At any time, SL must either
directly show the following, or show enough other stuff to allow the
player to compute the following:
- How many more lemmings are still required to win.
- How many lemmings are available.
This describes the main goal, and whether it's still attainable. Lemmings should not be a memory game. We can argue if it's action puzzle or not, but it's certainly not a memory game. It's a major source of rage to fail or cancel a level because I forgot the save requirement. Why would you hide the main goal in such game's design after someone points it out?
Great to have but not absolutely required:
- How many lemmings are still in the hatches.
For the choice of statistics to show, Amiga is a bad reference. Amiga and DOS didn't show the save requirements. It's one of the flaws, and we don't have to proliferate that.
NL's choice feels like a local optimum: (hatch), (hatch + out), (saved − required). I tried hard to make something even better for Lix and didn't find anything. Displaying ratios with a slash, e.g. (saved)/(required), made the stats harder to read, not clearer. Well, please try to beat it, too, we'll never know.
Ditch the percentages, show absolute values.
don't think icons are the way to go with this at all, since SuperLemmini's close emulation of the Amiga interface
IN-OUT-HOME proposal is also a deviation from the Amiga interface
For the
style of the stats, is-like-Amiga can carry more weight than for the
choice of stats.
attempting a borderless fullscreen window...
Fullscreen window is promising, more than exclusive fullcreen, yes. Fast to enter and exit, cheap alt-tab, plays nice with other things, etc.
-- Simon