Ideas for Skills

[Clam]

Post your ideas for Lemmings skills here! Skills can be as crazy, mundane, versatile or useless as you like.

DISCLAIMER: This is not a wishlist thread for Lix/Lemmix/whatever. Please don't pressure game designers to implement the ideas contained here!

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Enlarger and Shrinker

The Enlarger causes a lemming to instantly become twice as tall and twice as wide. Effectively it treats each 2x2 block of terrain pixels as a single pixel. Effects include:

• Double movement speed
  
• Can walk over taller obstacles
  
• Double safe-fall distance
  
• Can't fit through 1-pixel gaps (needs an empty 2x2 "pixel" space to fit through)
  
• Unaffected by non-constant traps (too weak to fell a giant lemming). Constant traps still kill.
  
• Can't fit in the exit
  
• Bridges, tunnels, bomber holes etc. are scaled up accordingly
  
• Skill assignments cost twice as many skill points. If you assigned a permanent skill before enlargement, it stays with the lemming but you need to assign again (using another point) for the lemming to regain the ability. Regular umbrellas don't cut it for a giant lemming! (Technically the lemming is 4x as big so skills should cost 4 points, but they wouldn't be much use at that cost.)
  
• You can assign Enlarger again to the same lemming! Obviously there's a practical limit to how many times you can do this, as well as the escalating skill cost
  
  The Shrinker causes a lemming to halve in size. Effects are basically the reverse of the above, except:
  
• Size of bridges and tunnels will have to be approximated, unless the game resolution is increased (vector graphics anyone? )
  
• A lower limit on size applies (see above )
  
• Also unaffected by non-constant traps (sneaks past them)
  
• Can exit but counts only half (more generally: (lemming scale)/(exit scale))
  
• Skill assignments cost half as many points (fractional skills, wheee!)
  
• If permanent skills assigned before shrinking, the excess is returned to your stockpile
  Lemmings still respect blockers regardless of size!
  
  Traps, goals, hatches can come in all sizes too of course. Everything is relative!
  
  
  
  Upturner and Downturner
  
  A different take on the gravity feature.
  
  These are permanent skills. When the Upturner encounters a wall that it would normally turn around at (or would climb up if a Climber), it instead changes its gravity 90 degrees and walks up the wall. When the Downturner encounters a drop that it would normally fall at, it changes gravity and walks down the wall. Other skills can be assigned as normal in the lemming's new orientation.
  
  Notes:
  
• Upturner can still fall and, unless combined with Floater, splat.
  
• Downturner still turns at walls, unless combined with Climber or Upturner.
  
• Depending on the shape of the wall/cliff, the lemming may turn twice in quick succession. This works itself out when you apply the rules one frame at a time.
  
• In some cases (eg. with short falls), lemmings with one of these skills may find themselves stuck while normal lemmings continue on
  
• Upturning takes precedence over climbing. To make an Upturner climb, you need something like the sticky-jumper from Lix. If the game doesn't offer such a possibility, these two could be made mutually exclusive.
  
• A Downturner can fall if the terrain is removed from underneath it. This means a Floater may still be needed!
  
• Upturner + Downturner becomes like the Magno Booter from Lemmings 2, but not quite so useless

[ccexplore]

Hmm, I have to admit those sound interesting. I admit didn't think much of this topic on first impression, considering that Clones basically implemented all the obvious things that would come out of this list (and then some), but having read through your take, they do sound like pretty interesting variations.

Given how small the lemmings normally already are, I don't think you want the shrink limit to be any more generous than shrink-once (from "normal size").  You can always have levels that start off with suitably giant-sized lemmings if you want to support more than one level of shrinkage.

[Clam]

I'm aware that Clones does these things, but via objects on the map rather than skills. The new skills in namida's games got me thinking along these lines

Shrink could work any number of times with vector graphics and zoom. Lemmings ALL the way down!

[ccexplore]

Shrink could work any number of times with vector graphics and zoom. Lemmings ALL the way down!

Hmm, either I'm not completely understanding your proposal, or you may be oversimplifying things a bit in terms of practical implementation.  I guess it might work somewhat practically if you keep track of each piece of terrain, as well as the areas affected by each skill applied.  For collision checks, you'd need to find the set of terrain + skill areas containing a particular area of interest, and then work through the sequence in which they were applied to determine whether you have terrain or empty space in the area.

Perhaps you have more experience in certain areas of computer science to be more certain on the viable implementation of your idea.  (I'll confess for example that I knew little beyond general concepts when it comes to GPU capabilities in typical PCs of today.)  Love to hear some more details in that case.

TL;DR:  representing "arbitrarily" small pieces of terrain isn't the problem.  The tricky part I believe, one fairly unique to Lemmings-style games, is that as you apply skills to the level you get more and more new pieces (either from terrain addition, or via destruction skills splitting pieces into smaller parts) to track.  Bitmaps normally greatly optimizes this task, but becomes less and less practical when shrinkage is not limited to a fairly small* number of times (especially with your proposal where the size changes are basically exponential per number of size-modification skills).

*That said, given the amount of RAM in modern computers, bitmap representation may be good enough to support something like shrinking down 3-4 times or so, which might be good enough for most levels.

[RubiX]

Free climber   (AKA Dan Osman Lemming)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy3SuhEQHVg

Capable of climbing terrain that isn't 100% flat, includes small overhangs.     (Should still have angle limitations though, or it would become too much like magno boot again)

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1way blocker     (2 abilities.     Left hand / Right hand)

Only 1 of the 2 hands is held up, the side with a hand down can be walked through.

May be pretty interesting for some single player puzzles.
This could make a good way to compress a group without needing to dig etc.

[ccexplore]

Capable of climbing terrain that isn't 100% flat, includes small overhangs.     (Should still have angle limitations though, or it would become too much like magno boot again)

I haven't looked at the video but it sounds exactly like the rock climber from Lemmings 2 (which uses a 45-degree angle limit, roughly speaking).  Though the Lemmings 2 rock climber also has an additional behavior IIRC, where if the climbing surface leads to the ceiling, you can give another skill at the top to make the lemming shimmy across the ceiling.

[Clam]

bitmap representation may be good enough to support something like shrinking down 3-4 times or so, which might be good enough for most levels.[/size]

On further thought, probably +/- 3 levels is all you really want anyway. Beyond that, the the 2ⁿ skill cost gets a lot harder to work out, and I imagine it's not much fun searching the map for lemmings so small you can't even see them at the default zoom level .

Thanks for the explanation of the mechanics involved. And no, I don't have any ideas regarding implementation

[Clam]

Restarter

Immediately returns the lemming to the spawn point in the hatch where it started from (as a faller/walker, as if it had just spawned).

Some potential uses:

• Save the lemming fro a trap or inescapable pit
  
• Stop a digger before he goes too far
  
• Remove a blocker
  
• Re-use a permanent skill somewhere else (these stick with the lemming)
  
• Explode a bomber less than 5 seconds from the hatch (the bomber countdown continues)
  
• Stall while another lemming completes a path
  An alternative implementation would be to insert the lemming into the next slot in the regular spawn sequence, which gets interesting with multiple hatches

[Minim]

Some ideas off the top of my head:

One for Lemmings 2: The Bungee jumper, derived from the older Worms games. Basically the lemming uses a bungee at the top of a cliff. The fan is used to help swing the lemming back and forth to get to the intended direction. An example of where this skill could be utilised well is Tricky 7, as there is a pixel gap and a long fall from the top pillar to the floor, and the bungee sorts that problem out perfectly.

One for all games, the Thruwalker, where the lemming simply walks through the wall instead of up or down. If there is a gap, then the lemming reverts back to it's normal stance. I wonder what happens if I try to dig with a thruwalker? Fun 11 is the best level to use this trick, as you can have two of them, a quicker and simpler way to go through the wall instead of the climb-walk-float process.

[ccexplore]

<snip>The fan

Eeeek, nooooooooooooooooooo!

Well j/k sort of.  I mean I actually do pretty well with fanning on Lemmings 2, but I suspect in general it isn't a particularly favored feature of that game.

Actually, based on the description of the skill, it may not be strictly necessary to require a fan for the skill to work?

[ccexplore]

The Mime or Linker (name undecided at this point):  unlike most skills, this one requires you to pick two lemmings rather than one to take effect (it still counts as one skill usage even though two lemmings must be selected).  The two selected lemmings will become "linked" permanently after usage of the skill.  If one or both lemmings are already part of a linked group of lemmings, the two groups are joined into one larger group of linked lemmings.

Linked lemmings have one or more of the following effects (again, not decided yet how deep the linkage may go, just throwing out some ideas):

• When you assign a skill to one lemming, all other linked lemmings will also receive that skill assignment for free if it's allowed by their current state.  So assign one builder to a linked lemming, all other lemmings linked to it may become builders (if allowed based on what they are currently doing) without using up additional builders.  Potentially the pseudo-assignments carried out by nuking can also behave this way.
• Another possibility is that in addition to skill assignments, certain behaviors may also be linked together as well.  For example, we could have it that if one linked lemming changes their facing direction for whatever reasons, all other lemmings linked to it will also change their facing direction (not all to the same direction, just opposite of whatever direction they are facing before), unless forced to a particular direction due to a blocker field.  Or if one linked lemming reverts from a skill action to walker/faller? (eg. builder hits obstacle, basher has no more material to bash), all other linked lemmings will revert to walker/faller as well.  (Some details may need to be worked out regarding how this interact with various states the lemming may be in.)
• Along this line of thinking, it would seem that linked lemmings should exit together or die together if any one of them exits or gets killed for whatever reasons.

It's hard to say which behaviors should be linked and which shouldn't, the above list are just some ideas to consider, and some combinations may not be that great in practice.

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As a variation, instead of linking existing lemmings together, we can combine a simple cloning action with the above to come up with a skill applied to a single lemming, which has the effect of splitting it into two separate (so you cloned one basically) but linked lemmings.  To make things interesting, at the moment such a skill is applied, the cloned lemming should have opposite facing direction as the original, but otherwise keep pretty much the exact same states as the original.  We can even make it so that if you apply this to a lemming that is already part of a linked group, all of them will each split into two, effectively doubling each lemming in the group.  (Although with that formulation, perhaps in such a case it should eat up more than one count of the skill, to counteract exponential growth in number of lemmings.)

[namida]

As a variation, instead of linking existing lemmings together, we can combine a simple cloning action with the above to come up with a skill applied to a single lemming, which has the effect of splitting it into two separate (so you cloned one basically) but linked lemmings.  To make things interesting, at the moment such a skill is applied, the cloned lemming should have opposite facing direction as the original, but otherwise keep pretty much the exact same states as the original.  We can even make it so that if you apply this to a lemming that is already part of a linked group, all of them will each split into two, effectively doubling each lemming in the group.  (Although with that formulation, perhaps in such a case it should eat up more than one count of the skill, to counteract exponential growth in number of lemmings.)

Aside from actually linking the source lemming and clone lemming, that "Cloner" skill exists in NeoLemmix pretty much exactly as you described it. It's probably the least-used in my levels out of the new skills (apart from Mechanic), but there's a few levels in Lemmings Plus Omega (and one in Holiday Lemmings Plus) that use Cloners.

[LemSteven]

The Eraser - When assigned, it erases any steel areas, traps, or water within a certain radius of the lemming.

The InvinciLem - A lemming given this ability simply cannot die.  Traps, water, and splat falls have no effect on him.  If he falls off the bottom of the screen, he will re-appear at the top.  (I can think of a zillion uses for this last feature alone.)

[Wafflem]

Laserer - this skill will create a horizontal blast that will create a basher-sized tunnel. The length of the laser is from the direction that the lemming is pointing to the side of the level.

For example, in Fun 5 "You Need Bashers this time," if a lemming at the beginning of the level shoots the laser on the right side, the laser will make a horizontal line through the blue wall, the crystal wall, the top of the crystal net, and the Y-shaped wall, which will reach all the way to the right side.

Melter - this causes a lemming to melt into liquid. Kinda useless; unlike a bomber and stoner, the lemming dies completely without removing terrain or creating terrain.

Hoverer - causes the lemming to drift like a balloon when walking off the edge of terrain. They will drift across a small gap until they reach the other side. This, floater and glider are mutually exclusive.

Fireworker - a 5-second countdown type of Lemming. After 1, the lemming says "Oh no!" then blasts off like a rocket, destroying terrain upwards for a distance before exploding like a regular bomber. The lemming blasts off instantly in the NeoLemmix version.

Waiter - causes the lemming to "wait" for 5 seconds. They stand and tap their toes with the 5-second countdown on top of them. Other lemmings can walk past them.

Magneter - causes a lemming to walk on metal only; any attempt to leave the metal causes them to not get off the metal and walk back. This is a permanent skill.

Sacrificer - unlike a Disarmer, when a lemming hits the trap trigger area, they die but in the process also destroy the trap. A similar instance occurs with single-use traps.

Roller - the lemming forms into a ball when they go down slopes.

Bouncer - when a lemming hits the ground, they bounce in the direction they are going.

Screamer - makes a lemming scream, causing all other lemmings in the vicinity to turn away.

Sculpturer - a type of building skill like Builder, Platformer and Stacker, except that the lemming builds a sculpture of himself. This is the equivalent of around 36 builders steps.

[Clam]

Laserer - this skill will create a horizontal blast that will create a basher-sized tunnel. The length of the laser is from the direction that the lemming is pointing to the side of the level.

This reminds me of the "Lemmings Returns" fangames where instead of assigning skills, you drew lines over the level to create or destroy terrain. Here you do that with a skill instead

Melter - this causes a lemming to melt into liquid. Kinda useless; unlike a bomber and stoner, the lemming dies completely without removing terrain or creating terrain.

Lix has skills to this effect, albeit not ones that you can select in the editor