For I love singleplayer games, in which you are followed and helped by a companion (at least for a small amount of time), I´ve decided to built in this feature. The buddy will not follow the player the whole time, but he will be there in some places.
Because I love Secret of Evermore (Sometimes even more than Secret of Mana) I try to put in a doggy. I only own a fat cat in real life ( Jimmy Kater)...so why not realize my dreams and create my own dog
More to come soon!
ps: I ve seen some very very nice games that have the same feature here. Go for it, it is a great feature!!!! And your Ai works way better than mine does hehe...but in my case it works out fine right now.
pps: Have you ever seen the movie "A boy and his dog"? Strange movie...but the idea behind it is great (I think they have also inspired the guys from fallout III )
Its pretty simple, if you wanna try it out (found a tutorial the other day):