Hmm, I'm not sure how good the black-white is. The ends of the ruler should come in at least two colors (design criterion #5), the central bar doesn't have to be.

I'm okay making the central bar thinner (make it 1 pixel wide) and keep the white/black near the ends only. Or make the white/black into white/medium grey. Many things to try.

The color cycling is fundamentally problematic. NL color-cycles the gadgets in clear-physics mode, I don't like that either. With the glaring color cycle, the designer is telling me: He has no clue what colors are best, therefore let's cycle through all colors in hope that, sometimes, non-clashing colors are in the cycle. But now the designer has dodged the design problem at hand. His job was to make stuff look distinct. Instead, he distracts me with animation/motion, and there will be clashing colors in the cycle, i.e., stuff looks temporarily the same. Exactly what his design should have avoided.

I wouldn't buy a hammer that is good for hammering nails throughout most of the day, but fails between 09:30 and 10:00 in the morning because during this half-hour, it transforms into a flashing light so I can see it in the toolbox.

-- Simon

Snow Way, all right, I'll play it.

My solving strength is moderate. Quirk knowledge about NL comes more from reading on the forums than from playing. Skill combinations that have become second nature for Armani/Icho will not jump to my eye. I'll have to solve those from first principles, which takes time.

-- Simon

Here are two candiates.

Design criteria:

• The main bar is 3 pixels wide, like the NL 12.14 ruler. I think that's fine, but I have no strong feelings about the width.
  
• No 1-pixel-high horizontal marking lines. Horizontal features, e.g., the triangles at the ends, are several pixels high. Reason/goal: Prevent the inclusiveness/exclusiveness ambiguity.
  
• You must stand the ruler onto the ground. Don't wedge it into the ground. Reason: This is the only natural way when you have no visible horizontal cut-off other than the very ends of the image itself.
  
• The ruler measures only one distance, the regular walker's length. It doesn't measure the other two distances.
  
• The ruler has two-colors, black and white. Reason: See that you're measuring correctly even when you measure from bright/dark ground. You won't stick the ruler into the bright ground by accident.

Next livestream, I'll play with one of these.

Please shred these ideas apart. What sucks with them? Do you want the old ruler as a user option?

-- Simon

Next stream will be in 3 days, on Wednesday, May 28th, starting 16:00 UTC.

I'll play more levels from many different authors. Again, help solve the levels in chat! (Unless you had already known the solution by heart before the stream.)

-- Simon

Hmm, right. If this color picker gives me a reason to overhaul more number pickers, then all the better. All numbers should allow both typing and increment/decrement. Then we can remove the strange divisibility by 2, and allow the full range 0 through 0xFF inclusive.

Yep, I'll keep the menu color picker. It doesn't get in the way, and it has its charm, yes.

-- Simon

Fix the design Reinvestigate all ideas to fix the design of the splat ruler. The ruler confuses newbies and experienced players. This weekend, I'll write a proper post in the existing topic. It's not as easy as I thought earlier today.

Discoverable replay cancelling is good, e.g., clickable R in the panel. Subtle animation for the R is fine, assuming you mean proper animation, not color cycling. I have ideas. Please make a separate topic for this when you have a build that supports this animation.

Small visual bugs such as the 999-cap sound reasonable to fix. Never had it, but sure, squeeze it in.

-- Simon

I'm not happy with the endgame rules in Sneak.

Parlett's original rule was: You continue to take turns around the table. Every player must flaunt 1 or more cards. When only one player is left with cards in hand, that player puts his cards onto his pile, effectively getting +1 point per leftover card.

We (geoo and I) felt that this (+1 point per unplayed card) encouraged slow and passive play during the main part of the match, which was the sneaking. I don't remember our first rule change for this. It was natural to try −1 point per leftover card, and geoo's group eventually arrived at only a single round of flaunting.

This round of flaunting still has some special rules compared to the main part of the match (the sneaking part), and my goal is to simplify this.

I've tried to remove the option to challenge the flaunts. To compensate nice flaunts, I gave +2 points per card in the flaunt. But this +2 is unnatural. For now, I've kept geoo's way in the rules, and edited my way (flaunt, but no challenging) from giving +2 per card to +1 per card in your flaunt.

I've tried to stop the game immediately when the final card gets drawn, and gave −1 point per card in hand. This led to wild and ruthless sneaking near the end. It was now better to give your cards to a random opponent (you'll only lose compared to that single opponent) than to score −1 per card yourself (you lose compared to all opponents).

My next playtest will be: When the final card is drawn, the game ends immediately (no flaunting) and your cards in hand are worthless. Reason: We know that +1 encourages passive play and −1 encourages throwaway sneaks, therefore we must try ±0, the value in the middle. This is the easiest rule I can imagine. I hope that it works.

-- Simon

School quiz! This is about the rules of multiplayer Lix. Consider a 4-team game, with teams red, yellow, green, blue. A red lix enters an exit.

Question 1: The exit shows the team colors of red and yellow. Who gets points for the red lix?

Question 2: The exit shows the team colors of green and blue. Who gets points for the red lix?

Question 3: Is Simon happy about this? Why?

Question 4: What design do you think he will propose instead?

Question 5: Why is wrong to implement the design that you think Simon will propose, and what should he implement instead?

Answers to Q1 and Q2

Exit has red and yellow, red lix enters: The red team gets 1 point. The other teams (yellow, green, blue) get nothing.

Exit has green and blue, red lix enters: The green team gets 1 point, and the blue team gets 1 point, too. The other teams (red, yellow) get nothing.

Questions 3-5 don't get a spoiler immediately. I will eventually write down my ideas. But I'd rather not stir the pot before I've seen other people's opinions. There will be no failing grade here; everybody who answers will pass the course.

-- Simon

Hmm. If 0xFE confuses you less than 0xF0, I'm fine with making the cap 0xFE.

It's a hack in any case. The fundamental problem is the divisibility by 2 in the GUI widget. There is no GUI widget that combines both (a) increment/decrement buttons and (b) number typing. I don't want to invest energy in making a special widget only for the menu color. I don't remember why the menu color is configurable in the first place. Such a 1990's feature.

-- Simon

Quote from: WillLem on May 18, 2025, 12:40:08 PMThe dual effect of "fails here" and "is eventually assigned here" each providing audio feedback works much better

Better in what way? The click succeeds; it queues, which is what I want. Before, successful queuing played no sound, which was odd indeed. But now, the success sounds like failing, and it feels buggier than before, not better.

If the queue fizzles due to time-out ... well, should it ever time-out in the first place? The queued shimmer should stay in the queue until the climber is at a ceiling. If he falls/hoists, then we can clear the queue.

QuoteThe only issue with this is that ideally the skill would also be deducted at the point of assignment, and since that messes with physics & replay timing, it would render CE incompatible with NL 12.14 content. So, we probably shouldn't mess with that either.

I assume "point of assignment" is the time of the click mid-climb, not the physics update when he starts shimmying.

It's conceivable to lie in the skill panel, and show fewer skills on the skill button even though they're unspent in the physics. Can't tell from the outside how elegant that would be. Can be fertile ground for bugs.

You can queue shimmier to a climber. What other skills can you queue? Is the queue part of the physics? If it's not, we should be able design it so that it doesn't feel like a bug, yet complies with the NL physics.

Quote1) Same-frame assignment whilst in Replay Insert mode
1 and 5 could each be something else entirely.

Hmm. Yes, better feedback for same-frame assignment should give unique feedback. I don't believe sound alone will be enough. But that's for another topic.

-- Simon

Ah, then queuing is more prevalent than I thought, and most queues fizzle without effect. If we want to fix the OP behavior, we'll have to distinguish now what will fizzle, and we've never had to distinguish before.

I have no good suggestion (other than your simulation) that fixes this exact problem and keeps all other failed sounds.

The only time I need explicit notification for assignment failure is: The click fails to assign because that new assignment would overwrite an existing same-tick assignment to different lemming. I don't need sounds for any other failed assignments.

In this light, I'm even beginning to think that the other failed assignment sounds are a problem. I didn't realize this before. For the same-frame problem, I'd like explicit feedback that the new assignment fails because of the existing same-frame assignment. The CE 1.0.1 fail sound doesn't tell me that; it merely tells me that there was some whatever reason to fail.

-- Simon

No problem, thanks for your patience. Welcome to the forums!

-- Simon

Yes, the sound for a successful assignment plays when the shimmying begins (in step 7).

-- Simon

Community Edition is magnificent. Everybody should use it!

I've played CE 1.0.1 for 3.5 hours on stream. All the major annoyances are solved: It zooms into the cursor. It guards against accidental assignment overwriting. Like NL 12.14, it stays in the level on losing all lemmings.

I've ranted about the splat ruler the most, but the ruler has a known workaround, I'll put an image file of a simple stick in place of the out-of-box image file. In long play, it's normal to find other small bugs, which I then file, but that shouldn't detract from the good impression.

-- Simon

NL-CE 1.0.1.

Repro:

• Have a level with climbers, shimmiers, and a ceiling to which we can climb.
  
• Make a lemming climb the wall.
  
• Select shimmier in the panel.
  
• Near the ceiling (but before he reaches it), hover over the climber and click.
  
• You'll hear the sound for a failed assignment.
  
• Wait for the climber to reach the ceiling.
  
• The lemming will shimmy. Edit: You'll also hear the sound for a successful assignment.
  

Observed: Sound for the failed assignment in step 5 and successful shimmying in step 7.

Expected instead: No sound in step 5 when we click. (Reason: The click produces an effect, it queues a shimmier, therefore it was successful.) Still successful shimmying in step 7.

-- Simon