[Physics][Bug?] Climber/shimmier fall distance discrepency: intended or not?

Started by Dullstar, August 09, 2020, 09:36:06 AM

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Dullstar

I was testing a level out and I wanted to see how many stackers, hypothetically, would be required to make this fall safe, if that's the route I decided to go to get the shimmier down. With three stackers, the shimmier will survive the fall, but the climber dies. I don't know if the shimmier gets an extra pixel of safe fall distance or if the climber gets one less pixel of safe fall distance.



I'm guessing it's probably a bit too ingrained to fix, even if it is a bug, but I figured I'd at least report it.

At the very least, the splat ruler doesn't really lead me to identify this as the expected result.

IchoTolot

I think that the head of the shimmier is below the head of the climber when he hits the ceiling and therefore the shimmier is at a lower point when he falls --> survives.

That would make sense in the way that the climber directly has to hit his head while the shimmier is hanging on with his arms.

Proxima

This is why the current splat ruler has an extra bar at the end -- the full length indicates the distance climbers will splat; the shorter length is for everyone else.

I have argued that this should be reverted if we can't find a clearer way to indicate it, as it's causing more confusion than it's preventing, but that's an argument for another topic :P

namida

Honestly - it never even came to mind that the splat ruler needed to cover shimmiers too.

I don't think there's an issue with the physics itself. Climbers simply get closer to the ceiling than shimmiers do, that makes sense; one is bumping his head, one is hanging by his arms. I doubt that it was specifically outright intended by Nepster (who implemented the Shimmier) that it should have a slightly lower fall start, but I certainly don't believe it's a problem.

My train of thought here went "shit, the ruler needs to cover the shimmier too", then "no, that's going to make it too messy, perhaps seperate rulers are needed", then "this would need to be different hotkeys, so should be configured as a single key with multiple sub-settings similar to Select Skill etc" which ultimately lead me to: Should helpers like the splat ruler be fully user-customizable, with some reasonable defaults - which could include "plain fall ruler", "climber fall ruler" and "shimmier fall ruler" - provided with NL?

If multiple options, with such a setup, were to be implemented, becoming user-customizable would almost happen just as a side effect of handling the easiest way to allow adding new ones in the future.

This is something I need to follow up on as a seperate idea. But as far as the original issue here is - no bug.
My projects
2D Lemmings: NeoLemmix (engine) | Lemmings Plus Series (level packs) | Doomsday Lemmings (level pack)
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