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Messages - Nepster

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1606
NeoLemmix Main / Re: Bugs/rants from 2015-09-27 session
« on: October 05, 2015, 09:36:59 PM »
Adding general floor checks (or low ceiling checks) might create problems with terrain additions, e.g. via building stairs/platforms against the wall. I would add such checks only for the very beginning.
Can you provide a more specific example of what problems you have in mind?  My suggestion for adding floor/low-ceiling checks is still specifically about climbers and hoisters, not every possible action.  If we want consistency, it's not clear to me why it should matter that the terrain is pre-existing versus added via a skill.  Having checks happen only at the start seems like the same kind of "adds another rule (i.e. makes gameplay more complicated)" situation that you were objecting to earlier when discussing namida's proposal.
The word "general" in my previous post was intended only for climbers (ans possibly hoisters), i.e. in situations like the one in the attached picture, I think the climber should continue. The reason is the following:
Let's consider the opposite action: removing terrain. If you remove terrain at the lower half of a climbing lemming, he will continue climbing. This indicates that only the upper half of a climbing lemming counts for determining its position and whether he should continue climbing. So after adding terrain in the bottom half, the lemming should be above the added terrain. As stopping to climb and start walking on the added terrain is kind of weird, I am in favour of letting him continue on his climb.
As for a possible implementation: At the beginning failing the floor check should immediately turn the lemming around, because there is simply no wall to hang on to. On a successful floor check, he will be at least one frame in the climbing position. Once there one can apply ceiling checks to determine whether to continue climbing.

True, this suggestion has the disadvantage of "adds another rule", but I am not yet convinced that one can drop this rule. Furthermore while floor checks may replace namida's suggestion, the converse is not true. Even with namida's suggestion, one might need floor checks and has to decide when to apply them.

1607
NeoLemmix Main / Re: Bugs/rants from 2015-09-27 session
« on: October 05, 2015, 08:18:17 PM »
Surely the best solution is to tweak the digger mask so it no longer leaves that single pixel?
As far as I know, the digger mask for the first stroke was changed from 2 addictional pixels to only 1 pixel. As this change was deliberately made, I expect that namida has very good reasons for this and therefore refrained from suggesting to undo this change.
And the current mechanics always leave this overhang, independantly of the starting position.

One can either add a floor check...
Adding general floor checks (or low ceiling checks) might create problems with terrain additions, e.g. via building stairs/platforms against the wall. I would add such checks only for the very beginning.

1608
Two more (but very similar) solutions.

1609
NeoLemmix Main / Re: Bugs/rants from 2015-09-27 session
« on: October 05, 2015, 05:37:08 PM »
1) Climber ignoring the lowest 6 pixels of terrain
Just to give an example of the current behaviour, I made a little level TestClimber.lvl (just watch it and do nothing; if you want some fun, try to predict the path the lemming takes ;)).
namida's suggestion (to allow climbing through terrain when hoisting immediatly afterwards) would make the conversion of L1/Lemmix/Lemmini levels easier, but adds another rule (i.e. makes gameplay more complicated). And I don't yet understand what would happen in my test level? Would the lemming try to climb and behave (at least for the very first part) as in the current version, or does he simply turn around? I feel that simply turning around would be more appropriate.

2) Climber and very small overhangs
See the attached picture: When digging down a miner shaft, one or two pixels remain at the top. Thus currently there is precisely one side of the digger hole that a lemming may use to climb out. In L1/Lemmix/Lemmini the opposite happens and lemmings can always climb both sides (due to slightly different digger mechanics).
So the question is: Should the climber be able to ignore such very small overhangs (consisting of only one or perhaps two pixels)?
Arguments for NO (current NeoLemmix mechanics):
- Simpler rules, i.e. no exceptions.
- New trick to turn around climbers (without having to use builders) that can be exploited in levels.
Arguments for YES:
- The current behaviour may break old levels without having an easy fix or introduce new backroutes.
- IMO letting lemmings climb out on both sides creates more interesting design options.
I can live with any of the options, but feel that we should be aware of the consequences of our choices.

1610
In Development / Re: NeoLemmix Conversion of Lemmini levelpacks?
« on: October 03, 2015, 08:40:39 AM »
I am a huge fan of this project and if you have small tasks, I would be glad to help (but not with drawing rating signs, because I am very bad at this).

To reduce the amount of work, wouldn't it be better to wait for NeoLemmix V2.00 first (or at least until all mechanics changes are decided) and then adapt the Lemmini levels to NeoLemmix?

1611
Closed / Re: 2.00 "Disable direct drop" and "Timed bombers" options
« on: October 01, 2015, 07:39:36 AM »
Fall distance is not directly editable in NeoLemmix levels. It only exists in the form of "Cheapo Mode", which is strongly advised against using in any new levels, and exists only for the purpose of converted Cheapo levels - it should be noted also that the fall distance change here cannot be decoupled from the other changes that Cheapo Mode applies. The "Fall Distance" option you see in the editor that allows directly choosing a value is for (Super)Lemmini levels, which do support arbitrary distances; this option is disabled when editing a (Neo)Lemmix level.
I am talking about the option "60Px Fall Distance" I see in the System.DAT Editor. As this is checked e.g. in the LPDOS preset, I thought one could change this for NeoLemmix levels as well?

Quote
- glider mechanics (when do they turn around compared to just drop a little in height?)
IIRC, it's consistent with swimmers (or walkers in no-gravity levels).
I never claimed it was inconsistent. But I cannot (in any of these cases) decide what will happen simply by only looking at the terrain. The glider is the worst in this respect, because it is not easy to determine the pixel it is positioned on.

Quote
Entrance order, you can make 4 instead of 2 hatches and get any entrance order you want.
Which is precisely why there is zero logic in not having that option. Because the exact same effect can be achieved simply by placing however many entrances is needed for the desired order. So, it makes sense to allow simply choosing a custom order out of X number of custom exits, rather than requiring some to be duplicated (which would be an especially huge headache if the level designer later decided to change the order).
Sorry, but due to this option I always place 4 hatches in a level instead of only 2 or 3 and I cannot confirm that changing the order is an especially huge headache.
I think Simon's argument goes as follows: The standard option will be used in most levels and only few make use of doubling up hatches to change this order. So it boils down to the question: What does the player expect and then get in a level where the entrance order does not matter?
And as you said: Having this option doesn't create more choices for level designer. So we might look to secondary arguments to decide whether to keep this option or not. And Simon has such an argument against it.

1612
Closed / Re: 2.00 "Disable direct drop" and "Timed bombers" options
« on: September 30, 2015, 10:47:05 PM »
This new poll seriously confuses me, so let me state my opinion here in words:
- If I would be the king of the world and only my point of view counts, then direct drops would be disabled completely.
- If there are some level designers who want to use direct drops not only for convenience but as an integral part of levels, then I would prefer keeping this option.

But the option brings serious harm -- hidden inconsistency that will eventually surface during play. This is horrible for beginners, and bad for experienced players, too. I don't believe all of its voters have understood this. Not a single one has explained how the option provides enough benefit to warrant the inconsistency.
While this is a valid argument, I don't think it's quite as bad (in the case of direct drops) as you want to make us believe. There are currently other quirks of NeoLemmix that are worse in this respect, e.g.
- the precise climber mechanics (I am currently undecided whether to start a new thread to discuss them or not)
- glider mechanics (when do they turn around compared to just drop a little in height?)
- disarmers not disarming traps that are currently triggered.
True, all of these points do not change from level pack to level pack, but understanding them in the first place is much more complicated than to check out direct drops.

And if we use your argument, then there should be no options to change the entrance order to ABBA or to change the max. fall distance. But both options are currently supported by the editor V1.35D, though we may of course decide to change that as well...

1613
Two solutions for Stonecrest V3. Both use the same (and only one) exit.

1614
Closed / Re: 2.00 Bomber mechanics in NeoLemmix V2.00
« on: September 30, 2015, 03:39:40 PM »
Have you considered to make the bomber hole one pixel wider, such that it has odd width and can be properly centered around the lemming?

1615
Closed / 2.00 Bomber mechanics in NeoLemmix V2.00
« on: September 29, 2015, 05:22:09 PM »
namida has recently opened up the discussion for small physics changes for NeoLemmix V2.00, so I will start by discussing one pecularity of bomber mechanics.

It concerns bombing in miner shafts: The bomber hole slightly depends on the direction the lemming is going! See attached picture. Upper row shows the two choices of bomber holes for lemmings going down, the lower row does the same for lemmings walking upwards. The bomber holes for ascending lemmings is actually one pixel further to the left that for descending lemmings.
This small difference has one rather big consequence: Only ascending lemmings can create bomber holes that turns other lemmings around - descending lemmings cannot!

I suggest changing the bomber placement for descending lemmings into the one for ascending lemmings. This way it is unlikely to break any existing levels (as turning lemmings in such bomber holes was already possible in original Lemmix and NeoLemmix up to now), but makes the behaviour uniform.

1616
Closed / Re: Editor Bugs / Suggestions
« on: September 29, 2015, 04:26:44 PM »
Since I'm planning to do a new editor with V2.00n, I'm not going to make any major changes, ...
Sounds sensible.

... but I can take into account some of the minor ones (and your suggestion for more documentation)
Currently there seems to be no link to your help page on the forum. So I would suggest:
- Adding a link to the help page to the "NeoLemmix Info, Downloads, Etc" topic.
- Making a .txt or .pdf-file with all the documentation and adding it to the dropbox folder with all the editors. Alternatively zip it to the .exe of the editor.
Of course all of this can wait until you have the V2.00 editor, if that saves you work.
As a user I prefer documentations that are stored locally on my computer to ones that on the web (especially if I have to search for them each time).

-how about the option to have all of the menu windows [like skill menu, stats, terrain selection] appear automatically when you open the program. Currently; every time I open the editor I press the F7-F10 or whatever to make them all appear and re-arrange them in the bottom bar.
Not too fond of this suggestion, due to my different style: I usually have one big window displaying the level (with the grey boxes at the bottom reduced to minimum size) and only the inspector window open as a separate window. Having more windows open would only require screen space that has better uses.

1617
Closed / Re: Editor Bugs / Suggestions
« on: September 28, 2015, 05:57:29 PM »
Simon has vented his rage on the NeoLemmix player, so I may have my own little rant about the NeoLemmix editor ;).

1) Missing documentation
There is no readme file coming with the editor, explaining all the buttons, menus, ... (and I don't know whether one actually exists). Some examples, what should be explained even for people that know the original Lemmix:
- All options in File-Settings
- There is a unlabeled box under "Index" in the Inspector menu.
- What are "S Val" and "L Val"? What "Reset ID"?
- There is a drop-down menu at the bottom right of the Inspector menu. What does it do?
- System.Dat Editor? Huge pile of options and only some are self-explanatory. For a new user, it is not even clear what this whole editor can be used for! And isn't there a barely visible textbox at the very bottom?
- "Help" does not help, but gives the credits. Perhaps give some in-editor help/explanations here?
- What does "Validate Level" do exactly? How does it fix which issue?
- There are some grey boxes in the lower half of the editor. What are they there for?
- ...
(many of them are rhetorical questions for me, because of dedicated experimentation - so no need to answer them here)

2) Remove "Selection" from the top bar and replace it by "Windows" (or something similar)
I rarely need the "align" function, but frequently want to open the skill window, inspector window, ... So I would prefer moving the "align" functions to the bottom of "Edit" and move all the windows to a separate drop-down menu. Then the "View" menu would be much smaller.
On a related note:
- Why is "Dos Levelpack Editor" under "View" and not under "Tools"?
- Is "Align to grid used by Dos" really needed anymore? You cannot save levels in the old Lemmix format anymore, can you?
- Minor point: The order of the window options and view options does not coincide with the order of the FX-keys. Perhaps they can be ordered within the drop-down menu to reflect the order of the FX-keys (though the pairing between options and FX-keys should be kept).

3) Revamp Skillset window
- Currently some of the less used skills are quite at the top of the window (like disarmer, swimmer and stoner), white important ones are at the bottom. The ordering possibly reflects the ordering in the skill panel later on, but here it is more important to find much-used skills easily.
- The miner is far away from basher/digger and floater/glider could be next to each other as well. You probably intended this window to be read horizontally, but with the clear separation into two colums, I always read it vertically.
- Minor issue: Could you fix the internal order of the boxes. Hitting tab gives a random walk around this window ;). At least all the boxes with the number of skills should be consecutive when hitting tab.

4) Revamp Gimmick window
- About half of the space is taken up by two gimmicks that are rarely used (and that I did not even know about before seeing them here). This space could be used much better by displaying a short description of the current gimmick. If one selects the clock gimmick or bait-and-switch then it may still display the additional options, but otherwise it is simply uninteresting.
- The drop-down menu to select the gimmick shown only 8 out of 44(?) gimmicks in total. It would be better to show a larger number of gimmicks at once.

1618
Closed / Re: 2.00 One-Way Arrows
« on: September 28, 2015, 04:49:56 PM »
My thoughts...

1) I would like to have a possibility to "double" the visuals, i.e. displaying twice as much arrows as usual. The reason is that sometimes the one-way-wall is only a small area and displaying twice as much arrows helps the player to realize what is going on. Currently you can simply place two objects over the same terrain piece, if you want to achieve that. See the attached level "Midnight Stroll" (part of NepsterLems) as an example.
The same goes for tile sets like the psychedelic style, where (depending on the terrain) arrows may be hardly visible.

2) Please provide at least the option to position the arrows for one-way-walls as the level designer wants them, instead of using a preset huge tiling of the level. Again this helps the player to discern small one-way-walls. Moreover it is (to me) much more aesthetically pleasing to see two full arrows instead of one full and two half arrows.
As en example consider the level "Roadblock" (again from NepsterLems). Currently the main problem is, that the animations start at different frames :sick:. If you now add badly placed arrows to this... :sick::sick::sick:

Generally I feel, that the original Lemmings/Lemmix level design method did a very good job of giving level designers huge flexibility while relying only on very few rules and options. I think we should strive to keep this flexibility while not making designing levels much more complicated.
Having said that: Why not have one-way-walls as areas for all mechanical purposes and adding the arrows as objects without trigger areas (possibly only visible if over the correct area)?

PS: I don't even see, why creating one-way-walls as areas is better than defining this area via the current precedure of objects on terrain pieces?

1619
...and some more solutions for bsmith and Crane.

1620
Site Discussion / Re: Private message attachments
« on: September 27, 2015, 11:47:27 AM »
I agree that deletion after 30 days may be a bit early, especially if the attachment is a beta-version of a NeoLemmix level pack and updates are done via single level files. How about 3 months?

Fun fact: I have only two PMs with attachments above 100kB - both of them were send by namida ;P.

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