[GENERAL] [DISCUSSION] Culling some options for objects

[ccexplore]

Triggered traps should animate while idle. They're non-solid, and dangerous. They must look as different from terrain as possible. Showing only one idling frame is a huge mistake by all Lemmings games.

I feel like this deserves a separate topic.  I sort of understand the motivation behind such a proposal, but a bear trap looks ridiculous to animate while idle (except maybe with the subtlest of visual effects like some sort of glimmer).  And you don't get confused ever again once you interacted with one for the first time.

[edit: one additional thing worth pointing out:  by making triggered traps not animate, it actually provides an important functional distinction between them versus constant traps, given that the former cannot kill while in use while the latter is a constant kill.  Granted, it's not the only way such a distinction can be depicted.]

[namida]

"Bad level design" -- this is a subjective thing and should not be talked about as if it isn't [as it almost ALWAYS is on this forum*] The game should not have limitations to prevent some type of level design just because some people don't like it.

*I'm frankly getting tired of hearing this bandied about by many people now.  There is the general consensus of what is popular and what is not. That's all there is to it. I don't like the idea of spreading suggestions to encourage level design and game design to more closely fit one's own personal view.

"Bad level design" is perhaps a misleading term, "unfair level design" would be more accurate I guess. But I would really, really rather this didn't become one of those places where we get fussy over the exact wording used to refer to something.

Anyway - as I've said a few times, the fact that a feature could be used in ways that constitute bad level design is not, in my opinion, enough to justify removing / not adding something. It can be a contributory factor, but it isn't enough on its own.

[ccexplore]

Animated should mean (non-solid and some effect on collision) instead of only (non-solid).

Lesson: if anyone ever visits Simon during Xmas, be sure not to touch the Xmas tree lights.  By his design preference, they should electrocute you to horrifying death. /s

[Simon]

Agree how our result won't affect the L2 Shadow set. Yet L2 Shadow highlights the problems from no-effect. Fake turns yes-effect into no-effect.

I don't put up decorations during the holidays. Misleading fluff!

namida and Icho are correct how we should keep valuable tools, even if they allow evil design. I'm undecided about only-on-terrain, I see its decorational value. But fake and invisible provide no extra value. Cull fake and invisible.

Compare this with Lix: I get occasional questions how to put terrain behind water, Lix doesn't allow that. But nobody ever asks for fake or invisible.

-- Simon

[namida]

Alright, it does indeed seem we have a strong preference for removal of fake / invisible. I guess those things can go then.

I'm still not too sure about only on terrain  - even more so if fake is removed (unless fake becomes a side effect of "only on terrain" in the first place). I'm somewhat leaning towards culling it too, because outside of one-way walls (which have only-on-terrain as an inherent property anyway) there's no case where it's needed, and even decorative use of it is rare. On one hand, the code to support drawing it will mostly need to be there anyway, for one way walls to use too. On the other hand, it's basically a "poor man's invisible" in most cases, and it does still require some extra code (and more so if we want to make it work properly as an independant option - currently it will only even work with terrain that's marked as one-way capable) for relatively little gain.

[Nepster]

I attached one of my levels recently made in the Shadow tileset, where the level becomes more honest by using Only-On-Terrain for some of the decoration objects (tree, trashcans and window). Personally I don't really care about the decoration and I only placed them there, because Only-On-Terrain is currently possible. Should the option Only-On-Terrain be removed, this would be no big loss and I will simply remove the decoration objects from this level.

Regarding the level "Pagoda St." IchoTolot mentioned (and perhaps he can attach the level or provide a link so that everyone can have a look at it), I fail to see why one has to use the continuous trap in the Marble style for this effect? Why not use the candles of the exit top? I am still not convinced, that Only-On-Terrain is required for anything else than no-effect decoration objects. As far as I can see, most arguments in favor of keeping Only-On-Terrain made by IchoTolot and möbius, focus on decoration objects anyway.

[ccexplore]

It seems that the best example of only-on-terrain with a non-decorative object remains the Amiga version of Fun 20/Mayhem 7, unfortunately I've yet to find a youtube video that actually shows it.  And to be fair, I feel even there it sounds better on paper than it actually looks.  Note that AFAIK that use of the acid objects in those levels are still deadly (at the very least, it doesn't affect level solutions to have them be deadly).  It is also placed away from any solution paths.

It remains the case that only-on-terrain will likely be a niche feature even for artistic purposes, not completely useless but certainly rarely needed.  Given its relative low usage, I guess if the few level authors who are affected can all find acceptable alternatives, then it's hard to argue for keeping it.  We are still sort of punishing those level authors for their past artistic creativity but I'll take their acceptance of an alternative decoration (or removal of decoration altogether) as them getting over the loss.   One can argue we are still stifling future artistic creativity, but given that this particular option hasn't given rise to much artistic effects thus far, it seems their artistic energy is probably better spent on other more flexible avenues like creating or updating/supplementing the graphics sets with new decorative options.

Agree how our result won't affect the L2 Shadow set. Yet L2 Shadow highlights the problems from no-effect.

I suppose you can phrase it that particular way.  Yet if we look at the problematic decorative objects in L2 shadow:
   a) If we turn them into deadly (or otherwise some sort of effect) objects but leave them unanimated by default, they still don't stand out visually from terrain.  The best that can be said is that maybe you'll remember them better for future due to the negative reinforcement after sending a lemming to it.
   b) If we leave them decorative but have them animated by default, this is enough on its own to make them stand out and to let you know that they aren't terrain.  It is true that you can't tell for sure they have no effect until you send a lemming to it and see what happens.
   c) If we add an effect to them and have them animated by default, you are really still in case B, unless the game only offers one kind of effect.  Otherwise, you still can't tell what the effect is (kill one? kill all? exit? spring? teleport?) without testing it with a lemming.

So I'm not really seeing a completely solved issue with any of the options above.  If you only care about partially solving it, adding animation actually seems to be more helpful than giving an effect to the object.

[edit: if the objection is specifically about turning a functional object fake for decorative purposes, that point I can see more merit for, though that's not really the way I see L2's shadow set as problematic--the game is actually quite consistent in treating which pieces in the set are decorative vs terrain, just that visually you can't really tell which is which.  Generally speaking, if a decoration is far away from the solution paths, you probably don't need to make it fake.]

Fake turns yes-effect into no-effect

Sure, but I imagine almost everyone will agree that if an option exists to change the effect of any object to anything, it'd be just as bad to turn an exit into a constant trap, or a teleport into a spring, etc.  Because doing so purposely introduces a functional inconsistency--not specifically because of no-effect per se.

I don't put up decorations during the holidays.

That's fine and feel free to do so when you make graphics sets.  I just expect that other people may want to create a graphics set like Holiday Lemmings with its purely decorative Christmas lights, and I don't feel particularly convinced at this point that I should be discouraging them.

[Simon]

L2 shadow: Lamppost, trashcan, tree = normal earth. Moon as no-effect is probably OK, because it lacks sharp outline.

Culling fake and invis: Good long-term decision. What happens with fake hatch-marking pickups? Automatic hatch marking planned, or postpone this issue?

No time for detailed reply >_>

-- Simon

[namida]

What happens with fake hatch-marking pickups? Automatic hatch marking planned, or postpone this issue?

They could be overlaid on steel to make their trigger area inaccessible. Some form of proper marking is desired, but it seems that while plenty of people want it, no one wants to suggest any ideas on how to best handle it; and I myself am not entirely sure on the best way either. Depending on the complexity of the chosen method, it's something I wouldn't mind trying to get in for the next release, even though fake / invisible probably won't be removed until (at least) V1.45n. (The reasoning being the extremely short notice otherwise; all other features destined for removal in V1.44n have, if not outright been stated as being removed, at least been under consideration for removal for a while now.)

[Nepster]

It seems that the best example of only-on-terrain with a non-decorative object remains the Amiga version of Fun 20/Mayhem 7...

This sentence should be:
"It seems that the best example of only-on-terrain with a non-decorative object, that cannot be replicated by only-on-terrain with a decorative object, remains the Amiga version of Fun 20/Mayhem 7..."
Given that we discuss culling Only-On-Terrain completely, this feels like an important distinction to make.

It remains the case that only-on-terrain will likely be a niche feature even for artistic purposes, not completely useless but certainly rarely needed.  Given its relative low usage, I guess if the few level authors who are affected can all find acceptable alternatives, then it's hard to argue for keeping it.

Low usage should be only one contributing factor in the decision to remove a feature. Otherwise there are lots of other stuff like steams in Lix that need to be culled as well.
I see the low usage mainly in the fact, that the L1 tilesets have almost no pure decoration objects apart from exit tops. So there was almost no opportunity to properly use this option. The main question that I am asking myself right now is: Do we encourage or at least expect that future graphic style designers put purely decorative objects in their styles? If yes, then Only-On-Terrain might see much more use in the future. If no, then Only-On-Terrain might not be worth keeping.

[ccexplore]

It's more that when weighing pros against cons, low usage means at least you have one less on the "con" side, that is, "damage" to existing levels is low.

It is a fair point that if future styles have more decorative elements, there might be some bump in only-on-terrain usage, but I still feel like most decorative elements probably will not need it?  I'll admit not being particularly artistic, I could be quite off in that assessment.

------

About exit tops (not fully relevant to the topic, but...):  while it's impossible to know definitively without actually talking to the original DMA people, it's quite likely the only reason they exist is as a memory/disk space saving measure.  Because most parts of the exit objects are not animated and their compression algorithm isn't that smart, it would take less storage to split the single object up into two parts, one object containing all the static stuff that can then only take one frame to represent, and a second object containing just the smaller portions that are animated and required storing multiple frames.

A good example supporting this is the exit in the red-bricks style of ONML.  The animated part is not the top but actually the middle (specifically the spinning columns on the left and right), the static part actually contains both the top and the bottom.

I also recall in ONML styles there are other non-exit objects that are split in a similar fashion (ie. animated and non-animated parts), for example I think the lizard trap in the rock style.

So it's fair to say that with the exception of Holiday Lemmings (for which I believe we have confirmation from DMA people that it was an explicit design choice to have no deadly objects), there are no objects designed solely for decorative purposes in L1 and ONML levels.  Still, I suppose it doesn't really mean much beyond tradition/history.

[namida]

After further discussion, including on IRC and via private messages, and actually looking at some of the usage cases, I'm deciding against culling any of these options.

Most of the arguments for culling them are "they can be used for unfair design". This isn't really a valid argument, because so can many other things - removing these options won't stop someone from using No Overwrite to hide an exit or a trap in terrain. Or, not using No Overwrite then hiding terrain behind an object. Or just making a 99 builder level that requires using all of them - not nessecerially unfair, but probably worse in terms of bad level design. The correct response to bad design is not cull the option that made it possible, and in the process punish other designers who use it more validly. The correct response is to advise against it, and if an author continues to refuse to not design bad levels, don't play their content. To compare to the situation with gimmicks - they had the very strong argument of making the code very complicated. On the other hand, these have no such argument - even Only On Terrain, which is at least a little bit complicated (but also probably has the most examples of good usage), is still quite simple. Fake and Invisible are a matter of "don't write the trigger area" or "don't actually draw the object".

The arguments for keeping them are much more compelling. Both the examples where they're used well (PimoLems or Orig Mayhem 7 for only-on-terrain (and in many cases these objects should be using Fake as well), Smooth 10 / Bumpy 12 for Invisible), and the fact that even if the options were to be removed, there are ways around it - custom (or more likely, modified) graphic sets for example, which would in turn complicate things when a system of allowing multiple graphic sets in a single level is implemented, and thus there ends up being way more duplicated stuff to clean up (already there's some, due to the various Epic tilesets / other variant sets, and the Snow / Xmas sets having a lot duplicated between them) - a system which, in itself, would only make it even easier to use these workaround options.

So. Final answer; these options are staying. If you'd rather not have them, you're more than welcome to not use then and not play any levels that do (EDIT: or, indeed, grab a copy of the source code and make your own version that ignores these options). I realise some people will want to further express their opinion on this subject, so I'll leave the topic open for now, but be aware it's not very likely it'll change anything at this point.

[Simon]

Most of the arguments for culling them are "they can be used for unfair design".

No.

From 2 hours ago in IRC:
<SimonN> the point is not whether it allows bad design
<SimonN> the point is that fake & invis both flat-out invite bad design

-- Simon