[Suggestion] [Player] Naming consistency for bomber, stoner, ohnoer

[Strato Incendus]

I just noticed something in NeoLemmix 10.13 and was wondering whether it had been changed for New Formats, but no, it's still the same:

A bomber performing the oh-no animation is named "ohnoer" if you hover your mouse over it.

However, a stoner performing the same animation is named "stoner".

Shouldn't both be called "ohnoer", or one should be called "bomber" and the other one "stoner"? (Or "exploder" rather than "bomber", since apparently that was changed for New Formats?)

Then of course, there's also the question what lemmings doing the oh-no animation after a nuke are called - because they're technically not "bombers". Unless you define nuke as "assign a bomber to all", which it technically is... (Can you imagine a gimmick back in the day that turned the nuke into "assign a stoner to all", and nuke solutions exploiting that in some weird way? )

Really just nitpicking and nothing urgent at all, it just seems curious to me .

[Nepster]

There are basically three answers to this:
1) The simple answer: I never looked at this and never really cared how they are named.
2) The historical answer: Though "OhNoing" is not really descriptive, it was kept because L1 called it that way.
3) The lazyness answer: When namida introduced the stoner, he was too lazy to draw a specific stoning animation that distinguished it from the exploder. So they just look pretty similar, though they are actually completely separate states for the lemming.

I am against calling the stoner "ohnoer" as well, because when paused during the animation, this is the only way to distinguish stoning from exploding.
If a majority prefers "exploder" instead of "ohnoer", I am happy to make this change. But my guess would be that many would like to keep that from L1.
The nuking is game-wise the same as (timed ) exploding, so any naming change would be applied to nuking as well. Btw. I always thought of nuking as "apply exploders to all", so it would fit.

[Strato Incendus]

Thanks for the explanation!

Indeed, with regard to distinguishability (the only gameplay argument in this issue), it would make sense to abolish the label "ohnoer" and call a bomber a bomber and a stoner a stoner. Or the bomber an exploder, for that matter .

Because while many may be used to the label "ohnoer" from L1, they're also used to this skill being called "bomber" in L1 - and that has already been changed it to "exploder" in New Formats, which, however, is the term for this skill from Lemmings 2.

Consequentially, one would expect to read "exploder" when hovering the mouse over an exploder in New Formats, and "stoner" when hovering over a stoner.

[namida]

I remember in another discussion, the label "Exploder" in the editor was said to be a mistake. "Bomber" is still the correct term, which is also how the file formats (and NeoLemmix internally) refer to the action.

However, replacing "Ohnoer" with "Bomber" makes sense IMO. "Ohnoer" may be amusing when a player first discovers it, but doesn't offer much useful information.

[Simon]

L1 calls this a bomber, never an exploder; namida has this right.

L2 calls this an exploder, for both two implementations that behave differently. Classic tribe's exploder doesn't fling and ohnoes, this is practically the L1 bomber. Other tribes' exploders fling and don't ohno.

Lix is a mess here. Imploder is like L1 bomber except that it doesn't ohno. Pepole call it all sorts of things: Bomber, L1 bomber, imploder, normal bomber, nonflinging exploder. The file format calls it exploder for backcompat with very early 2006 when this was the only ploder in Lix. Exploder is like L2's flinging exploder, and people call it fling-bomber, flingploder, exploder, flinging exploder; the file format calls it exploder2. I didn't want to call either ploder a bomber; reason: L2's bomber flings and survives.

I'd be slightly more happy if NL's L1 bomber is consistently called bomber than if it's called exploder.

-- Simon

[ccexplore]

L2 calls this an exploder, for both two implementations that behave differently. Classic tribe's exploder doesn't fling and ohnoes, this is practically the L1 bomber. Other tribes' exploders fling and don't ohno.

To add further confusion, L2 does have a separate skill called "bomber", for which in the animation the lemming brings out an actual bomb, the bomb then explodes and the assigned lemming gets flung upwards (and other lemmings nearby get flung away), but the assigned lemming also survives unlike the "exploder" skill carried over from L1.  It is a bit questionable to have such similar skills (then again, that's the norm with L2 skills for better or worse), but if both skills were to exist it's easy to see why the one that's visually depicted with an actual bomb would be called "bomber".

------------

Anyway, if I recall correctly, Lemmings 1 (at least for DOS) doesn't actually display "bomber" on mouse-hover, at least not while the countdown is still in effect.  It's still the case of course that the game only uses the term "bomber" (ie. not exploder) in things like manuals, level titles, etc.  And it'd make sense that if we currently have two similar-looking but actually different "ohno" states in NeoLemmix, it would be vastly preferable to call them separately as "bomber" or "stoner" to help distinguish.  If you really want to call out the "ohno" I guess you could do maybe "bomber (ohno)" or similar, even though it feels a bit verbose.

[Nepster]

Regarding the "bomber" vs. "exploder" question:
1) My personal preference is "exploder", because there is only an explosion animation with no bomb anywhere (compared to L2). However I can understand the point of view that L1 called it "bomber", so "bomber" is more established.
2) While the NeoLemmix file formats call it "BOMBER", the internal code is less clear: While the skill button is called "spbBomber", the action is called "baExploding", we are calling the method "HandleExploding" and nuking sets the "LemExplosionTimer". But having said that: I don't think we should use the internal names as arguments. Normal players will never ever see them, so it really doesn't matter if there is a naming inconsistency.

Regarding "bomber (ohno)": I am fairly sure this is simply too long to be displayed on the screen.

[Strato Incendus]

If you really want to call out the "ohno" I guess you could do maybe "bomber (ohno)" or similar, even though it feels a bit verbose.

Then you'd never be able to read the word "bomber" or "stoner" on screen in the first place, because when you kill lemmings mid-air, i.e. without the ohno-animation, they turn into the "star" / explosion animation immediately - and since there's no lemming left to hover the mouse over, there's also nothing to read either.

"Ohnoer" to me is just a fun term, similarly to "shrugger", "drowner", or "frier" , without much gameplay use. For example, "frier" is only displayed when a regular lemming walks into a fire trap; when an athlete, e.g. a climber, does it, it remains a climber until it's dead.

The only "state" label that's currently game-relevant is the term "jumper", i.e. a lemming going up a six pixel height, because lemmings can't be assigned skills while "jumping".

However, considering the plans to introduce the jumper L2 skill into the New Formats version of NeoLemmix (don't know how things are going on that front? ), this behaviour should be renamed as well.

A lemming performing a jump skill would then probably be called "jumper" while on the parabolic curve in mid-air, and become a faller again once he resumes the regular falling animation.

That would require a new name for the "lemming stepping over a six pixel wall who can't be assigned any skill". Something like "stepper", "lifter", "bouncer", "leaper"... time to get creative!

I would only advise against the use of the term "hopper", because that is an L2 skill as well. Even though it will probably never be introduced into NeoLemmix, it would just cause further confusion to have conflicting meanings of one and the same word.

[nin10doadict]

The only "state" label that's currently game-relevant is the term "jumper", i.e. a lemming going up a six pixel height, because lemmings can't be assigned skills while "jumping".

Actually, I noticed that in new format this term has been changed to "ascender," perhaps in preparation for the jumper skill being added at some point.

[Strato Incendus]

Ah, great, thanks, that escaped me, apparently!

[namida]

Then you'd never be able to read the word "bomber" or "stoner" on screen in the first place, because when you kill lemmings mid-air, i.e. without the ohno-animation, they turn into the "star" / explosion animation immediately - and since there's no lemming left to hover the mouse over, there's also nothing to read either.

Try mousing over the center of the actual explosion. For a Stoner, it'll just continue to say "Stoner", but for a Bomber, during this explosion (which is only visible for one frame of game-time), the caption will actually change to "Bomber" rather than remaining as "Ohnoer".

[namida]

Over two years later, this simple text change is fixed in commit d459cc3.