[SKILLS][PLAYER] Skill decisions

[namida]

Once I have made final decisions about any of the skills, I will post them here.

Please keep in mind that if I say a skill is accepted;
- It still won't be included in a RC / stable build until all of the new skills are ready to go stable (or rejected), and this will be V12.12 at the earliest.
- It might still get further slight physics tweaks, though once declared "accepted" I would not expect any more major changes.
- Visuals / theming are still 100% up for discussion. This could mean (using an existing skill as an example) that if "Basher" was accepted, it could still be changed to "Flamethrowerer" later (while keeping the same general physics and at least similar specifics) - it would just mean that we would be getting a skill that has the physics of the "Basher".
- I won't be making decisions on all four skills as soon as this topic is made. I'll be posting in this topic as I make the decisions, which could still be a long time.

[namida]

My first decision - the Laserer will be making it into NL.

[namida]

While I'm not convinced we're out of the woods yet re: bugs, I am satisfied the Slider isn't going to be too much of a buggy mess that I have to keep fixing forever (*coughswimmercough*), and that it has sufficient usefulness.

As such - I'm also going to say that the Slider is now confirmed.

[namida]

Okay so... this is not going to be a popular decision, but it's the decision I've made.

Both the Grenader and the Spearer will not be making the cut.

Considering only the end-user side of things, I would agree there is a lean towards accepting them - even if it's a much closer decision than the other two. However, there's a third factor that I've given weight to here, and that's the coding complexity. These skills have regularly been a source of bugs (keeping in mind that bugs prior to any release were a factor too, so the community would not be aware of every bug that's had to be dealt with), a lot of which arise from the fact that they're dependent on a second object, that at some times (but not others) must be kept "in sync" with the lemming (I will note that the Slider has also been a bit buggy at times, but a major difference is in the severity of these bugs - the thrower ones tend to be messy and complicated to fix, whereas most Slider bugs come down to "I overlooked something that, once I recognize needs to be done, is very easy to actually get done"). There's also a lot of edge cases that have to be considered around eg: terrain near the thrower, and the more I think about it, the more I realise there isn't really any "ideal" solution to these.

Ultimately - it's not any single one of the negative factors that lead to this, though, but rather the overall combination of them makes these skills, even if they do have a decent amount of potential, not worth the effort that would be needed to maintain them.

I will look to making a new exp build, with only the Slider and Laserer, and based on V12.11, sometime this week. At this point, given that the decisions have been made about which skills will make it and the physics are more or less finalized now, the next exp will no longer apply the "official styles only" restriction as I do not feel there is a significant risk of it being misused long-term anymore. I will stress that this does not mean that you can throw together a level in it and consider it "done and dusted" - there is still the possibility of physics changes that might require tweaks to the level, even if it's less likely at this point. It simply means that you can count on the skills themself sticking around, and therefore levels will almost certianly be feasible to migrate to a stable version.