Hi,
This arose from
Lix's Replay Insert Mode discussion. Independently, I discussed the NeoLemmix behavior shortly on my twitch livestream a week ago.
nin10doadict describes the problem well:
The bug is:Consider the example:
Phyu 59: Lem 5 gets a basher.
Phyu 60: Lem 6 gets a builder.
If you go back and insert at phyu 59: Lem 6 gets a builder, then depending on whether we're using Lix or Neolemmix we get different behaviors.
In NeoLemmix the previous assignment to Lem 5 at frame 59 is silently overwritten and won't happen anymore. Could have disastrous effects on the rest of the replay; now any other assignments that were dependent on that one will be in unhelpful locations or fail for one reason or another. I find myself manually shuffling through the frames when using replay-insert to ensure I don't accidentally overwrite something, which seems annoying.
NeoLemmix's insert mode ("blue R") is reasonably hard to access: You'll have to map a hotkey to it, remember the hotkey, and conciously decide to use this mode. Thus, the problem won't hit everybody.
But
if you use it, sooner or later, you'll accidentally assign on a same frame and thus ditch a seemingly-random assignment from the middle of your replay. It's a small data loss bug. Granted, it's softened by the ease of recreating the overwritten replay. But it's insidious because you won't notice right away that you overwrote an assignment.
Solution ideas:Should the player have to manage this?
Can the game notify the player that an overwrite has occurred with a sound or visual cue?
Should the game prevent the overwrite altogether? If so, can the player force the overwrite anyway with repeated attempts?
I think that the accidental overwrites should be hard or impossible. A dumb, but robust and easy way is: Flat-out disallow the new assignment and keep the old. If we want to be cheap, then give no feedback besides the obvious failure to insert.
namida, how much energy would you want to invest here? I'd happily chew through some UI suggestions if others pipe up here, and maybe I'll have more insights on my own, too.
-- Simon
