[SUG][PLAYER][DORMANT] Unfair content warnings / prevention

[namida]

I'm thinking - NL already goes a long way to fight unfair level designs. But there's likely room for improvement here.

My intention here is not to outright disable such levels. There are several reasons for this - the risk of false positives, preservation of historical content, some might even have very rare legitimate use cases.

Instead, I'd like any solutions to take one of three forms:
a) An explicit warning message to the player. I'd kind of like this to be an intrusive, unmissable one (a popup of some kind); but it could also be something a bit less in-your-face like a "WARNING: May contain unfair content" text on the preview screen.
b) A conditional, or just always-shown, helper of some kind. For example, perhaps a big "EXIT" with an arrow appears above / below the exit at the start of the level, preventing it from hiding behind terrain even using workarounds like "fill the entire level with an updraft trigger area". This could even be more generic, just a "WARNING" sign that alerts the player that something dodgy is going on in a certain area, rather than specific graphics for each situation.
c) Additional clarity in Clear Physics Mode. This would likely be in addition to, not instead of, one of the above.

Regarding the situations this should detect, of course, some are more realistic than others to detect in practice, but some situations I'd consider:
- Objects (other than purely-decorative ones) hidden behind terrain
- "Only on terrain" objects that don't overlap any terrain - although my more-instinctive thought here is that only-on-terrain objects should be non-functional in the first place
- Multiple overlapping windows, if this affects the state of spawned lemmings or the spawn order
- Multiple overlapping pickup skills (even if they are the same skill, the overlap will affect how many)
- Objects that have functions, but blank graphics (and thus end up invisible)
- Identical in appearance steel and non-steel pieces (this would only be able to go as far as detecting them when used in the same level, and would be very limited as to how much it can detect those that are merely "similar")
- Perhaps any piece explicitly marked as "UNFAIR" in the NXMO / NXMT file, for those who are choosing to make such packs while being honest and open about it (or as a tag that can be added in the styles download to pieces that have been identified as unfair but are not detected by NL's automated tests)

If false positives / flagging of legitimate use cases become too much of a concern, this could perhaps be combined with some kind of centrally-maintained whitelist of levels that are confirmed to be fair. On the other hand, my sympathy for historical content only goes as far as "don't outright prevent it being played" - I am 100% okay with such levels being flagged with a warning, my own included in a couple of cases where I've made designs that don't stand up to today's standards.

[Proxima]

I think additional clarity in Clear Physics Mode is an excellent idea -- if using my suggestion for giving each object type a different colour, updrafts could be a desaturated colour so that overlapping trigger areas would still be visible.

I am, however, against doing anything more than that. This is partly from a selfish point of view -- I don't want my play experience to be disturbed (especially not with something as intrusive as popups) just because you want to communicate information (that I already know) to potential new players. I also don't see it as helpful; "May contain unfair content" doesn't actually give the player the information they need to interpret what is on the level -- especially for someone new to NeoLemmix who doesn't even know yet what our standards are on what is fair and unfair. We already have Clear Physics Mode for locating objects and learning which object has which function; and we have the intro pack, as well as the panel button, to help the new player discover that CPM exists.

There is always going to be some potential for unfairness, and some disagreement over what counts as unfair. What really matters is that we have a community consensus that we should try to be fair in our level designs going forward, and are willing to listen to each other and make changes in response to feedback. And as far as I can see, we pretty much have that.

[WillLem]

the risk of false positives

What does "false positives" mean, particularly in this context?

- Objects (other than purely-decorative ones) hidden behind terrain

Maybe NL could be configured to display a CPM-mode version of the object graphic when it's completely hidden behind terrain. So, a bright pink shape would appear.

- Multiple overlapping windows, if this affects the state of spawned lemmings or the spawn order

I've suggested a possible solution to this here. TL;DR - add A, B, C, D etc... helper icons above entrance hatches (as there's currently no CPM way to determine order anyway), and in cases where they overlap configure NL to display the helper letters next to each other rather than themselves overlapping.

"May contain unfair content" doesn't actually give the player the information they need to interpret what is on the level

I agree, and I too wouldn't like to have popups or pre-screens for such levels.

I understand the idea, though, and I myself have previously suggested that packs could be labelled as [HIE], meaning that they contain hidden and/or invisible elements.

Maybe, in the case of popups, if these were implemented in a more specific way (e.g. "this level contains a hidden exit" or "this level contains overlapping teleporters"), and be made optional so that users can disable these popups if they aren't bothered about hidden or invisible stuff, then this would satisfy just about everyone.

Thinking about it, this might even be a decent enough way to settle the whole thing once and for all!

What really matters is that we have a community consensus that we should try to be fair in our level designs going forward, and are willing to listen to each other and make changes in response to feedback.

+1 for this!

Maybe there should be a community-agreed list of things that should and shouldn't feature in levels, grouped as:

Acceptable: most people in the community agree that these features are acceptable.
Controversial: there is divided opinion on these, so expect that some players will not take kindly to use of these features, but others may enjoy these features.
Unacceptable: most people in the community agree that these features are unacceptable (this would mostly be features that are not feasible to completely remove).

This would then give people the freedom to choose how they wish to proceed with level design in full light of community guidance, and the same things don't need to keep being repeated. Newcomers can simply be referred to the Community Level Design Guidelines.

[namida]

What does "false positives" mean, particularly in this context?

A false positive is when something is detected, but isn't actually the case. While this specific example is very unlikely to happen (other than due to an outright bug), an example could be if an exit that's 100% (or close to it) visible gets flagged as "hidden".

(A false negative, by extension, is the opposite - such as if the algorithm fails to detect a completely hidden exit for some reason.)

Acceptable (most people in the community agree that this feature is acceptable)
Controversial (there is divided opinion on this, so expect that some players will not take kindly to use of these features, but others may enjoy these features)
Unacceptable (most people in the community agree that this feature is unacceptable) - (this would mostly be features that are not feasible to completely remove).

Not a bad idea tbh.

[Dullstar]

I'm not going to take a position at this time on whether or not the warning should exist, but with the proposed use cases, I'd like to say that I think there are legitimate use cases for multiple overlapping windows - for instance, creating a level where every other spawned lemming has different permanent skills. There's certainly some deceptive ways to use it, of course, like overlapping a bunch of hatches to make a bit of a "gotcha" lemming to break a solution that otherwise should have worked.

[namida]

for instance, creating a level where every other spawned lemming has different permanent skills.

This is at least partially noticable because of the weird-looking mess created by the overlapping skill icons. Even this isn't ideal. I think I have a couple of levels that did this back when fairness wasn't as strong a concept as it is now; I should change them. Or, improve how this is displayed, then it could be accepted as legitimate.

[WillLem]

This is at least partially noticable because of the weird-looking mess created by the overlapping skill icons. Even this isn't ideal. I think I have a couple of levels that did this back when fairness wasn't as strong a concept as it is now; I should change them. Or, improve how this is displayed, then it could be accepted as legitimate.

I think it's important for the helper system not to get too messy: maybe some things could be made visible from the panel, or when hovering the cursor over an entrance hatch, for example (for the latter, maybe hovering over the hatch could display all info about that hatch as a list: spawn order, number of lems, permanent skills if applicable, whether it's overlapped...) and in the event of overlapped hatches, simply clicking on the hatch could display the info about the hatch underneath it...

Mayyyyybe too many things to have to know about, but I suspect that most players will simply just play the level and find out the information they need to know by simple observation. The feature would mainly be there for those who prefer to know everything about a level before they start playing it, and such players are likely to familiarise themselves with all of the interface/helper features anyway.

[Proxima]

Continuing a conversation thread from the Lemmings Redux topic:

Can you elaborate a bit more on why "unfair content detection" would result in the same scenario as outright banning of unfair content, please? I'm not sure how it would be the same...

As I said: if I know that certain features of my levels are going to inflict pop-ups or flashing red text on the end user, then I'd rather just take those features out, even if they are ones I personally don't consider unfair. I wouldn't be surprised if others would do the same.

[Strato Incendus]

What about exits or other objects partly covered by terrain (as to simply require an additional skill to get access to them, or to allow a worker lemming to walk past it earlier, similarly to a locked exit)?

What about exits set to no-overwrite and placed entirely on top of terrain?

I think it would depend very much on the coding whether these would be caught as false positives.

[WillLem]

As I said: if I know that certain features of my levels are going to inflict pop-ups or flashing red text on the end user, then I'd rather just take those features out, even if they are ones I personally don't consider unfair. I wouldn't be surprised if others would do the same.

It could have the opposite effect as well, though - the "Parental Advisory" thing, where artists deliberately include controversial elements in their work because they know it will flag up the "Explicit Content" warning, and therefore teenagers will find it cool. Supposedly.

I can certainly imagine getting a kick out of knowing that a level is being flagged - it gives it extra character! I wouldn't want it to be every level - that would get tiresome. But knowing that a particular level is "naughty" can be fun.

It has also been suggested that it's best to save all unfair content for one pack (or rank) and denote it accordingly. I don't really like this idea, though, because for me the whole point of including the occasional zinger is that it (can) add variety and flavour to an otherwise normal, standard pack (if done well and placed appropriately).

For me, the bottom line is that using a detection system & warning allows NeoLemmix to set the standard clearly whilst giving creators and players the freedom to enjoy the game however they wish: players who are bothered by the messages (and not the content) could simply disable them from the menu.