[Suggestion][Player] One-way up and down force fields

[Strato Incendus]

Force fields so far only exist for left and right. The need for equivalents for up and down first arose for me when trying to design Swimmer puzzles:

1) Since Swimmers always float to the top of a water area, a one-way down force field would limit this automatic ascension while still allowing Swimmers do dive down through this field from the top.

This would make the Swimmer skill much more versatile, since it would allow them to navigate through water-filled corridors more easily, using sloped ceilings to get down, while the one-way down fields would prevent them from automatically shooting back up again as soon as there's no slope.

Since some have criticised the Swimmer as being a somewhat limited skill, I think this would be a great opportunity to increase the design space of this skill without actually introducing anything new - just by combining two existing elements (the Swimmer plus force fields).

But of course, there are also other uses for these up and down force fields.

2) Specifically, one-way up fields would allow a lemming to build / climb / jump / glide through a gap without allowing him to get back down again (to free the crowd or similar). One-way up fields would prevent lemmings from falling through, meaning lemmings could walk on top of them like on terrain and other lemmings could ascend through them from below. In contrast to terrain, destructive skills obviously can't remove one-way up fields.

3) With one-way down fields (outside the Swimmer application), you could allow lemmings to fall into pits that they can't easily climb or build out of again.

The general idea of all one-way fields is to basically act like half-permeable terrain - a barrier that you can move through easily in one direction as if it wasn't there, but that reliably holds everything back that tries to move in the opposite direction.

[namida]

Don't hold your breath on this one. While this might not hold true if I think about it more, at least at a quick thought it sounds like this would actually be quite tricky - certainly, lemmings don't "face" up or down in the same way they face left or right, rather, it would likely need to be implemented similar to terrain except that it's only detected by some terrain checks and not others. This in turn sounds like it has huge potential to bring out a bunch of bugs.

With that being said, I'm not opposed to the concept, and I haven't thought too hard about this yet - maybe there's some simpler implementation I'm overlooking - so I'm leaving this open for now.

[WillLem]

I'd support this idea as well; anything that gives the Swimmer skill even more scope seems like a good idea. It could also be used in levels generally.

Question, though: if a lem were to fall into an "UP" field, would they "land" and then walk on the field...?

[Strato Incendus]

Question, though: if a lem were to fall into an "UP" field, would they "land" and then walk on the field...?

Yes; the question is whether they would splat if the drop is sufficiently high, because they're technically not landing on terrain.

Likewise, it would be debatable which skills you can assign while walking on a one-way-up field that has no terrain beneath it.
a) You could say you can only assign skills that you could also assign to Fallers and Swimmers - i.e. permanent skills, lethal skills, and Cloners. This would mean though that you, among others, can't assign Walkers to them - which would be weird, considering that you would still see the lemmings walking. Blockers wouldn't work either. So aside from Cloners - or lemmings falling onto the up-field from both sides - it would still somewhat act like a one-way-left or -right field, because lemmings couldn't be turned around on it. The difference would be that walking on an up field wouldn't actively turn anyone around, so you could indeed have lemmings facing in both directions walking on it. They would simply have to keep their direction until they're on solid ground again.

b) You could make the case that the lemmings are Walkers, i.e. you can assign any skill to them that you could assign to a Walker - i.e. practically every skill. This would also include that you can make them Platformers anytime, because they're not on flat terrain. This could actually become relevant, because a Platformer's bridge would indeed seal up the one-way-up field, allowing no further lemmings to pass through from below. (At least not by climbing / building etc.; Lemmings can obviously "ascend" through Platformer bridges, since they're only 1 pixel thick).

At this point I'd like to ask you again how this "Reacher jumping through Platformer bridges" trick that you mentioned works? The thread where I originally asked this question was closed by namida, because the main issue discussed there had been settled.

In any case, assigning Builders while passing through such a field would not be a problem, because the lemming stands on solid terrain (his own staircase), and Builders don't require terrain beneath their feet anyway in order to continue - technically not even during initial Builder assignment, as evident by the flying-Builder trick (Diggers and Builders assigned in succession, with the Builder being assigned when the Digger already no longer has any terrain beneath his feet).

b) seems more useful and more intuitive to me, personally. It would allow the field to act as one-way terrain, permeable from beneath, solid from above.



This of course raises the question whether it should be possible to shimmy along a one-way down field. My instinctive response would be no. But then again, this was precisely why solid ceilings were abolished in New Formats, because they were technically not terrain, so having something solid but not being able to use the Shimmier on it would have been inconsistent.

My argument for "you can't shimmy along one-way-down" fields would be that you can't climb up a one-way-left or -right field from the other side either. With solid level sides, you obviously could climb those. So this would be my reasoning why one-way fields in general act differently than level sides.

[Dullstar]

I would intuitively expect that a one-way-up field would probably act as terrain that the lemming can pass through from underneath, but not from above; thus a lemming would still splat if it landed on it, and I would expect only the miner and digger to be unusable on them (while you could assign it, it wouldn't really do anything, so I think the assignment should just not be allowed, since that's how steel is handled with destructive skills). Platformers would need more discussion, I think. I'd expect the one-way-down field to behave similarly, including effects on the fencer.

Allowing Shimmiers to use the one-way-down field would make them more interesting, I think, but it would also be inconsistent with climbers on the right/left fields. That said, a lot of that potential functionality this interaction would allow could be provided with Sliders as a new skill.

[Strato Incendus]

That said, a lot of that potential functionality this interaction would allow could be provided with Sliders as a new skill.

Well, I wouldn't expect Sliders to be able to hold on to horizontal one-way fields.

Do you mean it would be either one-way up and down fields OR the Slider? Or that the two in conjunction would provide interesting new interactions? I'm not quite sure whether I understood you correctly.

I've found out it is possible to simulate Slider behaviour to some extent using again the left and right one-way fields - but I don't see any particular overlap with up and down force fields...

[Dullstar]

Assuming you would be able to make the assignment (though thinking about this further, I'm guessing you probably wouldn't be able to), one use I could think of for letting the shimmier use the one-way down field would be to assign one from above the surface to be shimmied across (currently, you always have to get to the ceiling from below). The slider, however, would provide a way to do this without the inconsistency with climbers on one-way left/right fields.

That said, it's not the only use of that you could envision with letting shimmiers use the one-way down field (which means several couldn't be replicated with the Slider). It's just the one I thought of at the time.

[Strato Incendus]

Yes, you would indeed be able to shimmy through a one-way-down field from above, but not back up again. Then the question is whether the Shimmier should start shimmying along the lower side of the one-way-down field instead. This way you could create "Shimmier crossings", which I've always considered a very interesting idea!

I tried to create such a crossing on my Lemmings Open Air level "Everything I do (I do it for lemmings" (thanks again to Armani for his great help on improving that one! ).

Spoiler

It involves creating a path for the Shimmier with a Platformer first, then bombing another lemming on top of the platform once the Shimmier has passed, so that he can go through it and continue shimmying further upwards. It also involves a Blocker to turn the Shimmier around, so he never actually lets go of the ceiling!

You could do the opposite of what I did in that level, perhaps more easily so, by having a lemming shimmy down first, then close off the original route behind him with a Platformer or Builder, which would then shape his new path. But all of these solutions would require additional lemmings to assist the Shimmier. Which can be a nice challenge of course, but also can be quite a hassle if your intended solution isn't about that.

Shimmying along the bottom side of the one-way-down field certainly seems to promise more puzzle potential than the Shimmier simply letting go and falling off, merely because these fields are "not terrain".



I still don't quite see how the Slider fits into this. Yes, a Slider can connect two instances of Shimmier usage with each other: Ceiling (with or without slopes), straight wall to slide, then another ceiling.

However, one-way-down fields won't change much about this interaction: Since the Slider can go around both outer corners (Slider --> Shimmier) and inner corners (Shimmier --> Slider), but the Shimmier can't transition back into a Climber, he won't be able to go up the same path again anyway that he took with the Slider on the way down.

One-way up and down fields do help to cut off paths that Shimmiers can cover all by themselves, though. Which actually makes them even more important, because we're not just talking about having a solution for a potentially broken skill interaction, but about a tool that could already be used to limit the backroute potential of several skills on their own (Shimmiers, Jumpers, Climbers, Gliders, Builders...).

[namida]

Okay so - I'm sorry to say this, but at this point, it's becoming more and more clear that these would not at all be a simple matter.

One-way left and one-way right fields are simple: They make the lemming face a certain direction. Nothing else.

On the other hand, these need all manner of cases to be considered. They'd essentially need to be handled as pseudo-terrain, with each individual terrain check declaring which field(s) it does or doesn't detect.

Thus - while I do stand by that these are interesting ideas, I'm going to have to shut them down on the grounds of implementation complexity.