[SUGGESTION] [PLAYER/EDITOR] Pillar Set Spike Trap

[mobius]

reserved

[mobius]

This is with the updated version of NL with terrain mixing and object rotation in mind;

This trap could be incredibly useful but it's not, here's why:

The trigger areas isn't where it looks like it should be. A lemming can walk directly into the spikes and survive easily. It's inconsistent and makes using this trap (at least in my experience) very difficult.

In order to, for example; make a wall or long vertical area deadly you need to place lots of them overlapping, which looks messy.

I propose either altering the trigger area or making a new trap similar to this one which works more logically.
I also propose converting it from a single-kill trap to a kill-all [like the fire from Hell set]

While people in IRC asserted altering the current trap would break a lot of existing content I disagree.

1) I'll admit I certainty haven't observed every instance of use of this trap. But from what I've seen people usually use it in conjunction with making a small area on a or the wall itself deadly. I've never seen it used as a pass-through trap. IN levels like OL and Genesis I recall it being used most often in areas where you bypass it completely.

2) To my knowledge, this trap is used rarely, in the original games AND custom levels.

3) I propose to make the trap more useful to the level designer, and more predictable to the player. The trigger area shouldn't be so large it's difficult to get around [perhaps like Lemmini* cough]. I think the area of effect should be where a lemming gets very close to the spikes. I think if you set it against a wall, a faller against that wall should get hit.
I propose making it a kill all because it almost acts that way presently; since the animation is so fast. It's inconsistent be a single kill trap with super high speed.

There's also this argument that I don't agree with keeping up updating players to support the original games, but that's another discussion..


Making a brand new trap is fine to me; to make things simpler it could be spikes with little or no animation. Actually I suddenly got the idea to make a trap like this for many sets, of various colors/shapes for each set. This of course; is much more work than the former suggestion.

*even in Lemmini I don't remember this particular trap actually being a problem, but it's been a long time since I played.

[Nepster]

1) [...] I've never seen it used as a pass-through trap. [...]
I propose making it a kill all because it almost acts that way presently; since the animation is so fast.

NepsterLems, Black Hole 11, "HangLem" uses the spike trap in this way. The level would be impossible if the spike trap would be a continuous trap.

2) To my knowledge, this trap is used rarely, in the original games AND custom levels.

This is less true for custom levels: NepsterLems has 24 pillar style levels, 9 of them use the spike trap and only 7 of them use the rope trap.

It's inconsistent be a single kill trap with super high speed.

Then the chameleon has to be a continuous trap as well...

I also propose converting it from a single-kill trap to a kill-all [like the fire from Hell set]

I am missing a list of advantages of "continuous spike trap" over "triggered spike trap" in your post . Currently I only see you arguing, that there is little difference between the two. So why is there a need to change it?
Moreover making it a continuous trap means that we need constant animations for the spikes.

The trigger areas isn't where it looks like it should be. A lemming can walk directly into the spikes and survive easily. It's inconsistent and makes using this trap (at least in my experience) very difficult.
[...]
3) I propose to make the trap more useful to the level designer, and more predictable to the player. The trigger area shouldn't be so large it's difficult to get around [perhaps like Lemmini* cough]. I think the area of effect should be where a lemming gets very close to the spikes. I think if you set it against a wall, a faller against that wall should get hit.

Good points here. But instead of altering the trigger area which might break existing levels, I suggest one of the following two approaches (the first was already suggested in chat yesterday):
a) Change the sprite by removing three of the four spikes and keep only one at the correct location. This makes the appearance more honest without changing the actual physics.
b) Allow changing the height of the trap: NeoLemmix already supports customizing the width of water(-like) objects. So it shouldn't be too hard to allow customizing the height of the spike trap as well. Then all newly placed spike traps have big trigger areas. However supporting old levels would still be possible: When loading an old-format level, we would automatically change the height so that only one spike is visible and move the object a bit, so that the trigger areas doesn't change.
I see at the moment no advantage of changing the trigger area over either of these two possibilities.

[mobius]

I think now, making a new trap is a much better idea. Making smaller versions/less spikes or more is good too. I'll forget about changing the old one.

Should have thought of this before: a perfect solution for making the trap a kill-all;
Simply have it constantly animating, so the spikes are going in and out all the time. This would work if you made it a separate trap from the old one. The two would be pretty clearly distinguishable; the new trap is always animating while the old one, single kill is not.

Single kill trap: send a clump of lemmings together to have 1 or more survive when only 1 gets killed.
Kill all trap: effectively makes a blocking wall for the lemmings.

Most of the time this system works just fine. The spike trap and chameleon traps don't; they are so fast clumping lemmings together for this is so difficult one, especially new players might guess it isn't even possible. As I myself; until told recently didn't realize the spike trap was a single kill. Yes I should've reasoned it was, but that's not the point. Some being faster than others is fine, but not to this extreme.

If anything I think the chameleon trap should be slowed down. You're right that it is similar here, but it's irritatingly fast imo. But honestly I'm really not interested in altering anything with the old game.