[DISC][STYLES] Pickup skill objects for initial V12.7 release

[namida]

Okay so - as everyone knows, custom pickup skills are gaining official support in V12.7, but this does mean every custom pickup skill object needs to be remade to fit the new system.

To avoid any glitchy or semi-incompatible pickup skills showing up, so far, my plan was that the styles download, upon V12.7's release, will have all the custom pickup skill objects outright removed. Yes, this will give "missing object" errors, but it will be pretty clear why, as opposed to the unpredictable results from non-updated ones.

However, in a discussion on Discord, IchoTolot made a suggestion to a user who didn't have their replacements ready: just use copies of the default one as placeholders for now.

How do people feel about this idea - instead of nuking the custom pickup skills, replacing them with copies of the default one as placeholders until the author submits a proper V12.7-ready copy?

[Simon]

Will the default's trigger area match the custom's trigger area? Have authors usually kept the default trigger? Then the custom tile would be eye candy, and using the default sounds natural.

-- Simon

[IchoTolot]

Will the default's trigger area match the custom's trigger area? Have authors usually kept the default trigger? Then the custom tile would be eye candy, and using the default sounds natural.

The trigger is defined in the nxmo file. If the trigger only differs slightly from the default ones we could still use the custom trigger area. Yes, this is problematic in the sense that the default now has a slightly different trigger in this set, but this is just a temporal solution anyway until the real sprite is finished.

[GigaLem]

If this has to be the case, i'm probably gonna need to make a bunch of text edits if any are necessary so that the pick ups remain in the level. And on top of which have their placement adjusted. (Asside from making backups of the levels) I can accept temporarily removing them so they can properly cook in the oven til they are ready to go!

[namida]

I think you misunderstand what I'm suggesting. Basically, I'm suggesting that until style creators provide V12.7-ready custom pickup skill objects to replace their existing ones, that copies of the default one be put in their place (in the styles themself, not in levels) as placeholders. Then, when style creators have their custom ones ready, they can just replace the copies-of-default in their styles with them.

This would essentially mean that - the styles download that comes with V12.7, instead of the custom pickup skills being removed, they're all replaced with copies of the default ones. Style creators can replace them back with their custom ones (updated for V12.7) when ready.

[namida]

Will the default's trigger area match the custom's trigger area? Have authors usually kept the default trigger? Then the custom tile would be eye candy, and using the default sounds natural.

The trigger is defined in the nxmo file. If the trigger only differs slightly from the default ones we could still use the custom trigger area. Yes, this is problematic in the sense that the default now has a slightly different trigger in this set, but this is just a temporal solution anyway until the real sprite is finished.

I just looked into this, and it seems that the majority of them have trigger areas that deviate from the standard ones - some only slightly, some to such an extent that the trigger areas wouldn't even overlap. This does throw a bit of a wrench into these ideas, although there might still be a way to do it (automated) with some secondary animation* trickery...

* or rather, with abusing a feature that's not exclusive to secondaries, but was introduced for the sake of them, namely the offsetting of animation positions

This would still mean that the size of trigger areas would often differ between styles though... so I have to say that ultimately, I'm currently leaning towards "just remove them" again. The substitution either involves creating trigger area confusion or subtly breaking existing levels; removing the objects altogether results in a very clear and obvious break, and since almost all such objects have "pickup" in their name, the missing piece error will make it pretty clear it's due to this.

The pickup skill object in Arty's silhouette style is an edge case. It completely replicated the default one, except for custom lemming sprites. It's no longer necessary to have a seperate object to achieve this now that pickup skills are rendered based on the active lemming sprites anyway, so V12.7.0 (including RC6, but not earlier RCs) replace it with the default one automatically.

[Dullstar]

I think Icho's proposed solution is probably best here. It's non-ideal that the trigger areas would be different between styles, but it prevents content from being broken entirely, and style updates should eventually fix it, as the style is the source of the issue, not the level using it.

[namida]

and style updates should eventually fix it, as the style is the source of the issue, not the level using it.

Which is another concern, if I'm being completely honest. In all honesty, I don't have much faith that they actually will be updated. From V12.5.X to V12.6.X (which required slight tweaks due to the introduction of the Shimmier), only two custom pickup skill objects were updated by the style's creator - and the creator of those styles had a few more styles that he didn't update the pickup skills from. The rest only got updated because Nessy volunteered to do them all.

There is one slight difference here - V12.6's updates were always only going to work as a temporary measure, because - even if V12.7's changes didn't happen - they'd break the next time a new skill was added or the skills were reordered. V12.7 changes to a system that's specifically designed not to need any more future updates.

The V12.7.0-RC build was released a month ago, which was an opportunity for people to start preparing their custom pickup skill objects for V12.7.X. Take a guess at how many custom pickup skills that existed in V12.6.X, have had updated versions submitted...

Spoiler

Zero.

[Dullstar]

That is a slight problem. How many of them are there? If the graphics are already finished (and just need to be adapted to the new format), it might be a good idea to seek out volunteers to do the conversions just so we can be done with it.

On one hand, this may encourage style creators to get lazy with the updates, but on the other hand, failure to do so may discourage people from using unofficial styles.

[namida]

That is a slight problem. How many of them are there? If the graphics are already finished (and just need to be adapted to the new format), it might be a good idea to seek out volunteers to do the conversions just so we can be done with it.

The graphics needed for the new version cannot easily be reconstructed via automated means from the old ones. It could be done manually, but this would be very time consuming. There are 20 existing ones that need to be updated. Three authors are collectively responsible for all but two of these (two more are joint creations between one of those three authors and another author). A few are palette swaps of each other, but most are entirely different.

On one hand, this may encourage style creators to get lazy with the updates, but on the other hand, failure to do so may discourage people from using unofficial styles.

Use of non-standard pickup skill objects has always been discouraged in the past, and it was constantly advised that they could break at any time, but it happened anyway. This is why keeping backwards-compatibility here is a very low priority compared to how I usually handle BC.

Style breakages where people have observed that advice have been very rare, especially post-new-formats.