So if the HP numbers apply to each monster's health (because a rolling doesn't do 2 HP damage), what does the 2 HP mean? Is there a certain way you have to hit a rolling to get it to die?

 

 

How can they be invincible and have 2 HP at the same time?

 

How can they be invincible and have 2 HP at the same time?

"Invincible" will override any HP setting (and non-shootable as well). Though it's a bit pointless to have a unique HP if NPC.tbl overrides every instance of it, setting these flags on a per-entity basis (outside of NPC.tbl) has its uses.

 

They probably have 2 hp cause they may have had their code recycled from an entity that had 2 hp or something like that, and why bother to change it?

 

 

No that's probably 2HP. I remember dealing with a Mannan, having over 1000HP, but obviously it doesn't take that many shots to kill. I guess for those enemies with huge amounts of health, 998HP is technically 0HP.

 

b
but you can't damage rollings

 

b
but you can't damage rollings

Well the Rolling is marked as invincible, but the Mannan is not. They still have similar styles of health, though. If one of you really wants to test this, unmark the invincible checkbox and see if it takes 2HP to kill.

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

Ohhh OK so after a little testing myself, I figured out I was confusing the whole Mannan thing up. The Mannan has 100HP, not 1000HP, but if you set it to 2HP it dies instantly. The Rolling does actually have 1000HP, because when I set it to 2HP it actually needs to take 2 damage to die. Cave Story health values are confusing.

 

Some entities have a health check in their code, for example Gaudis. If their HP falls below 985 (maybe), they enter the dying animation/change into NPC Dying Gaudi. To prevent player from avoiding the animation, the HP is set to really high values so he/she can't just destroy the enemy even with a powerful weapon.

Some entities have 1000 HP without having a dying animation or anything, though, like Nothing or Rolling.