[DISC][PLAYER] Midair exit rules

[Strato Incendus]

(Edit by namida: Topic split from [BUG][PLAYER] Using shimmier/jumper to let a normal lemming enter a midair exit.)

Shimmying into the exit should definitely be allowed, though, just like swimming into the exit .

So the prevention of exiting needs to be specific to the Reacher state.

[Dullstar]

I feel like we need to do a much better job making a clean, easy-to-understand rule as to what states should and should not be allowed to exit. Right now, I really do feel like it's largely, "Some of them can and some of them can't, but there isn't really that much consistent logic between them so you just have to memorize them."

And I think breaking some existing levels to do this is totally okay. I don't think we should maintain unintuitive behaviors simply because someone's managed to create a level that uses them.

[Strato Incendus]

Gliders and Floaters can both exit, that is consistent and predictable and shouldn't be changed.

The Shimmier is very similar to the Swimmer in many regards, e.g. in terms of which skills you can and can't assign to it. Swimmers can exit if the exit is in the water, so Shimmiers should be able to enter an exit that is dangling under the ceiling.

Skills that allow movement as that skill for an extended period of time - Climber, Floater, Glider, Swimmer, Shimmier - are all able to exit and should be, because it's just a different form of regular movement, like the Walker.

That leaves short and temporary states like the Jumper and Reacher, neither of which should therefore be able to exit, in my view. They belong in the same category as regular Fallers, I think, which aren't able to exit either.

[IchoTolot]

Jumpers and reachers are Lemmings in mid air. No Lemming should be able to enter the exit in mid air with the exception of gliders and floaters. Period.

The Shimmier is very similar to the Swimmer in many regards

Totally disagree here: Swimmers are a completely different state - They are not in mid air. Yes shimmiers still have a ceiling above, but their feet are in mid air. Skills you can assign/not assign to them is not a good comparison.

I would tend towards shimmiers should not be able to exit as a result.

The mid air point is the critical thing in this matter.


In any case: Strongly advice towards a fix from my side - reachers and jumpers should not be able to exit.

[Simon]

I like Dullstar's push for rules that allow to infer such details from some general rules.

I feel that these rules will be very hard to make, even if we disregard any existing culture. I believe this difficulty is natural to Lemmings-likes, i.e., it's neither the fault of the cornucopia of skills, and neither the fault of never having thought about this from first principles either.

Possible obstructions to clear rules:

• Blocker can exit, even though it can't be assigned builder.
• Climber, can it exit? Has floor underneath (and really is inside the floor), can be assigned jumper, cannot be assigned builder. Climber may be assigned jumper, I deem this surprising to this day.
• Should all three of climber/slider/shimmier be treated the same w.r.t. exiting?
• Hoister/antihoister/dangler should probably be like climber/slider.
• Ohnoer can exit, even though it doesn't sit on anything and can be assigned nothing at all. Can ohnoer exit midair?
• Splatter cannot exit, even though ohnoer can.
• Swimmer can exit. Can drowner exit? How similar is drowner to swimmer? How similar is drowner to splatter? How similar is drowner to ohnoer?

Lovely thread. I am looking forward to serious hardcore popcorn.

For the record, I deem it an inconsistency that floaters/gliders can exit, but fallers cannot.

-- Simon

[Strato Incendus]

Fallers used to be able to exit, as far as I recall, but it was scrapped many years ago. So before we change that back again, we should probably look at the reasons again that were mentioned for culling it back then.

[IchoTolot]

Ohnoer can exit, even though it doesn't sit on anything and can be assigned nothing at all. Can ohnoer exit midair?

No, it can only exit after it landed on terrain.

Splatter cannot exit, even though ohnoer can.

A splatter is already dead. An ohnoer is still alive.

For the record, I deem it an inconsistency that floaters/gliders can exit, but fallers cannot.

It was discussed back then. I found it weird as well. But ultimately it was decided that they should be able to exit.


I still would say that all previous discussions and decisions should stand and the focus should lie on the jumper/reacher bug.

[Proxima]

The discussion that resulted in removing direct drop (= fallers can exit).

A summary:

* Direct drop was always enabled in early NL, by deliberate decision, rather than being a bug as it was in original Lemmings. In particular, namida's sky tileset was designed around the mechanic, with an exit that was intended to be placed in midair.
* In early NL, each pack was a separate executable rather than being run by a centralised engine. At some point, the option was added for pack authors to disable direct drop, after this was specially requested by some pack authors.
* When NL became more centralised, we had the above discussion on whether direct drop should be enabled or not; it was considered making it an option, but due to the desire for a single set of mechanics, this was taken off the table.
* Both the discussion and the voting showed an overall strong preference against direct drop.
* Namida, who was at the time strongly in favour of keeping direct drop (I believe he has since changed his position) insisted on keeping "floaters/gliders can exit" without any voting, even though the discussion showed that many of us preferred that this should also be scrapped.

[Dullstar]

It would be a pretty large breaking change, but I think the inconsistencies introduced by the floater/glider cases and oh noers are very weird (certainly, the sort of thing I was alluding to when I said "Some of them can and some of them can't, but there isn't really that much consistent logic between them so you just have to memorize them") and are worth reconsidering.

If I had to propose a specific rule, I would say that the exit should be usable by walkers and any state that can be cancelled by assigning a walker, and unusable by all others.

[IchoTolot]

It would be a pretty large breaking change, but I think the inconsistencies introduced by the floater/glider cases and oh noers are very weird (certainly, the sort of thing I was alluding to when I said "Some of them can and some of them can't, but there isn't really that much consistent logic between them so you just have to memorize them") and are worth reconsidering.

If I had to propose a specific rule, I would say that the exit should be usable by walkers and any state that can be cancelled by assigning a walker, and unusable by all others.

Sorry, but I would be totally against that. The time for large game breaking changes was back when we transitioned to the new formats and I highly advice against another large stumbling block for content creators if is not 100% nessesary.

The only cases I find mildly weird would be gliders/floaters while the oh-noer case seems very natural to me. At this point I think it's way too late to change up the whole ruleset again and I already have quite a lot of levels that will break as a result in mind - an example would be that EVERY nuke-level would break. I won't destroy the content for this.

I also don't find the current ruleset very inconsistent to begin with.

On top of that the "any state that can be cancelled by assigning a walker" rule seems also very arbitary to me and not an improvement over the current situation.

Yes, feelings towards certain behaviors may change over time, but changing up the physics of established behaviors every now and then just results in instability, uncertainty and broken content and all that just for a potentional minor consistancy increase.

I rather have stable content than a POTENTIAL for a minor consistency increase for exiters.

Still, the reacher/jumper bug needs to be fixed.

[WillLem]

For the record, I am very strongly in favour of keeping the behaviour that reachers and jumpers can exit.

Reasoning: a jumper/reacher is a lemming in an active rather than passive state. At the moment, fallers and splatters cannot exit (both are passive states), which prevents direct drop. Conversely, jumping into an exit feels like a perfectly acceptable and expectable game mechanic rather than a bug.

Keeping rules simple is important, sure, but if floaters and gliders can exit in midair, then jumpers and reachers should be able to as well. To my mind, this is keeping things simple.



It seems to me that this is one of those things that largely comes down to "what do users prefer" rather than it being an actual problem with the game. If one user makes a level which requires jumpers to be able to exit, and another user makes a level for which jumpers exiting would be a backroute, then it's just one user's preference against the other.



In response to comments:

For the record, I deem it an inconsistency that floaters/gliders can exit, but fallers cannot.

I want to agree because I like the direct drop mechanic, but - as stated above, I would deem floater/glider to be an active lemming state, and faller to be a passive lemming state.

A splatter is already dead. An ohnoer is still alive.

So is a jumper/reacher. Why should ohnoer be able to exit and not jumper/reacher?

If I had to propose a specific rule, I would say that the exit should be usable by walkers and any state that can be cancelled by assigning a walker, and unusable by all others.

Strongly against this idea.

If you want a simple rule: any lemming which reaches an exit's trigger area by any means should be able to exit. That's simple enough, and yet it has been rejected in favour of a more complex setup. Simplicity/specificity, therefore, isn't necessarily a good argument towards any behaviour being acceptable.



Side note: fallers can interact with traps. Everyone accepts this, so why not accept fallers being able to exit?

My point here is that, again, it comes down to preference and/or whether a solid argument can be made in favour of such behaviour. There is no "rule".

[IchoTolot]

Side note: fallers can interact with traps. Everyone accepts this, so why not accept fallers being able to exit?

Simple:

The trap is the active part here. The trap simply kills every lemming entering its trigger area.

The exit is passive. It just allows the lemming to exit. The lemming has to do the work himself here.

Also, this behavior was just the pinnacle of annoying in the past: I had so many backroutes where you just could direct drop into the exit. So many ugly flamers and steel had to be placed just to avoid a lemming falling from the top of the screen into the exit. It just makes no sense. You cannot just fall out of an airplane and directly go into your own house!

A splatter is already dead. An ohnoer is still alive.

So is a jumper/reacher. Why should ohnoer be able to exit and not jumper/reacher?

An ohnoer still needs to have solid ground under his feet.

As I said earlier: The mid air point is the critical thing in this matter.

The lemming needs solid ground under his feet. A reacher or a jumper does not have solid ground under his feet therefore he should not be able to exit.

[Strato Incendus]

I kind of like WillLem's idea of "active" vs. "passive" lemmings. I'm definitely on board with IchoTolot in general, though, that we shouldn't risk a great amount of level breakage here. As far as I am aware, there are no levels yet requiring Shimmiers or Jumpers to exit while in that state, whereas this is the case for Floaters/Gliders as well as Swimmers.

The latter is important because Dullstar's suggestion would also prevent Swimmers from exiting if the exit trigger is inside a water area. And there are definitely levels which have an exit in water, too.

An ohnoer still needs to have solid ground under his feet.

As I said earlier: The mid air point is the critical thing in this matter.

The lemming needs solid ground under his feet. A reacher or a jumper does not have solid ground under his feet therefore he should not be able to exit.

I for one would also be fine with Shimmiers shimmying into the exit, just not the Reacher. The mid-air definition is somewhat arbitrary here, because if mid-air were the crucial criterium, then Floaters and Gliders shouldn't be able to exit either without any ground under their feet. You could also say "neither Shimmiers nor Swimmers have terrain under their feet as they exit". Therefore, because Swimmers can exit, Shimmiers should be able to do so, too.

Although it would be a little weird that a Shimmier can exit if his feet touch the exit, but not if he lets go of the ceiling and drops just 1 pixel as a Faller ^^.
Same for the Jumper: If he can exit at the very last frame of his arc, but not once he transitions back into a Faller, that might lead to some awful pixel precision.

[Simon]

Ohnoer can exit, even though it doesn't sit on anything and can be assigned nothing at all. Can ohnoer exit midair?

No, it can only exit after it landed on terrain.

Then the 12.11 exiting behavior splits into at least 3 groups of skills: Some can exit regardless of terrain (floater), some can exit only if on terrain and not in midair (ohnoer), some can never exit with or without terrain (faller).

lemming in an active rather than passive state. At the moment, fallers and splatters cannot exit (both are passive states)

Be careful that you're not merely introducing names for the existing (potentially completely arbitary) behavior in current 12.11, but that there is really a substance behind the naming. I believe there is substance to this, but it doesn't come through entirely yet. E.g., for a completely new skill, I would like to guess in advance what you deem active.

-- Simon

[IchoTolot]

Then the 12.11 exiting behavior splits into at least 3 groups of skills: Some can exit regardless of terrain (floater), some can exit only if on terrain and not in midair (ohnoer), some can never exit with or without terrain (faller).

Groups don't really matter here in my opinion. You also got an error in there!

This is technically not correct: A faller is a special state that only exists in midair ---> The faller belongs/fits to the "can exit only if on terrain and not in midair" group. It just exists in midair only and therefore cannot exit.

Another example here would be the blocker: A blocker is a special state that only exists on terrain  ---> The blocker belongs/fits to the "can exit only if on terrain and not in midair" group. It just exists on terrain only and therefore can exit.