[SUGGESTION] [PLAYER] Talisman award screen

[Crane]

As far as I know, the player only knows that they have won a talisman by the appearance of "CONGRATULATIONS! You unlocked a talisman!" in place of "All lemmings accounted for", which is easily missed because it doesn't stand out, plus it gives no indication of what you actually did to get it unless you studied the achievement list extensively beforehand.

I would like to suggest a dedicated splash screen that is displayed that clearly indicates that you unlocked a talisman, as well as listing the talisman in question.  This screen should appear between completion of the level and the standard statistics screen that shows how many you saved and the password to the next level.  It also acts as a good debugging tool, as it can indicate bugs with how the talismans have been set up in the level pack (i.e. the actual mechanics not matching the text description).

As for how the splash screen should look, I made a mock-up.  Find attached.  (Also find attached a copy of the image)

[IchoTolot]

This seems like a very nice idea, even if I don't care that much about talismans. Right now getting one is pretty underwhelming

[namida]

I don't know that talismans are a major enough feature to warrant an entire extra screen. With that being said, I'm definitely open to ways in general of improving the postview screen, and displaying talisman receipt more prominently is definitely something that can be considered. Even better if possible though, I'd like to have some message appear as soon as the talisman is earnt (much like with what happens with achievements / trophies on consoles (and, I assume, Steam)), rather than delaying it until the postview screen; especially because there's nothing that prevents a single level from having more than one talisman (in fact, I'm considering having two talismans for the same level in LPV).

[Crane]

Well, unless I'm mistaken, a lot of talismans involve successfully completing a level under certain conditions, such as rescuing 100% or not using certain tools - I was under the impression that if you failed to complete the level, you don't get the talisman.  Granted, it depends on how flexible the talisman system is.

Achievement pop-ups are largely game-dependent, and sometimes they can be annoying, especially as such a pop-up might cover up the mini-map or the clock in Lemmings, say.  To give an example in another game, you can configure StarCraft II so that any achievements you obtain during a multiplayer match will only pop up at the game's conclusion, mostly so you aren't distracted or have your vision obscured during a fire-fight.  One option would be to have a splash-screen displayed for each talisman achieved, so clicking the mouse button will display the next one.

Personally, I'm an achievement hunter, and like the critters in Pokémon Go, I gotta catch 'em all!  So getting a nice announcement for one's progress is such a great feeling!

[namida]

Well, unless I'm mistaken, a lot of talismans involve successfully completing the level given certain guidelines - I was under the impression that if you failed to complete the level, you don't get the talisman.  Granted, it depends on how flexible the talisman system is.

Yes, they do. However, try the following. For the sake of simplifying things here, I'm going to use an example talisman where the rule is "Save 38 lemmings with no more than two builders".
1. Start with a save file where you have not already unlocked this talisman.
2. Go to the level that has this talisman.
3. Get to 38 lemmings saved, without using more than two builders.
4. Insta-restart the level via the R hotkey.
5. Complete the level; it doesn't matter whether or not you meet the talisman requirements during this attempt.

The result...

Spoiler

You don't get any special message on the postview screen. However, if you check the Talismans menu, you will see that the talisman has indeed been unlocked.

Now of course - this is probably best defined as a bug that needs to be fixed. But if we have multiple talismans in the single level - not something that's happened yet as far as I know, but definitely something the game allows for and as mentioned, I'm considering doing so in a future pack - then this would be a good reason to perform steps like the above. But this hinges on you knowing that you do still get the talisman awarded, even if you don't get a special message for each one. Going on from this; I would also argue that if you didn't get a notification as soon as the talisman was unlocked, you may not realise that you get it awarded even if you don't go to the postview screen (indeed, you should - assuming NeoLemmix does save your progress in such a case, which it should do but I haven't tested - get the talisman even if you replace step 5 above with "Exit NeoLemmix by pressing Alt+F4"; the postview screen has nothing to do with unlocking talismans beyond displaying a message stating that you got one).

[Crane]

I would argue, and I sense most players are doing it anyway, that you should actually complete the level and get to the status screen to be awarded a talisman.  Granted, that's because there isn't an in-game announcement, so they fully complete the level under the given conditions, just to be sure.  If there are two talismans for a single level, I think it's more likely that they would be attempted on different takes, especially if they're mutually exclusive (this, of course, depends highly on what the talismans require).  Personally, I'd like a loud splash screen since most level packs only have one talisman per level at most, and ultimately not that many talismans compared to levels, hence it's a rare occurrance.

Of course, it's your game, and what's best should be left to you.  Either way, I sure hope to see something new for talismans and will be grateful for any acknowledgement for being an achievement hunter!

[namida]

I'd like to get more opinions on this subject before making any final decision. If people seem to prefer your idea, then it certianly wouldn't be hard to implement; I just question whether it might be annoying. So if people don't think it will be, then sure, I'll implement it.

[Crane]

My thoughts precisely.  I'd love to hear what people think too.

(Personally I don't think it will be annoying because it will only appear once per talisman).

[Nepster]

What are the plans for the new design of the result screen? I vaguely remember some suggestions to remove the password, but include some more statistics? Or were the additional statistics meant to be added to a (yet-to-code) level browser? Or something else entirely?

Under the assuption that passwords will be removed from the result screen and no additional statistics are added there, I think we then have enough space to add a (perhaps slightly smaller) talisman picture to the result screen together with a description of the talisman.

Attached a mock-up of this suggestion. It was made in 5 minutes using Paint, so please ignore the irregular background, wrongly spaced letters, ...

[namida]

I haven't yet thought about exactly what any new postview (or preview, for that matter) screens might look like, apart from that I'm quite possibly going to go in the direction of "complete overhaul" rather than "minor tweaks to the existing one".

But I'm not going to do anything in regards to overhauling any screen until I fix that weird double-window thing. I already have a good idea of what I'm going to do about it; I used another project of mine (that doesn't really seem to be going anywhere, haven't touched it in weeks now) as a testing ground for the concept.

[Nepster]

Ok. Then I am in favor of:
- Wait until working on the new result screen
- Ask: Is there enough space left to add the talisman image and description to the new result screen?
- If yes, then place it there.
- If no, then perhaps add another splash screen for the talisman.

[Simon]

You may unlock several talismans during the same play session.

Unlock time and notification time can be different. When you play, unlock, framestep back, and do something completely unrelated, you still get the medal after play.

-- Simon

[namida]

When you play, unlock, framestep back, and do something completely unrelated, you still get the medal after play.

Currently though, you wouldn't be notified about it in this case (actually, it's possible that certain changes elsewhere - and I'm meaning in the stable version here compared to earlier versions; not the experimental version alone - have had the side effect of fixing this bug; I'd have to check). This matter is simple enough to fix if it isn't already.

While unlock and notification don't have to be exactly at the same time, they shouldn't be too far apart. Postview screen is probably okay, if we can do it in a way that's clearly visible yet non-intrusive. I would argue that delaying it any further than that is too much. The biggest problem comes back to that we need to allow for multiple talismans being obtained at once. A hundred being obtained in a single play of a level is an unrealistic scenario; but NeoLemmix should handle this gracefully - at the very worst, it should fail to display all of them, but in particular, it should not crash or make a glitchy-looking postview screen. Ideally, some system would be found that can display this in a non-intrusive way. A hundred is an unrealsitic scenario, but two in a level is very possible, and even three is plausible.