Lava vs. Slime.

D00D64 said:

I thought so too, but lava, even if it WERE safe to stand on irl, is FAR too dense to sink in.

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Well, if we're being that literal, it's impossible to sink entirely in real-life quicksand, too. You can only be submerged up to about your chest, because you are less dense than the quicksand itself.

D00D64 said:

That, and it doesn't seem like that great of a mechanic (it certainly didn't in the multiplayer level with it...). It sounds more like a giant annoyance than anything else.

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Now, that's a legitimate complaint. But I didn't mean to imply that it would be better, either.

Maybe we shouldn't overthink this stuff. I mean, this is a game with an anthropomorphic talking hedgehog. We don't need to be 100% accurate to science.

Exactly, Fawfulfan. That last comment of yours makes sense.

I personally don't really care if its lava or slime or whatever. It's a game that doesn't necessarily have to make sense. The point is, you can tell that the sector will damage you in some way, and you should try to avoid it. What else do you need?

This has become a very popular topic I see. I think everyone had different ideas about exactly what defined these.

BlazeFan1 said:

Exactly, Fawfulfan. That last comment of yours makes sense.

I personally don't really care if its lava or slime or whatever. It's a game that doesn't necessarily have to make sense. The point is, you can tell that the sector will damage you in some way, and you should try to avoid it. What else do you need?

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Well, there's a different gameplay mechanic though. Lava acts differently from slime, so it's important to differentiate them.

BlazeFan1 said:

I personally don't really care if its lava or slime or whatever. It's a game that doesn't necessarily have to make sense. The point is, you can tell that the sector will damage you in some way, and you should try to avoid it. What else do you need?

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HOWEVER, it's also important to set the rules of the game outright; from experience in RVZ, and official map, we know lava is solid when you're on it, while water is jsut that; water. If another map comes around, and we suddenly fall THROUGH lava while in our Elemental Shield/Invincibility, we want to know why the lava isn't lava. [Offtopic]This is why I should really replace that flat in Hazard Comet like I did Bleeding Green; Unlike Nitric, it does not instakill[/offtopic]

Game logic frequently doesn't make any sense, but it works as a whole as long as it's applied consistently. A classic example is food healing you in many games. Sure, it makes no logical sense, but as long as food always heals you it's consistent as far as the game is concerned, it doesn't matter. If a random piece of food (that wasn't rotten or otherwise clearly marked as bad) hurt you instead, the player would complain that it makes no sense, despite food healing you not making any sense to begin with.

SRB2 is a game with lots of rules about how the world behaves. Lava in SRB2 acts like a solid while slime acts like a liquid. This doesn't really have any reason other than gameplay balance. However, we made sure to keep it consistent in the game so the player feels like the rules are being followed properly, no matter how arbitrary they are. Since everyone is already used to the rules we set up, they'll feel like something is wrong when those rules are broken, even though the way lava acts in SRB2 makes just as much sense as meat healing you in Castlevania.