Status: Done for the next update.
There are a few options in the Inspector menu, that are there for historical reasons, but are completely at odds with the current best practices in level design.
Here is a list of them
- Invisible Terrain: Actually I haven't yet found a way to select this option, but I cannot think of any use of invisible terrain, except to annoy players with unfair tricks.
- Fake Terrain: I cannot select this either, but it falls again into the category "cheap tricks to annoy players".
- Only on Terrain Object: I remember one Lemmix level using this for design purposes. But I cannot think of any other purposes (except to annoy players again)? I don't think design purposes are enough reason to keep this (especially as the very first option!).
- Flip Objects: This is very useful for several objects. However this is COMPLETELY misleading for preplaced lemmings, because this does not change the direction they are facing in the level and you are ending up with lemming walking to the right while facing left in the editor :devil:. So please disable this for preplaced lemmings!
A similar problem have hatches, because the way they are displayed has nothing to do with the direction the lemming drop out. However I have no idea how to properly solve this, because some hatches are plain ugly when flipped, while other look still good. - Fake Objects: Using this is EXTREMELY bad level design!
- Invisible Triggers: What does this option actually do, except hiding important information? And how can I select this?
- Invisible Objects: Ok, here I can imagine a few proper uses: If one wants to slightly extend the trigger area of a continuous trap without messing with the visual display. But even this is on the border of bad level design. Nevertheless most uses will just be a major annoyance to players. So no big deal removing this.
- Bottom right dropdown box: Another completely unintuitive box with no explanation at all. But more important: This is only useful if one added additional steel areas, which is bad level design in the first place. So there is no reasong to add a mysterious option just for this purposes. And btw. why can one select "Nothing"? A steel area that does nothing should be removed!
All these options clutter the Inspector menu without adding any purpose. So please remove them and then you have enough space to add tooltips for the remaining options.
I know, that there are some old levels, that can be loaded in the Editor and use these "features". For such level, I would just ignore these settings (because they are bad level design anyway) and display the resulting level. To notify the level designer, display a warning message: "This level uses outdated terrain or object properties." and then a description what general changes were made to that specific level, e.g. "It contained invisible objects, that now are visible."
Quote from: Nepster on January 30, 2016, 11:33:11 AM
- Flip Objects: This is very useful for several objects. However this is COMPLETELY misleading for preplaced lemmings, because this does not change the direction they are facing in the level and you are ending up with lemming walking to the right while facing left in the editor :devil:. So please disable this for preplaced lemmings!
A similar problem have hatches, because the way they are displayed has nothing to do with the direction the lemming drop out. However I have no idea how to properly solve this, because some hatches are plain ugly when flipped, while other look still good.
For hatches, in my opinion I'd rather they'd be flipped to prevent confusion on which lemming faces left and which lemming faces right.
Quote from: Nepster on January 30, 2016, 11:33:11 AM
- Fake Objects: Using this is EXTREMELY bad level design!
The only time I use Fake objects is for when I use pickup skills to mark that pre-assigned permanent skill lemmings come out of the trapdoors, to prevent people from picking up the skill by accident. Yet this can still potentially cause confusion in a level that also has pickup skills (none of my levels have done this yet as far as I know). And this, is why we need proper markers.
The standard Lemmings hatch is symmetrical except for the shadows and a small part of the graphic. However, that part doesn't serve to point a particular direction; it just happens not to be fully symmetrical. Flipped hatches would not at all help to indicate which are left-facing, it would only make the shadows look wrong.
A better solution would be an arrow above the hatch to indicate its direction, though I've never felt this to be a problem and I like the more natural appearance of plain hatches.
Quote from: DynaLem on January 30, 2016, 08:18:38 PM
The only time I use Fake objects is for when I use pickup skills to mark that pre-assigned permanent skill lemmings come out of the trapdoors, to prevent people from picking up the skill by accident. Yet this can still potentially cause confusion in a level that also has pickup skills (none of my levels have done this yet as far as I know). And this, is why we need proper markers.
If there is a chance that players will try to reach these pickup skills, then they probably should be placed above steel instead of just turned into fake ones. I would find it very frustrating to try hard to get these skills only to find them to be fake objects.
Of course getting proper markers is still the superior option :).
Some of these (eg. invisible / fake terrain) have never been supported in NeoLemmix; they're in the editor because SuperLemmini supports them, and the editor supports SuperLemmini levels.
Then they can definitely be removed when editing NeoLemmix levels. And I would even remove them for SuperLemmini levels as well: They still lead to bad level design! There is no rule saying that every "feature" of a game must be accessible via the editor.
In order to be able to implement this without a lot of hassle, I would need to be able to edit the Inspector window in the Delphi IDE directly. Currently I can't do this, as EricLang's dialog uses a lot of custom controls. So I would have to either significantly overhaul it, or replace it completely (which is probably a good idea anyway). Fixing that matter would also allow addressing this suggestion (http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=2433.0) at the same time.
I'm putting this at low priority for now, but it's probably one I'll get around to sooner rather than later.
Alright well, with me finally being able to get the forms loading in the Delphi IDE, I was able to do some tidyup without difficulty.
I've rearranged the items so that there's more consistency between the ordering of options for terrain, and the ordering for objects. I've also made it so that SuperLemmini-exclusive options are hidden when editing a NeoLemmix level, and vice versa. I didn't feel that actually removing any options was appropriate.