[SUGGESTION][ALL] Reorder skills in skill panel

[namida]

Reason: The kill of a lem is secondary.

And that is precisely the point I disagreed with earlier. Bombers and stoners are the only skills which are affected with regards to their usability by the save requirement. A climber or glider can be affected in certain cases, when their permanently changed behaviour makes them go into death traps, but bombers and stoners kill 100% of the time. Any other skill can always be used, but bombers and stoners can't.

It is possible under specific circumstances to *usefully* assign a bomber or stoner, and have the lemming survive. Without too much detail, just remember that ohnoers will fall if they have nothing to stand on, and that until the lemming actually explodes, it can still exit safely. I myself have created two 100%-required levels that cannot be solved without using a bomber.

A bit more spoilery, still somewhat vague

In one such level, the bomber is used purely to stop a digger a bit earlier than he otherwise would, and falling into the exit simply means the lemming doesn't die - the level could work just as well if he blew up during the fall instead. In the other such level, these aspects of the bomber are used to cause a glider to fall straight down instead of at an angle.

[Strato Incendus]

I know the oh-noer could be used in Lemmings Revolution as a surrogate floater - that's because it was possible to cancel a bomber like any other skill: by assigning a different one. You could make a lemming do the oh-no part while landing (which apparently is mutually exclusive with the splatting animation), and then assign e.g. a builder to save him . That doesn't work in NeoLemmix, of course.

Specifically, when you assign a bomber to a glider, it is going to explode without the oh-no animation, so I don't know how it's supposed to make the drop straight.

[namida]

Specifically, when you assign a bomber to a glider, it is going to explode without the oh-no animation, so I don't know how it's supposed to make the drop straight.

You assign it *before* he starts falling.

More specific

In the level in question, you assign it while he's a digger, immediately after he removes the last pixels of terrain, but before he becomes a faller. The "instant explode vs ohno" test is based on the lemming's current action, not whether or not they have ground below them, so he will become an ohnoer, then fall straight down.

If you want to actually see it in action, go check the intended solution replay for...

Spoiler

Lemmings Plus Omega II, Sharp 7 "Odyssey"

[nin10doadict]

Well, now I know why that level was so far up there and why I couldn't solve it before. Those tips were enough to figure it out; I never would have without them... Absolutely disgusting.

On the topic of the skill ordering, I'm wondering if we've reached a consensus. We seem to be getting sidetracked.

[Proxima]

I'm wondering if we've reached a consensus. We seem to be getting sidetracked.

We have not. Simon's proposal is drastically different from previous proposals. I'll make a more detailed post tomorrow, it's very late now.

[Strato Incendus]

Simon's suggestion is more radical because it would indeed alter the order of classic skills as well.

I guess replays won't be affected by this? Because replay files probably don't contain information about which slot in the panel gets selected, but simply which skill, no matter where it resides on the panel. If I add e.g. useless bombers to a level that only had seven skills beforehand, the replay file isn't affected either, after all.

[Nepster]

I guess replays won't be affected by this? Because replay files probably don't contain information about which slot in the panel gets selected, but simply which skill, no matter where it resides on the panel. If I add e.g. useless bombers to a level that only had seven skills beforehand, the replay file isn't affected either, after all.

Indeed. Replay files contain the actual skill (like BUILDER, BASHER, ...), not the index of the skill button.

[IchoTolot]

I read a lot in IRC about tileset designers worrying about the workload with rearranging the custom pickup skills. I want to take away the worries a bit.

If Nepster's 3rd suggestion is accepted:

3) I split pickup skills up into lots of separate images, one for eack skill. This would be by far the most work for me, but has the additional advantage, that it would remove the tight coupling between skills and styles. This means: I could add another skill (like the shimmier) and the styles are not forced to update, because suddenly one frame is missing in the pickup skill image.

Then near to no new work will follow from this. The worst case would be you have to seperate long custom pick-ups graphics into single pngs for each skill and I think even if that would be nessesary this can be done quickly.
Also what will follow from this change will be a great improvement from the backwards compability and stability side: Any future skill changes won't affect your already implemented pick-ups anymore. Only in the case of a new skill 1 additional image must be provided and that is unavoidable anyway, but Nepster already descibed that. The uncoupling makes everything way more robust to future changes.

The skills could be swapped as they pleased and it won't matter anymore.

So I am highly in favor of this point being implemented and I would even offter to help with cutting the long pick-up pngs into single skill bits!

For the general new ordering: Do as you please! Decide on a senseful ordering and I will accept it (I don't care that much here, as long as it isn't random).

[Nepster]

Regarding the pickup skills: I thought what I wrote above already implied that for all existing styles, I will do the image updates myself. As I don't have to create any new images, and just cut and past from an already existing sprite, even I can do that So don't worry about the workload for yourself - there will be essentially none!

[Simon]

Re Pickups: Very good to decouple them either from tilesets or from internal ordering.



I reordered the Lix skills and gave 1 of each L1 skill. Screenshot of my last proposal. Floater is adjacent to builder, and both have this bright yellow despite their massive difference.

There are really 5 categories of skills:
1. No terrain change, movement of single lem.
2. No terrain change, affect other lems.
3. No terrain change, permanent skill.
4. Terrain addition.
5. Terrain removal.

I feel like 1-2-3 have coherence as a supergroup, and, separately, 4-5 also.



This would follow from Strato's most recent proposal. Blocker sits in the middle of constructive skills, and it tacks group 1 at the end.

-- Simon

[namida]

There has been an intention for a long time to decouple them from tilesets; it just didn't happen in time for the new-formats release. However, I will point out that GigaLem has personally been told several times that such an intention exists, and that if he does create custom pickup skills anyway, there would be no guarantee that future updates wouldn't break them (or the levels using them, for that matter). Disregard this if Nepster's stated intentions have changed since he took over.

With that being said, if the graphics are already up to date (ie: they contain blank + all 17 skills, in the current order), it should be very simple to create some code that reorders them to the correct new order. There would still be a need to create new frames for Jumper and Shimmier, once added. This could be automated (see: when the Fencer was added, code was added to NeoLemmix to automatically add a Fencer pickup skill graphic to any pickup skill objects that didn't already have one - this worked by assuming (and this held true to both advice given at the time, and the situation in reality at the time) that all existing pickup skill objects were the default graphic, just recolored; and from there it would grab the border and background color from an existing frame, then draw the cropped-to-fit-in-the-circle Fencer graphic on top of it), but is a lot more work than reordering. This code probably no longer exists in the new-formats version, but could be digged up by going back in the repo to the V10.13.18 release (which IIRC, did still have this code).

[Nepster]

There has been an intention for a long time to decouple them from tilesets; it just didn't happen in time for the new-formats release. However, I will point out that GigaLem has personally been told several times that such an intention exists, and that if he does create custom pickup skills anyway, there would be no guarantee that future updates wouldn't break them (or the levels using them, for that matter). Disregard this if Nepster's stated intentions have changed since he took over.

I have not stated intentions either way, because there have been other more pressing problems, so I forgot about this.

We have not. Simon's proposal is drastically different from previous proposals. I'll make a more detailed post tomorrow, it's very late now.

I would be interested in your take on this, so here is a friendly reminder

[Simon]

The supergroups might make more sense in this odering. First, everything that doesn't affect other lems. Then, everything that affects other lems.

1. Nonpermanent single lem
2. Permanent single lem
3. Permanent that affects others (NL disarmer)
4. Batter, Blocker that directly affect. Maybe swap to blocker-batter. NL: only Blocker.
5. Adders. Maybe swap to connect cuber-exploder. *)
6. Removers.

The only difference to the 2017 Lix layout is that the exploder goes with the terrain removers.

*) When all 14 skills are shown at any time, you can leave the killing adder at the left. Then the adders and the removers have an equal order, the killing skill comes first in both. Probably put killing skills next to each other in NL?

--  Simon

[Proxima]

Thanks for the reminder. It's been a pretty horrible week, but hey, weekend, time I got around to this.

I prefer Nepster's original suggestion, with my fencer modification (i.e. this order), to Simon's proposal. I have two main reasons for this:

(1) Getting the eight original skills out of order is a serious drawback for NL (as opposed to Lix) because of the wealth of older content, when these were the only skills existing, that NL strives to keep available. This applies to levels with patterened skillsets and other, subtler patterns (e.g. the ordering of the tutorial levels in GemLems). I'm (hesitantly) okay with Nepster's bomber-blocker switch, because this is a small change and has good reasons in favour, but a more drastic change would need stronger reasons in favour. Which brings me to:

(2) "Bomber destroys terrain" does not seem a good enough reason for grouping it with the other destructive skills. The fencer, basher, miner and digger are variants of the same idea, with only the direction of travel different between the four; the bomber is completely different in all respects except that it is also destructive. The bomber is the only L1 skill that kills the lemming, and it is the only instantaneous skill, i.e. its action includes stopping itself, by contrast to the blocker and all the other terrain removers, which continue until something else stops them. NL's stoner and Lix's cuber share these features. Similarly, the stoner and cuber are not variants of the same idea in the same way the builder, platformer and stacker are.

I'm still not sure about the walker. In Lix, it certainly belongs with the jumper and runner; in NL it (more weakly) belongs with the cloner. Yet I do see the argument for keeping the skill order of the two games as similar as possible. Maybe all of these skills should come before the permanent skills.

[Nepster]

I'm still not sure about the walker. In Lix, it certainly belongs with the jumper and runner; in NL it (more weakly) belongs with the cloner. Yet I do see the argument for keeping the skill order of the two games as similar as possible. Maybe all of these skills should come before the permanent skills.

Instead having the "Nonpermanent single lem" coming before the "Permanent", I would place them afterwards, i.e. either where they are in my original suggestion or alternatively between "Permanent" and "Batter/Blocker(/Bomber)". The reason is mainly that I don't want to split the non-permanent skills into two parts.