All good questions Simon, thanks.
How does it relate to existing such state? Can you be a neutral rival? Or are you exactly one of regular, rival, neutral, etc.?
At present, the plan is to not allow a lemming to be both a Neutral
and a Rival. If a designer somehow manages to assign both (for example by using a text editor to input both properties), the Rival state will be preferred.
Rivals will be zombified as normal upon contact with a Zombie, but then at this point their Rival status will essentially be void anyway (and, will likely be removed code-side to prevent bugs).
How do neutrals count in the different exits?
They will count as +1 in either exit, in the same way that Zombies will count as -1 in either exit.
Do you have different skillsets per such tribe?
No, that becomes too complicated. At present, the idea is as simple as each team having its own exit; where skills are concerned, the interest will come from having to divide the skills between the two teams as well as making sure that one team doesn't follow the other as a result of previous skill actions.
Take care with using only color to mark things. Blue athletes are now harder to differentiate from the red athlete.
Athletes will still be marked as such in the skill panel status display. Additionally, Rival Athletes will have "R-" prepended to their status (e.g. "R-ATHLETE"). The recolouring compliments this.
It's not enough to play existing 2-player levels; most of those are boring in singleplayer by design.
I disagree with the first part. It's
because the 2-Player levels are boring in singleplayer that the feature is worth pursuing: suddenly, these become much more interesting levels. IMO, that's enough. As a Bonus, we also have another unique design feature that has puzzle potential and which can't be simulated using existing features.
Even zombies feel like they're not pulling their weight; their complexity weighs a lot, see our nuke/exiting worries from last month
Right, but bear in mind that we were working on NeoLemmix which (IMO) hasn't fully fleshed out the potential of Zombies.
A NeoLemmix Zombie:
* Removes the lemming
* Cannot receive skills
* Infects other lemmings
* Can interact with traps
* Retains any permanent skills
A SuperLemmix Zombie does the same, plus:
* Can exit (counts as -1 towards the save requirement if they reach an exit)
* Can interact with buttons
* Walks more slowly
* Eats pickups
* Can be killed by Spears, Grenades and Lasers
* Has a dedicated Talisman (Kill All Zombies)
* Has their own sound scheme (trivial, perhaps, but adds more depth to the feature)
So, I'd also have to disagree that Zombies don't pull their weight. Even in NL, Zombies are a unique feature in that they're a moving (and growing) trap, something that the game didn't have previously. There are some very interesting Zombie levels in NL, despite the feature not being developed as far as it could have been.
The SLX augmentations afford Zombies a much more prominent and textured effect on gameplay. These features have added maybe 100 or so extra lines of code and a small handful of additional assets, so Zombies don't "weigh" too much more in SLX but do have greater gameplay value.
With that said, I recognise the wisdom in what you're saying - the more I work on SLX the more I'm learning that some features just aren't worth the effort that they require and the amount of code they end up touching; this is actually a lesson I learned quite early on, but it's having more of an effect on my decision-making lately.
With
that said, Rivals definitely seem worth the effort to me. We do of course need to address the specifics, hence why I'm glad you asked the questions you did. This helps a lot!