[SUGGESTION] Optional hints for levels

[nin10doadict]

I've noticed the 'sketch' objects you can place in a level using the editor, but they can't be seen when the level is loaded. Perhaps there could be a way to press a key to make sketches appear as 'no effect' objects so the player can get a hint where to use a certain skill? Sometimes one skill placement is all you need to get past the mental block.

[namida]

Sketches are intended for use for level designers - for example, if they want to know "How big should I make this gap so that the player will need three builders to cross it"?

The reason they don't appear in-game is so that even if the level designer leaves them in, they won't give away anything unintentionally during gameplay. As such, using them for hint purposes is not ideal.

[mobius]

I really like the idea and frankly don't care how it's implemented.

Of course you don't care how it's implemented since you aren't the one implementing it.

That's not what I meant; I meant I don't care whether it's overlaid text or a preview screen or dialogue box or if it's text in fancy colors with little flowers.

Also; Cheapo has arrows you could place to appear in different places in the level to serve as hints (besides text)

[the dialogue box comment was just there to tick off Simon ]

[namida]

I'm thinking of three possibilities here:

1. A popup dialog that does *not* prevent the game from playing as normal. Basically, one that always stays on top, but allows gameplay to continue behind it. The user can then resize, move or close this as they like, including (if in windowed mode) moving it outside the boundaries of the NL window itself. Pros: Very easy to implement, very flexible. Cons: May be a bit annoying to the user.

2. Overlaying it over the level area, similar to Cheapo: Pros: Shouldn't interfere too much with gameplay, shouldn't be too annoying, should still be fairly flexible. Shouldn't be too hard to implement, either. Cons: It does still somewhat interfere with viewing the level area, and there is also the question of how well this would perform on very small levels, especially at low zooms.

3. When hints are activated, shrink the level area display slightly and use the extra space to display the hint(s). Pros: Won't interfere with gameplay at all (beyond allowing a little bit less of the level to be viewed at once, and zooming out can remedy this if need be). Cons: May be tricky to support longer hint texts, and will be very tricky to implement.

Displaying things such as the arrows in Cheapo is a seperate matter, which could work with any of the three systems, and probably with most other alternatives that anyone might think of.

[mobius]

1. Honestly I'm not super in favor of a dialogue box either (like Simon points out) it can get irritating if too many of these pop up all the time. But in this case; if you press a button to receive a hint it would not annoy me; as long as you can press escape and get rid of the box.

2. the overlay seems like the best option. Although now that I think about it... maybe not. Either 1 or 2 is okay with me.

3. I don't like the sound of this option at all.

[nin10doadict]

I'm kinda wondering about the same approach that 'The Incredible Machine' uses for hints. Turn them on and buttons shaped like little hands will appear and point to specified spots in the level. Click one to open a dialog box with a relevant text hint. It sort of allows multiple 'tiers' of hints; maybe just seeing certain spots pointed out would be all you need, or you could get the text if you're still stumped, or you could just leave all hints off.

[Flopsy]

Personally, I'm in agreement with exit

I think hints should be kept as a separate text document, they should not be easily accessible within Neo Lemmix itself.

Maybe slightly off topic here but is kind of similar in context: Something that comes to mind is recently I had the privilege of playing the original Acorn Archimedes Lemmings and I remembered the level skip code "IAMNOTGOOD" which would allow you to skip levels by a simple press of the space bar.
This was a well known level skip code from my school days and everyone would use this cheat code when playing Lemmings but it ultimately resulted in everyone being a lazy Lemmings player because if they made a mistake on a level (even on Fun levels), instead of nuking they would just tap the space bar which would just skip to the next level preview screen.
I get the impression that this is similar in context to what exit is saying where no one would play the game properly and the hints would just result in a plethora of lazy Lemmings players although the Space bar skip mentioned would just instant solve the level for you and you don't see the solution at all.