I'm wondering whether the current behaviour for floaters and gliders when encountering a splat pad makes sense.
Currently - only if they've started pulling out their umbrella / glider, they'll be safe. Especially for floaters, which fall some distance before pulling out; if they hit a splat pad before this, a splat will occur. See attached level. (The attached level uses floaters. This is equally applicable to gliders, but less noticable because gliders fall only a very short distance before pulling out their hangglider.)
In this level, notice the difference in behaviour between the 7 lemmings:
1. This lemming doesn't move downwards far enough to become a faller, so he does not die.
2, 3, 4. These lemmings do move far enough to become fallers, but not enough to begin floating. They splat. In the case of lemming 2, the difference from lemming 1 (visually, prior to splatting) is almost unnoticable.
5, 6. These lemmings get part way through pulling out the umbrella. They survive. This is consistent with the behaviour that would occur when assigning a floater just before a lemming hits the ground.
7. This lemming pulls out his umbrella completely, and of course, survives.
The case I'm mainly wondering about is the case of lemmings 2 to 4. Should we:
(a) Keep the current behaviour. Although they may have the floater / glider skill, they don't get a chance to activate it, and thus should splat.
(b) Change it so that these lemmings would survive. A lemming surviving a fall via a single frame of attempting to start floating is a well-established, accepted and widely used mechanic; and this is arguably more consistent with that - that it's more about the lemming having the skill. (Indeed, except by changing the max fall distance, you'd never be able to set up a situation where a floater splats due to not having time to pull out the umbrella (except by using a splat pad), even though there is no explicit prohibition on this.)