I've been playing around with the Spear Thrower a little yesterday, and here's one interesting thing I've found out about how it behaves in L2:
- if you throw a spear into a wall and then climb it up, the lemming will actually climb through the spear from the bottom; but when he hits the ceiling and falls back down, he will walk on top of the spear
That's a bit surprising. Are we talking regular climber or rock climber? Any way to see some screenshots or a video (eg. angle of spear)?
With a rock climber and a suitably angled spear, I could see the rock climber climb around the angled underside of the spear to reach the top side, but that's quite different from literally going through the spear.
If the spear touches the wall low enough, I can see a regular climber ignoring that low point of intersection when it started climbing (ie. its head is already above the spear when it started climbing), but that also doesn't sound like what you are describing either.
I think most people would likely consider the described Lemmings 2 behavior unexpected and buggy. The only way it makes sense is if in Lemmings 2 and unlike Lemmings 1, they more generally added some overhang tolerance for the regular climber so that it doesn't fall as easily.
If all of these answers are no, however, that would reduce the versatility of the Spear Thrower - and therefore its range of applicability - drastically.
Maybe, but it doesn't really need all those extra corner cases to be useful IMO.
But it's interesting you point that out. Even in Lemmings 2 there is at least one interesting interaction I know of, that makes sense in real life but might not be necessarily expected by the player:
A traveling spear can pop the ballooner's balloon!
That's a bit surprising. Are we talking regular climber or rock climber?
Good thing you made me double-check that! ;) I was talking about the Rock Climber. However, he doesn't go around the spear, he simply pulls himself through the spear with the Hoister animation.
The regular Climber will simply bump his head on the spear and fall straight down, like when hitting a normal ceiling.
That said, the NeoLemmix climber does now possess some abilities of the Rock Climber, like transitioning into a Shimmier at the ceiling (a regular L2 Climber never dangles from the ceiling, which is the animation you need for the transition to a Shimmier). So it's somewhere in between. Still, I think bumping his head on the spear would be the expected behaviour for the Climber in NeoLemmix; transitioning into a Shimmier would of course be possible one frame before that (since NeoLemmix doesn't use the dangling animation).
Regarding your spoiler: ;)
Cool, I didn't know Spear Thrower and Ballooner interacted in this way! ;) I guess it also works with the Archer? Not only that; it also seems like passing through the balloon flattens the curve of the spear, so that it's more likely to create a horizontal platform.
Anyways, neither of this will be relevant in NeoLemmix, since we probably won't ever get the Ballooner.