It feels odd that you should use that as an argument against the "5 speeds" idea.
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Since ONML was designed second, this really looks as though the designers themselves realised that the game didn't need so many gradations in release rate....
Thanks for tallying these up, it's interesting to see the spread in L1.
The list
is quite large with many values accounted for, and I imagine that those less-frequently-used ones were used for a reason
in those levels; same goes even more so for ONML, in which the levels were even more tightly designed.
So, allowing more variation allows for the creation of levels which might need a more finely-tuned RR as its base. Sure, there might be
more frequently used ones, but narrowing the choices down to just those feels unnecessarily exclusive, particularly from a design POV.
Having said that, I like your "9 options" list; it's an attractive prospect from a player POV, for sure. Simon's idea of revising it to allow "natural" timing of the Walker animations would be a good revision as well. Were it not for the fact that the Editor allows you to type the values you want, it would definitely be something to consider for the Editor to make level creation easier.
During play, the displayed initial spawn interval is for eyeballing, and I have feelings for it. E.g., spawn interval 60 gets the second lix stuck in first lix's digger pit, but 50 is too quick.
You can do the same with RR, how is SI more helpful in this case?
I don't like levels with precision RR fidgeting. I'll solve those by trial-and-error, not by exact math, and they're annyoing.
Agreed, fair comment. Perhaps this is an argument for
not allowing more RR/SI values, but it's possible to make fidgety levels no matter which value is displayed, and as long as the player has some gauge in mind for what value equates to what result in-game, RR and SI are equal here, too.
It helps a little if I have a feeling for what the numbers mean
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Thus, if WillLem wishes me to avoid exact math, then forcing RR over SI will not progress towards that goal.
OK, so I guess SI wins out a little bit here. If you're having to do mental arithmetic
because RR is displayed instead of SI, then yes I'd prefer to avoid that.
Still, the ideal situation is that a player would be changing the value and then noticing how it affects things in-game, eventually learning to equate meaning to them by intuition. It's only
because you know exactly what SI means that you favour it, and RR now looks more arbitrary. Conversely, a player who knows nothing about SI instead learns to equate meaning to the RR values...
Thinking about it, and with "OG preservation" aside,
a scale using colours rather than numbers is probably what I'd personally prefer... (although, that would be very awkward to try and implement in a button-oriented panel; such a thing would probably need a sliding scale).
I like to choose, during level design, an odd spawn interval (because the walker's animation cycle has 8 frames)
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With L1 RR or NL RR, it's not immediately obvious which numbers will make odd intervals, and they obscure entirely which numbers make prime intervals.
Ultimately, though, it's necessary to learn which values are useful for either RR or SI. You've learned SI, hence your preference. Someone who'd learned RR would feel the same way.
But OK -
I don't want to exclude people who've taken the time to learn either value, so if I was to re-implement the option it would be for that reason.
How would people feel about bringing the option back, but having it show RR when in Classic Mode?