Changed release rate in New Formats?

Strato Incendus · October 13, 2018, 10:34:46 AM

I do get the feeling that Release Rate 1 is a lot slower in New Formats than in Old Formats, meaning the interval between the Lemmings is a lot larger.

Has the scale on which this is measured been changed? And if so, is this accounted for when converting levels to New Formats?

Proxima · October 13, 2018, 11:52:27 AM

Yes. In old formats, the actual spacing only changes with every second RR increase, so RR 2 = RR 3, RR 4 = RR 5 and so on.

To avoid this and give the designer more options to work with, RR 99 remains the same (release every 4 frames) but every RR (99 - n) is equivalent to (99 - 2n) in old formats. Notably, this means that round numbers remain round numbers, e.g. new 80 = old (99 - 2 x 19) = old 61 = old 60.

The converter does take this into account.

Strato Incendus · October 13, 2018, 12:38:26 PM

Ah, okay, thanks for the info! I guess a lot of my levels with the standard release rate of 50 are going to end up with some odd number like 52 or so now

.

IchoTolot · October 13, 2018, 01:23:54 PM

Quote from: Strato Incendus on October 13, 2018, 12:38:26 PM
Ah, okay, thanks for the info! I guess a lot of my levels with the standard release rate of 50 are going to end up with some odd number like 52 or so now .

No.

The old RR rates are now the values 50-99. While 1-49 are the new, slower numbers.

The conversion for smooth numbers is the following: 50+(Old RR)/(2) While for odd numbers you can use the closest smaller smoooth number, as Proxima already mentioned that these are the same.

Old RR 50 (and 51) is therefore: 75 (50+(50)/(2))

Old RR 1 is 50 (50+(0)/(2)), RR 2 and 3 is now 51 (50+(2)/(2)), RR 4 and 5 is now 52 (50+(4)/(2))..... and so on. (This also works with 99 = 50+(98)/(2))

As already mentioned, no worries:

Quote from: Proxima on October 13, 2018, 11:52:27 AM
The converter does take this into account.

Strato Incendus · October 13, 2018, 01:38:34 PM

Thanks for the explanation! I wasn't worried about any levels breaking, just about the release rate seeming arbitrary. If all RR 50 levels become RR 75 now, that's fine, I guess - I'm just used to 75 being pretty fast already.

But eh, whatever - I just hope people don't abuse this too much to create lazy stacker levels, rather than coming up with a creative way of preventing lemmings to slip past the stacker

... This of course could already be done before if there were multiple hatches, but now it's also possible with a single hatch.

namida · October 14, 2018, 07:36:57 AM

Quote from: Strato Incendus on October 13, 2018, 01:38:34 PM
Thanks for the explanation! I wasn't worried about any levels breaking, just about the release rate seeming arbitrary. If all RR 50 levels become RR 75 now, that's fine, I guess - I'm just used to 75 being pretty fast already.

But eh, whatever - I just hope people don't abuse this too much to create lazy stacker levels, rather than coming up with a creative way of preventing lemmings to slip past the stacker ... This of course could already be done before if there were multiple hatches, but now it's also possible with a single hatch.

To the contrary though, it opens up the possibility of making the player think they can use a stacker to contain the lemmings, but in fact one was meant to slip past.

Interestingly - I tried this only after seeing your post - I notice that RR50 (which corresponds to RR1 in older versions) is exactly the minimum release rate at which a lemming will slip past - 49 (which would have been -1 (or -2, since they'd be identical) under the old system) is low enough to avoid it, as long as the stacker is level (not placed in a position where the first brick is one pixel lower).

And yeah, a lot of release rates do end up taking somewhat arbitrary-looking values now. The option of lower release rates than previously possible was just a logical addition - the main reason for the change was to get rid of the situation where each pair of consecutive values is identical in practice; instead, even a change by 1 has an actual (albeit very minor) impact on physics.

Also note that few, if any, release rate values will be a nice number under both the default setting of using a release rate and the alternate setting of using a spawn interval. I don't know how widely used the spawn interval setting is, though; it's definitely not what most people use (though it is how the release rate is actually stored in level files and replays).

Simon · October 14, 2018, 01:13:37 PM

Ah, people still get confused about RR. Who would have thought. :-P

If you want a robust and useful unit, let the game display the spawn interval as-is. NL has an option for that. Lemmings RR 50 or NL RR 75 will spawn the lemmings in intervals of 28 frames. And 28 frames between lemmings will always be 28 frames between lemmings.

-- Simon

Dullstar · October 15, 2018, 02:25:07 AM

I'm tempted to agree that Spawn Interval may be a better choice than Release Rate. But I'm not sure how I feel about the current max, 99, becoming 4, as it would feel psychologically better if the lowest Spawn Interval was 1, though that might be a bit dense of a rate for lemming release.

The main advantage of Spawn Interval, IMO, is that it's a completely different way of measuring the spawn rate of lemmings, instead of the New Formats redefinitions of what, for example, a release rate of 50 means - part of the reason why I opposed the un-duplication of the redundant release rates. Once Spawn Interval is explained, it is also slightly easier to understand, since Spawn Interval directly correlates to the thing it affects in-game.

The main disadvantage is that this would change big numbers from being fast to big numbers being slow, which might take some time to adjust to in gameplay situations.

namida · October 15, 2018, 07:26:34 PM

Quote from: Dullstar on October 15, 2018, 02:25:07 AM
I'm tempted to agree that Spawn Interval may be a better choice than Release Rate. But I'm not sure how I feel about the current max, 99, becoming 4, as it would feel psychologically better if the lowest Spawn Interval was 1, though that might be a bit dense of a rate for lemming release.

The biggest problem here is that there's no "maximum release rate" feature. Unlike extending the range to include slower values (which won't be applicable except to new levels that intentionally use them, as we can set a minimum), increasing the maximum RR (decreasing the minimum SI) would have an impact - possibly leading to severe backroutes in some cases - on all existing levels, except for those that use locked release rates (which so far, are a minority of levels).