Chicago-Themed Terrain

[Liebatron]

Awesome!

Also, one more update; I was playing around with it and I noticed an issue with the hitboxes for the fire traps where the hitbox didn't quite extend to the bottom of the fire, much less below it. I think I forgot to make adjustments after adding pixels to make it 8-pixel grid compliant.

I did some hitbox testing and made some adjustments; the Lix can survive having their hair or feet singed a bit, but if they decide to befriend the fire too much, they go up in flames as expected.

EDIT: One more tiny fix; literally 3 pixels the *slightly* wrong color on two of the trains. I reuploaded the zip!

[Liebatron]

Also here's updated versions of the levels themselves! Most of the changes were made just to accommodate the new steel terrain, but there's a couple changes I made to make a couple things less tedious, particularly in the later levels. I'm attaching replays too this time!

Also, there's 4 "Bonus" levels in this pack; I wanted to make a level pack which would exclusively use pieces from the Chicago terrain set, and I *almost* did; Walk-In Appointment and Promontory Point both use an outside entrance and exit, Overtruss Trek uses a "construction" set hatch, and in 4 levels I did use someone else's water. I came close though!

The bonus levels are just 4 more (Really 3, one is just a silly no-skill level) that didn't really fit into that goal!

[Simon]

Yeah, inconsistent hitboxes between fire/water is cultural debris. Fire will trigger if (foot + 0, 4, 8, or 12 hi-respixels above) intersects the hitbox. Water will only trigger if foot intersects the hitbox. Since the hitboxes are filled rectangles, never weird holey shapes, better rule would be to always only trigger on foot, and increase all fire trigger areas downwards by 12 pixels. I'm reluctant because this would be breaking change, and really hard to detect: Nothing would prevent old-tiles with new-game, nor new-tiles with old-game.

The cultural debris comes from: Fire originally hit the eyes that dependend on the spritesheet, not (foot + 12 above). It's stupid to depend on the spritesheet for such unexpected detail like eye position, therefore I simplified to (foot + 0, 4, 8, 12 above) and kept backwards-compatible hitbox definitions in the tiles.



Still busy, haven't looked in peace at the updated tiles. Thanks for sticking to the 8-grid! I'll take a closer look eventually and go through your changes.

I remember, as a player, that the Chicago exit/goal was hard to find; the exit looks on first sight like any other train wagon, with only subtle detail to set it apart. Instead, exits really should pop into view, it's an important place in the level. The quick suggestion is to draw a large animated arrow over the exit train car. Combine it with the "board here" sign? But I'll have to look at the tileset in peace again before I can suggest anything serious.

It's hard to add space to the left/top after-the-fact to existing tiles. Long-term idea for Lix is to allow that, and specify offset in a tile definitions file (txt file). Such definitions are only allowed for gadgets in 0.9.x. That's enough in this particular case where we might add to top of exit. But in general, it's conceivable to also allow them for normal terrain. On the other hand, I'd like to keep things easily-guessable for new tileset designers... unsure how much freedom is the right choice. Definitions text files are already a stretch for simplicity; if I allow them, I may as well give more power.

-- Simon

[Forestidia86]

I've played through the 3 bonus levels with skills.

Spoiler

For Crying Out Loud - Was a nice challenging level, had one skill left in the end.
Extrawurst - I used basher mechanics, so that the platforms were sufficient and had a lot of skills left.
Lixylvania -  A lot of hidden fire that could be omitted with some squeezing.

[Liebatron]

Thanks for trying them out!

I took a look at the replays, and I've gotta say, the Extrawurst replay took me by surprise
It did not at all occur to me that you could just platform right over the hitbox for the 'customer'... I'll have to find a way to prevent that.

Your solution to "For Crying Out Loud" is cool, also! It uses most of the same mechanics as my solution, but uses up a couple more skills on the left, while using significantly fewer on the right side of the level. Mine saves 18, but it uses up all the skills

Lixylvania - There is quite a bit of fire! I'm curious though, what do you mean by omitting by squeezing?

Also, I have some ideas for the exits... When I've got time, my plan is to fiddle with the lights around the door and see if I can't make the exits more obvious that way!

[mobius]

I've noticed this isn't included in the main download yet, what's the status on this?

[Simon]

I've noticed this isn't included in the main download yet, what's the status on this?

Don't use the Chicago tiles for lemforum levels yet.

I've let the inclusion fell by the wayside in late 2021. The first impression was that the tiles were nice, but fiddly and non-tiling. Then Liebatron improved the grid of the steel to 8, but I still haven't looked at the improved gridding since.

I remember being concerned about the fiddlyness and it was hard to put into words. Sizes are perfectly consistent within Chicago, but clash with all remaining tiles of Lix. This has implications for the editor and the architecture of Lix in general. E.g., Lix offers one big selection of all tilesets' traps, another big selection of all tilesets' steel, but Chicago feels like it calls for separation. Then there are the concerns with the trap definitions etc. from my reply #32. Lots of little stuff to get right to include Chicago properly in Lix so that neither's quirks harms the other.

-- Simon

[Liebatron]

I'm still around; if there's anything I can change to get the things to work better with other tilesets, let me know!

[Simon]

Thanks! I'll re-look into your Chicaco tiles within the next weeks, and post feedback here. At latest, I'll post the feedback after Easter, i.e., Tuesday, April 11th.

I'm still busy as usual in other parts of Lix and other hobbies, and I'll be away for a week. The deadline of April 11th is for me to not let the tiles drift again.

-- Simon

[Simon]

Real-life stuff came in-between. I was away for the past 2 weeks.

I'll look at the steel within the week, and post feedback for the steel until Tuesday, April 18th.

Overall, the earlier problems still stand: Lix doesn't support the set well. The many non-terrain tiles would flood Lix's browsers because, e.g., traps all appear on a single page in the Lix editor browser, not in a file tree. Nonetheless, I want to look at the steel as promised! The steel in Lix 0.10.7 is already confusing. Ideally, I'll give you feedback on the steel that can also help us improve the existing steel in 0.10.7.

-- Simon

[Simon]

Here's the promised feedback on the steel.

Steel adheres mostly to the 16-grid. Nice! In particular, the big steel truss square is 48x48 now.

You don't have overly many steel pieces, that's nice and plays ball with the editor's steel browser that merges all installed steel into a single view.

Shape nitpick: Some steel is 6x32 or 32x6. That is quirky, but okay, if you want 6-wide bars instead of 8-wide, then that's how it is and designers will have to use the 2-grid instead of the 8-grid.

Theoretically, you can make the bar's bitmap 32x8 with only the central 6 pixels solid, and 1+1 transparent rows at either side. Such a tile feels misalinged unless it had an odd shape to begin with, but you don't have odd-shaped decor; you have rectangular steel. I think the 32x6 is more honest.

Nails: Good! When we look at the steel, we see the nails, and will likely consider the tile steel.

(Now your steel isn't the hardest steel to recognize anymore. I'd like geoo's white steel pipes to get similar nails, or at least small bumps. Those pipes are hard to recognize as steel until you've memorized them.)

Color: The main steel problem wouldn't be in the steel tile itself, but rather a feature of the the overall set. You have diggable grey houses, diggable grey earth, diggable brown railway truss, but then greyish-brown steel. The steel's color still blends in.

E.g., see attached screenshot. We recognize the steel bar clearly as steel once we've decided to look for steel and found that steel. But it doesn't jump into our eyes. With all the colorful action, we're prone to hit the steel by accident.

I don't have a good recommendation. You could make the steel white-and-dark-grey with even glarier nails, but then you'll kill your mood. After all, you want steel trusses that fit the scenery.

Compare with other sets: Other tiles aren't as colorful or mini-detailed, or have much larger details. Grey steel with nubs sticks out in those other sets.



That's the feedback on steel. More feedback on the entire set to come, again with a deadline: Tuseday, April 25th.

-- Simon

[DanielOakfield]

This set would be a great addition to the game, what has happened? Any news?


There are a lot of free-to-use tilesets out there too, which I used to make some levels. Plus some custom made. What are the policies for sending new tilesets for the official release Simon?

[Flopsy]

I think the main things when submitting new Lix tilesets are:

• They don't contain copyrighted material, although Lix initially started out using Lemmings tilesets we don't like any graphics from Lemmings actually being in the game now.
• The tiles generally have to be sized in multiples of 8 to be consistent with the rest of the tilesets in Lix. For example, most tilesets tend to have blocks of 8x8, 16x16, 32x32. Of course they don't have to be squares, just in multiples of 8 to fit in well with the Lix in-game editor.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, I'm sure Simon would add to this