[SUG] New skill - Batter/Flinger

[Strato Incendus]

Ah, I recognise my Lemmings World Tour level "In the army now" (which is in itself a NeoLemmix remake of the L3D level "This is the army").

So the Boomerang, in this case, would fling the lemming back over that wall?

[jkapp76]

So the Boomerang, in this case, would fling the lemming back over that wall?

I drew the pink line to indicate the travel arc of the boomerang. To show how the boomerang could move over, or through terrain by basically ignoring terrain. If there was a lemming near that green brick wall he wouldn't be thrown far enough the clear the wall.
A boomerang would be bigger than the average ammo round or grenade, so it could hit a target easier. And after it travels horizontally through its course it turns upward to capture a bit more ground and sails up and off the screen.

This is just my quick idea of how a long-range non-destructive flinger could work. The most debateable part of this idea is how I describe it as passing through terrain by ignoring terrain. It would be passing over or in front of it visually. No destruction at all. only hits lems\zombies.

I like the bazooker idea too. And I think the bazooker should leave a crater. And like Lemmings 2 I think the location of the crater should determine the nearby lemmings that are flung. I like the original batter idea too.

[jkapp76]

Here are all the frames for the Bazooka sprite.

If we fire the bazooka strictly horizontally we may not need frames 11-18 as they aim upward.

Any lemmings close to the detonation crator are affected and flung. I couldn't get the lemming firing the bazooka to be flung except once when i fired into the ceiling direcly above him.

The bazooka misses lemmings and hits terrain. Which would make it good for hitting zombies and balloons.

[Simon]

What do you mean by "ranged Batter"? What we're currently discussing the Bazooker could look like? If the range works in a perfectly horizontal trajectory

Right, the inspiring L3 hadouken is a non-instant projectile that travels straight horizontally. It crosses gaps, but vanishes when it touches an uphill slope.

Flung lemmings are already chaotic. Such a purely horizontally-flying projectile is easy to predict, limiting the overall chaos.

The origin of the Lix batter was that I wanted another way to remove enemy blockers. Before the batter, you could remove ground (impossibe on steel) or invest in a timed fling-exploder (costs a lix, costs 5 seconds, can backfire). The Lix batter is good at batting blockers, and that was the primary job. The ballistic arc of the batted lix was secondary in the original design.

You're not constrained by any such need to remove blockers only. Ranged batting is a loose idea, you have a lot of leeway and can be creative. E.g., maybe Pinball (with its near-straight ball trajectories) is a better inspiration than Lix batting (with the medium-length ballistic arc).

-- Simon

[Floyd Brannon]

I think the Ballers look good but only if they don't roll too far. It would seem odd to me that a bazooka caused several lemmings to all roll around.

I'd probably prefer more of a jolted toss. but a roll could be good if its not too rolly. My opinion.

[WillLem]

I think the Ballers look good but only if they don't roll too far. It would seem odd to me that a bazooka caused several lemmings to all roll around.

The example shown is just the sprite. The arc they take upon being hit is dealt with separately.

What's most likely is that Ballers will take an exaggerated Jumper arc, bouncing whenever they hit something. But, this hasn't been fully decided yet.

[WillLem]

Some decisions on the Batter:

The Batter will not be a ranged skill, and instead will function like the Lix Batter, only affecting lems in the immediate vicinity.

The "bat" will be another projectile type, like spear or grenade; we already have a way for lemmings to detect the presence of airborne projectiles, and this works nicely; makes sense to re-use this same logic for the Batter. The obvious difference is that the bat will not be thrown, but instead will take effect during a particular frame of the Batter's animation.

During the Batter's "hit" frame (when the bat is at full extension in the animation), any lems that are in contact with the Bat's collision area will become Ballers - the exact physics of these lems has yet to be decided upon, but current instincts are that it should be a much less complex response than the Lix Batter*.

*Having thought about this again recently, and having re-read Proxima's list of reasons for supporting this skill, I think the Baller's movement should closely resemble (if not exactly be) that of a Jumper; a sprite-swap might be all that's needed, and then we can simply re-use Jumper physics - this would keep the skill action relatively predictable and would cover all of the benefits mentioned by Proxima, as well as drastically reducing the potential workload.

[Proxima]

I would recommend giving the batted lemming a higher and wider arc than the Jumper. Then ledges that are out of reach for a Jumper but in reach of a Batter can present an interesting problem, because you have to have (at least) two lemmings close together for one to bat the other.

[WillLem]

I would recommend giving the batted lemming a higher and wider arc than the Jumper.

When working on the Hoverboarder skill, I tried modifying the jumper arc for Hoverboarders and (while partly successful) discovered that it's a lot of extra work for very little gain.

Jumper code is extensive throughout the project and it has a lot of edge cases that would all need to be duplicated for any other "move through the air" actions that aren't in a straight line and which require complex position checks (note: there is still a Jumper bug in both NL and SLX that neither I nor namida have yet found a fix for!)

I'm not completely ruling out a larger arc, but let's see how it goes with the much, much, much easier method of re-using what's already there first; in practice, it might be plenty good enough. The challenge you describe would still be possible to create, even in a level providing both Jumpers and Batters.