[SUG] Allow Fencer to continue when there are no pixels at foot position

[WillLem]

This suggestion has arisen from a PM from mobius:

during certain stages of a miner if you assign fencer it will cancel quickly; I'm assuming because the fencer falls or doesn't have satisfactory terrain to proceed. Is this intentional? I just checked and this also happens in NL. I don't know if this is intentional or desired; just bringing it to your attention.

[WillLem]

The situation described by mobius happens because Fencers stop Fencing if there is no pixel at their foot position. Since a Miner tunnel necessarily creates a dip of several pixels, there are a number of frames of the Miner animation from which a Fencer, if assigned at that point, will not be able to continue Fencing.

My thoughts here are that we can probably relax this a bit to grant the Fencer a bit more versatility and assignability. Fencers should be able to adjust to at least one pixel missing at their foot position, in much the same way that Bashers can; what would happen is that the Fencer would would step down into the missing pixel, find solid ground, and continue with an upwards trajectory from there, as usual.

I'm happy to go ahead and implement this change unless there's a significant reason not to.

Thoughts?

[mobius]

my personal biggest concern is that this arbitrarily allows for you to cancels other skills with a fencer; in a way you can't necessarily do with most other skills of its kind. It reminds me of the Lemmini bug/feature of canceling miners with a blocker, which always felt kind of hackish to me.

[WillLem]

my personal biggest concern is that this arbitrarily allows for you to cancels other skills with a fencer

Yes, agreed. I was thinking about it earlier and it wouldn't be too difficult to set up a situation where a level would require a Fencer to cancel a Miner. If we can fix this, then let's!

[Strato Incendus]

Question: Won't this change allow a cloned Fencer to go down the tunnel of the original Fencer (just like a Basher)? Because those should always only have one pixel of height difference on the slope.

I'm not saying that’s a bad thing — I'm just pointing it out. Because so far, cloning Fencers was only useful if the lemming stood in between two walls on more or less flat ground. Cloning a Fencer within his own tunnel, meanwhile, so far always leads to the immediate cancellation of the cloned Fencer.

[WillLem]

Question: Won't this change allow a cloned Fencer to go down the tunnel of the original Fencer (just like a Basher)? Because those should always only have one pixel of height difference on the slope.

I haven't tried it yet, but... yes, I imagine this would happen.

Thinking about it (again, not having looked at it yet), it might be that the problem outlined in the OP is that Fencer isn't finding a pixel to step up onto, which is just as important to the Fencer skill as having something to stand on in the first place.

I'll keep this topic well posted and won't do anything game-breaking without agreement/discussion.