Splat ruler in 0.9.5 to 0.9.10

[Forestidia86]

Draw splat ruler even when it doesn't snap to anything.

Does this really improve useability? But if the others get better along with that I have to take it I guess.

[Simon]

The ruler in 0.9.4 was only visible when you pointed above a legde or inside a ledge. The ruler would then snap to the ledge.

Complaint against 0.9.4 ruler: It doesn't go where you want.

I argued that it always goes exactly where user wants once they point to near the right spot, and conceded that the snapping behavior should be more self-explanatory. If you could always see the unsnapped ruler, you would understand better how it snaps. Thus, since 0.9.5, I draw the ruler every time.

Arty still wants the ruler to never snap, but I haven't seen a use case yet for a never-snapping ruler. Are there any?

-- Simon

[Forestidia86]

Arty still wants the ruler to never snap, but I haven't seen a use case yet for a never-snapping ruler. Are there any?

Maybe if you just have a wall and want to meassure from a certain point there, where there is no terrain to snap to, just blank wall.
Or generally if you want to meassure the splat distance from one point to another, but there is not yet terrain to snap to where you want to messure.
Having the snapping activated could interfere with that (because it is prone to snap to a ledge close to it)?

[Colorful Arty]

A perfect example of not wanted a snapping ruler: you are shoveling through a wall, and will soon break through it completely. After you break through, you will fall a good distance, and you want to know if that distance is splat height or not. A single pixel will make the difference between safety and death, so you pull out your trusty splat fall ruler to measure. However, you cannot get a measurement, because every time you move the ruler next to where the lix is going to shovel out, the ruler snaps to a different location. You try to move the ruler up to the proper place, but then it snaps far too far upwards, making it useless again. You are now stuck with a ruler that snaps to all the wrong places and you cannot possibly find out if the fall is survivable or not.

However, with a ruler that doesn't snap, you can move it to exactly the right place and get an accurate measurement of any fall every time.

Personally, I see absolutely no advantage to snapping the ruler at all. It bothers me that the NeoLemmix ruler locks in place after a second.

[Forestidia86]

A perfect example of not wanted a snapping ruler: you are shoveling through a wall, and will soon break through it completely. After you break through, you will fall a good distance, and you want to know if that distance is splat height or not. A single pixel will make the difference between safety and death, so you pull out your trusty splat fall ruler to measure. However, you cannot get a measurement, because every time you move the ruler next to where the lix is going to shovel out, the ruler snaps to a different location. You try to move the ruler up to the proper place, but then it snaps far too far upwards, making it useless again. You are now stuck with a ruler that snaps to all the wrong places and you cannot possibly find out if the fall is survivable or not.

However, with a ruler that doesn't snap, you can move it to exactly the right place and get an accurate measurement of any fall every time.

Personally, I see absolutely no advantage to snapping the ruler at all. It bothers me that the NeoLemmix ruler locks in place after a second.

Well, in your example, I just would let the ruler snap to the ground that your lix will soon fall at. The ruler goes upwards as well for this reason. But I can see that it can be confusing/finicky and that there are instances where you don't want the snapping.

Maybe it's just different in multiplayer because you have to act fast but from my experience with using it in probably more than hundred singleplayer levels I can assure that it has really proven helpful and convenient for me. The snapping takes the precise meassuring away, one can just loosely point to a location and it shows one the height.

Edit: Maybe if you want to build stairs to catch the fall in Arty's example then non-snapping would be better? Although you should actually be able to meassure from the tunnel, especially when the ruler is visible over the terrain or it's close to breaking through? (You have to meassure where there is terrain in the height you want to meassure from, the bars have a certain lenghth, so you don't have to meassure from the point of breaking through.)

[Simon]

-- Simon

[Simon]

However, with a ruler that doesn't snap, you can move it to exactly the right place and get an accurate measurement of any fall every time.

What is the right place?

In the example images above, if your mouse's x-coordinate is near the breakthrough's x-coordinate, your mouse can be slightly outside or slightly inside the wall. If outside, the ruler will snap to the floor, then the blue bar will be your answer. If inside, the ruler is freely-positionable anyway, like in the last image above, which is what Arty wants.

if you want to build stairs to catch the fall in Arty's example then non-snapping would be better?

If the stairs aren't built yet, the ruler is already freely positionable.

The ruler will only snap to ledges a survivable distance away from the mouse.



From IRC today:

<SimonN> I have another theory: people love to measure from the start of the fall and hate measuring from the end
<SimonN> because measuring from the start is natural considering how you think about solving lemmings levels
<Forestidia> Yeah, that's sounds like a common intuition.
<SimonN> and the ruler isn't designed to measure like this [it's designed to measure both from the start or the end, whatever has the clear ledge]

-- Simon

[Colorful Arty]

Ah. I didn't realize you had to move the ruler to the tunnel itself to get it to snap correctly. My instinct is to move it to the floor where the fall ends to try and get an accurate measurement.

[Forestidia86]

I've tried to make an explanation video to the ruler (0.9.5-0.9.10 version). Watch it at your own risk; I really don't know if it's enlightening or even more confusing.
Simon, please correct me if I said something wrong.

Edit: Changed format of video file.
Edit: Video outdated as of v. 0.9.11 since the default ruler is now geoo's twofold ruler. (If you use #SPLAT_RULER_DESIGN 2 in the user file the video should still be applicable.)

[Forestidia86]

Hm, I think the first intuition dealing with the ruler is to drag/move it around to meassure. But if you try to drag around it, it snaps wildly. Maybe this leads to the initial confusion. This ruler you have to point at the place where you want to meassure. And there should be at best snappable terrain there else it could snap somewhere else, probably another point that can lead to confusion. It depends on how many snappable terrain is nearby how precise the pointing is.
It goes upwards and downwards from the point of meassuring, which can be confusing at first as well but is correct relative to the current design of the ruler.

[Simon]

I've implemented geoo's design in unstable/master. You can pull & build yourself to get this:

• Only 2 bars instead of 3. Splat ruler still centered around mouse cursor.
• Either of the 2 bars can snap against terrain. (In 0.9.10, only middle bar could.)
• Snap distance is 16 pixels, far less than the entire safe-fall height of 126 in 0.9.10.
• Splat ruler displayed whenever cool shades active, even when splat ruler doesn't snap.
• To get the 0.9.4 ruler in unstable/master, in src/game/core/splatrul.d, change:
  alias PreferredSplatRuler = SplatRulerTwoBars;
  ...to:
  alias PreferredSplatRuler = SplatRuler094;
  

-- Simon