Reconsider solid ceiling in view of addition of shimmier? [DISCUSSION]

[Proxima]

The ceiling acts like a steel wall in all other cases. Builders hit their head, Lemmings turn if they run against it. So it would only be logical if the shimmier grabs onto it. Not doing so would be a weird special rule.

Well, I think it is time we reconsidered the deadly ceiling. Nepster decided to cull radiation and slowfreeze in spite of damage to existing content, because it resulted in a simpler and more consistent game.

[Proxima]

This was discussed on multiplay occasions in the past with the final result ending here: http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=2537.0
Even with a high majority in favor of this.

In favour: namida, IchoTolot, Gronkling, Minim, Dullstar
Against: Nepster, mobius, Simon, Proxima

That's your idea of a clear majority?

[IchoTolot]

1.) It would still be a majority.

2.) Where did you pull out Nepster's clear against voice?

Nepster after the content breaking analysis and last post: "I could live with a solid ceiling as well. Solid ceilings tend to create far less backroutes than solid edges, so turning deadly ceilings solid will not break many levels."

2 of the other against voices don't have content to maintain as well and wouldn't face hours of level checking and fixing and therefore no consequences. (Simon and you)

[Proxima]

"I could live with" means "I would prefer not". If you want to discount that for not being "clear", then you should discount Gronkling and Minim's votes in favour as well. But this kind of tallying is pointless; if you want to see whether there's a majority or not, hold a poll of the current forum members. Several of the currently active content producers didn't contribute to the old discussion at all. My point was just to refute your claim that the discussion was closed because of a "high majority".

I accept that as I don't have a NeoLemmix pack yet, I'm not directly affected if we decide to make this change. On the other hand, leaving bugs and inconsistencies in the mechanics because we don't want to mess with old content does affect any content I make in the future, and it affects all new players and creators.

[IchoTolot]

"I could live with" means "I would prefer not". If you want to discount that for not being "clear", then you should discount Gronkling and Minim's votes in favour as well. But this kind of tallying is pointless; if you want to see whether there's a majority or not, hold a poll of the current forum members. Several of the currently active content producers didn't contribute to the old discussion at all. My point was just to refute your claim that the discussion was closed because of a "high majority".

I accept that as I don't have a NeoLemmix pack yet, I'm not directly affected if we decide to make this change. On the other hand, leaving bugs and inconsistencies in the mechanics because we don't want to mess with old content does affect any content I make in the future, and it affects all new players and creators.

That's why it was discussed multiple times and finally a decision was made to end it. If we pull out old discussions with final descisions again and again we never will find stability!

[kieranmillar]

I think being able to shimmy along the top level border would look and feel absurd to me in the same way climbing up a solid side border would be absurd, because there is no terrain there. If you want to be able to shimmy on the top of the level, just put some terrain there.

I never viewed the top of the level as steel, but like one of the force walls from Neolemmix, but pointing downwards. And you can't climb up those walls, so you shouldn't be able to shimmy along the ceiling. But my expectation had always been that all 4 sides were deadly, so the ceiling being different in this case has always felt a bit odd to me, but I guess in the original lemmings it barely ever mattered.

[Proxima]

That's why it was discussed multiple times and finally a decision was made to end it. If we pull out old discussions with final descisions again and again we never will find stability!

Your definition of "multiple" is as shaky as your definition of "majority". And I'm not proposing to pull out multiple old discussions, just this one, precisely because it was closed prematurely by fiat of namida when the discussion had no clear consensus and there was a lot still to be said. In particular, namida decided about the sides and top together, so there was never any room for anyone to say "Well, now that we've decided about the sides, the top should be deadly too, for consistency". I can't help feeling that at least some of the participants would have agreed with that.

[IchoTolot]

That's why it was discussed multiple times and finally a decision was made to end it. If we pull out old discussions with final descisions again and again we never will find stability!

Your definition of "multiple" is as shaky as your definition of "majority". And I'm not proposing to pull out multiple old discussions, just this one, precisely because it was closed prematurely by fiat of namida when the discussion had no clear consensus and there was a lot still to be said. In particular, namida decided about the sides and top together, so there was never any room for anyone to say "Well, now that we've decided about the sides, the top should be deadly too, for consistency". I can't help feeling that at least some of the participants would have agreed with that.

This was far from prematurely. Sry but this was long drawn out.

[Proxima]

Two pages of discussion over two days. No further discussion after the decision to have deadly sides.

[IchoTolot]

Two pages of discussion over two days. No further discussion after the decision to have deadly sides.

With all the prequels in IRC and spread out over other topics.

[Proxima]

Then I have to ask: Why was this discussion spread out so much? That stopped people who wanted to contribute from having an accurate grasp of what had already been said. And given that the discussion was so badly handled, why is it so unthinkable to suggest we have a proper discussion so that at least we can have some closure?

[IchoTolot]

Then I have to ask: Why was this discussion spread out so much? That stopped people who wanted to contribute from having an accurate grasp of what had already been said. And given that the discussion was so badly handled, why is it so unthinkable to suggest we have a proper discussion so that at least we can have some closure?

He had a proper discussion. We had a closure.

After 1,5 years breaking up standard physics again that would have significant impacts even at that time would burn down everything today.

[Proxima]

Discussion that's hidden from people who have an interest in participating is not proper discussion and should not be treated as binding.

And I do think you are overreacting; yes, it would take some work to fix levels affected by this, but only those levels where it's possible to interact with the ceiling, which is probably a small fraction of NeoLemmix content.

[Colorful Arty]

I think being able to shimmy along the top level border would look and feel absurd to me in the same way climbing up a solid side border would be absurd, because there is no terrain there. If you want to be able to shimmy on the top of the level, just put some terrain there.

This right here. While it is important to be consistent, it's just as important to be intuitive and to make sense. It really makes no sense for Lemmings to be able to shimmy across the top border of the level, and since the top border currently does not kill lemmings, it should not kill the shimmier if he jumps into it. Rather, since the top border acts like a steel wall, the shimmier should hit his head on the border and fall right back down to the ground.

[Dullstar]

When I played through Lemmings 2, I found the deadly ceiling to be one of the most annoying aspects of that game (granted, the flinging mechanics made that much worse than it would be in NeoLemmix, but still). Considering that the ceiling's behavior doesn't usually result in backroutes, the ability to put builders close the ceiling without having them die randomly because they went slightly too high is rather nice - besides, it's logical that lemmings, if allowed to go offscreen towards the top, would eventually fall back into the level area due to gravity, which isn't the case with the bottom (because you can think of it as a bottomless pit) and the sides (where there's no particular reason why the lemmings should EVER turn around). It also has the convenience thing of not having to babysit climbers as much - and if the level designer really wants to fry rogue climbers it's easy to use a flame trap for that, especially with style mixing.

It is also logical that the top edge of the level represents sky. You cannot hold onto the sky, therefore shimmiers should not be able to attach to it. To be honest, I don't think it's even all that inconsistent to disallow the shimmier from using the ceilng, because while we sometimes consider the ceiling to be technically equivalent to a mass of steel just offscreen, there's no particular reason it needs to literally behave like a mass of steel at the top of the screen. The main reason I think it makes sense to have lemmings hit their heads on the ceiling is because you have to set an arbitrary "you can't build here" cutoff SOMEWHERE to prevent the lemmings from walking on top of the level boundary - and having them hit their heads certainly makes a lot more sense than them randomly dying because they wandered 1 pixel too high.

Consider a level, one screen large, with the sides and ceiling accessible to lemmings. Now picture a builder that, if allowed to continue building as long as possible, reaches the point where it would die with deadly ceilings. Now, let's expand the level, repeating the terrain on the edges of the level infinitely. Lemmings traveling to the left and right would continue travelling left and right forever (assume the player lacks a skill to turn them around with), whereas the builder, building in the same position as before, will fall back down after passing the former ceiling. This is a compelling reason why it makes sense for the sides to be deadly, but not the ceiling.
To summarize, I am strongly against deadly ceilings, and against shimmiers attaching to the sky.

[Simon]

expand the level, repeating the terrain on the edges of the level infinitely.
Lemmings traveling to the left and right would continue
builder [...] will fall back down
makes sense for the sides to be deadly, but not the ceiling.

This is promising because it tries to remove the boundary instead of enforcing special boundary rules. The visible area will then define player influence instead of a living zone for lemmings. And it cries for an extended view once we get close to the ceiling, with a cutoff height for skill assignments.

But it has a catch. Lix has the infinite terrain extension. When you place the final builder brick under the ceiling, because of infinite extension, the brick creates a solid tower instead of a flat rectangle. The building lix will step onto the brick, thereby enter this tower and be stuck inside. Followers will turn at the tower and walk back down.

Since I don't like lixes stuck outside the visible area, I kill everything that's completely out of bounds. At least for the builder, the kill doesn't play a big role; the tower behavior comes entirely from the infinite terrain extension. 100 % logical from simple rules, but highly unintuitive. I had to test this in Lix while writing the post! Yet I'll keep it in Lix because rules should be simple, and level designs should leave the ceiling alone.

You can get around this with special rules for terrain that was always there vs. terrain that we created during play. But then we would heap special rules onto the ceiling despite our attempt to remove its specialness. Or, maybe special rules are best nonetheless.

Infinite terrain extension should kill climbers because they will never return.

I love that you brought this idea to the table. It's really the heart of the problem: The ceiling should matter less, not more.

ceiling's behavior doesn't usually result in backroutes

My hunch was the same 2 years ago. I haven't reconsidered since because the question hasn't come up since.

Icho's argument from 2 years ago was that deadly ceilings would force many level changes. Levels can break either by new backroutes or by failing intended routes; I assume here we would lose intended routes from randomly dying climbers.

-- Simon

[ccexplore]

(Sorry if below points had already been made on the thread.)

Climbers don't climb the level's left/right borders in NeoLemmix, do they?  They certainly don't in original Lemmings, despite other interactions present for those borders (eg. turning around walkers).

At least with climbers, even if they could climb the borders it would be quite difficult to exploit that behavior usefully.  Shimmying across the top border however would seem way more exploitable than any other ceiling interactions to date.  I don't think it is acceptable behavior to open up such an exploitable border behavior.  Heck, some people already feel even the existing border interactions are already too helpful.

[Nepster]

First of all: While I am against reiterating the same arguments over and over after having reached a conclusion, I think it is totally fair game to open up a discussion again, if new developments add substantial arguments to one side or the other.

Arguments for solid ceiling:
1) Existing content, that relies on it.
2) L1 had this behavior. As NeoLemmix already changed quite a lot of stuff, I suggest to disregard this point.
3) Climbers may accidentally vanish out of the screen.
4) Sky isn't deadly, cf. Dullstar's argument: Well, if you really want an in-game reason, one could always say lemmings will die due to asphyxiation due to thin air this high.   More problematic is the question: If the sky is considered air, then why do builders turn around when they hit the ceiling, instead of continuing forward?

Arguments against solid ceiling:
1) The ceiling is currently an exception: All other sides are air and lemmings die when they reach them. So there is no reason to expect that the ceiling behaves in any way differently.
2) Shimmiers should not be able to shimmy across the top border. With a non-solid ceiling, this is a non-issue. Otherwise it would require ugle special-casing to determine whether the shimmier has actually grabbed terrain or the level ceiling. And this special-casing would even be needed during each frame, because shimmiers may at first hold onto actual terrain and then reach the ceiling while already shimmying.
Moreover it is not clear to me why there should be a difference for shimmiers but not for builders for an empty ceiling compared to one that has a 1-pixel high terrain ceiling.
3) What should we do with jumpers, which will be implemented at some point, too? If we consider the sky to be empty non-shimmyable, then the jumper should be able to move through the ceiling with his head, instead of hitting and dropping down.

Upshot is: With the shimmier and the jumper ceiling interactions become much more frequent and muc more varied. If we keep a solid ceiling, then we will need a lot of special rules to define what happens to shimmiers and jumpers, while the rule-set would be a lot simpler for non-solid ceilings.
Therefore I am acutally much in favor of non-solid ceilings, which will be far easier to learn and understand given the new additions to the skill set.

I made a new-formats version on NeoLemmix with non-solid ceiling for you to try out, cf. attachment. Surprisingly few replays fail actually.

When I played through Lemmings 2, I found the deadly ceiling to be one of the most annoying aspects of that game (granted, the flinging mechanics made that much worse than it would be in NeoLemmix, but still). Considering that the ceiling's behavior doesn't usually result in backroutes, the ability to put builders close the ceiling without having them die randomly because they went slightly too high is rather nice - besides, it's logical that lemmings, if allowed to go offscreen towards the top, would eventually fall back into the level area due to gravity, which isn't the case with the bottom (because you can think of it as a bottomless pit) and the sides (where there's no particular reason why the lemmings should EVER turn around). It also has the convenience thing of not having to babysit climbers as much - and if the level designer really wants to fry rogue climbers it's easy to use a flame trap for that, especially with style mixing.

With the skill blueprints accidentally building out of the ceiling or jumping out of it will be more or less a non-issue. And jumping out of the screen with a shimmier... Let's just say I have faith in my fellow players that they will be able to recognize when there is no solid terrain above the lemming .
Regarding the climber: Yes this is an issue, but even now I would certainly encourage level designers to put terrain there, if the climber is intended to drop down again and not rely on the player knowing that the ceiling acts solid.

It is also logical that the top edge of the level represents sky.

Then please explain, why climbers should drop down if they reach the ceiling, if it is so logical for it to represent sky.

You cannot hold onto the sky, therefore shimmiers should not be able to attach to it. To be honest, I don't think it's even all that inconsistent to disallow the shimmier from using the ceilng, because while we sometimes consider the ceiling to be technically equivalent to a mass of steel just offscreen, there's no particular reason it needs to literally behave like a mass of steel at the top of the screen. The main reason I think it makes sense to have lemmings hit their heads on the ceiling is because you have to set an arbitrary "you can't build here" cutoff SOMEWHERE to prevent the lemmings from walking on top of the level boundary - and having them hit their heads certainly makes a lot more sense than them randomly dying because they wandered 1 pixel too high.

I am no really convinced here, that turning around due to illogical steel at the ceiling is in any way better than arbitrarily dying there. Certainly neither is prefect, but I cannot see why turning around is inherently more logical than dying. More convenient perhaps, but that wasn't your argument in this paragraph.
And finally I just have to ask: Why should a builder turn around, when hitting the ceiling with his head, if there is no steel at the ceiling? Why not continue until the builder's feet hit the ceiling? If the ceiling would be considered sky, then certainly this would be much more logical, wouldn't it?

[nin10doadict]

I wouldn't mind if the ceiling did become deadly... The only level I can think of that I've played recently where I used the ceiling was "Bridgeworks" from Sublems, where I built all the way up to the ceiling to form a wall up there, which I don't think was the intended solution anyway.

[Dullstar]

I focused primarily on the builder for my argument while mostly ignoring the climber. For the climber, I don't really like either option but I also don't really have a good reason for one over the other. Having them hit their head is certainly more convenient, but you'd hope level designers would avoid making level designs that rely on this behavior.

I kind of like some of the ideas Simon came up with regarding infinite terrain extension (which would kill climbers), though I'd make the following suggestions on how to handle builders/jumping shimmiers/etc.
 - Don't kill
 - Cut off building close to the edge of screen to avoid offscreen terrain, but don't turn the lemming around.

I don't think there is any fully logical way that also makes good gameplay sense to fully handle the level boundary, since such a boundary doesn't really have any real life equivalent. Even if you made the argument that the air is thin, they wouldn't asphyxiate immediately, after all - if it was just, say, a builder stair jutting of the screen, they could probably hold their breath long enough to survive.

Whatever the outcome, though, I'll make sure that any future levels I create are unaffected by the ceiling behavior.

[GigaLem]

I'll agree with Dullstar here, the ceiling shouldn't kill but it shouldn't allow lemmings to shimmy across it.
Essentially, the ceiling can be summarized as a One way down field.

[Nepster]

Given that the No-Ceiling version was downloaded 9 times, and only Dullstar and GigaLem complained about the non-solid ceiling, I think that this experiment went pretty well. So the next experimental version will have non-solid ceiling.

[Strato Incendus]

Are there any original levels (meaning from Lemmings / Oh no! More Lemmings) which are going to have their solutions affected by this?

(Just noticed that a level I created today happens to fall into this category .)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Proxima]

There are a couple of levels in Genesis Lemmings that rely on a solid ceiling, notably Everyone's a hard nut and Lemmings' Ark.

For Redux, I've added terrain at the top edge in any case, since regardless of what's eventually decided, I don't think it's fair to rely on players knowing about hidden mechanics.

[Strato Incendus]

For Redux, I've added terrain at the top edge in any case

Ah, nevermind, I wasn't even thinking! The solution to such problems can be so easy...

Though I'd suggest to use specifically steel where such "alibi terrain" is needed. Otherwise, it would still be possible to build towards that top terrain and bash through it or something similar. Afaik this was possible in the Mac version of Lemmings and Oh no! More Lemmings, and you can easily break some levels this way (for example "Mind the Step", Mayhem 28) by just going above the entire landscape .

[IchoTolot]

I swor not to post in here again and I thought the discussion was finally over with the decision to respect the results of the old discussions, but the out of nowhere decision for change I cannot let just stand here.

I find a non-solid ceiling the wrong decision and as my researches of the past have shown a ton of content is affected by this, just to get rid of edge-cases of potential future skills. I would rather cut these new skills even.

When I played through Lemmings 2, I found the deadly ceiling to be one of the most annoying aspects of that game (granted, the flinging mechanics made that much worse than it would be in NeoLemmix, but still). Considering that the ceiling's behavior doesn't usually result in backroutes, the ability to put builders close the ceiling without having them die randomly because they went slightly too high is rather nice - besides, it's logical that lemmings, if allowed to go offscreen towards the top, would eventually fall back into the level area due to gravity, which isn't the case with the bottom (because you can think of it as a bottomless pit) and the sides (where there's no particular reason why the lemmings should EVER turn around). It also has the convenience thing of not having to babysit climbers as much - and if the level designer really wants to fry rogue climbers it's easy to use a flame trap for that, especially with style mixing.

It is also logical that the top edge of the level represents sky. You cannot hold onto the sky, therefore shimmiers should not be able to attach to it. To be honest, I don't think it's even all that inconsistent to disallow the shimmier from using the ceilng, because while we sometimes consider the ceiling to be technically equivalent to a mass of steel just offscreen, there's no particular reason it needs to literally behave like a mass of steel at the top of the screen. The main reason I think it makes sense to have lemmings hit their heads on the ceiling is because you have to set an arbitrary "you can't build here" cutoff SOMEWHERE to prevent the lemmings from walking on top of the level boundary - and having them hit their heads certainly makes a lot more sense than them randomly dying because they wandered 1 pixel too high.

Consider a level, one screen large, with the sides and ceiling accessible to lemmings. Now picture a builder that, if allowed to continue building as long as possible, reaches the point where it would die with deadly ceilings. Now, let's expand the level, repeating the terrain on the edges of the level infinitely. Lemmings traveling to the left and right would continue travelling left and right forever (assume the player lacks a skill to turn them around with), whereas the builder, building in the same position as before, will fall back down after passing the former ceiling. This is a compelling reason why it makes sense for the sides to be deadly, but not the ceiling.
To summarize, I am strongly against deadly ceilings, and against shimmiers attaching to the sky.

I 100% stand behind Dullstars post here and highly protest against a non-solid celing!

[Strato Incendus]

If I understood Dullstar's post correctly, this is mainly an argument against a DEADLY ceiling, not necessarily against a non-solid one (i.e. one that would allow you to "build over the level" and then fall back into it).

I agree that deadly ceilings were annoying in Lemmings 2, mainly however for jet packs and super lemmings and all that other nonsense which was difficult enough to control with the mouse in the first place. A deadly ceiling would probably be less problematic if it triggered at the lemmings feet rather than its head (which would pretty much require almost the entire lemming to be outside the level before the trigger occurs, so there would be less "random" deaths). But still, I'd also prefer a non-deadly ceiling .

That doesn't necessarily mean it has to be solid, though. Since I'm currently creating levels for NeoLemmix 1.43 again, "solid like steel" in that case actually meant climbers could go up the sides of the levels. So if we consider the ceiling this type of "solid", it would make sense for shimmiers to attach to it. However, since level sides have been deadly for a long time now, for the current state of affairs it would make more sense if neither climbers nor shimmiers could interact with the ceiling in any way.

Therefore, GigaLem's analogy of the "one-way down field" seems to make most sense to me. Of course we technically don't have one-way down fields yet, but considering what the left- and right versions do: You can build against them or use them to turn around, but you can't climb them.

Transfering this principle to the ceiling would mean: You can turn around by bumping your head, but you can't shimmy along it.

[Simon]

"one-way field" is a bad name and clashes with "one-way wall", which is implemented as a field, too. Rename the thing to leftforce, rightforce, downforce. Or leftpusher, ...

Now, whoever wants the ceiling to be air with downforce: Please spec your proposal such that a computer can understand it.  "can be summarized as" or "principle means that special case X is resolved as" won't cut the mustard. I'm sure there is a nice idea to investigate here, but you're too vague.

Example spec: Whenever you would enter downforce as a walker, instead turn. Whenever you enter downforce as a faller, ignore (behave as if there were no downforce). Whenever you would enter downforce as a non-walker-non-faller, instead become walker or faller depending on whether you're standing on ground or not, and also turn around (I despise this turn, it's for back-compat).

Beware: Whenever your behavior becomes cute or introduces new mechanics, your ceiling becomes an interesting gameplay element. Your ceiling might be interesting in level designs, exactly what we'd like to avoid. In the above spec, the ceiling would catch jumpers mid-flight and have them drop straight down from the apex of the jump.

Also beware: Nasty corner cases of walkers getting stuck in downforce after walking into it from slope below.

-- Simon

[Nepster]

A deadly ceiling would probably be less problematic if it triggered at the lemmings feet rather than its head (which would pretty much require almost the entire lemming to be outside the level before the trigger occurs, so there would be less "random" deaths). But still, I'd also prefer a non-deadly ceiling .

The ceiling would only be deadly if a lemming is completely outside the level area, i.e. if not even a single foot pixel is still visible.

I agree that deadly ceilings were annoying in Lemmings 2, mainly however for jet packs and super lemmings and all that other nonsense which was difficult enough to control with the mouse in the first place.

Yeah, I totally agree with that (and I hopefully mentioned that before in this thread - at least I should have done so). But this is mainly a consequence of all these flying skills and the horrible fan, neither of which is or will be present in NeoLemmix in the future. So I don't think the L2 experience is a good guideline for the choice we have to make here.
On the contrary: Lix has flinging and lix die if flung through the ceiling. Similarly for lix jumping out through the ceiling. As far as I know, this works pretty well and there is almost no complains. The main reason is probably that it's far easier to estimate what would happen, so players who lose lemmings that way think "Oh, my bad, I should have seen this" instead of "Stupid ceiling! I tried to fly my lemming within the level boundaries - why did you vanish nevertheless". At least these are my own reactions...

Now, whoever wants the ceiling to be air with downforce: Please spec your proposal such that a computer can understand it.  "can be summarized as" or "principle means that special case X is resolved as" won't cut the mustard. I'm sure there is a nice idea to investigate here, but you're too vague.

Well, although I certainly wouldn't mind if you do, noone has to write computer-readable specs here.

The main problem with all these suggestions that let climbers fall down but disallow shimmying across the ceiling is the following:
There are functions that answer the question "Is pixel at position (x, y) terrain?" and similarly for steel, any trigger area types, etc. Given the code structure these functions are the only way to check a certain pixel coming from a lemming action (at least without duplicating lots of safety code, too). This means that it doesn't matter whether a climber or a shimmier asks whether the pixel (0, -1) (the first ceiling pixel) is solid, this function will always return the same value.
So the lemming himself would have to check whether he is at the ceiling of the level or not. But what does a lemming care about the global properties of the level?
At the moment, such information could be read by a lemming, but this is more of a design fault in the code than anything else. All this means that to implement such a rule, I would have to introduce a rather tight coupling between a lemming and the global properties of the level, which creates problems in ensuring the code is bug- and glitch-free and in supporting the code over the next years.

Therefore, GigaLem's analogy of the "one-way down field" seems to make most sense to me. Of course we technically don't have one-way down fields yet, but considering what the left- and right versions do: You can build against them or use them to turn around, but you can't climb them.

Transfering this principle to the ceiling would mean: You can turn around by bumping your head, but you can't shimmy along it.

There is one big difference between the existing force fields and the downwards version: Lemming have a direction that is left or right, which simply can be reversed, and the resulting position totally makes sense. But lemmings don't have a downward or upward direction, so it's far less clear what should happen there. I am almost certain that you would not want a builder to continue building a downwards bridge . 
Should lemmings turn around? If not, then walkers on sloped terrain will be stuck at the ceiling position and climbers will simply fall down and climb the same wall again. If yes, then shimmiers and jumpers hitting the ceiling would turn around as well, which doesn't make sense at all (at least to me).
Should skills stop when hitting down force-field? If not, then builders would continue placing another brick, move a little bit forward and then fall through the bridge because they hit the end of the previous brick, while all other lemmings would be stuck at the top. If yes, then this would be a huge change compared to the other force fields, and gliders in updrafts would move along incredibly funny paths, because they would regularly revert to fallers and have to start gliding again.
How should bashers behave? Force fields are not solid, so bashers would stop much easier at the top and revert to walkers. Currently they continue, at least if there is usual terrain around the top. In my opinion, this makes a lot more sense, especially as it's much more common to have a huge terrain wall when bashing on the top (think "Going Up...", Mayhem 23) than having a pathway at the very top where lemming could walk along and the only bashable terrain might possibly be outside the whole level.
If jumpers are allowed to go through the ceiling with their head, but climbers will fall down when hitting their head at the ceiling,, what should happen if a jumper hits a vertical wall? I think it would be nice and helpful to transition into a climber. But what if the jumper's head is above the ceiling. Then we would transition into a climber where a climber should never, ever be!

[mobius]

maybe this was said before but I don't remember:

Why do so many levels depend on ceiling behavior? I personally think this is not the best design and in my own levels I (now) try to avoid anything finicky like messing around near the ceiling. I personally don't (usually) care for levels that are all about the greyer areas of the game like edge behavior, stacking 7 builders to make a wall etc.

In my own level pack, I can't remember off hand how many (if any) of my own levels depend on ceiling behavior. In the current pack I'm working on so far only 2 levels would be affected by it and they are very easy to change (one way or the other)

Anyways; that's way this isn't really a huge issue for me. But for the record; I would prefer deadly ceilings for reasons I guess already covered;
-it's consistent with all other sides.
-it allows for simpler; neater design. If you want lemmings to die above; no need for traps; just open the ceiling. If you want a safe ceiling just add terrain or steel. Seems simple to me.
-all of this other discussion about 'downward force floors' or the ceiling acting like sky is just silly imo. This is too complicated; I think the game should be simpler. It is already complicated enough.

[Strato Incendus]

If jumpers are allowed to go through the ceiling with their head, but climbers will fall down when hitting their head at the ceiling,

That would be inconsistent to me. Any skill should get interrupted when hitting the ceiling, just like it happens when they hit normal terrain above their heads. The reason a climber falls down at that point is because it doesn't have solid ground under its feet; a builder or fencer would simply turn around. Hence, a jumper, like a climber, would fall down again.

With the shimmier, we could go either route - because it would be the only skill thus far which interacts with terrain above its head as its main purpose. You could say a) it hit the ceiling, so the rule explained beforehand applies and the skill gets cancelled, resulting in the lemming falling down again; b) or you could say it grabs onto the ceiling like the climber used to grab on to the sides of levels in NL 1.43, and it would indeed be the level designers job to compensate for the backroute potential here.

Both would restrict the effect to levels where shimmiers are actually introduced; hence, there'd be no need to overhaul a bunch of old level due to a global physics / rules change. Every new skill has its own backroute potential.

Let's take the swimmer, for example: Up to its introduction, water had always been deadly. Swimmers now also bore the potential of creating backroutes in levels where water had been randomly placed as decoration. Yet, there was no need to replace all those water- with fire objects (like the "acid" from the Lab tileset) - because those levels created back then didn't include swimmers in the first place .

Therefore, I don't believe we need a deadly or non-solid ceiling just because the shimmier becomes available. As long as you don't include it in your skillset, everything works as usual. And if you include it, it's up to the level creator to place additional obstacles at the ceiling - fire traps, protruding terrain- or steel pieces etc. - to prevent backroutes. After all, it shouldn't only be the player's mind which has to adapt to the possibilities of the new skill, but also the level creator's .

[Proxima]

Therefore, I don't believe we need a deadly or non-solid ceiling just because the shimmier becomes available. As long as you don't include it in your skillset, everything works as usual. And if you include it, it's up to the level creator to place additional obstacles at the ceiling - fire traps, protruding terrain- or steel pieces etc. - to prevent backroutes.

Thing is, usual backroute-prevention focuses on preventing alternative ways of reaching the exit, not ways of reaching the ceiling. It sounds like you're saying that it should be obligatory for level designers to prevent reaching the ceiling (if there are shimmiers) just so the player won't ever be inconvenienced by there being an edge case. That's too much to demand of level designers (and testers).

Any skill should get interrupted when hitting the ceiling

That makes no sense; why should a lemming get interrupted by hitting thin air?

The only way a solid ceiling could really be justified is if we put the visible playing area in a "frame" so the player can see that there is solid matter above the playing area. (And then we'd have to work out how to indicate whether or not the currently visible playing area is the actual top of the level.) That would require a lot of extra work, though, so I don't think it's the best solution for NL right now.

[Strato Incendus]

That makes no sense; why should a lemming get interrupted by hitting thin air?

That's based on the assumption of the ceiling being thin air - which might make sense from a flavour-standpoint. I however am merely arguing from a mechanical viewpoint, i.e. based on the current mechanics for the current skills. And these say that builders, climbers, and fencers (the only upward-moving skills) all stop once they hit the ceiling.

It sounds like you're saying that it should be obligatory for level designers to prevent reaching the ceiling (if there are shimmiers)

You don't need to prevent the player from reaching the ceiling; that would involve playing through quite a lot of skill combinations, whether reaching the ceiling is somehow possible or not.

Instead, just block the route along the ceiling itself! A fire trap might do it, a triggered trap would also suffice (because like climbers and swimmers, shimmiers most certainly couldn't suddenly switch to disarmer state to get past the trigger). Most of the time something as simple as slightly vertical terrain would be enough for the shimmier to bump against, turn, and fall. In short: Just don't leave the entire ceiling open when you include shimmiers .

[Nepster]

Any skill should get interrupted when hitting the ceiling, just like it happens when they hit normal terrain above their heads.

I have two concerns:
1) With this logic walking lemmings should not turn around.
2) Shimmiers usually won't stop when they hit a ceiling when jumping upwards, because they actually want to reach a ceiling. So the rule "Any skill should get interrupted when hitting the (terrain) ceiling" will no longer hold. So why should it hold with respect of the ceiling of the whole level?

Instead, just block the route along the ceiling itself! A fire trap might do it, a triggered trap would also suffice (because like climbers and swimmers, shimmiers most certainly couldn't suddenly switch to disarmer state to get past the trigger). Most of the time something as simple as slightly vertical terrain would be enough for the shimmier to bump against, turn, and fall. In short: Just don't leave the entire ceiling open when you include shimmiers .

There are several problems here:
1) If one just adds terrain bumps, then partial progress on the ceiling may still create backroutes.
2) Even now level designers miss similarly unintuitive game mechanics: The best example may be the crawling routes in kieranmillar's L2 pack. kieranmillar knew about the crawling from the beginning on, but forgot time and again to check for backroutes using them. Another example is bashing at the bottom through all the obstacles, which I remember using to backroute at least one of your levels.
3) If we all agree that shimmying along the ceiling is unintuitive and shouldn't be used, then why allow it in the first place? It only creates more work for level designers and players, both.

[Strato Incendus]

1) With this logic walking lemmings should not turn around.

Well, usually they don't. A builder bumping his head on the ceiling will leave a gap there, because he can't finish his skill, and walkers will just slip through it, no matter how tiny it is, and keep moving forward.

The only case where walkers would turn around on the ceiling is when a fencer clears a path right to the top of the level and you have a lemming walking up that slope. Then again, now that the walker is also a skill of its own, you could say that skill of walking gets interrupted once the lemming hits the ceiling. And a skill being interrupted this way usually leads to the lemming turning around, as it also happens with a miner or basher hitting steel.

2) Shimmiers usually won't stop when they hit a ceiling when jumping upwards, because they actually want to reach a ceiling. So the rule "Any skill should get interrupted when hitting the (terrain) ceiling" will no longer hold. So why should it hold with respect of the ceiling of the whole level?

You're right that a skill wanting to interact with the ceiling is the unique and new part about this, which creates an exception to the rule. Bringing back the example of the swimmer, it would mean "all skills get cancelled once a Lemming's feet touch water", and the swimmer is the only skill which can still be assigned when the lemming is already in the water (stoners, bombers, and cloners can only be assigned in water once the lemming has been made a swimmer).

So here comes the philosophical question again of whether the ceiling is a steel wall. Most skills can't interact with steel. So it could be worth contemplating whether the shimmier shouldn't be able to shimmy along steel surfaces. It would make sense from a flavour perspective, at least - one a plain steel surface, he'd have nothing to grab onto . Mechanically however, I think of the shimmier as a horizontal climber, and the climber can of course hold on to steel.

I'm certainly not advising for a change of the climber mechanics here, that would be insane . Rather, we could create a difference between shimmier and climber here, similarly to the builder vs. platformer-discussion which popped up recently. Here also the L2-feature of the platformer gaining height was removed on purpose. So perhaps a shimmier shouldn't interact with steel, even though it is able to in Lemmings 2? Like with the platformer, we'd weaken the skill in comparison to L2, but thereby would also make it differ more from an existing one.

L2 blurred the lines anyway by additionally introducing the diagonally climbing rock climber, plus the option of assigning the shimmier to a lemming hanging from the ceiling. If I understood your plans correctly, this isn't supposed to be possible in NeoLemmix. So instead, it would have to be done with a piece of terrain next to the wall, making the climber a glider so he lands on top of it, and jumps at the ceiling as part of the shimmier skill from there. Or, as I like to do it in many of my levels, one would have to use two climbers, making one of them a stoner with the other one landing on top of it, so he could start shimmying from there.

How is the ceiling regarded in the current stable version, anyway? Does it count as "terrain", i.e. do lemmings do terrain checks with it the same way they used to do with the level sides in 1.43?

[Nepster]

1) With this logic walking lemmings should not turn around.

Well, usually they don't. A builder bumping his head on the ceiling will leave a gap there, because he can't finish his skill, and walkers will just slip through it, no matter how tiny it is, and keep moving forward.

The only case where walkers would turn around on the ceiling is when a fencer clears a path right to the top of the level and you have a lemming walking up that slope. Then again, now that the walker is also a skill of its own, you could say that skill of walking gets interrupted once the lemming hits the ceiling. And a skill being interrupted this way usually leads to the lemming turning around, as it also happens with a miner or basher hitting steel.

Sorry, but that is somewhat far-fetched, as in all other situations walking lemmings are considered as using no skill at all.

So here comes the philosophical question again of whether the ceiling is a steel wall. Most skills can't interact with steel. So it could be worth contemplating whether the shimmier shouldn't be able to shimmy along steel surfaces. It would make sense from a flavour perspective, at least - one a plain steel surface, he'd have nothing to grab onto . Mechanically however, I think of the shimmier as a horizontal climber, and the climber can of course hold on to steel.

I'm certainly not advising for a change of the climber mechanics here, that would be insane . Rather, we could create a difference between shimmier and climber here, similarly to the builder vs. platformer-discussion which popped up recently. Here also the L2-feature of the platformer gaining height was removed on purpose. So perhaps a shimmier shouldn't interact with steel, even though it is able to in Lemmings 2? Like with the platformer, we'd weaken the skill in comparison to L2, but thereby would also make it differ more from an existing one.

Yes, I deem the difference to climbers problematic. And what we call "steel" are more often iron blocks with nails instead of smooth steel surfaces. So your favour argument isn't 100% spot on.

How is the ceiling regarded in the current stable version, anyway? Does it count as "terrain", i.e. do lemmings do terrain checks with it the same way they used to do with the level sides in 1.43?

I had to check the exact usage and the ceiling is actually non-removable usual terrain. For basher (and miner, fencer, ...) terrain checks it counts as usual terrain, but it cannot be removed in any way. And yes, all skills do terrain checks for the level borders in exactly the same way as they do them within the level, too. The only difference is, that the sides and the bottom always return empty air and the top always returns usual terrain.

[Strato Incendus]

I had to check the exact usage and the ceiling is actually non-removable usual terrain. For basher (and miner, fencer, ...) terrain checks it counts as usual terrain, but it cannot be removed in any way. And yes, all skills do terrain checks for the level borders in exactly the same way as they do them within the level, too. The only difference is, that the sides and the bottom always return empty air and the top always returns usual terrain.

Okay, so that means it would indeed make sense for the shimmier to grab the ceiling. Which for me clearly makes it the level designer's job to take care of this .

2) Even now level designers miss similarly unintuitive game mechanics: The best example may be the crawling routes in kieranmillar's L2 pack. kieranmillar knew about the crawling from the beginning on, but forgot time and again to check for backroutes using them. Another example is bashing at the bottom through all the obstacles, which I remember using to backroute at least one of your levels.

Yes, you're absolutely right, and I had to react to that by adding further steel pieces at the bottom. I will have to do the same for another level nin10doadict managed to backroute on "Pit Lems". And that's how I'm used to it: Backroutes in the end are always the level designer's fault. Part of "educating" people to become good level designers is to allow them to make these mistakes, because only that way they learn to spot potential backroutes themselves, rather than having the software ensure that they can never commit that mistake in the first place.

I've learned from Pit Lems that I really need to factor in the additional deaths cloners allow the player when setting the saving requirement, rather than just going with "number of lems = number to be saved" because it feels more convenient. I've learned to watch out for stoners creating shortcuts due to their potential of easily breaking falls out of thin air. With the shimmier, all of us will have to learn to watch out for potential backroutes along the ceiling.

The attached level only shows the most radical way of doing this. I doubt such extreme measures will be required for most shimmier levels.