Frostav said:
-she should be able to use her hammer spin attack after hitting a spring. This would give her a distinct niche as the only character who defend themselves after hitting a spring
Amy being able to use hammer out of standard rise/fall states is something that I had been thinking of when playtesting, but it's less so because of the utility it would provide and more because of the visible intuitiveness. Probably Amy's biggest design flaw right now is that there's no way to tell for sure when Amy can and can't use her twinspin until you've done it a few times and you're actively keeping track of her "thokked"/jump state, because her jump frames currently don't convey that information due to being the same as her spring frames. I have no problem with Amy not being able to use hammer in these situations from a mechanical perspective (since it's technically consistent with how every other character works), but it would be easier to justify if Amy used different jump sprites for when she's allowed to hammer. Otherwise, allowing Amy to hammer at any point in the air is probably the next most intuitive solution and is unlikely to have any negative consequences on her gameplay.
-she should be able to use her hammer while running to make a large leap. One of the best things about SRB2 is the fact that you can get ridiculous airtime compared to other platformers, and this is a thing she could already do in the Advance series! I don't know how it would exactly, but being able to make huge leaps as Amy would be a lot of fun.
I could see the appeal of this, but the issue is that running and hammering already has utility for extending the range of Amy's hammer particles. Making it vertically thrust Amy on top of this might constitute a clash in utility that the end user is forced to work with.
There's also an argument to be made that one of the strengths of Amy's current design is in its relative simplicity. It may be better to give Amy more hammer uses by rewarding her with extra height when she destroys an object with her air hammer -- much like what happens now when Amy hammers a spring.
-It would be cool if her hammer flip in mid-air gave her a slight forward boost and a tiny bit of air, like a tiny upwards thok. Not enough to be useful as a true double-jump, but a way of extending her already impressive jumps even farther.
I have no thoughts on this on its own, but I will say that I lobbied for Amy being able to use hammer on spin in the air because it felt much easier to play than hammer on double-jump. Currently it's still the case that Amy will use shield ability instead of hammer on spin, if she has one. It would tidy up her control scheme and give her extra utility if spin allowed Amy to user her hammer
and the shield ability at the same time. Maybe hammering an enemy out of elemental drop could have additive rebound properties here, as a start to giving her more hammer tricks for mobility purposes.