Given that I basically got kicked out of another forum for "discussion-disturbing behaviour" for pointing out when people would use straw men - even though that is by definition a criticism of the argument a person makes and not of the person themselves -
I feel the need to respond .
I can understand Proxima here, because this "getting tired of having to deal with the same twisted arguments over and over again" was precisely what also led me to point out straw men in that other forum in the first place.
So first of all, I wanna say I'm happy people here seem to already be familiar with the general concept of what a straw man is, rather than calling somebody a know-it-all for merely introducing it to them.
If all the player wants to do is solve the level without actually going for it and trying anything out, why have the game animated at all?
Strato's straw man rears its ugly head again. No-one, I repeat no-one, has said this.
Proxima is right that no-one explicitly
said this, but this is the premise that people
acted upon. Let me point you to
the thread of my very first pack (Old-Formats only), Paralems.
The discussion arose because several people reported problems in terms of the supposed impossibility to solve my level "Skies aflame" (Disgusting rank, level 10), which also appears on the Encore rank of Lemmings World Tour.
Specifically, they were unaware that the lemmings on that level were pre-assigned Swimmers right out of the hatch. Note that there was no automatic hatch labeling in Old Formats when it came to pre-assigned skills; instead, people would use Pickup Skills (sometimes set to "fake", sometimes covered by steel, both to prevent these pickups from actually being collectible) to label their hatches. While this is certainly convenient, I still don't consider it necessary to this day.
This practice became particularly absurd when a) it was applied to pre-placed single lemmings (some level designers would put Pickup Skills onto the terrain below or above those pre-placed lemmings as "labels"; New Formats automatically shows the symbols above a pre-placed lemming's head at the beginning of a level); and b) when you had multiple hatches overlapping to effectively produce one hatch releasing different types of lemmings. My levels "Beware of collectivism" from Pit Lems and "Born this way" from Lemmings World Tour were kind of a response to this discussion, in order to demonstrate that absurdity.
So far, I haven't seen any general consensus yet that overlapping hatches would be considered unfair, btw. For example, they're also frequently used to successively release lemmings facing to the left and to the right. In New Formats, this can be identified by the arrow above the hatch pointing in both directions. When it comes to different pre-assigned skills coming out of the same hatch, though, the Old-Formats labeling tradition was actually more convenient, because it allowed you to place the pickup skills next to each other. In New Formats, skill labels will only be placed next to each other if you have athletes (=with more than one permanent skill) coming out of the same hatch; however, if you have one hatch with Climbers and one hatch with Floaters overlapping, the labels will also overlap, making them hard to identify.
Anyways, people believed this level with pre-assigned Swimmers could not be solved "just from looking at it". It didn't occur to me how anyone could come to this conclusion, partly because I didn't know about the tradition of hatch labeling, but also because I didn't consider it necessary,
given that you would see those lemmings are Swimmers as soon as the first one gets released from the hatch.
Here are the specific quotes:Also, I believe Disgusting 10 is impossible just looking at it. I even used clear physics mode to see if there were hidden exits which there weren't.
I also thought Disgusting 10 was impossible just from looking... And then I started it and saw that all the Lemmings were swimmers.
3) Do you have a working replay for "Skies aflame" (Disgusting 10)? As far as I can tell the hatch and the exit are completely separated by the steel wall and the fire trigger areas on the top.
Are you sure all of those are fire areas?
(Explanation: "Skies aflame" is a fire level; Nepster apparently forgot that the lava in the orig_fire tileset is regular water. This was nothing I changed about the level!
)
Ok, this is a perfect example why markes above exits with preassigned skills are so useful. I paused before the first lemming appeared and then decided the level is impossible due to the missing swimmers.
Note: Nepster wrote "exit" here when he probably meant "hatch", because exits can't have preassigned skills.
But he mixed up those two terms in that same thread elsewhere again, when he spoke of lemmings going "into a hatch" (which is impossible). I think he maybe regarded the hatches as "exits" from which lemmings are released into a level, but I doubt most other users would resort to this terminology.
Skies aflame: You are absolutely correct, but I have the tendency to pause even before the first lemmings appears and to plan my route...
Here you can clearly see people giving up on the level before they have even attempted the execution. More than that, they actively reported this to me as an "error" or "impossible level" before even trying (when I had made sure all my levels were solvable and had saved replays for every single one of them to prove it).
This level "Skies aflame" exposed that because it's literally impossible to overlook the relevant information as soon as you start the level for the first time. You can only fall victim to that confusion if you have never even once allowed a single lemming to leave the hatch.
That's what I mean by "people acted upon" the premise that it should be possible to solve the entire level in their head first before even attempting it in practice.
This was my response:It's quite baffling to me that people claim a level were impossible even before they have actually tried to play it ^^. And no, calculating through everything in your head might be "trying to solve it", but not "trying to play it". Even pure puzzle levels often require some trial and error, e.g. because a player can easily under- or overestimate the length of a builder / platformer, or the angle of a miner / fencer, or just the time a lemming needs to get somewhere. Even some of Nepster's levels, which I would consider the epitome of "puzzly", have such timing challenges involved. How would you be supposed to solve these types of levels just by thinking through everything in your head?
In contrast, me personally, I would never go as far as accusing someone of having made an impossible level without at least having tried a couple of things by clicking through them. If the solution doesn't work out in my head, I usually tend to think I'm too stupid to mentally crack the levels of more experienced players / level designers, and decide to just give it a go by trying some stuff.
Nobody accused me of having misrepresented their position back then (Proxima was also in the thread, he didn't do so either). And looking over that discussion again now,
I fail to see how I was strawmanning anyone here? When several people
provably felt "entitled" enough to a completely pre-level-start cognitive solution that they would report a level as impossible before even having made a single practical attempt?
I will acknowledge though that this philosophy may have changed in the meantime, because one of the strongest proponents of "strictly-fair puzzle philosophy" - that is Nepster - is currently no longer active in the forums.
The other issue regarding hidden traps was really more about to what extent traps can be considered "hidden". Specifically, Paralems got (in-)famous for animal traps, i.e. "hiding" traps behind terrain shaped like animals. Meaning, from a purely game-mechanical perspective, those traps would count as hidden, but flavour-wise, it's completely obvious where the traps are.
I do like how you put the traps behind the creatures. It just looks neat, even though there are some who I know will hate this.
nin10doadict then actually went on to employ this trap design on one of his levels himself ("Super Mecha Death Gators" from CasuaLemmings).
But he made sure to credit me for the general idea within the landscape of that level!