2.00 One-Way Arrows

[namida]

See also: This topic on the NX1 board.

So, it's already been decided that one-way arrows will no longer be considered objects as such, but will instead be implemented more similarly to steel areas (already an option in NX1, but generally the less-recommended option due to that, among other factors, no animation support exists for such one-way arrows).

Some things I'm wanting to consider are:

How to handle them graphically? There'll be a "default" graphic for them (so, graphic sets aren't obligated to contain graphics for them), with the optino for a graphic set to override it with custom ones; that much is established. The questions are - should support for animation be included, or should they at most move (similar to how most current ones do) - this would require a redesign in a few graphic sets that don't simply give them continous movement in one direction (eg. psychedelic, which has constant arrows which light up periodically; or Lab or Clockwork, where the arrows oscillate backwards and forwards rather than continously advacing). Supporting both is of course an option. EDIT: While I'm not ruling out offering the option (for graphic set designers) to just provide one graphic and have that move, it's not going to be enforced; full animation support will also be retained. (As such, this could simply be some kind of "autogenerate animation" option in the editor, rather than an actual feature of the game.)

Should changes be made to certain graphic sets where currently one-way arrows move in a different direction to how they point? This - in particular with the Fire graphic set, where all one-way arrows move in the same direction (towards the left), has been criticized in the past.

What about positioning of the graphics? Should it essentially function like a huge tiling of one-way arrows over the whole level (perhaps with an offset rather than always starting at 0,0), only displayed in regions where they're actually used? Or should it be more similar to current, where they're offset from the top-left corner of the one way area - which would mean more difficulty for level designers, but could look tidier in some cases when multiple one-way areas are near each other (especially if they're in the same direction)?

EDIT: Another thought - should the option exist (for the user) to ignore a graphic set's custom one-way arrows (and most likely, pickup skills too, though this could be a seperate option) in favor of always using the generic ones?


Any other comments on this are welcome as well, of course.

[ccexplore]

I think I'd much prefer having the flexibility to fully specify the animation, rather than being restricted to some predefined set of motions.

[namida]

That's my thoughts too; the reason I ask was because Simon mentioned in his recent post (in the main NeoLemmix board) that he often looks to the direction of movement, rather than the graphic of the arrows themself; so I was wondering if this might be a more common thing that other people simply haven't mentioned (after all, it can generally be assumed that if one person mentions a problem, there's most likely more people who agree but didn't want to / couldn't be bothered mentioning it). I also thought, may as well add other possible discussion points at the same time.

[Nepster]

My thoughts...

1) I would like to have a possibility to "double" the visuals, i.e. displaying twice as much arrows as usual. The reason is that sometimes the one-way-wall is only a small area and displaying twice as much arrows helps the player to realize what is going on. Currently you can simply place two objects over the same terrain piece, if you want to achieve that. See the attached level "Midnight Stroll" (part of NepsterLems) as an example.
The same goes for tile sets like the psychedelic style, where (depending on the terrain) arrows may be hardly visible.

2) Please provide at least the option to position the arrows for one-way-walls as the level designer wants them, instead of using a preset huge tiling of the level. Again this helps the player to discern small one-way-walls. Moreover it is (to me) much more aesthetically pleasing to see two full arrows instead of one full and two half arrows.
As en example consider the level "Roadblock" (again from NepsterLems). Currently the main problem is, that the animations start at different frames . If you now add badly placed arrows to this...

Generally I feel, that the original Lemmings/Lemmix level design method did a very good job of giving level designers huge flexibility while relying only on very few rules and options. I think we should strive to keep this flexibility while not making designing levels much more complicated.
Having said that: Why not have one-way-walls as areas for all mechanical purposes and adding the arrows as objects without trigger areas (possibly only visible if over the correct area)?

PS: I don't even see, why creating one-way-walls as areas is better than defining this area via the current precedure of objects on terrain pieces?

[IchoTolot]

I have quite some levels too where one-way-arrows only affect a little part of one terrain piece, so I would leave it as it is with one-ways-arrow objects placed onto the terrain itself. This way the designer can place them much more exactly, together with the one-way option on the terrain itself.  So I think this is perfect as it is. (changing this affects too many levels!!)
The animation (as I said to Simon), I couldn't care less about it. I simply don't care if the arrows are static, left/right or back and forward moving. The peak of the arrow is the important part.

[mobius]

right now I personally find the biggest issue with the arrows are the bad coloring in Rock, Bubble and Pillar.

It was a good choice to make Snow arrows red, why not copy SuperLemini's change of the others. [except for crystal, I like the crystal arrows as they are]. I actually liked the yellow on Brick, though it seemed odd at first, I like it now. Rock was an orangish-brown which worked well as did red for bubble.
Pillar was bad in Lemmini too, I would make it maybe black? the black in Genesis worked well I think [I realize all the arrows in every terrain set were black in Genesis]

-This and maybe instead of the current one size/type in each set, but two sizes for each terrain set; small [half of the size of the brick and bubble arrow field (that is: a small square block)]  and Large [the size of most others like from Dirt or Pillar]

Other than this I'm fine with the way it is. [Other than the rather stupid animation of the fire set as already pointed out]. I liked the unique animations types of Psychadelic and clock.

[namida]

-This and maybe instead of the current one size/type in each set, but two sizes for each terrain set; small [half of the size of the brick and bubble arrow field (that is: a small square block)]  and Large [the size of most others like from Dirt or Pillar]

One-way arrow areas will no longer be of fixed sizes in NX2. As I said - think of them as being more like steel areas (ie: you can choose the size of them arbitrarily) than objects (where the sizes are fixed, and the only thing you can do is repeatedly tile them to cover a larger area).

[ccexplore]

right now I personally find the biggest issue with the arrows are the bad coloring in Rock, Bubble and Pillar.

It was a good choice to make Snow arrows red

Huh.  Sounds like namida must've changed the colors from the official graphics set then for NL? I looked at ONML's in the original Lemmix editor and in all four sets, the OWW color all seem to be the same across the 4 sets, sort of a very pale pink (including the Snow set's) almost to the point of white.  Maybe that's what you mean by "red", except it's nowhere remotely as red as like this.

[namida]

Yeah, the Snow set arrows were changed to red (actual red) a long time ago:


(LPI Psycho 18, "Return of the T")

[namida]

Here's a potential "generic" one-way arrow design (ie: the fallback one used for graphic sets that don't have their own custom ones), hi-res. Edited it onto a Sky level map; I haven't made high-res Sky set graphics yet so the level map was simply made by upscaling the low-res graphics, which is why it looks kinda untidy. But I think it works well enough to show that even on a graphic set using very similar colors to those in these arrows, they're visible enough.

Let me know if you think there's any other graphic sets (particularly ones without one-way arrows - which I think might only be the Sky set, actually?) you'd like to see these sampled on before deciding whether you like them or not.

[ccexplore]

The re-coloring does bring up a good point: it seems like ideally the generic OWW arrow should be color-adjustable somehow, so that level designers who opt to use the generic arrow can more easily handle the situations that, for example, presumably led you to re-color the ONML Snow one to red.

Technically they can already do so by creating custom OWW graphics, essentially a "palette swap" version of the generic, but this is more about whether we can provide a quicker way for them to achieve this when it's just a matter of color.  And I'm sure there are ways to make one single OWW graphic be legible overlaid across most terrain even without any arrow color adjustments, but "legible" sometimes may still not look as good as a better choice of arrow colors.

[bsmith]

Would I be able to make a single frame of a one-way graphic and have the engine work out scrolling the graphic to the left/right/down?

[namida]

Yes, although this will more likely be something the editor generates rather than the game (not that that makes much of a difference to the end user).

Based on ccexplore's suggestion of being able to adjust the colors of the default one-way graphics to easily make custom ones, I threw together a little app that does this. It doesn't save the output, mostly because it exists for the purpose of demonstrating a concept, not as an actual design tool. Here it is if anyone wants to give feedback on it.

(Note: The base color should be entered in hexidecimal notation, while the intensities in decimal values from 0 to 255. Also note that you can click on one of the small images to display it zoomed; this does NOT automatically update when you re-generate the images.)

If/when this is actually implemented into an editor, it'll offer options for generating animations as well - probably with the options of "constant movement in arrow direction", "constant movement in opposite direction", "bounce" (like most of the L1 ones), and perhaps even a Lab/Clockwork-type animation (similar to bounce, but the rows alternate directions - so when the first row is moving left, the second is moving right, for example; you can see it in action here).

[mobius]

The app is awsome! pretty cool imo. I'd enjoy using that but I also don't want to simply throw away the old ones;

why not just dump all of the current arrow graphics into the "arrow sub category". And the user can choose any+ any new ones for any set or use this new tool. Since you're  combining all the graphics anyway [don't remember what the current consensus is on that] it would be fitting to have all the old arrow graphics together.

[namida]

The graphics aren't combined as such - there'll still be graphic sets, it'll just be possible to use more than one of them in a single level. I'd imagine that in practice, this is an option that would not be used too often (but we'll see) - it's just nice to have it available, and there's really no reason why it can't be done.

Going on from this, the way I see it is that each level would still have a "primary" graphic set - which is where it would get its custom system graphics (if any), one-way arrows, etc from. The generic ones are simply a fallback for when the primary graphic set doesn't have any; the generator tool is for graphic set creators (not level creators) who don't want to spend the time designing one-way arrows (which I can definitely say - is a very tedious task).