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Add L2 skills to NeoLemmix? [DISCUSSION]

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mobius:
So I've argued in the past that I don't want new skills or would rather focus on other matters of the game. But now after seeing/playing L2 a little bit I think I changed my mind.

I welcome any new skill ideas that come and have my own suggestions to offer; (with the stipulation that I hope we keep the max-8-skills-per level. I really like this set-up and think having more than 8 is too much).

jumper and runner If any new skills are added any time soon I'd like these best of all as priority. Lix has both these and I think they have already been demonstrated to be used to great effect. Geoo commented that they decided not to adopt L2's runner jumping forward a little bit off of edges because it was annoying. I'd like more explanation on that. At first glance I like L2's behavior.

I suggest the idea that runners do EVERYTHING faster; including bash, build etc. Essentially a runner becomes a lemming with the speed toggle on all the time. [except falling/floating for "physical or realistic" reasons]. In Lix running jumpers go farther; I like this.

shimmier (ceiling climber) - I kind of like how this is a non-permanant skill in L2; but arguments could be made both ways; being more like the climber skill, so that the lemming always shimmies when encountering a ceiling, or just single use as in L2. If it is single use; I think the whole "jumping" animation [which happens regardless of if there is a ceiling there or not] should not be adopted as in L2 which allows for problems*

sand pourer/glue pourer/ filler - after learning more about these in L2 I really like the idea of them. I'd like to think how we could tweak these to be even more interesting. At first I thought having more than one "pourer" skill was redundant but they all have different uses which can be interesting in different ways.

lazar blaster
Haven't experimented with this skill much yet in L2 but it sounds interesting.

magno-boots
I like the idea of this being a permanent skill which allows the lemming to walk on any surface and never fall.

*allowing you to use this skill for other things which it arguably shouldn't intended for, which most of which becomes redundant.

Ryemanni:
Jumper was almost essential in L2 and made some great puzzles possible. I also grew to like the pourers alot. Fencer was another good one, so I'm glad it's in NeoLemmix.

If more skills were to be added, I support the maximum of 8 skills per level.

Nepster:
Jumper:
We discussed this already in the thread leading to the fencer skill. The result was (IIRC): Would be nice to have, but would need lots of additional code and will very likely result in tons of glitches.

Runner:
I always got the impression that the runner wasn't really useful in single-player in Lix, but was mainly added for multi-player maps. In L2 the runner is useful, because many of the other skills behave differently when assigned to a runner, but I don't think the current NeoLemmix skills allow for such modifications. So I kind of suspect that the runner will turn out like the disarmer: Useful in principal, but rarely used in practice.

Shimmier:
Yes, I agree that the jumping mechanics make this skill far too strong. But we need some way to get the lemming to the ceiling, especially as we cannot assign the shimmier while a climber is dangling from the ceiling. So perhaps the shimmier should start by jumping vertically? But what if there is another very thin platform say 6 pixels above the ground? Shimmy along this platform, or hit the "head" (or rather the stomach), or jump onto this platform if no ceiling is found?

Pourer skills:
If we add such a skill, I would limit it to one pourer skill and not multiple of them. Unfortunately all of them have some problems game-mechnics wise. The main one is that they pour a few pixels in front of the lemming's position leading to the big question: What do if there is already terrain there? In L2 they don't pour anything in that situation, which is incredibly annoying. But I don't see a better solution. Furthermore there are some skill-specific issues:
Sand-pourer: This skill almost automatically covers the lemming's position with terrain. As lemmings placed within terrain create lots of weird effects, creating such a situation should be avoided or at least made expensive.
Glue-pourer: While very powerful, the exact mechanics are not easy to understand, especially when it comes to slopes: On a 30° slope the glue runs down without sticking anywhere. On a 45° slope it runs down for about 8 pixels and then sticks. I still don't know why exactly it does that? If it runs down big steps (like with vertical walls of 8 pixels or so) it never glues, as far as I can tell. At ledges the behavior of a single pixel of glue depends on whether the pixel below it is air, usual terrain or another glue-pixel that just got solid. Not to mention that when running along the glue is twice as fast as a lemming, but somehow slows down when sticking. So determining the exact result in advance will probably be very, very hard.
Filler: Apart from easily covering the lemming's position, this skill has the problem that it cannot be used in a lot of different situations. The other pourers offer a lot more flexibility.
Finally all of these pourer-skills need a huge amount of new code, because we currently don't have anything resembling a single non-solid pixels that moves around and turns solid at some point.

Laser Blaster:
It sounds fun in principal, but neither the original L2 nor kieranmiller's levels use them in really interesting ways. I never had any problems determining the position of the laser blaster and such levels almost always follow the rule: Get worker lemming below crowd to release them with the laser blaster. Moreover the smaller maximal fall distance in NeoLemmix (compared to L2) make this skill much less useful.

Magno Boots:
They violate one main principle: As long as a lemming is standing on the ground, one can assign skills to it. In fact I think in L2 one cannot assign any skills to a non-horizontal magno booter. So we probably should allow assigning builder, platformers, bashers, miners, ... to magno booters of any orientation. This could be a lot of fun, but unfortunately means a lot of work to code, too. And if I say a lot, I mean it, because basically all terrain checks have to be completely rewritten to be orientation-independant.

IchoTolot:
From all those skills I think the vertical jumping Shimmier after Nerpster's proposal would add the most.

Magno Boots are very versitile, but can mostly replace shimmiers even. In fact I would call them a more powerful climber/rockclimber/shimmier combination that you have to cancel though. So they make the 2 skills more redundant.

Pourer physics can be nuts and would make the game way more complicated to understand, especially as we tend to abuse every last bit out of the possible physics for solutions.

Laster Blaster: I side with Nepster here. Cool to use, but I think that the skill will be quite limited.

As for Jmper/Runner, I would simply repeat Nepsters sentences here as well.
J: "Would be nice to have, but would need lots of additional code and will very likely result in tons of glitches."
R: Too few uses in singleplayer and not as many skill changing combination as in L2.

mobius:
what I was thinking with the shimmier was that if you click on a lemming to shimmy but no ceiling is there; nothing happens at all; he only jumps when a appropriate ceiling is present. This could also solve the issue of terrain in the middle of the lemming. Jumping up onto said terrain is interesting as well however.

I didn't even realize the can of worms with the magno boots. If we did that; it'd be essentially the same as adding the alternate gravity feature.

I know Lix has had some issues with the jumper but I don't recall it being particularly more problematic than any other skill.

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