Basher staircases, keep/cull

[Simon]

Hi folks,

in IRC, we've been considering to remove basher staircases from Lix.

Proposed change: Shovel from bottom up, not from top down.

I've made the shoveller in 2011 to make basher staircases easier than in L1. But is it a desirable thing to copy from L1?

<SimonN> especially on maps that are a big chunk of terrain, with two players trying to get to the opposite side each. The basher staircase is a must here
<SimonN> This kind of map is somewhat common.
<SimonN> so, basher staircases are a standard move, enabled by a strange combination of skills.

<NaOH> When playing [Lix multiplayer] with a new player, I feel like they will see this trick and think 'wow, this game requires fiendish exploits of the exact nature of how the skills are executed to be good at' and be disappointed.
<SimonN> this is how expert play in many oldschool video games appear to the newbs
<SimonN> getting good at the regular things and exploiting bugs to a point where they become standard maneuvers
<NaOH> That's a common practice, sure, but I don't know if I would consider that good game design.
<SimonN> and while new players don't know the game too well yet, they have a good sense of what feels like a bug and what is merely surprising
<SimonN> it's bad game design [to make people rely on what's perceived as a bug]

Clam/Rubix/geoo/Proxima/Steve: How many existing levels do you expect to be affected?

-- Simon

[namida]

Bottom up would possibly come with a dofferent set of tricks waiting to be discovered that are equally questionable. A better workaround may be not applying the interruption mid-stroke, but that too is questionable, unless perhaps the new skill applies right away and the terrain "crumbles".

[Simon]

About that concern, a completely new anim can make the tunnel head always look like after a full swing, and slowly advance this shape. Clones had a basher like this.

I'd like very much to keep the basher always interruptable, yeah.

-- Simon

[mobius]

Lemmings Revolution didn't have this feature. They bashed bottom up. From my playing, I can't recall any weird behavior coming out of that, at least anything amounting to the severity of a basher staircase.

In theory you could keep interrupting multiple bashers to get through the terrain but leaving only a very narrow horizontal opening they could still walk through, but I don't see that going anywhere. You might want to check the Revolution glitch page.

I like the idea of getting rid of the old precision heavy/odd/not necessarily intuitive mechanics. A good game can be complex while still having simple mechanics.

-I would be highly amused at the "basher" animation being something like a judo chop! at the wall, then it crumbles or explodes.

[Proxima]

Interesting question. I've always liked this feature, mainly because of its versatility in challenge solutions, so I'd be a little sad to see it go. I don't think it's used in many of the normal solutions to levels, and perhaps none at all. I shall have to have a look through the set... (though bear in mind that there are still a lot of levels in the last rank I haven't solved).

Halfway Down the Stairs (that level, again!) uses this in the what I consider the "main" solution, but it's a level that's intended to have a variety of solutions.

Lix Potion Number Nine uses the trick in the intended solution to the 100% challenge, but of course not in the main solution for 50%.

It's very useful, though probably not essential, in Lixster Quadrille.

Think Inside the Box requires the trick (with so many available skills I wouldn't swear that it's impossible without, but it seems that it would at least become much harder than intended).

At least one submitted solution to Path of Wickedness uses it, though my own solution does not.

[ccexplore]

in IRC, we've been considering to remove basher staircases from Lix.

Let's be honest.  "We" here consists solely of NaOH (and you, but that will always be the case as you're the primary game developer) AFAIK.  I'm pretty sure this is the first time this was ever brought up.

I've made the shoveller in 2011 to make basher staircases easier than in L1.

I'm not familiar with this detail.  Is it a case of having more animation frames and/or better masks that make it easier to achieve walkable steps with the technique?

[21:19] <SimonN> so, basher staircases are a standard move, enabled by a strange combination of skills.[/i]

Strange maybe, but entirely logical.  In fact, the only reason this "doesn't work" in real life is actually because unlike Lix/Lemmings, basically people cannot fit inside the tight space that you get from the step created.  It doesn't seem any stranger to me than, say, assigning floaters last-second for survival.

[21:28] <SimonN> getting good at the regular things and exploiting bugs to a point where they become standard maneuvers
[21:28] <NaOH> That's a common practice, sure, but I don't know if I would consider that good game design.

We are hardly at the point where "we" (other than NaOH) are in agreement of this being a bug.  But generally speaking, yes, expert players will make use of any and all advanced behaviors, that's why they are experts.  It feels like this is more objectionable than, say, speed-mining, merely because it is less physically realistic, in a game that has many unrealistic behaviors to start with.

[21:28] <SimonN> and while new players don't know the game too well yet, they have a good sense of what feels like a bug and what is merely surprising

There's always a spectrum when it comes to odd behaviors, whether they feel buggy or merely unexpected.  If anything, based on past threads here, it seems like there will always be some disagreements over whether certain behaviors are buggy or merely a clever trick.

=======================

All that being said, I do have to admit that basher staircases apparently becoming a sort of standard move for multiplayer is at least understandably not the direction one might want the game to get into.  As I'm not that into multiplayer, and none of my community pack levels require this technique which is somewhat esoteric to begin with, I'm open to an alternate animation that eliminates the behavior.

About that concern, a completely new anim can make the tunnel head always look like after a full swing, and slowly advance this shape. Clones had a basher like this.

More precisely, the Clones basher (and actually, pretty much all its other terrain removal skills) has no concept of individual "strokes".  It is basically a continuous motion with the tunnel wall advancing at a continuous, steady speed.  This is different from Lix/Lemmings where we explicitly and visually depict removing discrete chunks of the terrain at a time, but with the removal occurs over several frames with parts of the chunk being removed each frame.

"Judo chop" is one way to eliminate the behavior while still keeping the concept of "strokes".  We can also alter the masks involved such that it is still doing partial-chunk removals over several frames, but just that at no point does the partial removal leave a walkable step.  namida could be correct though that this may lead to other exploitable behaviors, though perhaps none as applicable to multiplayer as the basher staircase apparently can be.

[Simon]

Revolution: Interesting, that never came to mind until now. So whoever was involved with that seems to have disagreed with basher staircases, too. ;-)

Möbius, I'm sorry how I didn't list you with the level designers in my opening post. You've built a ton of cool stuff for the Lix community pack. >_> If you have insight on whether existing levels might break, I'm all ears.

More from IRC:

[23:26] <NaOH> right, that little slope [basher relics at the bottom of the tunnel after a full swing] could be used to climb a steel block
[23:26] <NaOH> if the slope is in the right spot
[23:26] <NaOH> with the upswing [shovel from bottom to top] , you could have a sharp bottom edge and a curvy top edge

And now I'm reading Proxima's and ccx's response.

-- Simon

[ccexplore]

Revolution: Interesting, that never came to mind until now. So whoever was involved with that seems to have disagreed with basher staircases, too. ;-)

Seems just as likely that they are unaware of the trick to begin with, and it just so happen they picked a design that doesn't support the trick.  There's little debate that no one ever intended for it to be anything but an esoteric technique, and if it has become as ubiquitous in multiplayer as your IRC chats seem to indicate, perhaps that is a bad thing.  Maybe.

[edit: aside from Revolution, does anyone know/remember/can look up whether other games in the series support or not support this behavior?  I only remember clearly that Lemmings 2 still does:  it pretty much kept basher as-is from L1 behavior, and club basher is basically just with different removal mask and terrain checks.  The fencer though may be one variant which takes the "judo chop" approach, I'm not 100% sure though.  Don't remember L3 clearly enough to say, and haven't played L3D yet.]

[edit2: the technique is probably not too relevant in L3 due to two unrelated changes: A) you are always given unlimited jumpers which probably works better anyway for some of the cases you would make use of the technique; and B) the lemmings can no longer fit in tight spaces making the technique unexploitable in the remaining cases]

[Simon]

Let's be honest.  "We" here consists solely of NaOH (and you, but that will always be the case as you're the primary game developer) AFAIK.

I've made the shoveller in 2011 to make basher staircases easier than in L1.

I'm not familiar with this detail.  Is it a case of having more animation frames and/or better masks that make it easier to achieve walkable steps with the technique?

<NaOH> <ccexplore> "We" here consists solely of NaOH
<NaOH> hehe
<SimonN> It's true. I wondered, but was not hesitant, when drawing sprites in 2011 about it

I was sailing in open waters when drawing the Lemmings-to-Lix replacement sprite. Bashing from top to bottom seemed the normal thing to do, because L1/L2/L3 all did it. I knew about basher staircases, and had to decide what to do with them. I didn't like how it was a precision move in L1. They should be either done away with, or made easier than in L1. I settled on the latter back then.

I'm pretty sure this is the first time this was ever brought up.

It crossed my mind occasionally, but that's normal with most mechanics; so I have never brought it up. NaOH has brought it up a single time before, we didn't discuss it as deeply as today then.

We are hardly at the point where "we" (other than NaOH) are in agreement of this being a bug.

Right. Though not being 100 % fond, I made the active decision to have basher staircases in 2011. I've changed my view about it from back then.

I wonder if it's a neutral side effect, or an unwanted side effect, when the horizontal tunneler is frequently used to make 45-degree upwards slopes in multiplayer. Had I felt everyone would agree that this is unwanted, I'd have spared making another dreaded cull topic. >_>;

[...] is at least understandably not the direction one might want the game to get into.

Right, the multiplayer is the main reason to consider no-basher-staircases. Speed mining, or mine-build-mine-build, all use at least one skill moving in the general direction where it would normally go.

-- Simon

[ccexplore]

Okay, so sounds like culling it actually did cross your mind before, you aren't merely involved due to being the one who would end up making the changes.

Do we think a bottom-to-top bash stroke animation can ever look natural?  I could be mistaken, and the real world hardly uses Lemmings/Lix physics, but I believe all burrowing animals have evolved to use basically the same sort of top-to-bottom motion as the Lemmings basher does, when going horizontally.  I think it's because it works better with gravity and avoids having dirt flying up the air right into your face.

For reference, in Revolution the animation is not even really much of a stroke if I recall.  It looks more like the lemming is punching the wall in front, with the bottom block removed first on first punch, then the top block on next punch ("block" because due to practical limitations with 3D graphics, the physics there are based on larger block units rather than individual pixels).  So it's more of the "judo punch" approach then the classic bash stroke.  I do have to admit that given they could've just as easily remove both blocks at once, the "conspiracy theory" that they purposely removed the bottom block first to avoid staircasing is perhaps far more plausible than the usual conspiracies of the world.

The directionality argument is an interesting point, on the other hand it is at best a minor secondary argument, since there are other examples in the physics of using skills in "atypical" directions:  repeat platformer+basher to stack bricks diagonally like a builder bridge, repeated builder+digger/basher allows for an almost-horizontal (certainly less sloped) bridge, you can get through a wall horizontally with enough repeats of dig+build, etc.

How about miners?  In both Lemmings 1 and Lix you can also do "miner staircase".  Of course it's even worse to execute as you must interrupt on precisely one exact frame.  I suppose this at least severely limits its use in multiplayer due to lack of pause/framestepping.

=======================

aside from Revolution, does anyone know/remember/can look up whether other games in the series support or not support this behavior?

I actually had a chance to test stuff out just now.  The results are more interesting than expected:

L2: As noted, they left the basher behaviors basically as-is.  Though they did shorten the maximum height of a walkable step.  But all that means is that you can't make quite as steep a tunnel as you could with L1 physics (and that's not very relevant anyway in multiplayer context when you can't pause or framestep).  I do think it implies the corresponding miner staircase does not work due to too high a step, but forgot to check.  It might work with the scooper though? [edit: brain clearly not working, the scooper motion is one of very few that is bottom-to-top]

Club basher turns out to be not very exploitable.  Because of the much larger club-swing, at the point where you'd normally interrupt, the step is too high to actually walk up to.  Then at the next frame, so much more terrain get removed (practically like 90% of the entire removal chunk) that all you get is a pathetic "step"-height of around 1-2 pixels.  So technically it still works but not very effective compared to the regular basher.

The fencer does indeed take the judo-punch approach, despite all that fancy waving of the sword's tip in the animation disguising it.  There is no partial removal happening, a discrete chunk is removed upon exactly one of the early frames of the full animation cycle.  (Granted, one can argue that since the fencer tunnel naturally goes slightly vertically up as well, making a staircase is somewhat of a moot point; even if it works, it would merely allow you to achieve a steeper slope than the natural one.)

L3: it actually looks like you can't interrupt anything in mid-stroke.  It's true that there isn't that much of a stroke to start with, but so far when I try I haven't succeed in stopping anything mid-stroke.  The game appears to queue the skill/action assignment and only carry them out after the current cycle of action is completed.

Of course, more to the point (one which I can't believe I forgot), the L3 skill system actually combines basher/digger/miner by actually allowing you to pick the direction of the tunnel and even change it on the fly.  And diagonally-up is a valid choice for the direction, so you might as well just do that.

Revolution:  the miner staircase sort of works, but can't be easily applied repeatedly.  It's hard to depict what happens w/o a picture, but basically you can't be too close to the wall if you want to create a walkable step.  As a result, if you want to apply it repeatedly, I think you'd need to spend one more builder per step (so twice the usage of builders overall) to create the necessary room for the miner to start mining not too close to the current end of the tunnel.

[RubiX]

"Clam/Rubix/geoo/Proxima/Steve: How many existing levels do you expect to be affected?"

I actually can't think of any singleplayer levels where I put basher staircasing to use.    Wouldn't effect any of my maps im pretty sure.

[namida]

and haven't played L3D yet.

In L3D, a basher destroys an entire block at a time (though not the full height of it). During what'd be equivalent to L1's mid-stroke, the block simply starts to crack; if the basher is interrupted, the block remains cracked but none of it is removed. I can't recall what happens if another basher later attempts to bash this same block - whether it takes the full amount of time, or is reduced based on how much "damage" the first basher did.

[Clam]

Cull. Bashers are for digging forward, not up.

In multiplayer, the availability of this technique heavily rewards execution over strategy. Skill should be rewarded of course, but the reward is out of proportion here. Also, as mentioned, seeing this is likely to be bewildering to new players.

As far as a solution, I quite like the Clones method. It's rather sanitised, but at least it is what it says on the tin

Clam/Rubix/geoo/Proxima/Steve: How many existing levels do you expect to be affected?

Only one level from my pack: "A step two far?".

[ccexplore]

Clearly I need to spectate Lix MP matches more.  Never in my wildest dreams would I imagine such a relatively esoteric trick to become such an apparently standard maneuver, in MP no less.  Though it's kind of obvious in hindsight once it's been called out.

I think one important factor here is that MP levels tend to have an abundance of skills compared to SP levels.  In SP levels, even when a rare level requires basher staircasing, you likely can only use it once or just a few times; providing enough skills to do it more times and you either start getting backroutes, or it just becomes annoying to execute for little benefit.

In this way, bashing staircasing is arguably a huge backroute for MP levels then.  In essence it enables diagonally upward mining (and a pretty fast one at that), a maneuver not otherwise available.  MP level authors would need to be aware of this technique and look out for its use when they design MP levels.

Clearly the slope of the resulting upward path (ie. how high a step you can create with the technique) matters (as well as speed): unless we also eliminate the curved bottom corner of the basher tunnel-end shape, seems like you can still gain some vertical height even without interrupting the basher mid-stroke, just perhaps not enough height gained to make the technique a major tactical advantage in MP.  So it may well be possible to "cull" it merely by adjusting basher masks to never create as high a walkable step as you currently can, even while keeping the top-to-bottom bashstroke motion.

[ccexplore]

The handling of fencer in L2 suggests that it might actually work out okay if you simply apply the entire basher mask all at once at the end of the stroke animation, without changing anything else about the basher, which would be extremely simple to implement.  What I saw with the L2 fencer suggests that the animation can help somewhat obscure whether any partial-chunk removal is actually happening or not while the stroke hasn't reached completion.  Sure, it means if you interrupt in the middle, you have the effect that no terrain has been altered even though you can see the lix's arm reaching inside the terrain, but I think that's a minor visual side effect we can live with.  After all, it's not like you could get a diagonal brick in mid-air if you interrupt a builder in the middle of laying down the brick, so arguably the precedence for such things is there.

You can do this too with the miner, if you chose to cull miner staircases as well.  It works even better there since IIRC, there are only two frames over which the terrain removal is happening.

Granted, the specifics of the fencer animation is probably a factor in terms of the obscuring (the tip of the sword is rapidly waving up and down, different from the single-direction motion of the basher and miner stroke).