Poll
Question:
What's your thoughts?
Option 1: No limit, a level should be able to use every type of skill simultaneously
votes: 3
Option 2: The limit should be greatly increased (~16 or so)
votes: 1
Option 3: The limit should be slightly increased (~10 or so)
votes: 6
Option 4: The limit should stay as it is (8 skill types)
votes: 0
With the upcoming addition of the Shimmier, and a bit further down the track, the Jumper, we may be getting to the point where we want to allow more than 8 skill types per level. Indeed, even with only the current 17 skills (and even some cases pre-Fencer), I've occasionally found myself having to adjust levels to work with the 8 skill limitation.
What do people think here? Should we increase the limit? Should we get rid of it altogether? How should we allow for this on the skill panel? One possibility here is, if there are more than 8 skills, the furthest left / right turns into a "scroll left" / "scroll right" button, and only 6 skills are displayed at a time, or 7 if the user is at the edge. Another option might be to shrink the buttons to 2/3rds of their current height, and have two rows (increasing the skill panel's height by 1/3rd of a button), allowing for up to 16 skill types - and maybe more, if we also shrink the non-skill buttons accordingly.
Or, do people think this is fine as it is?
For now I tend to a slight increase, but the implementation is tricky and must be discussed. In that the main problem is located and if we find a good way, I would be completely fine with a higher increase.
Shrinking the buttons in width is only enough for a slight increase and will require customs buttons to be redrawn.
2 rows with a lower heigth would still have a limit of 16, would require redrawing of all custom buttons and would introduce the Lix "korean washing machine" effect of overloading the UI with tons of buttons.
The "scroll left" / "scroll right" idea seems more future-oriented to me, while also avoiding the "korean washing machine" effect. A limit might still be desirable when the skill type number increases even more over time and I think nobody here wants to scroll through a huge list. ;)
This of course has the disadvantage of not displaying everything at the same time. Testing needs to be done here I think.......
YES! YES! PLEASE! :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
For aesthetic purposes, though (and this included preserving visual similarity to the original Lemmings games), I'd suggest sticking to the classic 8-skills-bar as long as that threshold is not exceeded. The Lix skillbar, where all skills are visible all the time, including those you don't have any of in a given level, I find to be quite "cluttered" - too many buttons you don't need that can easily distract from the intended solution. I get why the Lix developers chose to have it this way, and I don't want to throw shade on them, but for NeoLemmix, I'd prefer a more efficient use of the space on the skillbar.
So there are basically three options, as far as I can see it:
- When the number of skill types exceeds 8, the section of the bar dedicated to skills (rather than the Minimap, Replay/Rewind buttons etc.) remains the same size, but the cells for the individual skills get smaller. In this case, one would have to put this to a litmus test to see how small the individual skill button can actually get when you throw in all skill types which are currently available.
- The skill bar expands - most likely to the right - when additional skills are added, at the cost of shrinking the other components. Most likely, this would mean making the Minimap less wide, since buttons like Pause/Nuke/Rewind/Clear Physics should remain the same size as the skill buttons. This would not require the buttons to be redrawn, but the Minimap would have to be able to adapt in size - not gradually, fortunately, but at least step-wise, becoming one step smaller for each increase of the skill bar beyond 8.
- Scrolling through a skill bar which is only partly visible - totally had not thought of that. That somehwat violates the "immediacy" philosophy though, which has already lead to changes that follow principles such as "one should never have to use clear physics", the level itself should show you everything you need to know right from the start.
Quote from: IchoLix "korean washing machine" effect of overloading the UI with tons of buttons.
Quote from: StratoLix skillbar, where all skills are visible all the time, including those you don't have any of in a given level, I find to be quite "cluttered" - too many buttons you don't need that can easily distract from the intended solution. I get why the Lix developers chose to have it this way, and I don't want to throw shade on them
Please destroy the Lix UI with the harshest criticism you can muster. I want to get brutal and honest feedback, it's the only way to improve Lix. "Korean washing machine", a 2016 thread on Lix skill panel (https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=2934.0)
Lix limited to 8 first, then to 12 because everybody wanted more than 8, and then 12 out of 14 made no sense because all 14 is only 2 more and much simpler. Thus now 14.
Right, all this is really 2 questions, (a) what to allow in level design and (b) how to make the UI.
Quote from: IchoThe "scroll left" / "scroll right" idea seems more future-oriented to me
This is dangerous. Information about leftover skills is so vital, I would not hide it behind buttons or scrollbars.
But I can't give a counterproposal yet, I'll sleep over this exciting design problem.
-- Simon
My suggestion: Add potential for two more skills, i.e. 10 in total. By shrinking the minimap, we can fit them in nicely. As this would mean making the menu bar more adaptive to the number of skills in the level, I would go even as far as: Never display any empty skill panels, but use the newly freed space for the minimap (so that a level with just two skills would have a huge minimap).
Quote from: Strato Incendus on May 15, 2019, 01:43:48 PM
When the number of skill types exceeds 8, the section of the bar dedicated to skills (rather than the Minimap, Replay/Rewind buttons etc.) remains the same size, but the cells for the individual skills get smaller. In this case, one would have to put this to a litmus test to see how small the individual skill button can actually get when you throw in all skill types which are currently available.
As we currently store everything in pixelated sprites, I fear that they will look horrible when shrinking the cells.
Quote from: Strato Incendus on May 15, 2019, 01:43:48 PM
The skill bar expands - most likely to the right - when additional skills are added, at the cost of shrinking the other components. Most likely, this would mean making the Minimap less wide, since buttons like Pause/Nuke/Rewind/Clear Physics should remain the same size as the skill buttons. This would not require the buttons to be redrawn, but the Minimap would have to be able to adapt in size - not gradually, fortunately, but at least step-wise, becoming one step smaller for each increase of the skill bar beyond 8.
As mentioned above, I like a solution similar to this, but remember some previous discussions that this would only work for at most 10 skills in total. Note that even now NeoLemmix supports some different minimap sizes (IIRC depending on window size and zoom factor), so this should not be too much work regarding the minimap.
Quote from: Strato Incendus on May 15, 2019, 01:43:48 PM
Scrolling through a skill bar which is only partly visible - totally had not thought of that. That somehwat violates the "immediacy" philosophy though, which has already lead to changes that follow principles such as "one should never have to use clear physics", the level itself should show you everything you need to know right from the start.
As Simon already mentioned, the skills are so vital to the game, that they should always be displayed.
PS: I prefer the NeoLemmix system over the Lix system of always displaying all skills, because the Lix system would mean lots of grayed-out buttons (because the skill is not used in the level) and less flexibility regarding additions of new skills.
10 skills would also be fine for me for the time being - oftentimes I only find myself one skill type short of implementing my intended solution, so these two could already make a huge difference! ;)
It just depends on how many new skills are going to be impemented over the years - and how they interact with others. For example, cloners and walkers offer lots of interactions with other skills, whereas jumper and shimmier do not (except for both interacting with the glider to some extent, e.g. you can jump on a stacker's stack by assigning a shimmier to a glider right next to the stack).
The more a given skill can interact with others, the more different skill types you can use to create interesting solutions, thus evoking the need in level creators to have more than 8 skills.
For shimmiers and also the planned jumpers, I don't see that issue that much yet, though. ;)
2 more would already be good and only displaying used skill panels while ditching unused ones in favor of a flexible minimap sounds like a nice bonus on top of it. :)
I'm a little bit torn on this, while having every skill in the level would be stellar, i'm in the boat where around 12 skills max would be good enough for me.
The skill bar would need to both Expand and Collapse for that
QuoteNote that even now NeoLemmix supports some different minimap sizes (IIRC depending on window size and zoom factor), so this should not be too much work regarding the minimap.
NeoLemmix only supports two fixed sizes, although simply the fact that code exists to account for that probably gives us an excellent starting point - if we can generate these two sizes, we can probably generate any arbitrary size. One size is used if the user has the Compact Skill Panel option enabled; the other size is used if they don't. IIRC, both minimaps are the same width, but the non-compact panel one is taller. That's it, currently; the minimap does zoom along with the skill panel, but this is just a direct zoom of the final minimap image, it doesn't show extra area and/or display at a higher resolution.
As I mentioned, I do find that on some particularly wide levels - some of the early levels in United, and in particular Revolution 13 "Sadistic Lemming Factory" in SEBLems which has an entrance on either side (and an exit in the middle) on a level I'd estimate as about 5 screens wide - the current minimap is already a bit small. The main points of the minimap are a level overview, and to quickly scroll; it doesn't achieve the former very well at all, and it's somewhat poor for the latter too, currently, and shrinking it would make this worse.
If we're going to downsize it even further - even as a "only happens dynamically when more room is needed for skills" basis - I think we need to discuss some approach to address that, perhaps allowing the minimap to increase or decrease its own zoom, either based on level size or based on user input (I would be okay with a slight further shrink to make room for clickable zoom buttons here, as the zoom feature itself would more or less make up for the lost size). Perhaps also worth considering, is not applying a dumb zoom to a rendered-at-1x minimap, but rather operating at native resolution regardless of skill panel zoom (and showing more area, or the same area at higher resolution, when the skill panel zoom is > 1x) - however this feels like it will be very tricky to implement.
I'm sure what to think about this one. I mean, the limit was noticeable to me e. g. when I was making one of the recent contest entries, and thought that the tasks and tricks within the level could be more varied but at the same time those skills need panels, and panels need room in the UI...
Though I think that it may be possible to get rid of some of the less useful buttons in the expanded UI? Maybe? But the question of the standard UI still remains.
"The limit should be slightly increased (~10 or so)" is what I picked as it seems most are in favor of this or at least okay with it. I don't think I'd like to see a major overhaul of the skill bar (other than graphically, possibly with default color scheme but I know this is already customizable).
I wouldn't mind honestly if it didn't change; it's not a priority for me really.
on Lix: in multiplayer I find having more than 5 or so skills problematic. It's just too many variables to keep track of in the heat of battle. For single player that's not an issue however; I think ~8 has always worked for me in puzzle making and playing. It's not restrictive yet not too overwhelming. It feels right, not too much, not too few, but as I said 1 or 2 more wouldn't hurt I don't think. But I don't think I'd really like to see more than that.
on button arrangement:
1) how about moving or getting rid of the nuke? I never liked it next to pause anyway; chance of accidentally clicking that instead of pause (even though it must be double-pressed) and we have F12.
2) how about merging the two release rate buttons into one. left click could go down and right click could go up or visa versa.
-the pause is another option to remove/letting players know about a hotkey. Many games I've seen in the past (including Lemmings revolution) have no button but a hotkey for pause. Many steam games these days have escape as a default pause button.
on the minimap: now that we have the zoom feature I stopped using the mini map a lot less. Although the zoom feature apparently can't go all the way out (I learned this just last weekend), it would be really nice if it could. Also the minimap now not showing the entire screen lessened it's useful for me as well. The whole point I liked about the original L1 minimap was it let you see lemmings everywhere and let you quickly get to anywhere in the level. That use is almost totally negated these days by these factors.
Quoteon button arrangement:
1) how about moving or getting rid of the nuke? I never liked it next to pause anyway; chance of accidentally clicking that instead of pause (even though it must be double-pressed) and we have F12.
2) how about merging the two release rate buttons into one. left click could go down and right click could go up or visa versa.
-the pause is another option to remove/letting players know about a hotkey. Many games I've seen in the past (including Lemmings revolution) have no button but a hotkey for pause. Many steam games these days have escape as a default pause button.
A corrupted or just poorly-set-up hotkey configuration, combined with removing the nuke, could leave a player with no way to terminate gameplay. By keeping the nuke button, this cannot happen - the user always has that there as a way out. Pause is also an important enough feature that I wouldn't want to rely solely on a hotkey for that either. Perhaps some of the utility buttons in the non-compact skill panel could be removed, though.
Quoteon the minimap: now that we have the zoom feature I stopped using the mini map a lot less. Although the zoom feature apparently can't go all the way out (I learned this just last weekend), it would be really nice if it could. Also the minimap now not showing the entire screen lessened it's useful for me as well. The whole point I liked about the original L1 minimap was it let you see lemmings everywhere and let you quickly get to anywhere in the level. That use is almost totally negated these days by these factors.
The zoom feature is limited to zooming out as far as "1 physics pixel = 1 on-screen pixel". Note that NeoLemmix is not DPI-aware (and for good reason - the CPU-based graphics rendering is painfully slow on 1440p or 4K displays, if NeoLemmix has to resize itself, rather than letting the OS's resize take care of it; 1080p is pretty much the highest resolution you can get away with using without OS-based scaling), so if you have a high-DPI display, then this is more "1 physics pixel = 1 on-screen
logical pixel".
I agree with increasing available skills to 10. I have occasionally seen designers complain about being unable to implement an idea they had because of the current limit. Also, it would mean that "crash course" levels (where the first levels of a pack introduce the skills as many at a time as possible) could get through all the skills in only two levels.
I don't like the suggestion to make the minimap variable-sized. It's true that it doesn't cope well with large levels, but there's no reason to think size of level is negatively correlated with number of skill types (if anything, you'd expect to see positive correlation).
Instead, we could get rid of some of the "Korean washing machine" buttons. Directional select can go; it's much more convenient to use a hotkey.
Nuke doesn't have much purpose any more; it's mostly a relic of L1. To namida's argument --
Quote from: namida on May 17, 2019, 12:25:26 AMA corrupted or just poorly-set-up hotkey configuration, combined with removing the nuke, could leave a player with no way to terminate gameplay.
-- a simple answer would be to make Escape a non-remappable "exit" key. There might be a problem for new players if we remove the nuke -- they might solve a level but have remaining blockers, and not realise that exiting via Escape will count as solving the level as opposed to aborting it. Still, if we make a new intro pack at some point, it could showcase this exact scenario to teach the use of Escape.
The pause button is also not much needed, because NL has so many levels where assignments must be made precisely, now that framestepping tools allow for this, that moving the mouse down to the pause button is simply too slow most of the time. I somewhat sympathise with namida's point here, though, so if we decide on removing two buttons to allow two more skills, I would go for directional select and nuke, keeping the pause.
Quote from: Proxima on May 17, 2019, 12:55:11 AM
I don't like the suggestion to make the minimap variable-sized. It's true that it doesn't cope well with large levels, but there's no reason to think size of level is negatively correlated with number of skill types (if anything, you'd expect to see positive correlation).
Instead, we could get rid of some of the "Korean washing machine" buttons. Directional select can go; it's much more convenient to use a hotkey.
If you select the "Compact Skill Panel" (which is the old-style one) in "Options -> Interface", you don't get the "Korean washing machine" button like directional select, you just have nuke, pause and fast forward.
Nevertheless suggestions like removing nuke and fast forward (and make Esc non-configurable, so that players can't lock themselves out) sound like sensible alternatives to shrinking the minimap.
Hard-binding Esc is conceivable, I have no opinion on this.
Removing nuke is a physics change, a handful of levels rely on the nuke. Nuke serves as a replay terminator: Solution creators prevent failing replays from running for 5 minutes. Otherwise okay.
You can put buttons in the info bar where the in-game stats get printed.
Minimap already fails at what it should do, see mobius. Minimap can be obsolete if zoom is good, apparently zoom is not good enough to see entire map. I never use the minimap, I have ultra-wide monitor at 3440x1440.
Make minimap toggle-able in-game? Then you toggle between full row of buttons (no minimap), and nice large minimap, some people want proper minimap.
Removing dir select buttons: Careful. What you remove from the UI, the new player will not try. People will not read manuals. Level designers get crazy about making their own skill tutorials (unnecessary, skills are in the panel, tutorial pack exist for skill subtleties that level designers can miss anyway) but haven't/won't make directional select tutorials (with good reason, it's the job of the engine to explain it). Also people won't play tutorials; people play packs, and not every pack has that; if every pack had that, people would skip it. Lix has tooltips for dir select whenever two opposing lixes are under the cursor, but I haven't user-tested those tooltips.
Splat ruler should get a button?
-- Simon
About removing buttons: I would strongly advice not to and I am completely against removing stuff like pause, nuke, fast forward......
Yes the hotkey is better and faster, I completely agree there, but the reason they are there in the first place is that these functions are not hidden! New players tend to use near to no hotkeys and the functions stay hidden. The nuke button is vital to some levels and players not knowing the hotkey would be screwed!
I would rather merge some buttons in a way like like the 2 in 1 directional select one than removing them. I rather risk having more of them than removing and hiding them.
I might have a method of making this plan work, but it'll need some more icons, hotkeys and programming to pull this off. How about we replace the third and tenth tabs (i.e. where the climber and digger icons are traditionally placed) with a previous/next page button. So when the player clicks one of these two buttons the six skill types shown on the screen are replaced by the next six and so on.
If that can be pulled off, you can have up to 12 or 18 skills at once. In the classic skillset, the seventh and eighth skill won't be lost, it would appear on the next "page".
In such a case, you wouldn't need to display the scroll buttons unless there's 9 or more skills - indeed, I would say we shouldn't display them unless there's 9 or more; this way more attention is drawn to that there's extra ones to scroll to.
But overall, page-flipping is essentially just a variation of scrolling, which seems very unpopular as an approach to deal with this. If we do increase the limit, it's most likely going to be one of the following ways:
a) Shrink the minimap
b) Increase the total width of the skill panel
c) Remove or shrink some of the existing buttons
There is of course a limit on how many extra skills we can squeeze in with this - 9 total is definitely doable, 10 should be possible, if we want more than that we'd probably have to use a combination of those approaches. But this is okay - the strongest preference seems to be for just a slight increase.
I would definitely say - regardless of decisions (other than a decision of "don't change anything", which seems extremely unlikely), we should approach this in a way that, the behind-the-scenes code can handle unlimited skill types, and only the UI limits things. This way, it'll make things easier if there's ever a decision in the future to accomodate an even higher limit.
In regards to increasing the panel's width - when the current-standard (ie: non-compact, with the extra feature buttons and the larger minimap) panel was introduced, some users complained it appeared too small on their screen, because there wasn't room to zoom it further. Let's consider - on common resolutions, can we add 16px (the width of one button) to each skill panel type, without forcing a lower level of zoom? What about 32px?
To start off with, some details to be aware of:
- I am assuming full-screen here. If anyone has any particularly specific setups using a windowed display that they're concerned about, please mention this so they can be taken into account.
- NeoLemmix is DPI-unaware. This means that, for example, if your display resolution is 1920x1080, but you have Windows scaling set to 150%, NeoLemmix thinks it's running on a 1280x720 resolution display (with the upscaling from that performed by the OS, not by NeoLemmix). I will account for (a) the most common cases, (b) cases that I personally use, or (c) cases that anyone else mentions they personally use.
- When unzoomed, the standard skill panel is 416px wide.
- When unzoomed, the compact skill panel is 320px wide.
- Both skill panels are 40px tall. Irrelevant here, but mentioning for completeness's sake.
- These widths include the minimap, and the height includes the information text above the actual skills. In terms of NeoLemmix's internal workings, this entire area is the skill panel, and is rendered / zoomed as one large area.
Again - please let me know if you use a resolution or zoom factor not covered here, so it can be taken into account to decide whether widening is feasible.Resolutions overview
Sample resolution
- Standard panel: Current {#1}, +16px {#2}, +32px {#3}
- Compact panel: Current {#1}, +16px {#2}, +32px {#3}
- Importance: {How important do I think accounting for this resolution is?}
#1 - The maximum zoom level the panel can be displayed at, at the current size.
#2 - The maximum zoom level the panel could be displayed at, if the width were increased by 16px.
#3 - The maximum zoom level the panel could be displayed at, if the width were increased by 32px.
640x480
- Standard panel: Current (1x), +16px (1x), +32px (1x)
- Compact panel: Current (2x), +16px (1x), +32px (1x)
- Importance: Probably very low. I suspect few people use this anymore.
800x600
- Standard panel: Current (1x), +16px (1x), +32px (1x)
- Compact panel: Current (2x), +16px (2x), +32px (2x)
- Importance: Also probably very low and not much used anymore. Not to mention, it's completely unaffected by the addition of even 32px, on either panel.
1024x768
- Standard panel: Current (2x), +16px (2x), +32px (2x)
- Compact panel: Current (3x), +16px (3x), +32px (2x)
- Importance: Probably the most common resolution among 4:3 holdouts, so maybe a bit more important than the other 4:3's.
1280x720 and 1280x1024 (Also: 1920x1080 with 150% scaling; 2560x1440 with 200% scaling; 3840x2160 with 300% scaling)
- Standard panel: Current (3x), +16px (2x), +32px (2x)
- Compact panel: Current (4x), +16px (3x), +32px (3x)
- Importance: 1280x720 is probably quite important; as most 1080p displays (which are becoming increasingly common) are by default set to 150% scaling.
1366x768
- Standard panel: Current (3x), +16px (3x), +32px (3x)
- Compact panel: Current (4x), +16px (4x), +32px (3x)
- Importance: Pretty much the most common display resolution these days, especially for laptops, so very important.
1536x864 (Rarely if ever used directly, but 3840x2160 at 250% scaling is this)
- Standard panel: Current (3x), +16px (3x), +32px (3x)
- Compact panel: Current (4x), +16px (4x), +32px (4x)
- Importance: I believe 250% is the default scaling for 4K screens, although 4K screens themself aren't too common yet. But regardless - this one needs no special attention, as everything fits.
1650x1050
- Standard panel: Current (3x), +16px (3x), +32px (3x)
- Compact panel: Current (5x), +16px (4x), +32px (4x)
- Importance: Was common on slightly older hardware, I believe it's pretty rare on newer gear.
1920x1080 (Also: 3840x2160 at 200% scaling)
- Standard panel: Current (4x), +16px (4x), +32px (4x)
- Compact panel: Current (6x), +16px (5x), +32px (5x)
- Importance: Although the resolution itself is very common, use of it without some >100% scaling is rare (though not unheard of - I myself prefer to be at 100% scaling on a 1920x1080 display). However, one counter-argument there is that an effective resolution (ie: the resolution NeoLemmix thinks it's running at, before OS scaling is applied) of 1920x1080 is pretty much the highest that NeoLemmix runs smoothly at even on high-end hardware, so some people might deliberately aim for this.
2560x1440
- Standard panel: Current (6x), +16px (5x), +32px (5x)
- Compact panel: Current (8x), +16px (7x), +32px (7x)
- Importance: Low. NeoLemmix doesn't run smoothly anyway when (it thinks) it's running at resolutions this high.
3840x2160
- Standard panel: Current (9x), +16px (8x), +32px (8x)
- Compact panel: Current (12x), +16px (11x), +32px (10x)
- Importance: Low. NeoLemmix doesn't run smoothly anyway when (it thinks) it's running at resolutions this high.
Overall - the compact panel gets hit much harder by this than the standard one, going against the whole reason it was implemented. This alone might be grounds not to do this for the compact panel (as there's no rule saying we can't eg. increase the with on the standard one, while shrinking the minimap or shrinking the pause / nuke buttons on the compact panel).
The standard panel on the other hand is only affected, out of the common cases, at a (perceived) resolution that's 1280px wide; or at resolutions where NL won't run well anyway. But 1280px wide is one of the most common, possibly even
the most common, resolution widths, so it definitely needs to be considered...
Quote from: Simon on May 17, 2019, 08:19:24 AM
Hard-binding Esc is conceivable, I have no opinion on this.
Removing dir select buttons: Careful. What you remove from the UI, the new player will not try. People will not read manuals. Level designers get crazy about making their own skill tutorials (unnecessary, skills are in the panel, tutorial pack exist for skill subtleties that level designers can miss anyway) but haven't/won't make directional select tutorials (with good reason, it's the job of the engine to explain it). Also people won't play tutorials; people play packs, and not every pack has that; if every pack had that, people would skip it. Lix has tooltips for dir select whenever two opposing lixes are under the cursor, but I haven't user-tested those tooltips.
Splat ruler should get a button?
I feel it important to point out that people have been using the directional select literally years (it first existed in the windows port? so 1996ish) before it ever gotten buttons on the skill panel in NL. Again I point out that many games nowadays features so-called hotkeys and no buttons. Pressing keys without any kind of visual button the screen is very common.
Tooltips is an excellent device for new players. I usually find them very helpful in any game/program.
Since everybody is in disagreement over the skill panel maybe making the whole game size bigger as namida suggests in the best solution.
-------------
another idea on 'removing' a button is to place the release rate change function up to overtop of entrances (this is how Revolution worked--you left or right clicked the entrances and the number appeared temporarily above it). That would free up one more space.
QuoteAgain I point out that many games nowadays features so-called hotkeys and no buttons. Pressing keys without any kind of visual button the screen is very common.
Most games nowdays also have gameplay not even remotely comparable to Lemmings. Probably the closest would be RTS games; I'm not familiar with the super-modern ones, but I recall every game in the Age of Empires series would have on-screen buttons for everything - albeit with some of the more advanced features hidden if you don't enable an "advanced mode".
Quoteanother idea on 'removing' a button is to place the release rate change function up to overtop of entrances (this is how Revolution worked--you left or right clicked the entrances and the number appeared temporarily above it). That would free up one more space.
This might give the impression that each entrance's release rate can be adjusted independently.
I just took a look at what the compact panel looks like - I haven't used it in so long, that I didn't remember off-hand. I know the DOS L1 skill panel (which is also 320px wide) would have room for two more skills, by removing some of the filler between the panels and the minimap / to the right of the minimap - but NL's compact panel has made use of this space for a fast forward button and an increase to the minimap width.
Perhaps this can be reversed - shrink the minimap a tiny bit and remove the fast-forward button. This makes room for two more skills on the compact panel. On the full-size panel, we've got 8 utility buttons that aren't stacked - Pause, Nuke, Fast Forward, Restart, Framestep Back, Framestep Forward, Clear Physics, and Load Replay. (We also have two buttons for directional select, but these are stacked.) Maybe we can stack some of these - I would definitely be okay with stacking the framestep ones in the same way as the directional select. Maybe Fast Forward and Restart can also be stacked - and then, viola, we've got room for two more skills. Perhaps we could stack even more aggressively, to also give a slightly wider minimap - I think this is more beneficial than these buttons being full-height.
Poll results are strongly in favor of a small increase (6 votes for small increase, 3 votes for no limit, no votes for keep as-is or large-but-still-limited increase).
Although the poll didn't suggest an exact number, discussion has very strongly favored setting the new limit at 10. Is there anyone who would prefer a different amount for the new limit, other than for reasons along the lines of "it should be as high as possible"?
Personally, I'd lean towards 10, but I would also be okay with 12, provided we can find a way to make it look nice on the skill panel. (I feel an odd number would be weird, that's why I didn't suggest 11.) I personally can't recall any case where I've wanted to use 10, but can recall several where I've wanted to use 9 - but again, even number is preferable to me here, and I think 10 is still a reasonable amount, as well as probably still relatively easy to fit into the skill panel.
That aside, any further comments for how this should work for the skill panel?
At this point, I feel very strongly against the following:
- Any kind of scroll or page-flip (can be hard to follow for the player)
- The same button being a different size on the compact panel vs the full-size panel (difficult to implement)
- Increasing the dimensions of the panels, especially the compact panel
- Vertical-stacking the release rate button (the only logical way to do this, that still displays all information currently displayed, gives an ~8x7 pixels pre-zoom area each for - and +)
- Removing the Pause or Nuke buttons (could leave players without a known way, or in rare cases any way at all, to pause and exit gameplay respectively)
So I think it's down to these options:
- Removing any of the function buttons (other than Pause and Nuke)
- Shrinking the minimap
- Dynamically resizing the minimap when extra skill slots are needed
- Vertically stacking some of the existing buttons - any stacking must apply to both panels
- Some combination of the above
With resizing the minimap - it should be noticed the minimap size on the full-size panel can only decrease, not increase - it would overlap with the time limit / time taken, otherwise. It could indeed get wider on the compact panel, but it's already wider there - what it lacks on the compact panel is height, but not much that can be done about that.
My preferred overall approach at this point - assuming 10 skills here, still - is as follows:
Full-size skill panel - Vertically stack the framestep buttons, and two other buttons - I'm thinking fast-forward and restart, though I don't feel particularly strongly about it. This makes room for two more skill buttons.
Compact skill panel - Remove the fast forward button. Shrink the minimap by 16px (making it the same width as the minimap on the full-size panel). This makes room for two more skill buttons.
I'd rather not lose minimap width on the full-size panel, and the dynamic resizing would be quite a lot of work to implement. The above should be fairly straightforward to do.
I think the least harmful option would to just shrink the minimap, it'd still be visible even if its just 16px smaller.
Vertical Stacking some buttons may also prove useful, but it'll depend on its execution.
I voted for all the skills on the panel, but I don't mind 10. I'm starting to agree that that's a reasonable enough amount.
Going for one of namida's plans of removing any of the functional buttons, I'd keep the minimap's size as it is, and remove the frame step buttons. I think these icons will cause new players the most confusion, as they might assume that these are directional buttons. I also realise that some of the other functional buttons will need to be moved to make sure the skills work properly.
I would choose out of these options:
- Shrinking the minimap / Dynamically resizing the minimap when extra skill slots are needed
- Vertically stacking some of the existing buttons (Directional select would be the first target)
Quote- Vertically stacking some of the existing buttons (Directional select would be the first target)
Directional select is
already vertically stacked.
Quote from: namida on May 20, 2019, 06:38:32 PM
Directional select is already vertically stacked.
Sorry, I meant single frame-stepping. :-[
what about vertically stacking the RR buttons as well?
I almost never use the "non-compact skill panel" btw, since I'm used to the old one I found no need for the the other buttons. Admittedly I forgot about how many buttons there are now. Considering all these buttons maybe double stacking the panel would be best. In other words have two layers: one for the skill and one for the other buttons. As long as a compact option is still available I won't complain; as I intend to keep using that. The non-compact is not necessary for me; too complicated, and the buttons themselves are too small.
About new players: as pointed out by others they may likely not understand what they do even having them there to see and use. So I don't think it's wholly a matter of ease for new players. For new players simpler is better.
Shrinking the minimap: this would just make the problems I pointed out with it even worse; making it even more useless. Why not just get rid of it?
Quotewhat about vertically stacking the RR buttons as well?
QuoteAt this point, I feel very strongly against the following:
[...]
- Vertical-stacking the release rate button (the only logical way to do this, that still displays all information currently displayed, gives an ~8x7 pixels pre-zoom area each for - and +)
Unless there's
huge support for it, consider this ruled out simply due to the result being kind of impractical.
Double-stacking everything, with full-height buttons, isn't practical. With reduced-height buttons, we'd have to be okay with the buttons being smaller on the compact panel too - I don't want to deal with the
same button being different sizes on each panel.
Made some progress on this. I've changed the existing code so that the limit of 8 is no longer hardcoded into it; instead, a single constant is specified which sets the skill limit (currently at 8) - with, of course, the catch that changing this constant doesn't automatically make room on the skill panel; so the count can be reduced, but not increased.
I've also tested and confirmed that, if I remove a couple of the other buttons to make some room, increasing the limit works fine - so at this point, I just need to modify the skill panels to make room for it.
EDIT: Aaand, done. (For the compact panel, the Fast Forward button is removed and the minimap is 16px less wide.)
I think this looks great! :thumbsup:
I would prefer the bottom one as it still has all the functionality and I think this is still ok in terms of too many buttons.
Yep, bottom idea looks best!
-- Simon
Agreed! :thumbsup: The rewind-, replay- and by extension also the true physics-button didn't need to be as large as they have been until now anyway, at least for me personally, because I always use the keyboard for those things.
Now I just hope enough people who voted for Neutral Lemmings to be introduced first change their vote to expand the skillset, because while I do admit that Neutral Lemmings provide more potential than I thought at first, simply having more degrees of freedom with regard to skill combinations is obviously going to blow the doors open much wider on new level-design possibilities... ;)
QuoteI would prefer the bottom one as it still has all the functionality and I think this is still ok in terms of too many buttons.
The first one was never the final plan, it was a work-in-progress shot.
QuoteNow I just hope enough people who voted for Neutral Lemmings to be introduced first change their vote to expand the skillset, because while I do admit that Neutral Lemmings provide more potential than I thought at first, simply having more degrees of freedom with regard to skill combinations is obviously going to blow the doors open much wider on new level-design possibilities... ;)
It's entirely possible this feature will make it in first regardless of votes, simply because it needs far less testing than neutral lemmings do - we pretty much already know, between running into the skill limit as an obstacle and seeing levels from Lix, that an increased skill limit will be beneficial, so we don't really need much testing for usefulness; and in terms of bug testing, it's a much simpler feature than neutral lemmings (although on the other hand - this is brand new territory, whereas on a technical level neutral lemmings are basically just partial zombies) - indeed, I would already be 95% confident about the current implementation. I don't believe we've got editor support yet (unless Nepster's done it), but if I'm not mistaken, the editor doesn't enforce the 8 skill limit when saving a level anyway; it just complains in the Level Validation tool if you've got more than 8 skills, and this is probably a matter of changing a single constant or conditional in the code. EDIT: Confirmed, this is indeed the case.
As you've likely seen, this feature is confirmed to be coming in V12.6.0. If you discover any issues with it, please post about them in the V12.6.0 experimental topic (or if you're reading this much later, after V12.6.0 has had a stable release, please create a new bug report / suggestion topic).