Move trigger areas up one pixel? [DISCUSSION]

[Nepster]

Internally the lemming location is one pixel below the lemming's feet. Most of the time, this is only important for the programmer modifying the code and not the player. But there is one exception: Trigger areas in the clear-physics mode.
For new players it might be much easier to understand if the lemming's position would be directly at the lemming's feet, i.e. when the lemming triggers the object if (and only if) it's feet hit actually the trigger area.

I will certainly not change all the code internally, but I can change the display of the trigger areas in clear-physics mode (and as well in the editor and the graphics tool) so that the trigger areas are always displayed one pixel higher than they are at the moment.

How would you feel about this change? Do you think this is sensible, or do you rather prefer to keep the current situation to avoid confusion?

[nin10doadict]

It's a matter of getting accustomed to how it is now, so I think the change isn't necessary. Admittedly, when I first started playing, I expected that a trigger that was resting on the ground would get any Lemmings walking on the ground. Now that I have learned that the trigger must be inside the ground for it to get the Lemmings, I have grown used to it and a change would be disruptive and force me to relearn how it works.

[Simon]

Even though I too have learned that the trigger area (TA) catches lemmings in the ground, not on the ground, it costs me mental energy every time to apply this rule. Either NL remains harder to understand for new players, or existing players have to re-learn.

The symptom is that NL culture suggests a shifted trigger area (TA) that doesn't overlap water exactly, but instead suggests that the TA be shifted down by 1 pixel. This catches walkers on the bottom of a water pit. Indeed, the culture tells you to mark nonexistant void outside of the tile as trigger area!

From IRC yesterday night: Nepster considers purely visual fix in clear-physics, editor, and graphic set tool. That means that what the programs display is shifted from what is written in the tile files? That can easily count as back-compat, because given powerful tools, you don't have to textedit the raw tile files. It would be offensive to interpret numbers in the same data field differently all of a sudden without a deprecation period and a field rename.

I see the main benefit for tile designers. Gronkling made perfectly rectangular water; a natural-looking TA would cover this exact rectangle, and no more. The proposed change, even if purely visual in all tools, allows that natural-looking TA.

-- Simon