[SUG] Invincibility

[WillLem]

Made significant progress on this now!

Here's a full video demonstration, showcasing as many of the invincibility properties as possible. For reference, they currently are:

Dedicated recolouring and "starry" overlay effect
Can survive any fall
Are immune to traps and fire
Can swim in all water object types
Are immune to zombies and poison
Ascend/fall out of ice cubes when assigned a Freezer
Leave a crater, but don't explode, when assigned a Bomber
If previously neutral, are no longer neutral
Get free skills

Click the gif to watch the full video:



At the moment the state is triggered by collecting all diamonds (and this is Editor-side optional). Next step is to add preplaced and hatch support, if possible.

[Strato Incendus]

Reminds me of the joke skill I once suggested called "The Tank". Basically a combination of things that were last seen in NeoLemmix 1.43: Ghosts (ignoring objects) and non-lethal Bombers; I think I also recall an "Invincibility" gimmick that had many of these effects (for example, as far as I recall, it also made Stoners non-lethal, i.e. would now apply to Freezers). I'm not sure, though, since I didn't dedicate an entire rank in "Lemmicks" to the Invincibility gimmick, but only a few levels on the Bedlam rank.

[WillLem]

a combination of things that were last seen in NeoLemmix 1.43: Ghosts (ignoring objects) and non-lethal Bombers; I think I also recall an "Invincibility" gimmick that had many of these effects

It's quite different from Ghosts; ignoring objects is pretty much where the similarities begin and end. Invincible lems can be assigned skills and don't turn other lems away.

I suppose the state is an amalgamation of several 1.43 gimmicks in a single lem state, which to my mind makes it less of a "gimmick" and more of an outright feature, especially when combined with collectible diamonds. But, I'm sure there are those who would disagree

After some consideration, I'm thinking it would be best not to go ahead with pre-assigned lems/hatches for invincibility, instead keeping it to only achievable with collectibles. I like the idea that only one lemming can be invincible at any time; it keeps the state unique, interesting and valuable; for instance, it means it's better to avoid the exit if the player wishes to keep the invincible lem active in the level.

I suppose we could make it so that only one pre-placed lemming can be assigned invincibility (this would avoid the need to place a single collectible next to a pre-placed lemming in order to achieve the same thing*), and then don't include hatch assignability. For now though, 2.7 will have invincibility as "assignable via collectibles only."

*With that said, the sound cue that would result from this might actually be helpful in letting players know that something is different.

[Strato Incendus]

Ghosts could be assigned skills in 1.43, otherwise they would have been pretty useless.

I agree that pre-placed invincible lemmings should be possible. The closest thing we have to an invincible lemming thus far is the Disarmer - specifically, a multi-athlete that can survive falls (Floater / Glider / Slider) and can survive traps by being a Disarmer. This is a commonly required setup for any level where you want to force the player to get a specific lemming from A to B:

If the required skills are available on the panel or as pickup skills, it's easy to circumvent the intended solution by just having a different lemming do the job.
However, if the required skills (in this case, invincibility) exist only one one specific lemming from the beginning of the level, this can be vital for enforcing solutions which would otherwise be impossible to enforce (=always result in backroutes).

[WillLem]

I agree that pre-placed invincible lemmings should be possible.

For now, I've decided not to go ahead with this. I'm not sure if it's possible to enforce "only allow 1 invincible lemming per level" code-side without introducing potential bugs. Note that the Editor would also need to support this as well. There would also need to be code to ensure that the lem isn't invincible and a zombie/neutral, which also adds mess.

With that said, if you want to have a pre-placed invincible lem, simply place a regular lemming in exactly the same place as a single collectible, ensuring that the lemming is positioned over the collectible's trigger area. When the level starts, they will immediately grab the collectible and become invincible - this will also trigger the sound effect, letting the player know that something is different.

Yes, this means we can't have multiple collectibles and "pre-placed" invincible lems in the same level, which I realise nerfs the collectibles feature somewhat if people end up wanting to use it just to make pre-placed invincible lems. I might reconsider this decision later if there's demand for it, and if this ends up being a regular use case.

this can be vital for enforcing solutions

With SuperLemmix, I'm aiming to encourage designers towards "multi-solution" levels. If a feature ends up helping to enforce "single-solution" levels, I'll most likely want to remove or seriously revise it!

[WillLem]

Added a poll.

We've had a chance to sit with invincible lems having free skills for a bit. No levels have been created yet (apart from those in the SuperLemmix Welcome Pack), but I wonder what people's thoughts are on this particular aspect of the invincibility state at this point.

If you haven't already, please do check out the SuperLemmix Welcome Pack for several examples of levels featuring invincible lemmings. I'm in two minds as to whether the levels are actually improved by allowing the lem free skills. My instinct is the state should feel somewhat OP and game-breaking, as it's what I'd expect from invincibility in video games in general.

Maybe free skills is a step too far - it could perhaps be more acceptable if the state had some other limitation (such as a time limit, or inability to exit whilst invincible). This is a possibility.

So far, I don't think anybody who has replied to this agreed that free skills is a good idea, sadly. Now that we've had a chance to play with it for a bit though (and still will until at least version 2.9, I imagine), what do we think now?

[WillLem]

Added a poll.

We've had a chance to sit with invincible lems having free skills for a bit. No levels have been created yet (apart from those in the SuperLemmix Welcome Pack), but I wonder what people's thoughts are on this particular aspect of the invincibility state at this point.

If you haven't already, please do check out the SuperLemmix Welcome Pack for several examples of levels featuring invincible lemmings. I'm in two minds as to whether the levels are actually improved by allowing the lem free skills. My instinct is the state should feel somewhat OP and game-breaking, as it's what I'd expect from invincibility in video games in general.

Maybe free skills is a step too far, though. Perhaps it would be more acceptable if the state had some other limitation (such as a time limit, or inability to exit whilst invincible). This is a possibility.

[jkapp76]

I voted YES, but option 2 to possible consider a time limit.
Seems a bit mario-like for invincibility to end after a time, which I like. I think he should be able to exit too.

P.S. I'm on the edge for option 1.

[WillLem]

Any more votes?

[jkapp76]

I was thinking about changing my vote from 2, to 1 just to break the tie. But it's been broke... for now.

[WillLem]

OK, let's keep the free skills. The voting slightly leans that way, and my own thoughts on it are that free skills are a good thing for Invincible lems. Reasons:

1) One of the side-goals of SuperLemmix is to introduce some features that encourage level designers to think of other ideas than "find the intended solution" when creating levels. We still want those levels, of course, but since Forum content has distilled the game pretty much exclusively down to that single level design principle, we need features that offer interesting and fun alternatives.

2) Invincibility should subvert the main principles of whatever game it's applied to. Skillset is one of the main principles of Lemmings, ergo we should do something with it when Invincibility is active.

3) It's super fun

One thing that could be considered to make it slightly less of a game-breaking feature is to only allow non-zero skills to be freely assigned to Invincible lems. So, if all of a particular skill have been exhausted before Invincibility status has been attained, that skill cannot be freely assigned to the Invincible lem.

Thoughts? Maybe we should try that for 2.8?