Elemental Shield vs. Water and Fire

Neo Chaotikal said:

Right, because using a completely distanced sector effect (which I might again remind, has only this effect on water blocks and water blocks alone) makes a whole lot fucking sense. That's like saying if you put ECVINES as an FOF's flat, then its planes become intangible.

EDIT: If the relative obscureness of linedef flags is your problem, then by all means just have separate "Slime Blocks" and "Lava Blocks".

Click to expand...

I don't get what the problem with having a separate sector effect is. It's very convenient and not complicated to use at all. The sector effect only makes sense because it makes flats tangible. Otherwise, we wouldn't need separate damage specials. Having a linedef flag for that will only make it more complicated for mappers to make sure that all lava blocks do what they should.

So your argument is "map makers are retarded, so let's make it as hard as possible for them to fuck up". Cool.

It doesn't make sense for a sector effect that says DAMAGE (FIRE) to make the top of a water FOF solid, especially when it does jack squat to any other FOF type.

It's also dumb that when you want to make something like lava with the "wading" properties of slime, you have to make "fake lava", as people dub it, by using water damage to secretly turn the lava into slime.

It makes no sense to have three different elemental damage types which affect water blocks differently while having only one type of elemental protection. If you're going down that route, then just make all of the three simply "standard" elemental damage, give them all the same kill message (the nasty goop one would work fine), and change the differentiating factor to their effects on water blocks.

The current system we have is sloppy, nonsensical and very inelegant, and no matter what argument you use against me you're not going to change my mind because this is an implementation-level problem, not a practical one.

EDIT: Maybe we should split the Star Post into like 32 different things, the angle system is way too complicated for people to use.

I went to RVZ1 in Match to see what message the lava in the shortcut would give me, and it still says "Burned to death!" despite the fact you can sink in it.

I see absolutely no reason for what's actually wrong with the way it is. Just because the "Damage (Fire)" and "Damage (Water)" types do nothing to non-water blocks, that doesn't make the implementation sloppy. Having separate linedef flags for those effects would just be more complicated and add nothing positive.

Titanium said:

I went to RVZ1 in Match to see what message the lava in the shortcut would give me, and it still says "Burned to death!" despite the fact you can sink in it.

Click to expand...

There's a linedef flag for that. Yes, it's actually "the top of water blocks is intangible, unless you set the sector effect to be fire damage, in which case it will be solid, except if you set linedef flag X, in which case it will be intangible again". This makes a whole lot of sense.

SpiritCrusher said:

I see absolutely no reason for what's actually wrong with the way it is. Just because the "Damage (Fire)" and "Damage (Water)" types do nothing to non-water blocks, that doesn't make the implementation sloppy. Having separate linedef flags for those effects would just be more complicated and add nothing positive.

Click to expand...

Create one or all of the following:

• Slime which hurts on contact
• Slime which is solid on top
• Lava which only hurts when submerged

You have 10 minutes. Do not use mismatching damage types. Do not use invisible FOFs. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

Neo Chaotikal said:

Do not use mismatching damage types.

Click to expand...

Who cares if the sector types are mismatching? Just get rid of those stupid console messages and be done.

SpiritCrusher said:

Who cares if the sector types are mismatching? Just get rid of those stupid console messages and be done.

Click to expand...

So effectively the difference between the three damage types would be... ???

Neo Chaotikal said:

If you're going down that route, then just make all of the three simply "standard" elemental damage, give them all the same kill message (the nasty goop one would work fine), and change the differentiating factor to their effects on water blocks.

Click to expand...

Way to read, bro

Neo Chaotikal said:

So effectively the difference between the three damage types would be... ???

Click to expand...

Water damage would only hurt when submerged deep enough, lava damage would make the flats solid, and electrical damage would do nothing special. You might wanna rename them, but that would really not be important.

Yes it would. You would not longer feel like you're "cheating" by labelling a lava pit with water damage, which is the whole problem.

(protip: I'm agreeing with you, you can stop flailing already)

I prefer each elemental hazard to have at least some kind of unique property. The problem with icy water is not only the fact that it lacks a designated cue, but that its effect is identical to the chemical damage. Now if instead it worked like Super Mario Galaxy where there's a screen-wide effect and a delay before you get hurt, it wouldn't be so bad.

What I don't want is for things to end up like the 1.09.4 where lava/water/slime is just used for the requisite water hazard but be otherwise entirely interchangeable. Mystic Realm was a HUGE offender, as are the circuit stages. What this does is give things more of a variety while also connecting them with elemental types of damage so the player doesn't have to wrap his head around whether its "the lava you sink into" or "the lava you can stand on".

Am I the only one who likes the console sayings?

I personally think that the elemental damage effects aren't unique enough. I believe that water blocks with Water Damage should have a slightly different sound effect...more like a viscous-sounding splodge than the splash of regular water. Electrical Damage should have a zapping sound. That shouldn't be hard; we've already got some suitable sounds in SRB2 that we could simply repurpose. It might be cool for the screen to shake a little too, to emphasize how jarring it is to the character.

Furthermore, I think Water Damage really ought to be renamed to Slime Damage, seeing as we pretty much only ever use it for various toxic liquids (except when we are making lava that isn't lava), and Slime Damage would also be much more self-explanatory to new wadders. Some of you might argue "Wait! Sometimes Water Damage is also used for freezing water!" to which my counterargument is that the name "Slime Damage" would still reflect by far the most common use of the effect. Likewise, I am also open to the idea of creating a new elemental damage effect called Ice Damage (or something else, I'm not married to that name), for use in freezing water, which would basically act like Electrical Damage does now.

Personally, I think that if you're going to get hit with elemental effects, there should be some small temporary effect that's placed onto you. Like for instance, if you get hit with the electric kind of effect, you should have an effect like the attraction shield, except in reality is attracts enemies towards you. If you get burnt, you should be slowed down. If hit with poison, your controls should be temporarily messed up. (Kind of like in the multiplayer mode in Sonic Advance). And all of these would have status effects over your player.

Neo Chaotikal said:

EDIT: If the relative obscureness of linedef flags is your problem, then by all means just have separate "Slime Blocks" and "Lava Blocks".

Click to expand...

Actually, the point of having it as a sector type allows you to have a Linedef Executor that adds or removes the damage. I.e., maybe hit a switch and all of a sudden that floor isn't so painful anymore.

The different types of damage were created because
a) Mystic couldn't make up his mind what kinds of shields he wanted (originally SRB2 was basic, elemental, armageddon, and attraction).
b) People wanted to be able to recreate the S3&K shields

Elemental's original billing was that it protected you from any environmental hazards... fire, electricity, chemicals, and you could breathe underwater. At some point this was considered too overpowered, so Mystic came up with the idea for a Fire shield (red) that did flame trails when you spindash. It was later decided that was lame and it was merged back into the elemental.

But if we wanted to recreate the S3&K shields, then why do we have the whirlwind shield? Why not just give the double jump ability to the electric shield?

Well SSN, there's also the console messages, which add a bit of variety to otherwise repetitive x killed by y messages. I rather like being able to see messages like "Player fell in some nasty goop!" or "Player got fried by player's fire trail!".

At any rate, now that there ARE different types of damage, I'd rather like to see them be varied instead of all just being damaging water.

I actually wouldn't mind if the Liquid and Inferno Shields were reinstated. It reminded me of S3K's shield structure, and that was one of my favorite games. The Elemental Shield's really overpowered in certain levels, too...(Infernal Cavern, anyone?)

Also, I have no objections to recoloring the Force Shield to cyan.

Cyan Ryan said:

I actually wouldn't mind if the Liquid and Inferno Shields were reinstated. It reminded me of S3K's shield structure, and that was one of my favorite games..

Click to expand...

lololol favoritism towards classic things

I actually prefer the new Sheild system in terms of multiplayer. It's really annoying to get something that's absolutely useless. Fishing through the list is annoying when the only really worthwhile one in most situations was the Flame Shield.
Now that it's all in one, it's considerably less annoying and there isn't all the wasted time.

Kyasarin said:

lololol favoritism towards classic things

Click to expand...

Isn't SRB2 supposed to lean towards classic-style stuff...?

Cyan Ryan said:

Isn't SRB2 supposed to lean towards classic-style stuff...?

Click to expand...

Yes, but does SRB2 have to be dependent on classics for all ideas? No, it doesn't.

Even though the new system isn't much like the classics or like the previous system, it's a boost to the multiplayer department, which appears to be the most popular part of the game.
Having a ton of gimmicky Shields that were practically never of use was just -- well -- useless, and actually annoying in situations where you'd have to fish through a Monitor and hope you get the right Shield for the level.
Though there's obviously still a bit of luck involved, it's not to the point that you'd waste a lot of time trying to find a specific Shield for a specific situation. Having it all in one makes it much more easily accessible and saves time and patience.

If we're trying to be creative with shields, then why did we create basic stuff like an explosion, attraction, and fire trail shield ability? For a creative shield, why not create a shield that allows you to "wall kick" off of the wall in a sense similar to how when Knuckles jumps off a wall when gliding except instead of barely going up, you jump up as high as if you were normally jumping (And you would actually do a slight boost off the wall so that way you couldn't just keep constantly climbing the wall). It would be convenient in a match in case someone decides they want to try to hit you with a scatter ring or something. And besides match, I think that could be used in a great gimmicky way in single-player levels.