Cull Disarmers, Triggered Decorations and Radiation/Slowfreeze?

[Proxima]

I don't consider reaction time, multitasking or somewhat precise placement of skills unfair to the player. They are just different skills a player of the original Lemmings game needed to have, just as he needed to have problem solving / puzzling skills, and, coming from a psychologist background, I want to "measure" these skills with my levels as well, not just the competence of problem solving. Good estimation of the position where to assign a skill is a mark of visuo-spatial imagination that at least some levels in a pack should reward.

To an extent, I agree: it's good that levels reward skill, and satisfying for the player when they do. The trouble is that we can't have it both ways. We decided, a long time ago, to push in the direction of easing execution and concentrating on rewarding solving skill, and that has allowed the creation of many levels that wouldn't have been conceivable in the older engines. This does mean that levels designed to reward execution skill become devalued. That's a loss, but it's one we're prepared to accept because of the gain to puzzle possibilities. After all, there are lots of other games that reward execution skill, but not many playgrounds for the kind of puzzle design we enjoy.

I don't believe the only challenge the introduction of these options leaves us with is creating huge levels that visually confuse the player on purpose and make them count the skills they use.

Neither do I "You only get one bash at it" and "The Mile High Club", two of the hardest levels in the Lix community set, are both single-screen.

Trolling (i.e. making normal terrain steel or steel normal terrain, hiding exits / traps, invisible & fake objects etc.) I would consider unfair, but not to the point of banning them. I just think such levels should be clearly identifiable in advance so they adress only the target audience they are designed for an that will enjoy them. Once again, "with great power comes great responsibility": Just because you CAN create something trolly as a level maker, it doesn't mean you should. And if you decide you want to, you should carefully consider how to go about it. Outright "banning" stuff, in contrast, in my experience just makes people crave more for what has been formerly available and is now forbidden / impossible.

Hiding exits and traps remains semi-supported by the editor, although the player can easily reveal them in clear physics mode. For manual steel and invisible and fake objects, it would require additional effort to include support for them in the new-formats editor, so that wasn't going to happen unless Nepster got a lot of input saying that the active userbase would like to make use of these features, which hasn't happened.

In general, we don't forbid anything, we just make recommendations. There's a list of guidelines on the NeoLemmix website; it includes, for example, "use unlimited time, except when the time limit is deliberately part of the puzzle", but we don't forbid users from including time limits. (Simon is particularly vocal about time limits, but the rest of us try to keep him in check.)

[IchoTolot]

While the puzzly packs I have seen so far are by no means a cakewalk as far as figuring out the route is concerned, they certainly are with regards to the execution. Even "Save Me", the hardest level on original Lemmings, is a complete joke with NeoLemmix tools. And while I view framestepping and replay features as overall convenient, I don't believe the only challenge the introduction of these options leaves us with is creating huge levels that visually confuse the player on purpose and make them count the skills they use. I enjoy that from time to time, but I think there are more different types of challenges than that, many of them unexplored so far. After all, frame-stepping also allows us to do much more mean things with regard to pixel precision than the original Lemmings could have ever afforded, and your level "Ninjas in the attic" is a prime example of that ^^.

Trolling (i.e. making normal terrain steel or steel normal terrain, hiding exits / traps, invisible & fake objects etc.) I would consider unfair, but not to the point of banning them. I just think such levels should be clearly identifiable in advance so they adress only the target audience they are designed for an that will enjoy them. Once again, "with great power comes great responsibility": Just because you CAN create something trolly as a level maker, it doesn't mean you should. And if you decide you want to, you should carefully consider how to go about it. Outright "banning" stuff, in contrast, in my experience just makes people crave more for what has been formerly available and is now forbidden / impossible.

I am quite radical in that regard. The only thing I even count as difficulty is the puzzle aspect. The hardest level for me originally was "No added colors or Lemmings", "Save me" is only hard because of execution while the solution is painfully obvious and I even would say it isn't a good level in the first place (too much building).
The puzzle was always my challenge, the execution could be a possible annoying part, but that changed for the better. Simple execution I still enjoy.

Really good huge levels which still show everything I consider a special art to make. A part of that is to dazzle the player a bit with the big landscape, but finding the right path to solve it is very satisfying. Still they show everything and have nothing hidden. Dragging on for too long without substantionally adding anything is also bad.
I recommend: http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=2299.0

With today's tools given to us: Being to precise without any reason is bad, but I would not shy away from precise actions if they are unavoidable and add to the solution in a positive manner.

Unfair things have to go, I'll make no prisoners here and I just despise them. I absolutely hate cheaters and abusers of unfair elements. I am the first one to descourage them and show the right way of the fair and challenging puzzle.

Sorry, but I totally disagree here. Players are the gods and we have to do all we can to make their experience as pleasant as possible.

Okay, it's good to know this. In my view, the level creator is the god - but only in the sense of "with great power comes great responsibility". I see this a bit like being a game master in Dungeons & Dragons: The level creator's job is not to defeat the players (that could be easily done because you have the power to put them into impossible situations), but neither to make the experience a cakewalk. The game master should challenge the player in a fair and transparent way, I think that's something we can all agree on.

My point of view is: I want to treat the player good like a god. I want him to understand, learn and see everything, but my goal is still (at least for the last rank): Defeat (stomp) the player fair and square. No dirty tricks, no hidden stuff - just a 100% fair, logical and solvable puzzles that get the better of him. So yes, I still want to defeat him in the end.

The player is a god who shall be satisfied, but the pack creator is also a god challenging the player to a fair duell that he wants to win. I always try to have something for everyone in my packs and there will always be things one person hates and another loves -- huge levels as an example here    I love to make huge levels, but I also throw in some smaller ones so that both types have something they enjoy. Size also doesn't define difficulty - the tricks and entropy of the level does.

[Strato Incendus]

For manual steel and invisible and fake objects, it would require additional effort to include support for them in the new-formats editor,

See, these are the types of changes I can totally understand. Extra work for something barely anyone uses? The cost-benefit analysis clearly says no. But additional required effort, as far as I remember, wasn't on the list of problems concerning slowfreeze.

That's a loss, but it's one we're prepared to accept because of the gain to puzzle possibilities. After all, there are lots of other games that reward execution skill, but not many playgrounds for the kind of puzzle design we enjoy.

Well, I'm working on "Pit Lems", refering to another such puzzle game "Pit Droids". That one will be purposefully more puzzly, and I shall see how that one is received by the community. It does have quite a lot of radiation and slowfreeze though, so I hope people keep their 10.13 version for quite some time, still .

PARALEMS has also been overhauled, but there are a couple of people still playing the current version, so I want to include their feedback before I upload the new version. That one obviously also still has slowfreeze and anti-splat pads, and I'm not planning to change that.

In case new skills or similar would be added to the new version, I'd try it out and see what ideas I come up with, for example for the shimmier in case it should be implemented. But should the new version only be a "reduction", while it would be understandable for me considering all the effort it takes to add new skills, personally I wouldn't see a purpose in using it when 10.13 could simply do more.

Size also doesn't define difficulty - the tricks and entropy of the level does.

I never claimed it does . I'd actually prefer more "contained levels" like "Mining company". Huge levels are great when they match the provided resources exactly, so that there's a danger of running out of them, like on "Final Frustration". However, a lot of puzzly levels I've seen so far are just "huge landscape spanning the entire screen, here's XX of every skill, go!"

These levels take a long time to solve mainly because of their execution . Scarcity of resources only rarely makes these levels more complicated, usually playing along a couple of general guidelines is enough to save resources (like "can I afford to go down here? Then I should use a miner and save the bashers for where I need them.").

Unfair things have to go, I'll make no prisoners here and I just despise them.

Well, I appreciate people standing up for their opinion, and even when they're convinced of it to a missionary extent that could be called a "crusade" for "puzzles only". Different players have different playing philosophies . However, as soon as one philosophy proclaims itself as the only "right" one, and this idea coincides with the removal of features that would be feasable for alternative views, that is what I call enforcing an ideology.

Having just played through the gimmicks rank of the old 1.43 introduction pack (thanks again to Nepster!), now I'm even less inclined to blame specific features for shortcomings of levels: A lot of these gimmicks that are gone now, at least in the form they were conceptionalised in, actually increased the amount of puzzling for me, even though on the surface all these gimmicks may just seem like random crazy stuff. Meaning: Sometimes you might throw out something just because you currently believe it conflicts with your philosophy, but it might turn out later that is not actually the case.

I admit that for radiation and slowfreeze, that probability is lower because they overlap with the discarded idea of timed bombers. If you're for an all puzzle approach, it would make more sense to me to throw out radiation and slowfreeze together and keep anti-splat pads and splat pads as a unit, rather than one of each, which feels kinda half-hearted.

I absolutely hate cheaters and abusers of unfair elements.

But the "cheater" in that scenario is the level creator, not the player, if I get that correctly? All the stuff we do with our nice convenient NeoLemmix features would totally be cheating by original Lemmings standards. And if the standards for what is cheating and what is not aren't universal, neither are the standards for what is fair or not.



@Nepster: Yes, I think you've summarised my position pretty much spot-on . The idea is: If 10.13 has radiation and slowfreeze and the new version has neither, there will be more differences setting apart the two versions, thereby more players who are on the fence about radiation / slowfreeze who will keep 10.13 installed. Different iterations of NeoLemmix for different uses, I'm fine with that! (1.43 for gimmicks, 10.13 for radiation / slowfreeze, new-format for shimmiers and whatever you might add ).

[Nessy]

IchoTolot is not enforcing his ideas on people. He is just expressing his opinion on something that he feels very passionate about. That's good. What I love about this community is that we can express ourselves without resorting to calling each other names or making nasty comments like in other communities that I have seen. True that different people have different philosophies, and not everybody is going to agree. That's okay! For example, I also dislike hidden content, but I don't mind repeat levels where both repeats have a unique solution. That's just my opinion and there are people here that don't agree and they will argue their stance. That's fine! You cannot change someone's beliefs, but nobody is trying to change anybody's beliefs. To me the most important thing ever is that we can all listen to each other.

[Strato Incendus]

Nobody is trying to change anyone's beliefs, but, to stay in religious terms, the "non-strictly puzzly" side has no churches . That makes it harder for them to practice their faith.

It just so happens to be that puzzles that take execution out of the equation are favoured among those who have the programming skills here on the forum. And if they decide to "take some toys away", the other camp gets passively affected by this. As I said, I understand reasons like "it's not worth the additional effort" from a programming standpoint. I also understand the problems associated with slowfreeze, radiation, anti-splat pads etc.

What I don't understand is what actual gain would result from their removal aside from "I can sleep better now because now I know for sure I won't have to see any levels including them" - it seems like a symbolic act that will barely have an overall effect, because so few levels use them, however those few who are affected by it are affected severely.

And that just feels like unnecessary censorship to me, especially when NeoLemmix allows you to just jump ahead to the next level. Or just play a different pack, of a fellow puzzle-lover who won't use these objects anyway. Meanwhile the kids can play with their execution-based action figures .

Seriously, the pool of packs is so vast that I just can't figure out why we even have to step on each other's toes in this matter . Having options isn't harmful, especially when most level creators seem to apply very careful consideration when designing their packs. I have yet to see any pack that really exploits such loopholes - if there is one, it's probably buried somewhere on the last page of the level packs subforum, because it's so unpopular . How much harm can it possibly do from there?

[Nepster]

Strato Incendus, I believe I mentioned it before, but yet again: NeoLemmix wants to give players as much control and information about levels, in order to reduce the amount of exploration and executional difficulties. As the focus lies on the players, it only is a natural consequence to take away the toys from level designers that (have a huge tendency to) increase such difficulties.

You ask what harm there is? The harm comes from the fact, that trolling levels and similar are contrary to what players expect. I donate my free time to NeoLemmix to give those level players who look for puzzles a great time. I don't do this to allow level designers absolute freedom, to make players looking for executional challenges happy or even to preserve old content. Those are all secondary goals. What you descibe with "Meanwhile the kids can play with their execution-based action figures" is simply another game: One that is equally valid, and can be equally much fun, but simply isn't NeoLemmix.

I feel with you and agree that it is a sad situation, that there is no programmer maintaining a lemmings clone, that focuses more on level designer needs or works to maintain a decent amount of executional challenges. But no matter how much you complain about this situation, I will not change the direction into which NeoLemmix is going.

Ok, and here is the more important part of this post: I am very seriously considering removing support for radiation objects, too! The discussion over the last few days has shown me, that radiation objects really don't fit into NeoLemmix and my first decision to keep it out of (misplaced) well-meaning for existing content, was probably not the best one considering the mid- and long-term future of NeoLemmix.

[Strato Incendus]

Well, if New Formats is supposed to become the standard version of Neo Lemmix for the foreseeable future, I'd definitely remove radiation, too. After all, when will be the next opportunity you'll get to remove it?

Concerning "pleasing creators vs. pleasing players": I for one also enjoy some execution-based levels in between puzzles as a player. Too many puzzles in sequence just tie a knot into my head . I might be able to solve them later, but I progress through a pack like that very slowly, because after a couple of levels I just find it tiring, so I stop and continue another day. The mean reason for me to do that is that the satisfaction of solving a complicated puzzle gets immediately dispersed by the next one appearing right away.

I guess I'm in the minority with this view, I just wanted to outline how pleasing the players and pleasing creators don't have to be mutually exclusive. As I've stated before, my goal is not to defeat the player (as IchoTolot), but merely to challenge them in a versatile manner. Hence, I don't want to be unnecessarily "mean" as a creator. And as a player, I like to see several of my skills challenged.

[nin10doadict]

Quote from Ichotolot:

My point of view is: I want to treat the player good like a god. I want him to understand, learn and see everything, but my goal is still (at least for the last rank): Defeat (stomp) the player fair and square. No dirty tricks, no hidden stuff - just a 100% fair, logical and solvable puzzles that get the better of him. So yes, I still want to defeat him in the end.

That was my view when I first started making Lemmings Squared. After posting it, I was harshly made to realize who I was dealing with. Casualemmings is my repentance for being foolish enough to believe I could defeat the veterans. Though I have been making a bit more progress on some of namida's levels... Just a bit.

From the looks of it, radiation is going to go away too. That's fine; I'll just stop making levels with it. I had a few more ideas with radiation, but I can come up with other ideas that don't use it. I probably won't be switching over to the new format for a while yet anyway, so perhaps I'll just use these ideas while I still can and then never have to bother thinking of ways to use radiation ever again.

Removal of features does prevent some levels from existing in newer versions, yes. This cannot be avoided. But those levels aren't gone for good. If you want to play it, you can still boot up the old version. Just like with the first Lemmings game: If you want to deal with having to restart a long level because you made one slip-up right at the end, the original game is still there for you. The fact that the old versions still exist and can be developed for if you so choose is what really makes the decision to cut a feature less painful to deal with. I support Nepster's push to take NeoLemmix in a different direction that tries to limit execution-based difficulty; that's why the engine was created in the first place.

[bsmith]

I'm a bit surprised that the discussion about radiation/slowfreeze took several pages.  My thoughts are that these two 'traps' are the most fiddly things currently in Neolemmix. I have yet to see a level that uses either of these that did not annoy me.  They also go against an aesthetic of action happening at the point of the trigger/skill assignment.  So I say throw them both out.

It looks like we are keeping disarmers, which I support.

I am leaning towards removing splat pads and anti-splat pads, especially when updrafts exist.  Updrafts seem to make more sense than the anti-splat pad, somehow.

[Nepster]

Giving the most recent feedback, I will remove radiation objects from the new-formats version, too.

One question that remains is: What should we do with the existing sprites?
- Door-like radiation/slowfreeze objects: I would like to simply remove these sprites, as they are pretty similar to teleporters and receivers. Perhaps the one or other can even be turned into a teleporter?
- Sparkling lights: They look pretty unique, so I am not sure what to do with them. Perhaps keep them around until we add another suitable object type, instead of repurposing them right away?
- Blinkling bubble from namida's wasteland style: I like the animation and would love to keep this sprite around. What about letting have it a come-back as a fire object?

Note: Existing slowfreeze and radiation objects will be removed from all levels when converting, even if we decide to repurpose some of the sprites.

[Nessy]

I think the radiation object would make a nice teleporter, as for the slowfreeze object I actually think it might be more suited as a trap that freezes a lemming... maybe. It doesn't look as threatening as some other traps, but it doesn't really look friendly either. If anything, I might just create a small animation on what I see happening to a lemming with a slowfreeze if it's a trap.

Are the sparkling lights the ones that are in the L2 circus tileset? If so I say we can keep it the way it is for now unless someone comes up with a better purpose for it.

I think the blinkling bubbles can be used as a fire object. They didn't look friendly to begin with, so using it as a fire object won't surprise players.

[Nepster]

Are the sparkling lights the ones that are in the L2 circus tileset? If so I say we can keep it the way it is for now unless someone comes up with a better purpose for it.

No, the ones that were previously slowfreeze/radiation objects, too. Strato Incendus used them in the level "Only over my dead bodies".

[Strato Incendus]

I can understand the wish to keep using the animations, it just seems extra-confusing if a visual element you know and recognise now does something completely different than expected. Sort-of like the green acid water from the Lab tileset that actually behaves like fire. Of course the behaviour of these objects will be consistent in the new formats version, it will just certainly take some time to adapt. Like Nepster mistook the airlock trap from the space tileset for an exit , or Flopsy considered Nessy in the Highland tileset a trap (which, admittedly, in my levels it usually is ...)

But on a cross-graphic set level, this change seems similar to switching from steel level sides to lethal level sides globally. That's also something I have to keep reminding myself of, now that I have started to use the 1.43 editor again as well .

[Nepster]

Very good point. So let's try it with just the glowing ball as a fire object while the new-formats is still experimental. After that we can compare our experiences with it and decide whether to keep it, remove it or even repurpose further sprites.
I will of course add a corresponding warning when posting the experimental new-formats players.

[Dullstar]

I am late to the party, as I haven't been around much recently, but I thought I'd add my thoughts on Radiation/Slowfreeze:

While I am slightly hesitant to cull because of existing content, I find these objects rather awkward to work with. If you'll recall I made some tutorial levels for the community pack. I made one for slowfreeze, but I don't like it very much. It was quite difficult to come up with something that functioned at all, honestly. I never even bothered with radiation.
I never could think of a way to really use the objects in a real level (that said, my levels aren't particularly challenging, so...)

I haven't used disarmers very much. It's easier to conceal solutions using other skills, though I am sure someone much more experienced with the game and much more clever than I am has managed to come up with a way to use them in a puzzle.