NeoLemmix > New Objects

[DISC][PLAYER] Direction faced by Climbers and Sliders after skill remover

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namida:
When a Climber or Slider has their permanent skill removed while climbing or sliding, they obviously need to fall off the wall. The question is - should they fall facing towards the wall, or away from it?

My thought is that in both cases, they should fall facing away from the wall. My reasoning is - the only time they would face the same direction at the end of climbing / sliding, is if they reach a gap in the wall (counting the top / bottom as a gap, if it's open space rather than terrain jutting out). If they encounter terrain in their way, which is the only other outcome besides "end of the wall" that doesn't inherently contain a direction change anyway, they would turn around. (The other ways they could detach from the wall are if they're pushed off by a blocker, force field or splitter - all of which inherently carry a direction change - or by wall-jumping, which implies their direction would become "away from the wall" regardless of any other potential factor that might apply.)

From Discord, Proxima mentioned that the lemming facing towards the wall would feel like he's still sliding down it, so should face away. I personally feel this is a weaker argument, though not by any means an outright invalid one. A couple more users also favored away from the wall, though gave no reason, simply agreed with an existing reason from someone else, or put it down to a gut feeling or similar.

Also from Discord, IchoTolot has a different train of thought here - that the climber continues in the same direction when reaching his goal (empty space at the top of the wall), while the slider turns around when reaching his goal (a floor at the bottom of the wall). In all other cases that don't inherently carry a direction change anyway, the climber would turn around while the slider would not. In other words, except where an external factor forces a direction, the two skills are essentially opposites. This would also fit with how they're more or less the inverse of each other in the first place. As such, IchoTolot's view is that the climber should face away, but the slider should face towards, the wall.

One thing I noted is that I cannot think of any situation that relies on one behavior or the other. The other behavior would always be possible to simulate via force fields, if nothing else.

WillLem:
I can think of 2 reasons why this is important:

1) It becomes a way to turn both a Climber and a Slider around. Whilst they do of course lose the skill thereafter, the turning around is achieved without any interaction with anything else.

2) If they fall facing towards, they have at least a 1-frame opportunity to interact with the wall upon reaching the ground (assuming it's not a deadly fall), whilst facing away means that they would have to turn around again to interact with it. Sure, the significance of this depends entirely on the design of the level, but it's clearly an important consideration either way.

There are probably other reasons as well. I favour facing away ever so slightly, but I don't feel too strongly about it at this stage.

Dullstar:
I'd argue they should face towards the wall in both cases.

My reasoning for this is simple: the animation for both skills suggests that the lemming is facing the wall when interacting with it. The deassigner is a deassigner, not a turner. If the wall is still there when they reach the bottom, they'll turn around anyway, and if it's not, then they'll keep going the direction that they were visually facing when the skill was removed.

namida:
Two things:

1. I have added a poll.
2. For at least the first public exp release, both will face away from the wall. (The face-toward behavior can be simulated by adding a force field, if desired.) This does not mean it cannot be changed later.

Strato Incendus:
I'd expect this to work the same way as with the Exhaustion gimmick back in the day when lemmings stopped performing their permanent skills. Of course, there were no Sliders back then, but I think Climbers turned around when falling, as if they had just hit their head.

I couldn't tell in kaywhyn's Lemmicks replays, because in the completed solutions, you usually don't see any Climbers quitting in the middle, since you have to find ways to prevent exactly that. kaywhyn, do you remember off the top of your head? ;) Otherwise I'll have to check again in the old editor.

I think the reason for the turnaround is the fact that Climbers (and now also Sliders) have their trigger one pixel inside the wall, i.e. at a point where a normal Walker or Faller would already have turned around.

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