Only-On-Terrain will be deprecated as of V12.12

[namida]

Firstly, to be clear - it will not be outright culled until at least V12.15, unless technical reasons call for it to be done sooner - and it certianly will not be culled in V12.12 at any rate, only deprecated.

This means - you should stop using the feature in new levels, and work on removing it from existing ones.

In its place, a new object type called "Paint" will be introduced. This is basically a no-effect object that inherently has the "only on terrain" attribute. This is so that animations specifically designed for only-on-terrain use can be created, without any confusion between them and actual real objects.

Once again - to be clear, V12.12 will support both Paint objects and the traditional Only-On-Terrain flag, though the latter should be treated as a backwards-compatibility thing only.

EDIT: Also, for clarification, nothing will change with regards to one-way-arrows.

[Proxima]

That makes sense. I was going to say "but only-on-terrain is essential for levels like Fun 20!" ...



...then I had a look in clear physics mode and found that with only-on-terrain, the gaps between the poles act as invisible water (and confirmed this by actually sending a lemming there). So I'm sorry for not noticing this before, and will of course fix this level before we fully release the Original Lemmings level pack.

(Most likely, I will fix it by making custom water objects specifically for the level. The proposed "Paint" object doesn't work for this particular case because it would have the opposite problem, the water on the poles would be fake.)

[namida]

(Most likely, I will fix it by making custom water objects specifically for the level. The proposed "Paint" object doesn't work for this particular case because it would have the opposite problem, the water on the poles would be fake.)

Water is horizontally resizable. You could pretty much use that combined with not setting no-overwrite; the only thing that would be lost is the water pixels disappearing when the terrain is removed, and that might actually be desirable as the pixels being removed creates invisible water otherwise.

[Proxima]

Right, I said something about that in the post I had started to write before I noticed the invisible water problem, should have at least mentioned it in the corrected post That would work but it's aesthetically not great because every water object would only be showing the leftmost few pixels of the animation. So I'd rather create a few custom water objects.

[GigaLem]

more or less, its getting a much needed upgrade if that's correct. But I assume the only "only-on-terrain" that'll remain is the one way arrows?

[namida]

more or less, its getting a much needed upgrade if that's correct. But I assume the only "only-on-terrain" that'll remain is the one way arrows?

Yes, one way arrows will continue to work exactly as they currently do.

[Strato Incendus]

Mmh, okay, I can see why for fairness reasons. This will mainly affect my LOA level "I believe I can fly", which makes use of precisely that visual effect of the on-terrain water disappearing when the terrain is removed.

As far as I understand this new proposal, the level in question would still work the same from a purely mechanical perspective: The water already is resized, so it would only be adapted to use the "paint" feature. This would then lead to the water still being visible after the terrain is removed. That destroys the illusion of the Swimmers "flying" on that level, but at least it remains solvable the same way.



One question with regards to the new skills though: As I've outlined in the general discussion thread, it is possible to place water on terrain, then shoot a Laserer tunnel through it, which a Swimmer can then traverse in both directions.

With the current settings, if you set the water merely to "overwrite", the water always remains visible in front of the terrain, but you can't see the Laserer tunnel the Swimmer then swims through.

But conversely, if you set the water to "only on terrain", it should be possible (haven't tried this variation yet) to see the Laserer tunnel you create, since the water disappears after the Laserer has removed the terrain. Except of course there's still water inside the tunnel, water which is now no longer visible. But at least now you could see where the Swimmer is going.

[IchoTolot]

I think we should start "gather" objects in released tilesets that are meant to work especially with "only on terrain" and update them accordingly to the Paint type over time.

For this maybe a list in the first post where we gather the findings would be a good idea.

Right out of my mind I would call out the 2 different animated windows from the L2 shadow tileset.

[namida]

That destroys the illusion of the Swimmers "flying" on that level,

If it's being used to create invisible water, then the level in question is a prime example of why this change is the right thing to do.

[Strato Incendus]

Yes, as I said:

I can see why for fairness reasons.

[Kingshadow3]

The following Lemmings 2 Objects will need to be changed to Paint.

Egyptian: Sphinx Eyes
Shadow: Both Animated Windows
Outdoor: Blinking Eyes and Spider Eyes