"Simple" steel and steel areas

[Crane]

Unless I'm missing something painfully obvious, I sort of miss the ability to specify areas of terrain that are to be treated as steel.  While it should be contained over steel blocks, there are times where non-steel terrain needs to be treated as such, namely extra decoration such as moss or ice coating the steel plates so it can't be blown away and potentially make unintended pits.  Would it be possible to return this feature?

[IchoTolot]

That would lead to very inconsistant steel, where sometimes the decoration is bashable and sometimes not. Right now the user is assured that terrain blocks on top are terrain and steel blocks on top are steel. I personally think this clear rule is worth more in total and there are enough alternative ways to decorate.

Also try letting the steel be the top layer, that way you have the full steel block and even cut off terrain makes a decent coating.

[Nepster]

Regarding steel areas: Support of this was removed from the NeoLemmix player some time ago and IIRC even the latest version of the old-formats NeoLemmix editor no longer supported this feature. This "feature" is truly gone, won't come back and I say: Good riddance.

Regarding "simple steel": The new-formats NeoLemmix player still supports this, mainly because it would be a rather big breaking change for many older packs. However as IchoTolot mentioned, it is recommended to no longer use it for new packs. For that reason, I will not implement it in the new-formats editor.

But it you really really want to, add the following line to your level files after(!!) finishing creating the level - the editor will remove it every time you save the level: AUTOSTEEL 2 

[Crane]

Yeah, I sort of do.  I hope you can trust a level designer when putting bits of ice or moss over a square steel plate, it's not invasive enough to imply that it can be dug through.

"AUTOSTEEL 2" doesn't seem to work.  Even changing it to "AUTOSTEEL off" or "AUTOSTEEL 0" doesn't change anything.  Am I missing something?  I'm using V12.00.01.

[namida]

I only have a very-out-of-date-now version of the source code (on that note - what is the link for up-to-date source?), but if how it worked there still holds, the correct line is

Code Select Expand

AUTOSTEEL simple
(Not case sensitive.)

[ccexplore]

I feel like the exact scenario Crane described (decorative moss etc. on steel) probably had been discussed in the past as well, don't remember exactly how it landed.  I could swear I remember making an argument myself that it is less intuitive for a bit of overlapping moss to imply the moss has eaten away the steel where it overlaps.

I think I may even have further explain it by saying that when terrain A overlaps with terrain B occluding parts of B, you can either say the terrain pixels of B were actually taken out and replaced by the terrain pixels of A.  Or, you can think more 3-D and say the terrain pixels of B still exists alongside A's pixels in the same locations, they are simply visually covered up by the terrain pixels of A, literally as if you have one piece of paper on top of another.  When it's normal-to-normal overlap, either interpretation makes no difference to the physics, because all terrain pixels get removed by terrain-removal skills anyway.  But if it's normal overlapping steel, it's perfectly reasonable to take the second interpretation, in which case the steelness still remains despite the visual occlusion.

Anyway, a return to arbitrary steel areas is definitely not the way to go, but sounds like there may be a case for a mode where normal terrain can overlap with steel blocks without destroying the steelness.

I realize such a feature can be abused to the point where you basically can have steel blocks hidden completely behind terrain in a very misleading manner.  Then again, hidden traps also exist and a level designer using misleadingly hidden steel is basically engaging in trolling the player just like using hidden traps.  On the flip side, even without this feature, I can also see a different kind of abuse where terrain always eats away steel, but the evil level designer arranges things such that scattered individual pixels of steel remain while the rest become normal terrain via the occlusion, creating a nasty situation where technically the tiny "grains" of steel are "visible" but just barely (and bonus points if the surrounding terrain's color is similar enough to the steel grains' to further mislead the player).

[Proxima]

This is the previous discussion you were thinking of. Possibly you didn't find it because it's in Lix, not NL

[Nepster]

[...]but if how it worked there still holds, the correct line is

Code Select Expand

AUTOSTEEL simple
(Not case sensitive.)

Yes, this is still the correct version. Thanks, namida. For my previous post, I accidentally looked at the code for loading older level file types, where autosteel was still the steel mechanic number 2. Sorry about the confusion.