[SUGGESTION][EDITOR][SEMI-ADDED] One-Way enabled as default for terrain pieces

[Nepster]

Status: An option (editor option, not level option) has been added for the next update to let the user decide what their preference is - if enabled, all newly-added terrain pieces will have the "one way capable" flag set. Default is the new user-friendly option (ie: mark all pieces as one-way-capable).



Because http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=2495 is already closed without any comment on ccexplore's good suggestion, I want to formally propose the following change:
- All non-steel terrain pieces have One-Way selected by default.
- All steel pieces use the current behavior.
This way new users get working one-way-walls, even if they don't yet know how to fine-tune them.
The advantage over selecting One-Way-Inversion by default is, that steel pieces will not get covered by one-way-walls.

[namida]

Steel pieces don't get covered by one-way walls anyway once actually playing - they do in the editor, for much the same reason that objects do (ie: the editor's rendering code is not very good), but once you actually play the level, any pixel affected by a steel area will be non-one-way-ized.

The problem with this change is - while it may be slightly more intuitive for new users, it would be more annoying than anything else for experienced users. If there is enough support for this change by people who feel it's beneficial - not just on theoretical grounds, but based on their own actual use scenarios, be it from while learning or how they'd prefer it now - then I could look at adding a configuration option on how to set this property for terrain pieces, and setting the default to the new-user-friendlier setting.

[Nepster]

Just looking through my levels in NepsterLems:
- Levels that would not change if every terrain piece is one-way: 24
- Levels that use one-way and not-one-way-combinations: 5
So at least for me, there are much more cases where I want to add the one-way property to terrain pieces than cases where I want to remove this property.

[IchoTolot]

I think One-Way disabled as default is more beneficial.

When I place One-Ways it's only on a few tiles and often there are steel pieces around them which should not have these property. Usually I even just copy paste the tile with the one ways, so I just have to activate it once.
For the most cases it would be more work to unmark the one-way property from the pieces around the area.

But an option to inverse the default would be a good thing for people, who are more comfortable with the other way.

[Nepster]

Sorry, I don't understand: In your first sentence, you agree that the default should be changed, but then you give agruments for keeping the current behavior. What am I missing?

But an option to inverse the default would be a good thing for people, who are more comfortable with the other way.

Isn't this equivalent to the current "One-Way Inversion" option?
What I am suggestion is not to add another new option, but to change the default setting of the current options.

[Simon]

The usability front says: When picking the one-way arrows, we always want to make something one-way. Our most basic task is to put the arrows somewhere, and make the terrain behind them one-way. Let's make this basic task straightforward. I suggest that every terrain piece may accept one-way-arrows by default, and you have to explicitly forbid one-way-ness per terrain piece.

It's irrelevant if fine-tuning by always-two-way-terrain happens in 3 % or 40 % of the levels. From the usability perspective, it is irrelevant even if it happened 70 % of the time. If we had 70 %, that would point to a feature misdesign rather than to a choice of bad default.

Cropping the one-way-field is useful functionality, and should be kept. namida has made a good point for it in the closed topic.

-- Simon

[IchoTolot]

Sorry, I don't understand: In your first sentence, you agree that the default should be changed, but then you give agruments for keeping the current behavior. What am I missing?

But an option to inverse the default would be a good thing for people, who are more comfortable with the other way.

Isn't this equivalent to the current "One-Way Inversion" option?
What I am suggestion is not to add another new option, but to change the default setting of the current options.

Sry mashed up the words there    Edited it.

[namida]

I can see we're not going to reach a consensus on this, so for the next update, I've added a configurable option of what the default is for new terrain pieces. The default setting for this option is to flag them as one-way-accepting (as I agree that this may be friendlier towards new users, even though it is more likely to result in poorly-defined one way wall areas); though note that this option will not automatically be set when upgrading from an old version.

[namida]

Since it seems (from PMs / chat) that some people feel there is still discussion to be had here, I'll reopen this for a while, though I'm not sure what remains to be discussed unless it's a "force everyone to use it the way I like" type situation.

So that you can see the option in action, I've uploaded an experimental editor version that has it. It won't be turned on by default (it will be in the "New Users" stable releases), but you can configure it in the File -> Options menu. This experimental version is probably stable enough to actually use, but I want to implement more of the recent suggestions / fix bug reports before releasing any official update.

[Nepster]

Let me move my PM-questions and namida's answers here:

What is the default setting for this new option?
How does this new option differ from the "One-Way Inversion" option?

The One-Way Inversion option is there for compatibility with content that pre-dates this option / comes from other engines, and is not recommended for use with made-for-NeoLemmix levels. The default setting for this new option is on; when the option is on, all newly-placed (and non-steel) terrain pieces will have the "One Way" flag on.

I am satisfied with these changes.

[Simon]

Yeah, smart.

Editor option > level-global option (which kills forward-compatibility of old NL versions) > per-tile option (which also kill forward-compat and bring interface bloat in the most critical area).

-- Simon

[namida]

No new posts in this topic for a while, so I guess I can finally close this one.

If there are any further suggestions for improving it (based on the experimental version's behaviour), or bugs are found in relation to it, please create a new topic.