[DISC] Rewind button?

[WillLem]

If the purpose of adding a feature is to improve quality of life, then it should not be locked.

Admittedly, I'm struggling to think of examples of games that provide QOL features as rewards, but I'm sure they do exist. One that springs to mind is Super Mario Sunshine, which allows the player to use Fludd on subsequent plays of the 'platforming challenge' levels once the main quest is completed. In this context, Fludd can absolutely be seen as a QOL feature, because it makes these levels significantly easier to traverse.

I'll come back later with better examples.

You wouldn't have attempted it if it were impossible.

Have you met me?? Attempting the impossible is my jam!

Are you going to set up a vetting system so that levels by other designers must pass this threshold before they're allowed to be published?

Definitely not. Anybody is welcome to make any levels for RetroLemmini that they wish. We could even put the decision of whether or not to lock the player-assists in the hands of the level designer. I did originally think that, and now regret not including that detail in the idea suggestion.

My 'standards' are not so unique, either; they reflect the strong opinions of other Lemmings players. However small, there will always be a group of players who want the game to be presented more or less as it was originally. RetroLemmini is for that group.

levels that don't meet your standards will continue to be made, and "I'd rather they didn't get made" isn't a good answer to the question of whether the engine should have better quality-of-life features.

I never said I'd rather those levels didn't get made. This is more a question of which gameplay style we want to support than a comment on level design (the original levels are, of course, an exception to this because they are the original levels, and this Forum wouldn't exist without them).

I should probably take issue with framestepping being described as a 'quality-of-life' feature here. Direction-select and assign-whilst-paused are arguably QOL features. Framestepping, on the other hand, is tantamount to cheating in a game like Lemmings. We all agree that the ability to framestep backwards immediately renders most of the original levels (which is what many players come to the Forums looking for) obsolete. We have to be careful not to do the same in RetroLemmini - that's the bottom line here as far as I'm concerned.

[Simon]

Direction-select and assign-whilst-paused are arguably QOL features.

Directional select can allow extra things. In a sufficiently stone-aged engine, you can't assign to certain lemmings in a dense pack unless you force direction. It would enable new things in L2.

Framestepping, on the other hand, is tantamount to cheating

If this means backward and forward skips (+1/−1 physics update, staying paused): You'll have to remove some cheating features from RetroLemmini. As-is, you can click to advance by 1 physics update during pause.

If this means rewind only: Then the difference between cheating and not cheating is that the non-cheater must mind-numbingly fast-forward to get where he wants, and the cheater may skip this fast-forwarding and immediately continue where he wants. Both end at the same game situation. The only difference is drudgework. This is Mindless's "It's just tedious, and that doesn't make for a good game."

You can design the game like this. But is that good?

A player must complete the level at least once in 'Classic Mode' before the modern controls are unlocked for that level.

Don't punish/lock X, instead reward Y.

Reward pause-free playing. Framestepping enters pause and therefore disqualifies you from winning pause-free, you'll only get a normal win. That would directly support what you seem to want, and it would be a fresh take on the whole matter.

-- Simon

[WillLem]

If this means backward and forward skips (+1/−1 physics update, staying paused): You'll have to remove some cheating features from RetroLemmini. As-is, you can click to advance by 1 physics update during pause.

Yes, as I said, it's unfortunate that this is already a part of RL. It won't be getting removed, but it has been made optional by another user/developer (Charles) who seemed to have a similar opinion.

the difference between cheating and not cheating ... is drudgework. This is Mindless's "It's just tedious, and that doesn't make for a good game."

Hm. Maybe I disagree that it doesn't make for a good game. If that's true, why are we all here? The vast majority of original Lemmings ports don't even have a replay system, let alone per-frame control over the gameplay. It can't be that bad a game if there's an entire Forum dedicated to it...

You can design the game like this. But is that good?

Maybe this is a question to which I don't think the answer should automatically be "no". If the player is punished for making a mistake, the real-time gameplay stakes are higher. Some players genuinely enjoy this. Lemmings itself was more or less built on this very principle.

And yes, it has evolved - and that's good. But, we have engines with player assists which we all (myself included) enjoy; we should also have one that presents the more traditional gameplay style.

Don't punish/lock X, instead reward Y.

Reward pause-free playing.

Yes, this could work. The Talisman system in Neo/Super is good; both players and designers benefit from it. I thought about implementing a challenge/trophy system in RL but realised how complicated it would make everything and so abandoned it (for now). I think it would only be worth the effort if it were a somewhat online feature, where players could see which trophies they (and other players) had achieved.

Counter-point, though: offering 'modern' features after a successful 'classic' playthrough is 'reward' rather than 'punish', is it not? We're saying: "well done, you completed the level without player assists, now they're unlocked for this level". Maybe it is a bad idea, I'm not 100% convinced of it myself. I'm just exploring the possibilities at the moment.

[Simon]

Lemmings was good in 1991 despite lack of action replay, not because of lack.

I'll rob you for $5000 and give you back $2000 as a reward for not telling the police. That's a good reward, $2000, it's a lot more than $1000. This is why I wrote: instead of punishing/locking. Different feeling.

Lemmings 3 happens to implement what you're considering. Solutions from an action replay don't count ("learner mode") for progression. Feature is meticulously implemented, but you're not supposed to use it until you've proven your worth. Reaction by Kieran:

using the replay feature makes the solve not count (why oh why did they do this? Idiots)

What I really hoped to see was a holistic argument. Why do all those design decisions make the best possible whole? I'm sure that, yes, you can continue to tell me nice stories about every individual choice however it turns out. X is easy to implement, Y easy to understand, Z is already implemented so it would be more work to cut it and some users would act up, W is optional control feature and we'll continue to support both yes W and no W, ..., but why is this exact collection of choices/features the overall best-suited?

I'm not even arguing that you have to implement rewind at all costs. Maybe drudgework is exactly the right cost for what you envision. Unlikely but possible. Unlikely enough to seek alternatives.

-- Simon

[WillLem]

Lemmings 3 happens to implement what you're considering. Solutions from an action replay don't count ("learner mode") for progression. Feature is meticulously implemented, but you're not supposed to use it until you've proven your worth. Reaction by Kieran:

using the replay feature makes the solve not count (why oh why did they do this? Idiots)

They did this because using the replay system to solve a level was probably considered cheating (or at least contradictory to the spirit of the game as it was intended to be played) by the developers. Otherwise, of course they wouldn't have implemented it in this way.

Part of the original challenge of Lemmings was to be able to solve the level in one single playthrough. If you could do that, you'd beaten the level good and proper, fair and square. And, of course you could pause the level to take a moment to set up your next action, but all assignments had to be made in real-time: that was a legitimate and enjoyable part of the challenge. I can't be the only player that thinks like this.

Anyway, RetroLemmini has already sacrificed some of this by having a replay system. So did Windows '95 Lemmings (which also allowed assign-whilst-paused). And yet, it never felt like it was getting in the way or completely ruining that aspect of the game because it wasn't used for fine-tweaking.

Most of the time when playing in RetroLemmini (which is currently my preferrd engine for actually playing Lemmings), I click to cancel my previous replay because I want to mostly do the solution over and don't care about sacrificing a few assignments; a fresh start is preferable. Again, I cannot be the only player who thinks like this.

Conversely - when I'm playing in NeoLemmix/Lix, I use backwards framestepping, of course - why wouldn't I. But, it makes the game feel totally different. Specifically: there are no real-time stakes at all. Nothing I do really matters because I can just skip back and redo it immediately. It feels like I'm editing a video clip rather than playing a video game. This is fundamentally a different way to play, and it matters.

Is that closer to the holistic argument you were hoping for? I'd be happy to unpack my thoughts on this further. And make no mistake: I would never want the player assists to be removed from Lix, NeoLemmix or even SuperLemmix. I just want to be very careful about adding them to RetroLemmini.

[Proxima]

Framestepping, on the other hand, is tantamount to cheating in a game like Lemmings.

There is no such thing as cheating in a single-player game, unless it has some form of player-player interactivity (such as achievements, online leaderboards, etc).

We all agree that the ability to framestep backwards immediately renders most of the original levels (which is what many players come to the Forums looking for) obsolete.

Out of 120 levels, there are five timed bomber levels in the entire game. ONML has only two out of 100.

Hm. Maybe I disagree that it doesn't make for a good game. If that's true, why are we all here? The vast majority of original Lemmings ports don't even have a replay system, let alone per-frame control over the gameplay. It can't be that bad a game if there's an entire Forum dedicated to it...

I'm here for the custom levels (making, solving and discussing), the challenges, and the community most of all. I haven't played original Lemmings for years.

Of course, I loved it when I played it as a kid. I loved saving the cute creatures, the music, the graphics... but most of all, the feeling of being challenged to work out how on earth it was possible to solve these levels, and feeling great when I got those moments of insight that made everything fall into place at last.

It's true that the original game didn't have any kind of replay system, whether because it would have been too tricky to code given the limitations of the time, or because it wasn't a common feature in games, or because the developers simply didn't think of it. Still, if it had had replays from the beginning, I can't see that anything I liked about the game would have been changed or diminished.

But I finished the original games decades ago (not counting ones like L2 and L3 that didn't interest me enough to look into them), so the only reason I'm interested in modern clones at all is their ability to support creating and playing new levels.

I know that maybe it's not my place to say these things. I haven't played any Lemmings content for a long time now, and when I do come back to it, it'll be NL for sure. So my opinions shouldn't have much weight in the direction RL takes. I'm mostly contributing because I hope this discussion can help you reason out the decision, so that whatever decision you end up making, it's done for good reasons.

Conversely - when I'm playing in NeoLemmix/Lix, I use backwards framestepping, of course - why wouldn't I. But, it makes the game feel totally different. Specifically: there are no real-time stakes at all. Nothing I do really matters because I can just skip back and redo it immediately. It feels like I'm editing a video clip rather than playing a video game. This is fundamentally a different way to play, and it matters.

This reminds me a lot of things that were said before the decision to add unlimited undo to Deadly Rooms of Death. Specifically, I remember one poster who was vehemently against UU because he wanted moves to feel "consequential". And then UU got added, nothing really changed, and it was still the same game, just easier to play.

It might surprise you, after the things I've said, that I actually don't use UU in DROD myself. But it does have single undo and checkpoints; if the choice were between enabling UU and having to restart the room every time I made a mistake, then I would have enabled it from the moment it was possible to do so 

But anyway. In a game like Lemmings or DROD where levels (or rooms) are distinct units of play, there are no "stakes" in any case. The only possible consequence for failure is loss of time. And that matters a lot more to me now that half of my life is behind me, and so much of my time is lost through feeling exhausted. I want the games I play to respect my time, and if I feel a game doesn't, I'm much more likely to close it and find one that does.

And while I appreciate that you prefer to play without replay features, that in itself isn't an argument for not adding them. If those features are there, people who prefer to play without them can still do so, while if they're not, everyone is forced to play without them regardless of what they prefer.

[WillLem]

There is no such thing as cheating in a single-player game

Fair enough. A better way to put it is probably "it undermines a big part of the game's challenge", which - in the case of L1/L2/L3 - was to solve the levels in real-time as much as possible as well as solve the puzzles.

We all agree that the ability to framestep backwards immediately renders most of the original levels (which is what many players come to the Forums looking for) obsolete.

Out of 120 levels, there are five timed bomber levels in the entire game. ONML has only two out of 100.

Did I miss something? We're not talking about timed bombers here, we're talking about framestepping. The original point stands: a lot of L1 levels feature challenges related to general timing and crowd control, which are rendered trivial by the ability to framestep.

It's true that the original game didn't have any kind of replay system ... if it had had replays from the beginning, I can't see that anything I liked about the game would have been changed or diminished.
...
And then UU got added, nothing really changed, and it was still the same game, just easier to play.

Fair enough. There's a very good chance that adding the ability to jump backwards a bit (possibly via savestate loading) won't ruin RetroLemmini's general gameplay and will just save the player time, which is an important consideration and the reason for this topic in the first place.

Any Rewind feature will no doubt be a balancing act between making the game better to play, and retaining as much of the old school 'charm' as possible.

I know that maybe it's not my place to say these things ... I'm mostly contributing because I hope this discussion can help you reason out the decision

This is much appreciated. All feedback is good, all opinions are valid and helpful to the outcome one way or another. Thank you for taking the time to contribute your thoughts!

[Proxima]

Did I miss something? We're not talking about timed bombers here, we're talking about framestepping. The original point stands: a lot of L1 levels feature challenges related to general timing and crowd control, which are rendered trivial by the ability to framestep.

Right. I mentioned timed bombers specifically because those are the clearest example where the entire level is trivialised. Other than that, I can think of specific activities in levels that become not an issue any more (such as precisely placing a miner so that it outputs where the crowd can climb into the tunnel), but those levels still have puzzle aspects. I guess there are levels like "The Crossroads" that are are entirely an execution challenge, but still a small minority of the levels in the game.

[Kapus]

I don't personally find it very necessary. The replay feature already lightens the weight of most execution-based mistakes. It's really slow on longer levels, yeah, but I'd rather have a faster speed up button than a rewind.