[DISC] 'Parental Guidance' sprites for trap animations

[WillLem]

I've looked everywhere but can't find the original suggestion. I'm pretty sure it was from Lana.

She suggested that Lemmini could have 'Parental' settings which display a 'take a break' message at certain intervals, and remove the blood from trap animations.

I've all but implemented the second of these suggestions. Style authors can provide '_pg' suffixed versions of any sprite in the style. If RetroLemmini finds the PG version, and the user has toggled the 'family friendly sprites' option ON in settings, it loads that one instead.

Initial implementation in RLPlayer commit 08d1c67.

I do need a bit of help with this though.

Firstly, it's difficult to decide which of the trap animations should be given PG variants. The ones that feature blood can be edited to be less gory, but what about the others?

Secondly, the editing work will require an artist's hand. If anyone wants to volunteer to do this, I'd be very grateful for the help. It will basically entail editing the OG (orig/ohno) styles' trap animations to be as un-gory as possible.

Also, how should the feature be worded in the Options menu? I've currently gone with 'Use family-friendly sprites if available', indicating the main aspects of the feature:

1) It's the animations themselves that have been edited
2) The intention is to make them less graphic
3) Some styles may not provide such alternatives (the original styles will all have PG variants included, but custom styles made by Forum users may not)

Any other thoughts/suggestions regarding this?

[hrb264]

That's a good idea. I was playing the OG lemmings from like 6 and some of the traps were a bit traumatic! No idea how you could make them less so though. That rope trap doesnt have any blood but the graphic is a bit disturbing. Perhaps a kiddies version where its not obviously killing the lemming?

[WillLem]

It's very difficult to know exactly where to draw the line. It's probably the sort of thing we can keep coming back to over time rather than something we have to perfect right out of the gate.

I'll ship the feature in the next version of RetroLemmini with just the blood removed (where relevant) - that won't take long to do and may be satisfactory for most users that want a parental setting.

More nuanced editing of the trap animations can come later. Hopefully, people will suggest specific ideas and (even better) provide an edited spritesheet that we can just drop in to the relevant style.

[WillLem]

OK, so I've done a quick pass of all OG-style traps. Here's what's been edited for the PG versions:

Note that the _md versions of these styles, and the 'classic' style, have also been updated as they contain some of the same traps.

Crystal slicer - Removed blood. This one is actually a lot funnier without it!

Dirt 10 tons - Lemming disappears after being squished
Dirt snapper - Removed decapitated head
Dirt boulder - Recolored blood to the same color as the boulder. The effect is that the boulder has left a trail of mud (rather than gore) after squishing the lemming

Pillar rope trap - Removed the stone ball from the second part of the animation. The effect is that the lemming is thrown behind the trap

Snow icicle - The lemming is squished rather than sliced in half. Much less graphic

The above will probably do it for now. Most of the others are already fairly humourous/family-friendly rather than gory, but please feel free to post any suggestions that you might have.