[SUGGESTION] Release rate and number of lemmings can be adjusted for each hatch

[Colorful Arty]

Something Lemmings Revolution did well is the ability to give each entrance hatch its own release rate. This not only allows different hatches to have different amounts of lemmings come out of it, as well as at different speeds. This would also allow levels with more than one entrance to have all entrances run at 99 release rate instead of them all sharing a 99 release rate, causing the flow of lemmings to be less than 99. I think this would be a nice feature to have, provided it isn't too difficult to implement.

[Nepster]

This would mean completely changing the way lemmings appear in hatches. Here some examples of the problems with this suggestion:
- Do the first lemmings in each hatch appear at the same time, or do they appear one after another? If one after another, then how far apart should they spawn?
- How would you change the RR for each hatch? If this is done by clicking on the hatch itself, this would be a completely new type of interaction on the screen, as the lemmings are suddenly no longer the only objects that may receive user input. What would you do, if you want to assign a skill to a lemming that is at the moment at the same position as the hatch?
- Yes, currently you cannot have multiple hatches that all spawn 4 frames apart. But now you can have multiple hatches that all spawn more than 54 frames apart (i.e. all slower than RR1). So your suggestion will certainly break several levels.
- If you want to have this feature as an alternative to the current spawn mode, then how would the player become aware that they suddenly can change the RR separately?
- Moreover this would mean a lot more to configure for level designers, adding quite some more options to the (already rather complicated) editor.

Note that you can already have different spawn rates and different amount of lemmings in hatches, by placing several hatches on top of each other.

[IchoTolot]

Something Lemmings Revolution did well is the ability to give each entrance hatch its own release rate. This not only allows different hatches to have different amounts of lemmings come out of it, as well as at different speeds. This would also allow levels with more than one entrance to have all entrances run at 99 release rate instead of them all sharing a 99 release rate, causing the flow of lemmings to be less than 99. I think this would be a nice feature to have, provided it isn't too difficult to implement.

Honestly thats a thing I really found annoying about Revolution. The RR already is one of the harder features to understand for new players and that would make it even more complex. Also cranking up the RR for each hatch individually would be more fiddly than awesome
So for me one general RR is enough and more would just be too much to fiddly with. Most effects can already be simulated as Nepster said with hatch stacking and a hatch with just a few Lems can also already be simulated with preplacers.

[Gronkling]

I would not like this feature. Now you know how multiple hatches will behave, with this you will not. Release rate is shown with one number, so having two will not work without being unclear, or needing quite large changes in GUI design. It would also likely break a lot of levels with multiple entrances.

[ccexplore]

To clarify and for reference to those who never played Revolution, in that game the streams of lemmings from each entrance is independent, it's not like in Lemmings 1 where lemmings alternate amongst the entrances to come out.  The lemmings will come out of multiple entrances simultaneously and at independent speeds depending on what the per-entrance RR is set to.  Also, IIRC the RR for each entrance is displayed right on top of the entrance object.  Each entrance has a minimum and maximum for what you can set its RR to, though you don't really know what the minimum or maximum is for each entrance until you try it out.

I don't think there's anything inherently good or bad, it's just a different system.  But since NeoLemmix already has a long history of using the Lemmings 1 system, it would definitely get very confusing to end up with a mix of two systems.  Affecting existing levels is a non-starter for obvious reasons.

It seems like Colorful Arty only cares about the ability to get higher release rates than you could in the current system with multiple entrances, which is really quite different from wholesale adopting the very different entrance system of Revolution.  It's a fair point that you can't get denser streams of lemmings in multi-entrance levels with the L1 system, but probably not enough to justify changing to a completely different system altogether.

[Dullstar]

While this suggestion would make multiple entrances each with a RR 99 stream of lemmings possible, I think the drawbacks far outweigh the benefits here. If another way could be found to allow RR 99 streams from multiple hatches could be found, then maybe, but even then it'd still be a pain to make the GUI work with it. The key here is that, for my support, anything done must not effect existing levels at all, and the current hatch behavior must stay default.

Also, I concur with ccexplore's comment regarding the fact that a mix of two systems would become confusing.

[ccexplore]

It's a fair point that you can't get denser streams of lemmings in multi-entrance levels with the L1 system

Actually, technically this is because we are capping at RR 99.  At this speed it will make a lemming come out every 4 frames, so the stream of lemmings are at least 4 steps apart, and then with multiple entrances the distance is multiplied by the number of entrances due to the alternation.

If the max is every 2 frames for 2 entrances and every frame for 4 entrances, then the minimum distance between lemmings coming out of the same entrance could be kept at 4 steps.  Doesn't work for other number of entrances though, at least not unless it becomes possible sometimes for multiple lemmings to come out simultaneously each from different entrances, and/or for the number of steps between lemmings to vary.

This still involves basically adding new RR values and adds complexity to how RR values map to the release timing.

[nin10doadict]

Besides, people already make evil enough shenanigans with the release rate (myself included). Somebody could end up designing levels that would require absurd precision with multiple release rates, which is already one of the hardest things to figure out in a level as far as I'm concerned. One RR is more than enough for me to manage as is.

[namida]

This still involves basically adding new RR values and adds complexity to how RR values map to the release timing.

I'd disagree somewhat about "adding complexity". All it would really be doing is changing the maximum from 99 to (presumably) 105.

Still, that would feel a bit weird, I think... 99 makes sense (even to someone with no knowledge of the exact physics) as a maximum value, 105 doesn't so much without knowing the physics in at least some depth. This may be more feasible if we were to overhaul the system anyway to either have a 1-to-1 correspondence between RRs and duration between spawns, or outright move to a system like in Lix that does away with this abstraction and instead the release rate directly is the number of frames between spawns. (Indeed, I would agree that the latter makes more sense in absolute terms, and keeping the 1 to 99 system in NL is more of a "don't change what people are used to" than anything else.)