Thinking Up Actual Uses for Swim?

Not sure if this is the appropriate forum for this topic, but I had to air out those thoughts lingering in the back of my mind lately.

Now that Swim is actually working, (It doesn't go through the water anymore, right?) it's still the most useless ability ever, at least through most of the current main campaign. I wonder if actual uses for it could be implemented in custom maps? Let's try to think of some!

· Waterfalls built inside walls, that the swimmer could "climb" upwards to reach new paths, or extra lives and rings. Imagine Knuckles, but bound to walls made of water. You could use a pushing force to prevent flying characters from going inside, that only the swimming character would be fast enough to go inside of.

· Half-frozen blocks of water floating in mid-air, that the character could leap to each of by swimming inside them. (Samurai Pizza Cat's Famicom game had loads of great gimmicks.) Imagine all the absurd platforming sections that could be created with this alone.

· This is a pretty abstract one, (Probably best for experimental labs and space stations.) but I also think it would be interesting if the swimming character also had attributes for running across the water at high enough speeds. That way, they can use spiral staircase FOFs made of water, or bouncy slime, to reach new paths. And if you really needed it to be grounded in reality, stone flooring and spikes under the water might work.

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All of those don't have to be exclusive to water-heavy levels either. Of course, flying characters like Tails could easily use those paths too, but that's not a bad thing if you're giving Tails more paths he can take as well. He's technically Fly/Swim anyway, but doesn't have unique animations for the latter.

Maybe a recreation of some 2D Super Mario Bros. 3 maps?

Just think of using the ability kind of like Mario 3 does.

Swim is a very conditional ability and should honestly be more of a secondary one. Swim is really useful when you can use it but it ends up very lacking in any other aspect unless you're in a level catered towards the ability. Giving the character in question another ability alongside Swim could make it a bit more fun to have, as you still retain the ability to Swim and run on water (Something Inazuma attempted to do with the Attraction Shield spin) while also having another way to get around if the area around you is dry as a towel.

Also yes, any character that gets Swim is instantly granted run on water. :U

.Luke said:

Now that Swim is actually working, (It doesn't go through the water anymore, right?)

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Yep, though that was only a thing for multiability flight I think? It's fixed whatever the case.

I'm honestly not sure about Swim being made a "secondary" ability - if you mean as in an ability2 option, what happens when you combine it with the Tails Flight ability? As it is now it would be entirely redundant there.

Monster Iestyn said:

I'm honestly not sure about Swim being made a "secondary" ability - if you mean as in an ability2 option, what happens when you combine it with the Tails Flight ability? As it is now it would be entirely redundant there.

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So don't do that? That's like blaming the custom character system if people use Thok with an actionspd of 0, or the picture format for when they make crappy recolors.

Tails should get his own swimming sprites.... I've always wondered how something like that would work out.

Is Swim still "Fly, but only underwater"? Because personally, I've kinda wanted it to control more like Spectator Mode (swim wherever you're looking) or ObjectPlace Mode (swim parallel to the ground, press jump to ascend or spin to descend).

Shadow Hog said:

Is Swim still "Fly, but only underwater"?

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Yes, but you can also run on water with it.

Shadow Hog said:

Is Swim still "Fly, but only underwater"? Because personally, I've kinda wanted it to control more like Spectator Mode (swim wherever you're looking) or ObjectPlace Mode (swim parallel to the ground, press jump to ascend or spin to descend).

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Personally I feel something like Big's Swim ability from Sonic Adventure (once you get that float powerup thingy) would be better than either of those two. As in, you automatically float to the surface, but you have to press or hold down jump to go downwards into the water.

Also, there's one other difference with Swim from Fly - apparently the ability works infinitely, rather than running out of breath after some time as with Fly.

Swimming characters should have an extended underwater timer as a secondary ability(alongside running on water). I know this is a piece of cake to do in Lua, but it'd be nice to have in the vanilla game.

Monster Iestyn said:

Personally I feel something like Big's Swim ability from Sonic Adventure (once you get that float powerup thingy) would be better than either of those two. As in, you automatically float to the surface, but you have to press or hold down jump to go downwards into the water.

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unless the character was constantly in an "attack" state, this would break any level segments that require hitting things while underwater

The float-up could use the spinning frames.

if we're still talking about MI's idea, I think the other way around would be appropriate

Blue Warrior said:

if we're still talking about MI's idea, I think the other way around would be appropriate

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Not really, no. If you sink when you hold the button, then basically this reverses the jump mechanics while in water, ie. when you're standing on the seafloor, letting go of the button would make you jump, ergo you should go into an offensive stance. Conversely, if you hold down the button, then you'll fall down helplessly, much like you do when you run off a ledge. This would make it interesting because then you can't just fly around killing everything, and there's the additional strategic element of where you should land next to get your attack back.

Butt-all meaningless for Match, though.

Here's an idea for scriptwriters to do with the swim ability, why not make it floaty platforming based like starfy? Basically, you can swim in all directions freely and will float down when your not pressing anything. You can get hit by enemies when swimming, but if you press the spin button, you can use a 1-second-long spin attack to defend yourself with, when you get out the water you'll simply splash out and try to get on land if it's nearby, other wise, back in the water you go, only problem is that players can take advantage of it and never drown until they're in Deep Sea zone's crushers section.