Don't get me wrong, I made some splat-hatch levels myself, but then it's precisely as you guys said: Catching the crowd is already part of the solution. Poor Wee Creatures is the only level in original Lemmings where I agree this is useful; Bitter Lemming / With a twist of Lemming, please and Steel works, meanwhile, merely delay the actual puzzle with this start. As you will see in the thread Proxima linked to, namida indeed agreed with me that With a twist of Lemming, please is the worst offender in this regard.

Meaning, simply giving the player a bunch of Builders and Floaters is precisely NOT how it should be done - at least not in NeoLemmix, where you have much more elegant and less repetitive ways (e.g. send a Glider towards a wall and bomb him to make a dent, then send a second Glider / clone the first one twice to get another one into this direction, then have him build a single staircase or platform from there that serves as a splatform).

And I've seen similarly "useless" splat hatches on custom levels. There was one particular brick level at the end of the first rank of DoveLems ("Cisterns, Chains and Bricks"), where you just have to build a random staircase under the hatch to prevent everyone from splatting at the start. The actual puzzle however is getting a Climber up a wall on the left or right and then navigating downward cleverly through a maze. This is the actual puzzle part, and it has nothing to do with the splat hatch at the beginning. It's just unnecessary delay of a solution to an otherwise very interesting level.

QuoteI know, but there has been talk of bringing something completely new and different to the table, so...

Yes, new. Not unpredictable .

QuoteActually (and this is the distinction I'd make with the Resetter), I think they should reset to the place where they landed, and not simply re-spawn from the hatch. That way, if terrain and stuff has changed around/beneath the entrance hatch, it could potentially start them off on a totally different route (after having picked up pickup skills that allow this, for instance).

I had read that part about landing, but thanks for pointing out the difference again! While yes, this may result in a separation of the resetted lemming from the crowd occasionally, most of the time, the hatch is not placed at such high altitudes or in such immediate danger that a path needs to be constructed right away to make some lemmings land elsewhere than others.

Sure, if you have a hatch above an abyss and need a Glider to even get the level started, the Resetter would place the lemming at the point where the Glider landed. But such levels tend not to be too popular, because any type of level involving a deadly drop right out of the hatch usually has some arbitrary hassle of saving the crowd as fast as possible before the actual puzzle itself can begin. By all means, make crowd control and -containment part of the challenge, but doing so by using a deadly drop right out of the hatch is somewhat of a cheap way to go about it, I think .

QuoteFurthermore, Icho's idea that the Resetter has

Quote
Possibility of permanent skill reset as well

would also distinguish it further from a teleporter, or simply another transport skill.

I thought we had agreed that permanent-skill removal is supposed to be accomplished by an object, not a skill?

Sure, that thread was called "object or skill that removes permanent skills", but so far, discussion in that thread had progressed to a point where we had narrowed it down to an object, at least to my understanding.

QuoteThe Randomer - when a lemming is in immediate danger and you just need something to get them out of it, the Randomer places the lemming somewhere else in the level that's a) safe and b) away from the other lemmings.

I feel that this would also introduce a fun element of unpredictability to the game: if we're looking for a skill that will bring something completely new to the table, this would definitely fit the bill!

However, to maybe reduce the potential ridiculousness of this idea, maybe...

I think by now you've figured out that unpredictability is the last thing the NeoLemmix community at large would want to be added to the game .

QuoteThe Sleeper - the lemming falls asleep in their current position and stays there until assigned another skill or "rescued" in the same manner as a Blocker (i.e. by removing the terrain directly below them). They do not block other lemmings, but they can be assigned any other skill from their current position. This could be extremely useful for lining up several worker lemmings who can then perform a number of simultaneous tasks (without having to spam the level with Blocker/Walkers, for instance). If the idea of the lemming being "asleep" seems a bit counter-intuitive, maybe the skill could simply be The Waiter...

This can already be done - and is already being done - with the Blocker on many advanced levels, and the Blocker is perfectly sufficient for this. The Blocker is basically just there to let a lemming "stand" somewhere until needed (but the challenge is freeing him from that position). In an easy level, this could happen via a Walker, or a Walker pickup skill that needs to be collected first. In advanced levels, it will usually happen in more inocuous ways, such as removing the terrain under the Blocker's feet, but it's not obvious with which skill this is needs to be done.

QuoteThe Resetter - moves the lemming back to the exact place they landed when they fell out of the entrance hatch. This would have way more puzzle potential than the Randomer (particularly if the terrain around the entrance hatch area has been changed) and would obviously be more predictable.

Like IchoTolot, I would agree that this has the most puzzle potential out of your three suggestions. But I hold against that: Definitely not more than the Slider.

In a lot of situations, what the Resetter accomplishes could just as well be done by placing a teleporter where the Resetter is supposed to be assigned. Of course a skill can be assigned anywhere, in contrast to an object - but precisely that can also easily make it broken. Keep in mind you're technically talking about a Teleporter skill here, even if it's limited to taking the lemming back to the hatch.

Usually, this would be applied after the path for the crowd has been prepared. Meaning, the way from the hatch is already safe. So it would immediately get the worker lemming back on that safe path as well, rather than maybe having to find a separate path for him because he has permanent skills that prevent him from just going along with the crowd. In such a situation, I actually see the skill reducing puzzle potential, because it makes something easier that would be more challenging and interesting otherwise.

And in turn, if there's still some work to be done on the side of the hatch, why not simply have a lemming from the crowd do it, instead of teleporting the worker back to the hatch? There's no need to enforce everything being done by the pioneer - in fact, a lot of players might consider that somewhat boring, because "pioneer" levels sometimes get frowned at by the more advanced players here. (Because those levels involve crowd containment rather than flow control.)

QuoteIf level authors seem unable to use the skill better than just that, then maybe it's not worth introducing, not because the skill is bad but because it seems like maybe no one will make good use of it anyway, apparently.

Well, the idea that it's "just another Floater" has mainly been aired by the Slider's opponents . For those who support it, I'm pretty confident they would try out every possible interaction that skill has to offer! And in doing so, they may also inspire those who originally didn't like the skill to try those ideas themselves.

Thanks, I had just read up on again myself! So that does indeed suggest namida isn't going to go out of his way to stop another motivated user to found "RadoLemmix" (naming it after the next noble gas in line ) with many more skills.

In general, I'm glad to see several people in the community don't object to an abundance of different skills in principle. As I said earlier, while I do think there are a multitude of problems with Lemmings 2 - no replay feature, not even a quick restart in the Amiga version, combined with extreme execution difficulty in terms of the fan, the chain, cannons, catapults, tumbler physics etc. - the large selection of skills isn't one of them. That is, as long as proper thought is put into every single one of them, and they are introduced slowly enough so that people can come up with decent ideas for each of them.

Clearly, this latter part did not happen during the development of L2, and functionally equivalent skills to existing ones (Club Basher, Scooper, Stomper are all clones of the Basher, Miner, and Digger, respectively) were introduced for what seems to have been just for the sake of it. If we can avoid this type of redundancy and only ever introduce any new skill after careful consideration for its novel applications, I think the total number of skills NeoLemmix can or should have is secondary.

After all, nobody forces level designers to make use of all the skills in existence in every single one of their packs. In fact, we've already found out that there seems to be a certain "bias" for just the good old classic 8 skills, i.e. a voluntary restriction of level designers to use just those throughout several entire packs.

Therefore, I don't see a particular danger of "overload" for New Players; they could simply be pointed to easier and less complex packs. This is vital anyway, since whether a pack has few different skill types or not is utterly irrelevant for its complexity if that pack happens to be called NepsterLems.



Btw, Here's a challenge for our "spirte master" WillLem: Do you want to "implement" the Club Basher, Scooper, and Stomper into NeoLemmix? Simply make a new sprite set where the Club Basher sprite is used for the Basher, the Scooper sprite is used for the Miner, and the Stomper sprite is used for the Digger! Kind of like the Lix digger has a drill, i.e. a different tool, but still does the same thing. We would just have to hope that each of these animations has an equal number of frames as the original... and the path it carves out in the terrain would obviously have to be identical (the "real" Scooper creates a slightly different path than a Miner in L2, but the applications are functionally equivalent).

So, I'm just rewatching IchoTolot's Let's Play of Lemmings 2, looking for applications of the Spearer. Even though the Spearer appeared on the skill panel, it wasn't used so far (Beach, Outdoor, and Egyptian tribe at the moment). Though IchoTolot did mention repeatedly in that Let's Play how he really doesn't like the Slider .

Quotewhy not have the Rock Climber, which would basically be a climber that can handle overhangs similar to what shimmiers can handle as well as having this synergy with the shimmier that was rejected for the regular climber

As I said earlier, in Lemmings 2 this "flipping around the corner" behaviour is typical of the Shimmier and independent of whether the lemming is a Rock Climber or just a regular Climber - as long as he can climb one way or the other, the Shimmier will flip around the corner and transition back into a (Rock) Climber. He will only fall down if he is just a Shimmier (i.e. got to the ceiling by jumping, rather than by dangling and then being assigned a Shimmier). Dangling from the ceiling is something only the Rock Climber can do; the regular Climber will just fall down immediately when hitting a sloped or flat ceiling.

The Shimmier however can't go up or down sloped ceilings in Lemmings 2; he will immediately start dangling and fall down as well. Sloped ceilings are exclusively reserved for the Rock Climber in Lemmings 2, meaning he will always look the other way compared to the Shimmier. Since we didn't want to have that close overlap between Climber and Rock Climber, the Shimmier was powered up in NeoLemmix in this regard, as to make the Rock Climber even more redundant.

I do think Climber and Rock Climber are more closely related than Slider and Floater though; Glider and Floater are much more comparable, I'd say, yet we still have both .

Quotebut the reason I bring it up is that I don't think it would make sense to have three different non-terrain altering ways to get lemmings down from a ledge that's too high, but only one non-terrain altering way to get them up.

Well, you could argue that both the Jumper and the Shimmier are non-terrain-altering ways to get lemmings up... non-terrain-altering is definitely true, and the "getting up" happens through the fact that both skills jump. Of course, a lot of times, a Shimmier requires a Climber to even get to the ceiling, but even when he doesn't, it's still an upward-moving skill. Of course, once he is attached to the ceiling, that ceiling can take him up or down, depending on its overall shape. But he's still traveling at a higher altitude than he was before.

But if you want more upward-moving skills: I think nobody has brought up the Super Lem (the L2 one, not ONML) yet?

It's the only flying skill from L2 that doesn't involve the annoying fan tool, and I agree with IchoTolot's statement from the LP that it's easy enough to use. It would also add something completely new, because it allows a lemming to move freely, but always straight to the position the courser is currently placed. By pausing and hitting play again, even in L2 you can control this skill quite nicely - with framestepping and rewinding in NeoLemmix, of course it would be even less of a problem.

QuoteOne of the other proposed movement-based skills, the runner, is something that I think has more abuse potential (I really, really don't like precise timing levels) than puzzle potential (as there are already many, many ways to separate lemmings from crowds). It exists in Lix, but Lix has multiplayer, which is where I think the runner has the most potential. Even without the implication that it will be the last new skill ever, I do not feel prepared to endorse either of these skills as future additions to the game.

Thanks for bringing up this distinction! Indeed, I can imagine that when competing with other players, speed by itself can be a key factor. In a single-player game such as NeoLemmix, however, I agree with you that I don't see much use for the Runner aside from adding execution difficulty through timing-based solutions - while players who like these kinds of solutions still have the Jumper to isolate a pioneer lemming from a free-flowing crowd.

QuoteI think of the skills that have been suggested, the projectile skills have the most potential. It takes enough other skills to replicate the functionality that it creates lots of backroute potential when working around the fact they don't exist -  if the puzzle can even be made to work without them. But I don't think it makes sense to implement a ranged construction skill, but not a ranged destructive skill (or vice versa). That would bring us to 21 skills, which isn't as nice of a number as 20, but... does that really matter?

QuoteI think many of the skills proposed are potentially good additions and it's too bad that we are forced to pick one.

I think it would be helpful if namida defined again what he means by "final version of NeoLemmix".

Obviously, we all get that at some point he's tired of adding new stuff to the game and wanting to wrap up his work on it. But since the code is open source and freely available, I guess nobody could stop another interested user with skills in C / C+ / C++ / C# (I forgot which of these New-Formats NeoLemmix was written in again ) from picking up after namida and maybe adding further skills in the future.

Even if this would count as a separate thing from "official and finalised NeoLemmix" (which could remain in a state where it always has 20 skills), a separate engine could start with the latest version of the NeoLemmix source code, and then simply work its way from there.

I already brought up the idea of Nepster maybe returning after the Jumper has been implemented... although I remember Nepster more for removing stuff from NeoLemmix than for adding much... But we need to remember that the Shimmier was still implemented by him.



Anyhow, if there's a general interest in the community in having further skills some time in the far future, who knows? Maybe someone else with knowledge in these programming languages will join the community... we could even try advertising NeoLemmix deliberately on platforms for these programming languages... and that someone might say:

"Do you know what's an even better number of skills to have than 20? 24! Because that's three sets of standard-eight!"

And then we can add the Slider, the Spearer, the Laser Blaster for upward digging, and the Roper for downward building...

But as I said, right now, such considerations would be "little finger - whole arm" .


And no, I'm of course not calling for any other programmers to "steal namida's baby" and take over . Quite the opposite - we have already seen namida giving his baby NeoLemmix into Nepster's part-time foster care, at a time when namida himself didn't want to be involved in NeoLemmix development all that much; until he took over again when Nepster went on a hiatus.

Who says something like that can't happen again?

I think at this point people have simply become emotionally attached to whatever skill they fancy the most: Basically, I see three factions:

- the Runner / Turbo-Lemming side
- the Slider side
- IchoTolot with the Spear Thrower (if anyone else has this as their primary choice, please correct me?)

Honestly, I probably could be convinced of the Spear Thrower in terms of a compromise - which would be the Roper. Since the Roper's main weakness is the limitation of the length of his rope, there is a point in L2 where the rope tears and the hook at its other end flies as a projectile of its own.

This projectile could still be used for most of the uses IchoTolot proposed for the Spear Thrower - like breaking a fall in a way similar to a Stoner, but at a distance, or shooting this hook through a tunnel created by destructive skills etc - while the rope itself could be used in even more various ways than the spear (especially because it would also be a little longer than the spear).

The problem is that the Roper, at least in its L2 form, requires a double assignment like the Archer, which namida has already ruled out.

So the question would be whether something similar can be implemented with just a single assignment.

@IchoTolot: I think you would agree that the Roper is more versatile than the Spear Thrower in general? The Roper can accomplish all the things you want, but makes creating walkable slopes and bridges a little easier.

Great idea, WillLem! Yes, I'd also vote for including this in the default style!

QuoteBut why waste this last opportunity on a skill that just makes some interactions more backroute prone and on top of that doesn't really add anything completely new to the table?

Because adding something completely new can also open a new can of worms. When the purpose of adding the final skill is to close NeoLemmix. The final skill should be like a lid that fits the already existing barrel - not stack another open barrel on top of the existing one. It should naturally fit in with what we already have while still providing something new. But ideally, it should not leave level designers craving for more of whatever the 20th skill introduces.

And modifying terrain at a distance is such a new ground. Why should there be a Spear Thrower, but not a Bazooker or Mortar? Or a Laser Blaster? Or even the Archer, which overall is much more versatile than the Spear Thrower, but simply takes a lot more effort to code?

Hence, I also think that order of release of skills is not particularly relevant here:

QuoteThe last 2 skills that were added are movement skills. I think it is also time to add to another group again.

Since this is going to be the final version of NeoLemmix, a couple of months after the implementation of the final skill, this "sequencing" will be less of an issue than simply the question what types of tools we have at our disposal in total. Especially new players joining next year will not know in which order Fencer, Shimmier, Jumper and 20th skill were implemented.

QuoteYou called it being a combination skill a plus point for the slider earlier:

[. . .]

Now it's a weak point.

No, I said the number of skills a given skill can interact with is the crucial factor.

A skill that only interacts with one other skill AND is only good in combination with that other skill - such as the Runner being essentially dependent on the Jumper, without modifying the behaviour of any other skill, in contrast to the Turbo Lemming - is not worthwhile on its own. Meaning, if a Spear Thrower can only create a bridge that lemmings can reliably walk onto through the interaction of the Builder specifically, that would be an argument not in its favour. I don't think the Spear Thrower is actually that limited, to be clear - but indeed I still have trouble imagining the bridging applications for the Spear Thrower in my head.

In contrast, a skill that interacts with several other skills can indeed be worthwhile. The extreme case would be the Cloner, which interacts with all non-lethal skills. The Slider can interact with Jumpers, Climbers, Shimmiers, Bombers/Stoners (by slipping into the gap / landing on the Stoner with already the correct position towards the wall to bash into that wall), and thus by extension also with Bashers/Miners/Fencers in new ways.

QuoteYou you say it yourself: The core is mostly redundant!

No, the core is weaker than the Floater, because it's more situational. The Slider is less overpowered in its core domain than the Floater, thereby reducing the "boringness" that arises from such a single-issue skill (extreme case: Disarmer). At the same time, it's not just a "strictly worse" Floater, like the Kayaker is a strictly worse Swimmer. This is important because I guess nobody would voluntarily use an objectively worse skill. Instead, the Slider makes up for his weaknesses in the Floater-specific application by adding in a whole bunch of new behaviours and interactions with several other skills. That is the part I was describing with "and then some".

QuoteI think you missunderstood proper positioning here. It's not the precision of the throw, just getting a lemming on the right area of the map.

Thank you for clarifying this! I'm still not sure I understand your various ideas for "spear from above" and "spear from below". How would this work without the player controlling the angle at which the spear is thrown? Which would require Archer-like double-assignments, and namida has already ruled out those.

Would you suggest a parabolic trajectory for the spear, like for the Jumper? Or as the Mortar would also have it?

I know I was the one who brought this up, but this doesn't mean I really have a preference. I'm just wondering about what would be the most logical step.

I think the actual inconsistency was introduced when we agreed that Gliders should open their parachute at the top of the Jumper's arc. This is another behaviour that used to be restricted exclusively to Fallers. But of course, it is very useful for Gliders, so I'm happy we agreed on this, and I wouldn't use the splat-pad argument to call for changing Jumper-Glider behaviour again.

However, if we wanted to be completely consistent, this would now mean that fall height would have to be calculated from the top of the Jumper's arc as well. Indeed, in my test levels, I was often surprised to see that a Jumper survived a certain drop, simply because it looked much higher than the height he was actually covering in the "Faller" state, which is the only one relevant to the question whether he splats or not.

Then again, having Jumpers survive these slightly higher drops (meaning up to regular splat height + their own additional altitude gained by the jump) is definitely nice for creating Lemmings 2: The Tribes style levels (since L2 allows for both ridiculous fall heights to begin with plus the "stunned" behaviour on top of that). And keep in mind the Jumper enables this without actually requiring a genuine physics change (like Cheapo Mode back in the day, or so I've been told). Thus, I think fall height should continue to be calculated as it is now, not factoring in the height of the lemming during the jump, and only "starting the countdown" after the transition back to the Faller state.

The question is also how many backroutes the Jumper might actually lead to.

Splat pads that can kill regular Jumpers landing on top of them can do a great deal to make a certain path Jumper-proof. Then again, if we're talking about the standard application of several small blocks here (each of which would have to be covered entirely by its respective splat pad in order for this method to be effective), then those blocks would also become Builder-proof - because each lemming would land on top of that block falling from a Builder, and therefore splat. Which kind of ruins the purpose.

Basically, a path of blocks covered in splat pads would scream "use Platformers here". This is already the case right now, because it disincentivises the use of Builders. If the Jumper's behaviour were changed in this way, it would merely extend this to Jumpers. But it would not result in a situation telling the player "use Builders instead of Jumpers here", because neither would work.



Thus, after having thought this through in the way explained above... I might actually say no as well. Jumpers should only be affected by splat pads when transitioning back into a Faller. This situation is still easy enough to create, after all, by simply placing the blocks one pixel lower than the piece of terrain the Jumper starts from, so at the end of his arc, he still has one more pixel to go as a Faller.

But I may have overlooked other applications where Jumpers splatting on splat pads right after their jump might be both useful and make more sense logically?

Quote
Regarding the workarounds for proposed behaviours, one thing I have to say is that the more complex they get, the more they scream "backroute potential!" to me...

Exactly! The more skills I have to provide to enable a workaround - especially when it comes to skills as powerful and backroute-prone as Walkers and Stoners, which is the case in all of my examples for substituting the Slider - the more likely this is to invite backroutes indeed.

Back to IchoTolot:

QuoteAnd you again don't see the possibility to adapt the terrain for these kind of things. The designer has total control and can design these things to not be precise. You don't need a new skill for it.

Of course the designer can adapt everything. But let me phrase this the other way round: The absence of the Slider forces the designer to adapt the terrain in a way he/she might not want to. If a certain skill behaviour is not possible in the first place and you keep adapting the terrain to make up for that, then at what point would we just say this is a completely different solution than intended?

Quote- Make the gap narrow enough that 1 spear does the job.
- Platformers are very slow, a throw is faster.

It's interseting that WillLem called those two things a good case for the Spear Thrower, because both sound like horribly precise execution difficulty to me. The spear would probably be just one pixel in diameter and a couple of pixels in length. Meaning, if you want to make a gap narrow enough for just a spear to be thrown through it, it would have to be a 1-pixel gap (well, if that doesn't sound like fun). But I think you are referring to the gap the spear is supposed to lead across here. So let's say that's 12 or 16 pixels. How deep does the spear stick in the terrain it lands in? If this is just one pixel too far, there will be a gap remaining on the side from which the spear was thrown.

But I know by now that WillLem likes a good bit of execution difficulty. In turn, the points he brought up right under that quote actually refer to something different, that is non-lethality:

QuoteThis is a very good case for the Spear-thrower: where the Bomber is an instant destructive skill, it would be good to have an instantly constructive skill that's a) non-sacrificial, and b) big enough to instantly close a large(ish) gap. I can definitely see the potential in this idea.

A while ago, WillLem suggested non-lethal versions of both the Bomber (the Lightsaberer) and the Stoner (don't remember the name of that one). This would essentially be the latter, but wider than the Stoner, more comparable to the Lix cuber, which creates an entire block, rather than just a narrow piece of terrain in the shape of a Lix. The added difference would be that it can work at a distance, as you said.



Still, the question remains: How do you get a spear to span across two chunks of terrain of equal height (like a Platformer bridge)? The spear would have to be thrown over the lemming's shoulder, i.e. from a higher altitude than the lemming's feet. Does that mean it always requires an additional Builder or Jumper to get on top of a "bridge" created by the Spear Thrower in the first place?

That would mean that the core application of the Spear Thrower would only be good in conjunction with another skill, whereas the Slider in its core application is of similar power as the Floater, and then some.

What I actually find a much more interesting case in favour of the Spear Thrower is this:

QuoteA spear must be thrown into already present terrain. That means the crowd will either hit a wall and turn or get on a platform and walk along.
Also you need to position the thrower first, getting that done is another challenge.

A stoner mostly just breaks the fall.

This "existing terrain" part is an interesting limitation compared to the oftentimes broken Stoner.

However, I'm generally a bit surprised about your several remarks here that almost seem to imply you like the Spear Thrower for... execution difficulty?

Quote from: IchoTolot- Make the gap narrow enough that 1 spear does the job.
- Platformers are very slow, a throw is faster.

[. . .]

Also you need to position the thrower first, getting that done is another challenge.

Those things (speed-based solutions and proper positioning) are precisely my main objection against all the projectile skills from Lemmings 2: The Tribes! The Thrower, the Spear Thrower, the Bazooker, the Mortar, and of course the Archer (Sports 10, remember ), even thought that latter one has fortunately already been ruled out.

The Laser Blaser at least creates a constant beam that is much easier to navigate and predict than a loose projectile.

Of course, as you said, we will have skill shadows for this in the end. But if the presence of skill shadows were an excuse for deliberately increasing execution difficulty, the NeoLemmix community wouldn't be so adamant about continuing to criticise execution difficulty in general.

Quote from: WillLemPersonally, I like the idea of more movement skills: we have more than enough terrain creation/destruction skills. Sure, they might be giving the game increasingly more "parkour potential", and I get why you might be against that idea. But ultimately, maybe the 20th skill should also bring with it a sense of balance.

And - level designers can still choose to limit the number of movement skills available in a given level, so we won't completely lose the need to find inventive workarounds. A lot of the original levels do just that: "sure, we could give you a blocker or some extra builders here, but we're not going to: find a workaround!"

An interesting new perspective! I admit that for the longest time, I was so keen on getting the balance between constructive and destructive skills right that I had completely forgotten about the fact that "movement skills" might establish themselves as a separate third category. While there is a certain overlap between movement skills and athletic skills (and a standard permanent Slider would also fall into that category), the Jumper, Shimmier, Walker, and technically also the Cloner show that movement skills don't need to be restricted to permanent applications.

QuoteAssigning a Slider is perhaps more "creative" in the sense that more can be done with the Slider state: assigning to Jumper, transitioning to Shimmier, landing facing the wall (I think this seems to be the current assumption, anyway).

If there are two ways to get the same job done, but one of them offers even just one more possibility, which are you going to favour?

This is precisely why in the "suggest your own 10-skill panel" thread ("Defining the new classic 10 skills" was kind of re-purposed to that recently), I dropped the Floater in favour of the Glider - because the Glider can accomplish the same thing as a Floater (when it comes to saving a lemming from a single lethal drop) if you just assign it late enough.

A Glider can only "backfire" due to its diagonal trajectory once it has already been assigned, by taking a lemming too far and leaving the player no option to delay the opening of the parachute - but then again, the same can be said for the Floater: If you need to survive a straight drop first, and at the next drop, there is a gap or water there so that you would need a Glider instead, the Floater can blow up in the player's face just as much as the Glider can.

In general, I'd even argue that the better a skill gets one specific job done - and only that job - the less puzzle potential it has. Namely, the Floater, the Disarmer, and possibly the Swimmer. But the Swimmer still has the most puzzle potential of these three, and even that skill has been called obsolete by Proxima!

So instead of providing these powerful skills to the player that get the job done too easily - like e.g. also the Walker gets the job of turning a lemming around done too easily - the designer can give the player something less powerful and, as WillLem said, tell them to "find a workaround!"

Basically, the only difference is:
- IchoTolot suggests to use workarounds with other skills to replace the Slider
- I suggest using the Slider to create workarounds that can replace Floaters and Gliders

But since I think we established that the number of different things you can do with the Floater is more limited, my argument is that the Floater is the one more worthy of being "replaced" by other skills.

(And no, of course this does not mean "cull the Floater from the game", but simply "maybe level designers should use it less frequently". I apply the same logic to using Stackers more frequently than Blockers, at least when it comes to crowd control. Blockers can have very advanced uses, but that's usually in levels where the crowd can't be contained at all, and the Blocker has to be freed again in the end.)

I think namida is describing the steps to implement wrap here, not SuperLemming...

But I'm not sure, of course.

QuotePerhaps in practice, the problem of parts of the trap getting recolored isn't as bad as I imagined.  I'll admit it is unfortunate that the lack of recoloring breaks how things look when a recolored lemming triggers a trap.

Yes, I thought so, that some traps would include those colours - but I thought recolouring those parts along with the lemming would be the lesser of two evils, compared to having a sudden switch of lemming back to default. Also, most of these trap colours seem to be pretty arbitrary. The chameleon from the Rock tileset and the frog from L2 Outdoor almost certainly have different shades of green than standard lemming hair, and everything else looks more like a technical device that can be painted whatever way the designer chooses. The only thing that comes to my mind that might be exactly the same colour as lemming hair AND have a natural equivalent that requires this colour would be vine trap from the Rock tileset... though even that one may be slightly brighter than lemming hair.

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Since Teleporters and Receivers act like Traps but send lemmings somewhere else, should the same be applied for those too?

Yes, of course! Thanks for bringing this up, sorry, I completely forgot! Anything that includes lemming sprites but isn't part of the standard sprite set.

The Drowner, as we know, is part of standard sprites, as if it were a skill, basically. I'm not sure about the Frier (=lemming walking into a fire trap)? The latter usually is harder to tell, because the lemming vaporizes so quickly that you barely see skin, hair, or clothes anymore anyway. But for the initial frames of the animation, it might be relevant.

QuoteSo, I'm happy to offer to go through the default ones, find the pixels that crossover with the Lemming sprites, and recolour them manually so that they're different enough not to get affected by a recolouring algorithm. It wouldn't be that much work and I'd enjoy it as a mini-project.

I appreciate your initiative, WillLem! Hopefully we can still find a more savvy way to do this, so that we do not have to get back to your offer and save everyone (but mostly you) a lot of work.

I'm glad to see this suggestion is being met with positive resonance overall!

QuoteSolved your levels Strato. Attached my first solution to Jump Around and a 0 jumper solution to Start Me Up. Both (especially the latter) were satisfying puzzles!

Thanks a lot, DireKrow! "Jump around" is an alternative solution, saves 1 stacker.

Your solution to "Start me up" has actually been turned into a Gold talisman! I didn't expect you not to use a single Jumper, when this is the new skill that everyone supposedly wants to toy around with.

So far, trap animations always affect default lemming sprites. Of course I know it's probably impossible (or not technically impossible, but an unreasonable amount of additional work for little benefit) to transfer all existing trap animations to include those sprite types with genuinely different shapes (i.e. X-Mas sprites, Lemminas, and Millas).

But for all the sprite sets that merely recolour the default sprites, would it be possible to apply the recolouring scheme to those animations as well?

Naturally, since every trap animation looks vastly different, this couldn't be as straightforward as saying "recolour the lemming's hair to A, recolour the clothes to B" - or at least I think so. Rather, it would have to be referential. Meaning: Have the game look for the specific colour codes of the default sprites in every trap animation, and whenever it detects green, it recolours it with whatever the recolouring theme set for hair colour; whenever it detects blue, it recolours it with whatever the recolouring theme set for clothes colour; and whenever it detects white / lemming skin tone, replace that colour with whatever has been set in the theme file for lemming skin.

This could then also be applied to athletes walking into traps. Currently, even when just using default sprites, any athlete walking into a trap immediately looks like a regular lemming again.

I have no idea how much effort this would take, whether it would be easy to code or too much to ask. But I thought this might be something that slipped under the radar, since for the longest time there was no recolouring feature, and therefore, nobody considered addressing this, because it all would have had to be done by hand.

Now that we have recolouring, maybe it's possible to extend the number of animations recolouring affects? If so, this might be another thing we would want to get sorted out before "wrapping up" the final version of NeoLemmix.