The ceiling acts like a steel wall in all other cases. Builders hit their head, Lemmings turn if they run against it. So it would only be logical if the shimmier grabs onto it. Not doing so would be a weird special rule.
This was discussed on multiplay occasions in the past with the final result ending here: http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=2537.0
Even with a high majority in favor of this.
"I could live with" means "I would prefer not". If you want to discount that for not being "clear", then you should discount Gronkling and Minim's votes in favour as well. But this kind of tallying is pointless; if you want to see whether there's a majority or not, hold a poll of the current forum members. Several of the currently active content producers didn't contribute to the old discussion at all. My point was just to refute your claim that the discussion was closed because of a "high majority".
I accept that as I don't have a NeoLemmix pack yet, I'm not directly affected if we decide to make this change. On the other hand, leaving bugs and inconsistencies in the mechanics because we don't want to mess with old content does affect any content I make in the future, and it affects all new players and creators.
That's why it was discussed multiple times and finally a decision was made to end it. If we pull out old discussions with final descisions again and again we never will find stability! :8():
That's why it was discussed multiple times and finally a decision was made to end it. If we pull out old discussions with final descisions again and again we never will find stability! :8():
Your definition of "multiple" is as shaky as your definition of "majority". And I'm not proposing to pull out multiple old discussions, just this one, precisely because it was closed prematurely by fiat of namida when the discussion had no clear consensus and there was a lot still to be said. In particular, namida decided about the sides and top together, so there was never any room for anyone to say "Well, now that we've decided about the sides, the top should be deadly too, for consistency". I can't help feeling that at least some of the participants would have agreed with that.
Two pages of discussion over two days. No further discussion after the decision to have deadly sides.
Then I have to ask: Why was this discussion spread out so much? That stopped people who wanted to contribute from having an accurate grasp of what had already been said. And given that the discussion was so badly handled, why is it so unthinkable to suggest we have a proper discussion so that at least we can have some closure?
I think being able to shimmy along the top level border would look and feel absurd to me in the same way climbing up a solid side border would be absurd, because there is no terrain there. If you want to be able to shimmy on the top of the level, just put some terrain there.
expand the level, repeating the terrain on the edges of the level infinitely.
Lemmings traveling to the left and right would continue
builder [...] will fall back down
makes sense for the sides to be deadly, but not the ceiling.
ceiling's behavior doesn't usually result in backroutes
When I played through Lemmings 2, I found the deadly ceiling to be one of the most annoying aspects of that game (granted, the flinging mechanics made that much worse than it would be in NeoLemmix, but still). Considering that the ceiling's behavior doesn't usually result in backroutes, the ability to put builders close the ceiling without having them die randomly because they went slightly too high is rather nice - besides, it's logical that lemmings, if allowed to go offscreen towards the top, would eventually fall back into the level area due to gravity, which isn't the case with the bottom (because you can think of it as a bottomless pit) and the sides (where there's no particular reason why the lemmings should EVER turn around). It also has the convenience thing of not having to babysit climbers as much - and if the level designer really wants to fry rogue climbers it's easy to use a flame trap for that, especially with style mixing.With the skill blueprints accidentally building out of the ceiling or jumping out of it will be more or less a non-issue. And jumping out of the screen with a shimmier... Let's just say I have faith in my fellow players that they will be able to recognize when there is no solid terrain above the lemming ;).
It is also logical that the top edge of the level represents sky.Then please explain, why climbers should drop down if they reach the ceiling, if it is so logical for it to represent sky. ;)
You cannot hold onto the sky, therefore shimmiers should not be able to attach to it. To be honest, I don't think it's even all that inconsistent to disallow the shimmier from using the ceilng, because while we sometimes consider the ceiling to be technically equivalent to a mass of steel just offscreen, there's no particular reason it needs to literally behave like a mass of steel at the top of the screen. The main reason I think it makes sense to have lemmings hit their heads on the ceiling is because you have to set an arbitrary "you can't build here" cutoff SOMEWHERE to prevent the lemmings from walking on top of the level boundary - and having them hit their heads certainly makes a lot more sense than them randomly dying because they wandered 1 pixel too high.I am no really convinced here, that turning around due to illogical steel at the ceiling is in any way better than arbitrarily dying there. Certainly neither is prefect, but I cannot see why turning around is inherently more logical than dying. More convenient perhaps, but that wasn't your argument in this paragraph.
For Redux, I've added terrain at the top edge in any case
When I played through Lemmings 2, I found the deadly ceiling to be one of the most annoying aspects of that game (granted, the flinging mechanics made that much worse than it would be in NeoLemmix, but still). Considering that the ceiling's behavior doesn't usually result in backroutes, the ability to put builders close the ceiling without having them die randomly because they went slightly too high is rather nice - besides, it's logical that lemmings, if allowed to go offscreen towards the top, would eventually fall back into the level area due to gravity, which isn't the case with the bottom (because you can think of it as a bottomless pit) and the sides (where there's no particular reason why the lemmings should EVER turn around). It also has the convenience thing of not having to babysit climbers as much - and if the level designer really wants to fry rogue climbers it's easy to use a flame trap for that, especially with style mixing.
It is also logical that the top edge of the level represents sky. You cannot hold onto the sky, therefore shimmiers should not be able to attach to it. To be honest, I don't think it's even all that inconsistent to disallow the shimmier from using the ceilng, because while we sometimes consider the ceiling to be technically equivalent to a mass of steel just offscreen, there's no particular reason it needs to literally behave like a mass of steel at the top of the screen. The main reason I think it makes sense to have lemmings hit their heads on the ceiling is because you have to set an arbitrary "you can't build here" cutoff SOMEWHERE to prevent the lemmings from walking on top of the level boundary - and having them hit their heads certainly makes a lot more sense than them randomly dying because they wandered 1 pixel too high.
Consider a level, one screen large, with the sides and ceiling accessible to lemmings. Now picture a builder that, if allowed to continue building as long as possible, reaches the point where it would die with deadly ceilings. Now, let's expand the level, repeating the terrain on the edges of the level infinitely. Lemmings traveling to the left and right would continue travelling left and right forever (assume the player lacks a skill to turn them around with), whereas the builder, building in the same position as before, will fall back down after passing the former ceiling. This is a compelling reason why it makes sense for the sides to be deadly, but not the ceiling.
To summarize, I am strongly against deadly ceilings, and against shimmiers attaching to the sky.
A deadly ceiling would probably be less problematic if it triggered at the lemmings feet rather than its head (which would pretty much require almost the entire lemming to be outside the level before the trigger occurs, so there would be less "random" deaths). But still, I'd also prefer a non-deadly ceiling :).The ceiling would only be deadly if a lemming is completely outside the level area, i.e. if not even a single foot pixel is still visible.
I agree that deadly ceilings were annoying in Lemmings 2, mainly however for jet packs and super lemmings and all that other nonsense which was difficult enough to control with the mouse in the first place.Yeah, I totally agree with that (and I hopefully mentioned that before in this thread - at least I should have done so). But this is mainly a consequence of all these flying skills and the horrible fan, neither of which is or will be present in NeoLemmix in the future. So I don't think the L2 experience is a good guideline for the choice we have to make here.
Now, whoever wants the ceiling to be air with downforce: Please spec your proposal such that a computer can understand it. "can be summarized as" or "principle means that special case X is resolved as" won't cut the mustard. I'm sure there is a nice idea to investigate here, but you're too vague.Well, although I certainly wouldn't mind if you do, noone has to write computer-readable specs here.
Therefore, GigaLem's analogy of the "one-way down field" seems to make most sense to me. Of course we technically don't have one-way down fields yet, but considering what the left- and right versions do: You can build against them or use them to turn around, but you can't climb them.There is one big difference between the existing force fields and the downwards version: Lemming have a direction that is left or right, which simply can be reversed, and the resulting position totally makes sense. But lemmings don't have a downward or upward direction, so it's far less clear what should happen there. I am almost certain that you would not want a builder to continue building a downwards bridge ;P.
Transfering this principle to the ceiling would mean: You can turn around by bumping your head, but you can't shimmy along it.
If jumpers are allowed to go through the ceiling with their head, but climbers will fall down when hitting their head at the ceiling,
Therefore, I don't believe we need a deadly or non-solid ceiling just because the shimmier becomes available. As long as you don't include it in your skillset, everything works as usual. And if you include it, it's up to the level creator to place additional obstacles at the ceiling - fire traps, protruding terrain- or steel pieces etc. - to prevent backroutes.
Any skill should get interrupted when hitting the ceiling
That makes no sense; why should a lemming get interrupted by hitting thin air?
It sounds like you're saying that it should be obligatory for level designers to prevent reaching the ceiling (if there are shimmiers)
Any skill should get interrupted when hitting the ceiling, just like it happens when they hit normal terrain above their heads.I have two concerns:
Instead, just block the route along the ceiling itself! ;) A fire trap might do it, a triggered trap would also suffice (because like climbers and swimmers, shimmiers most certainly couldn't suddenly switch to disarmer state to get past the trigger). Most of the time something as simple as slightly vertical terrain would be enough for the shimmier to bump against, turn, and fall. In short: Just don't leave the entire ceiling open when you include shimmiers :) .There are several problems here:
1) With this logic walking lemmings should not turn around.
2) Shimmiers usually won't stop when they hit a ceiling when jumping upwards, because they actually want to reach a ceiling. So the rule "Any skill should get interrupted when hitting the (terrain) ceiling" will no longer hold. So why should it hold with respect of the ceiling of the whole level?
Sorry, but that is somewhat far-fetched, as in all other situations walking lemmings are considered as using no skill at all.Quote1) With this logic walking lemmings should not turn around.Well, usually they don't. ;) A builder bumping his head on the ceiling will leave a gap there, because he can't finish his skill, and walkers will just slip through it, no matter how tiny it is, and keep moving forward.
The only case where walkers would turn around on the ceiling is when a fencer clears a path right to the top of the level and you have a lemming walking up that slope. Then again, now that the walker is also a skill of its own, you could say that skill of walking gets interrupted once the lemming hits the ceiling. And a skill being interrupted this way usually leads to the lemming turning around, as it also happens with a miner or basher hitting steel.
So here comes the philosophical question again of whether the ceiling is a steel wall. Most skills can't interact with steel. So it could be worth contemplating whether the shimmier shouldn't be able to shimmy along steel surfaces. It would make sense from a flavour perspective, at least - one a plain steel surface, he'd have nothing to grab onto :) . Mechanically however, I think of the shimmier as a horizontal climber, and the climber can of course hold on to steel.Yes, I deem the difference to climbers problematic. And what we call "steel" are more often iron blocks with nails instead of smooth steel surfaces. So your favour argument isn't 100% spot on.
I'm certainly not advising for a change of the climber mechanics here, that would be insane :) . Rather, we could create a difference between shimmier and climber here, similarly to the builder vs. platformer-discussion which popped up recently. Here also the L2-feature of the platformer gaining height was removed on purpose. So perhaps a shimmier shouldn't interact with steel, even though it is able to in Lemmings 2? Like with the platformer, we'd weaken the skill in comparison to L2, but thereby would also make it differ more from an existing one.
How is the ceiling regarded in the current stable version, anyway? Does it count as "terrain", i.e. do lemmings do terrain checks with it the same way they used to do with the level sides in 1.43?I had to check the exact usage and the ceiling is actually non-removable usual terrain. For basher (and miner, fencer, ...) terrain checks it counts as usual terrain, but it cannot be removed in any way. And yes, all skills do terrain checks for the level borders in exactly the same way as they do them within the level, too. The only difference is, that the sides and the bottom always return empty air and the top always returns usual terrain.
I had to check the exact usage and the ceiling is actually non-removable usual terrain. For basher (and miner, fencer, ...) terrain checks it counts as usual terrain, but it cannot be removed in any way. And yes, all skills do terrain checks for the level borders in exactly the same way as they do them within the level, too. The only difference is, that the sides and the bottom always return empty air and the top always returns usual terrain.
2) Even now level designers miss similarly unintuitive game mechanics: The best example may be the crawling routes in kieranmillar's L2 pack. kieranmillar knew about the crawling from the beginning on, but forgot time and again to check for backroutes using them. Another example is bashing at the bottom through all the obstacles, which I remember using to backroute at least one of your levels.