[DISC.][PLAYER] Jumper physics

[IchoTolot]

I think a double jump would not make much sense as an extra jump in mid air is quite unrealistic for a normal lemming. You can't really jump with no ground under your feet

But to my main point:

At this point the skill itself becomes quite overloaded. It is already very useful with the extra wall jump and climber interaction.

It also gets more and more complicated with more and more extra rules - we should try and keep it simple so it becomes not too difficult to understand.

That's why I am not just against the double jump but also against the updraft interaction. The skill should not become too complicatect and overloaded. It is already very useful as it is right now and should not become too powerful/overpowered.

[Proxima]

I'm with Icho here. Double jump only makes sense if a lemming can jump from mid-air, which makes the skill really overpowered.

Regarding the updraft interaction, I would like to see a diagram showing the proposed trajectory. I recall namida said the jumper would gain 1 pixel height per frame compared to its normal trajectory, but I don't know how many frames the jump takes.

[namida]

I think a double jump would not make much sense as an extra jump in mid air is quite unrealistic for a normal lemming. You can't really jump with no ground under your feet

I think specifically in regards to it "making sense", it's acceptable because double-jumping is a very common video game ability.

[WillLem]

Just whilst the discussion is being had, firstly with regards to a double jump being unrealistic:

I think specifically in regards to it "making sense", it's acceptable because double-jumping is a very common video game ability.

This was going to be my first point; double-jump is quite common in video games.

Most Lemmings skills are rooted in a certain degree of realistic or at least plausible physics, but the odd exception to this is fine (bashing through walls strikes me as an existing example of this - i.e. unrealistic but acceptable).

Secondly, with regards to it being an overpowered skill:

There is talk on the Final New Skill thread of some of the suggestions being underpowered or not having enough traction as an idea. It seems there is a sweet spot at which a skill is powerful enough to merit inclusion on the panel but not too overpowered that it carries more than a couple of possibilities.

With the Jumper, these are the possibilities that would make it a particularly powerful skill:

Transition to/from Climber skill - this has been accepted
Sliding upon interaction with walls - this has been overruled in favour of the lemming turning around and falling
Jump boosted by updrafts - still up for vote
Double-jump possible - seems unpopular from current comments

As you can see, out of four existing possibilities, we have 1 accepted, 1 overruled, and 2 up for debate - one of which could go either way and the other of which is currently an unpopular idea.

Quite honestly, I'd say that the Jumper skill isn't quite as overpowered as it could be. Perhaps if updrafts gets overruled, then Double-jump could be a consideration on that basis, also taking into account that it would cost two instances of the skill to perform, and as Namida suggested could be limited to a single repeat.

To only have 1 out of four possible power-related applications accepted would be a bit of a shame, and would make the skill underpowered, IMHO.

[Proxima]

With the Jumper, these are the possibilities that make it a powerful skill:

Transition to/from Climber skill - this has been accepted
Sliding upon interaction with walls - this has been overruled in favour of the lemming turning around and falling
Jump boosted by updrafts - still up for vote
Double-jump possible - seems unpopular from current comments

To only have one out of four possible power-related applications accepted would be a bit of a shame, and would make the skill underpowered, IMHO.

Two out of five: jumper -> climber and climber -> jumper were both accepted. (I would also count the jumper turning round when hitting a blocker's field -- we just didn't vote on this because it was never in doubt.) But the "power" of a skill can't be measured just by counting interactions; consider the very first thing we debated, the size of the jump. Since the jumper's utility is to move a single lemming around the level, the wider the area it can reach, the more powerful the skill is. The large jump we decided on (with the caveat that we could change our minds once the release candidate is out and we've had a chance to play around with it) will give it a wide reach in many levels, and the wall-jumping ability adds a lot more, whenever climbers are provided. Adding the ability to jump in mid-air would give it too wide a reach in my opinion -- it would be very difficult for the designer to anticipate everything the player can do with a jumper, and it would be very susceptible to enabling backroutes.

[WillLem]

Two out of five: jumper -> climber and climber -> jumper were both accepted.

I counted these as one: "Transition to/from Climber" - but yes, I suppose if you count them separately then it's 2/5 instead of 1/4: still 3 other things to take into consideration.

(I would also count the jumper turning round when hitting a blocker's field -- we just didn't vote on this because it was never in doubt.)

I wouldn't necessarily count this as a "power" of a skill, as such... but OK, fair point.

Adding the ability to jump in mid-air would give it too wide a reach in my opinion -- it would be very difficult for the designer to anticipate everything the player can do with a jumper, and it would be very susceptible to enabling backroutes.

Hopefully, then, interaction with updrafts will be allowed: that way, there will still be a way of extending the Jumper's reach but it will be more specifically dependent on the level's design rather than the player's implementation of the Jumper skill.

Just to provide a counterpoint to this though: surely a level designer can choose to only include enough Jumper skills to complete a level as intended, i.e. if a player decides to double-jump, it may cost them a Jumper skill that needs to be used elsewhere. There are still ways to prevent backroutes even if double-jump gets the vote.

Either way, I still think that having no way to extend the Jumper's reach leaves it somewhat under-powered, especially since the only "power" from the above list that has been accepted so far is the Jumper's abilities when combined with a Climber: in the absence of the Climber skill, the Jumper is not looking quite so powerful.

EDIT: Unless it's decided that assigning a Jumper cancels other skills, in which case it's also useful as a skill-canceller.

[namida]

EDIT: Unless it's decided that assigning a Jumper cancels other skills, in which case it's also useful as a skill-canceller.

I'm essentially thinking that you could assign a Jumper in any case where you can assign a Shimmier (plus the "assign to climber" special case). Did anyone expect otherwise?

[Strato Incendus]

No, that makes sense. Shimmiers can already be used as surrogate Walkers in this regard, to e.g. cancel constructive and destructive skills. The important part is that neither Shimmiers nor Jumpers should be able to free Blockers - that should remain specifically the Walker's responsibility.



Regarding double-jumping: While obviously this is very common in jump-and-run video games (and then also limited to one double-jump), didn't we rule out Swimmers jumping out of water for this exact same reason? That you can't jump without solid ground under your feet?

If it's possible to jump in mid-air, then it should definitely be possible to jump out of water, because at least there's a surface and some kind of substance there, rather than just... you know... nothing.

I guess the purely game-mechanical explanation would be that you can't assign any other skill to Swimmers either, aside from subtractive (=lethal) and additive ones (=Cloner).

But then again, if you go with a purely game-mechanical explanation, there's no reason why double-jumping should be limited to one repetition. The lemming would jump from mid-air the second time just like he's jumping from mid-air the first time. So this would be inconsistent.

Keep in mind that in most jump-and-run games that allow double-jumping, the second jump is accompanied by a different animation than the first one (usually a flip forwards). The animation for the lemming Jumper, in contrast, would be the same both times. Hence, it would be impossible to tell from the trajectory of the animation alone whether a given lemming is currently performing his first or second jump. And if there's no difference between the first and second jump, then I don't see a way (rules-wise nor coding wise), to make double-jumping possible but e.g. triple-jumping not.

Also, this rabbit hole goes much deeper. If you can jump in mir-air, can you also assign Jumpers to Shimmiers in their Reacher state, then? If our 20th skill becomes the upward Digger, that one would probably also have to include a Reaching animation. Then we'd have Jumper-Jumper, Shimmier-Jumper, and upward Digger-Jumper interactions.

[IchoTolot]

For the updraft interaction case it is less of a problem that the skill becomers overpowered.

The main problem there lies in the other thing that I mentioned:

The skill gets too complex with too many extra rules.

A skill should be easy to understand while still being versitile and useful. Right now new players would have to learn:

- The general jump arc.
- Glider activates at the highest point.
- jumper turns upon hitting a wall
- jumper  --> climber
- climber -->  jumper

I think this list is already quite big and should not grow any larger. An updraft interaction would add another special rule that I would not call obvious at the first glance and it can be quite a rare occasion in terms of seeing it being used in a level.
I also don't think the extra updraft interaction rule would add too much in terms of level design possibilities. It's too much extra rule weight for the level desgin gain you get. A slightly different trajectory isn't worth it.

If a jumper turns into a glider though of course the glider is affected then.

[Proxima]

Sorry to interrupt the updraft discussion, but I have a point I want to raise before I forget about it:

Speed. On flat terrain a la Tightrope City, can you assign jumper to the lead lemming of the crowd to get them further ahead? If you can, that's yet another point in favour of the jumper already being quite powerful as it is, as well as a strike against adding the Runner, since one of its main use cases can already by achieved with jumpers.

Either way, I still think that having no way to extend the Jumper's reach leaves it somewhat under-powered

There is no way to extend a Builder's reach, and it's the most powerful skill in the game.

[WillLem]

You all make very good points, and I don't really disagree.

However...

I still think that either updraft interaction or a single-repeat double-jump should be possible. Either of these cases does not increase the power of the Jumper skill all that much: one relies on the presence of an updraft object, the other relies on an additional assigning of a Jumper skill to the same Lemming.

To my way of thinking, it's more a case of: "take your pick which" rather than "no, let's not have either." That just seems unnecessarily restrictive, particularly since the Slider state has already been ruled out.

(That being said, if the Slider ends up being the 20th skill then this last point is somewhat moot...)

[Proxima]

I grant that your idea of allowing double-jump only during a jump is much more restricted and less liable to be overpowered than if you were proposing "jump from mid-air anywhere". But it comes with its own problems: firstly, even in videogame logic, the two usually go together, and it's not clear why it should be possible to double-jump during a jump only; secondly, the restriction makes it harder for new players to discover that double-jumping is possible at all.

To my way of thinking, it's more a case of: "take your pick which" rather than "no, let's not have either." That just seems unnecessarily restrictive

The Jumper is already extremely powerful. As I said, the power of a skill is not measured in terms of number of interactions -- look at the Builder, which has one interaction with another skill (the Blocker); or the Stoner, which has none*. It's about how versatile the skill is; the number of different situations it can be used for. The vanilla Jumper, by itself, can cancel another skill; get one lemming over a gap without using up a builder; get one lemming past a trap; get one lemming over a blocker/stacker (excellent for when your worker lemming needs to die or block and you need a second worker); get a lemming to a higher elevation; get a lemming to a lower elevation without floaters/gliders given a favourable terrain setup; get a lemming partway up a wall or close to a ceiling to bomb/stone there or collect a pickup skill. To all that, we've already agreed to add transitioning to a climber, allowing the climber to wall-jump, and gliding from the peak of the jump.

*Yes, the terrain created by a Builder or Stoner can be interacted with by other skills, but that's not a direct interaction of the two skills.

If you can look at all that and still think the Jumper needs more bells and whistles in order to pull its weight, then I guess we're not talking the same language any more.

[Strato Incendus]

If I had to go with one of the two, I think the case for updrafts increasing jump height would be more consistent than single-use double-jumping (and at the same time less potentially-broken than unlimited repeat-jumping).

Since the argument for double-jumping has been "it's possible in many jump-and-run games" (even though the way we think of lemmings in NeoLemmix is hardly similar to a jump-and-run game anymore), then, as I said earlier, the idea of a wind from below increasing the total height you can jump is just as consistent with that jump-and-run logic, while at the same time being more easily containable than double- or multiple-jumping.

Here is an example from the game Speedy Eggbert, which is the basis for Jaime's House and Techno graphic sets in NeoLemmix (you might recognise some of the blue Techno pieces):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc7I9-Hlyag

As you can see, this game not only has up- and downward updrafts, but also sideways updrafts that limit how far Eggbert can jump (if they go against his direction of movement), or increase the width he can jump across (if they go in the same direction of movement). Also, winds can be switched off by destroying the fan that creates them (even though this usually comes at the cost of one of Eggbert's lives).

[namida]

This updraft idea seems quite controversial. We might need a test run, or at least a side by side demonstration video...

[Proxima]

I voted against, but I'm not dead set against it and I would like to see it in action. Rather than (or in addition to) a video, I would simply like to see a screenshot with the trajectory indicated, with and without an updraft present.