I have a hard time with prop 1 or prop12. Consider the classic singeplayer beginner's setup of using blockers to hold back the crowd, then blowing up the blocker to free the crowd. If you remove non-flinging bomber1, now the poor player has to deal with the unwanted side effects of the blow-back from the flinging bomber.
That said, can we also consider that maybe instead of focusing on the similarities, we can try to make the two skills feel more distinct then they are now? Maybe call one of them "dynamite" instead of "flinging bomber", and have (more) different animations and skill icons accordingly?
New player screws up his solution by fling-exploder: Even if the player hasn't played the tutorials, not expecting the flinging at all will happen a few times at most. The fling-bomber's approximate effect is easy to anticipate afterwards. It's a normal learning process. Right now, the player has to learn both exploders anyway. Culling bomber 1 will make it easier, not harder, to learn the game.
New player screws up his solution by fling-exploder
Important design goals are simplicity and ease of learning.
I don't think I realized for at least a week after I started playing that there were two kinds of bombers. Even now I get confused as to which icon is which.
Speaking of playing, perhaps experimental validation is in order: [...]I could use sed to replace all L1 bombers with fling bombers, though I'm not happy to manually adapt all of the levels to work just for an experiment...
New player screws up his solution by fling-exploder: Even if the player hasn't played the tutorials, not expecting the flinging at all will happen a few times at most. The fling-bomber's approximate effect is easy to anticipate afterwards. It's a normal learning process. Right now, the player has to learn both exploders anyway. Culling bomber 1 will make it easier, not harder, to learn the game.Yes, but this would be an argument to cull the fling-bomber, not the L1 bomber :lix-mouth:. Even after playing through almost all levels of the community level pack and a good part of ClamLix and Rubix's level pack, I still cannot anticipate the flinging distance. Sometimes I plan to fling Lix X to position Y and the maximum I actually manage is about half the way. In other situations a Lix is flung far beyond the actual target...
If it's because they are similar, well Tribes has a lot of similar skills.
Quote from: Ben HIf it's because they are similar, well Tribes has a lot of similar skills.
It's definitely an anti-goal for Lix to wind up like Lemmings 2 with its borderline-silly cornucopia of 50+ skills.
To be fair, I'm not sure how much the vast skillset in Lemmings 2 actually translates into a learning problem for most people. That is, even for the people who don't like the vastness of the skillset, I'm not so sure that many are actually getting confused or stumped by it, as opposed to simply seeing the vastness of the skillset as inferior and not particularly compelling.
I generally like options allowing for personal preference, but in the timed/untimed case there's the issue namida mentioned. Having a level specific is even worse consistency-wise, as it essentially means having 4 skills all of which can be used in single player, rather than Proposition 2 where we have 4 different behaviors, but only 2 pertain to singleplayer and arguably only 1 to multiplayer (who wants non-fling bombers in multiplayer?).
I think avoiding skill redundancy is more about elegance, simplicity and having a few concepts used to their fullest instead of a lot of concepts that are just touched here and there
Ben H: Are you by any chance the Ben Hunter who created Cheapo levels back in the day?
Doing this can change a lot of singleplayer maps to be broken.The only change in game mechanics discussed right now, seems to be the removal of timers to bombers. As far as I know, there are only very few levels, that might be affected by instant bombers (e.g. Won't get fooled again, though I can't confirm that right now).
challenge that timing can bringFor singleplayer, many consider that a chore, not a welcome challenge.
The choice between (2) and (3) is whether consistency or ease-of-use is more important.
To make the difference really explicit, you could have the length of the timer as part of the symbol (5' in MP, 0' in SP).What on earth would be the point of a bomber with a five-minute timer? :lix-winktongue:
Does this mean it will continue to be possible to have both exploders and bombers in the same level?
An exploder assignment in a replay doesn't carry information about whether the exploder is timed or not. This is inferred by the number of players.
I am making a longer animation for the non-fling exploder. I'll show sprites when it's done. The exploder will stand still while going through the anim, as before. Thus, the crater is at the same position as when played back in the current Lix version. The explosion will happen a few frames later.
QuoteAn exploder assignment in a replay doesn't carry information about whether the exploder is timed or not. This is inferred by the number of players.
This sounds like a recipe for disaster. [...] always record their position as if they were untimed
QuoteI am making a longer animation for the non-fling exploder. I'll show sprites when it's done. The exploder will stand still while going through the anim, as before. Thus, the crater is at the same position as when played back in the current Lix version. The explosion will happen a few frames later.
This is also potentially going to cause issues, particularly if other lixes pass through at the same time.
==> replaycheck-2015-06-02.txt <== (stable version, large head, takes 4 frames to explode)
53x (FAIL): replay names an existing level file, but doesn't solve it.
803x (OK): replay names an existing level file and solves that level.
==> replaycheck-2015-07-08.txt <== (detonator, takes 8 frames to explode)
67x (FAIL): replay names an existing level file, but doesn't solve it.
789x (OK): replay names an existing level file and solves that level.
==> replaycheck-2015-07-12.txt <== (no animation, instant explosion)
87x (FAIL): replay names an existing level file, but doesn't solve it.
769x (OK): replay names an existing level file and solves that level.
Non-fling exploders will not go through an animation after countdown, before explosion.