New Concept Ideas For Development

by Wizzy Wed Dec 09, 2015 7:11 am

I came up with these concepts I think last year or a few months ago, but I figure there's no reason to keep them to myself. Perhaps these could be of help to future development in some way, or maybe just to get ideas from. Some of them have actually already been implemented in LR:A, which I'm pretty excited about. Anyway here's a few concept images:

Better look for tools:

Spoiler:

Line thickness options (already in LR:A. Yay Smile

) :

Spoiler:

Ability to erase part of a line, instead of 1 whole line drawn:

Spoiler:

Free form drawing, as well as line snapping enable/disable button (with brush example when using the pencil tool) (I believe a button for line snapping may already be in some version(s) :

Spoiler:

Enable/disable line visibility (would go with select tool) :

Spoiler:

A simple ruler:

Spoiler:

New wind line type:

Spoiler:

New slippery/ice line:

Spoiler:

Select tool:

Spoiler:

This is just an example of a great use for the select tool being able to move objects such as this tree:

Spoiler:

Ability to customize Bosh's rate of crashing/make Bosh more durable (or the alternative would be just to make new/different physics) :

Spoiler:

Importing/Exporting tracks:

Spoiler:

Maybe these could be of some use to developers. Cheers!

by **Apple** Wed Dec 09, 2015 10:55 am

There's some interesting ideas here. Even though a track isn't quite as impressive if you set the durability to 100, that would be very fun to play around with.

by Lukking Wed Dec 09, 2015 10:57 am

shua wrote:There's some interesting ideas here. Even though a track isn't quite as impressive if you set the durability to 100, that would be very fun to play around with.

I guess the 100% no crash is interesting in order to gain new players since every new player would rather set it to 100% than make a new line or move the line around.

by **Conundrumer** Wed Dec 09, 2015 11:32 am

I'm wary of adding too many features. More tools makes the UI more difficult to learn. More freedom hinders creativity. That being said:

Better look for tools: https://github.com/conundrumer/lr/issues/51

Line thickness option: A toggle for globally changing line thickness to half thickness is planned.

Ability to erase part of a line: Using lines to cut other lines is planned. You can currently angle lock a line and drag the endpoint.

Free form drawing: I don't know what you're suggesting here.

Line snapping enable/disable: There will be advanced settings.

Line visibility: How about white scenery lines/layers?

Ruler: You don't need a ruler if you can angle snap and duplicate lines.

Wind line: No

Ice line: lines already have zero friction, for the sled at least

Select tool: https://github.com/conundrumer/lr/issues/65

Durability: There will be advanced settings.

Importing/exporting tracks: This already exists for both LRA and LRJS

www.conundrumer.com/lr

by rabid squirrel Wed Dec 09, 2015 2:00 pm

First of all:
- Line snapping is literally toggleable in all recent versions (3.4.x, LRJS, LRA)
- The pencil tool is basically freeform drawing?
- what conun said about the ruler. Why would you need a ruler with angle & length indicators and a duplicate feature?
- how would an ice line even work?
- import and export already works

Not personally a fan of (I would just not use the feature):
- line thickness (I really enjoy the limitation of art with lines of a single thickness)
- wind line (why????)
- durability feature (Doesn;t the challenge of Line Rider quirk disappear when you have this? I hope we would at least have an indication of a default durability? or a reset button?)

A fan of these, sort of:
- erase part of a line (line segmentation is great but I would much rather be able to manipulate individual lines than treat collections of lines you've drawn like a giant jpeg)
- line visibility (I don't really understand the application for scenery lines, but it might be cool to have track lines that were visible in edit mode and not in play mode... Not sure if this would make it less accessible though)

Totally a fan:
- better look for tools (though this really isn't a big deal tbh)
- select tool (as long as you can't copy something from one track and paste it into another

)

by Wizzy Wed Dec 09, 2015 5:52 pm

Ok. Conun's post was incredibly arrogant, and some of what he said was completely unnecessary.

Rabid's post was also pretty disrespectful. There is no reason whatsoever to have an attitude. Don't like someone's idea? Fine. Don't get in someone's face about it and get heated up over, might I remind you, Line Rider. You are free to have your own opinion but you need to express it in a more respectful manner.

Gonna edit this later.

by efrazable Wed Dec 09, 2015 5:54 pm

FreakingKoalaMan wrote:Ok. Conun's post was incredibly arrogant, and some of what he said was completely unnecessary.

Rabid's post was also pretty disrespectful. There is no reason whatsoever to have an attitude. Don't like someone's idea? Fine. Don't get in someone's face about it and get heated up over, might I remind you, Line Rider. You are free to have your own opinion but you need to express it in a more respectful manner.

Gonna edit this later.

bruh clam down

by Chuggers Wed Dec 09, 2015 6:00 pm

Love the idea of selective line visibility, why hasn't anyone done this

also, the freeform pen drawing to one line thing would be helpful

also, heel yes to the ruler and select tool

by JealousCloud Wed Dec 09, 2015 6:13 pm

efrazable wrote:
FreakingKoalaMan wrote:Ok. Conun's post was incredibly arrogant, and some of what he said was completely unnecessary.

Rabid's post was also pretty disrespectful. There is no reason whatsoever to have an attitude. Don't like someone's idea? Fine. Don't get in someone's face about it and get heated up over, might I remind you, Line Rider. You are free to have your own opinion but you need to express it in a more respectful manner.

Gonna edit this later.
bruh clam down

indeed
tits need to be clammed right now.

by rabid squirrel Wed Dec 09, 2015 6:52 pm

FreakingKoalaMan wrote:Don't get in someone's face about it and get heated up over, might I remind you, Line Rider.

1) I care deeply about Line Rider and I do get heated up about it on occasion because it is extremely important to me.

Actually, nothing gets me heated up quite like people saying "It's just Line Rider". I've spent more time related to Line Rider than virtually anything else in my life, and I consider it to be the #1 importance in my life (after food, water, clothes, source of income, an apartment, etc)

2) I don't see how anything I said was "getting in your face" or "disrespectful"

by Wizzy Wed Dec 09, 2015 7:10 pm

Conundrumer wrote:I'm wary of adding too many features. More tools makes the UI more difficult to learn. More freedom hinders creativity. That being said:

People are smarter than you think. And I disagree in our case about freedom hindering creativity. In this case it would benefit more.

Ability to erase part of a line: Using lines to cut other lines is planned. You can currently angle lock a line and drag the endpoint.

This seems counter-productive. The goal of erasing part of a line is to try to cut back on creating another one in the first place.

Free form drawing: I don't know what you're suggesting here.

I find this as if you're trying to say what I drew is unclear, yet I don't know how it could be more clear.

Line visibility: How about white scenery lines/layers?

It's not just invisible lines it's toggling them on and off.

Ruler: You don't need a ruler if you can angle snap and duplicate lines.

It would be for making precise measurements of lines.. This would help with more accurate proportioning.

Wind line: No

Completely unnecessary to say this. You did not need to say this to write it off bluntly, or you could have just said why you didn't think it was a good idea.

Ice line: lines already have zero friction, for the sled at least

A bit of a smart ass remark. Obviously it would not be the same as a normal line, as you see in the picture Bosh would slide more to give more rotation, as if he were on "ice"

rabid squirrel wrote:First of all:
"First of all"

- Line snapping is literally toggleable in all recent versions (3.4.x, LRJS, LRA)
"(I believe a button for line snapping may already be in some version(s) :" this was also in the first paragraph of my post.

- The pencil tool is basically freeform drawing?
It's not the same. free form drawing as in draw a path and it creates a single line instead of multiple.

- what conun said about the ruler. Why would you need a ruler with angle & length indicators and a duplicate feature?
You can read my reply to this answer.

- how would an ice line even work?
Same for this.

- import and export already works
Now it does. Again this was in the first paragraph, these drawings are from a few months ago.

Not personally a fan of (I would just not use the feature):
- line thickness (I really enjoy the limitation of art with lines of a single thickness)
Personal preference.

- wind line (why????)
Because?

- durability feature (Doesn;t the challenge of Line Rider quirk disappear when you have this? I hope we would at least have an indication of a default durability? or a reset button?)
That would be the plan, and it would not be for the challenge. Not all tracks rely on how technically skilled people can be, and would be customizable. This is easily the best way to make the game more fun more newcomers and accessible. Would also open up more levels of creativity.

A fan of these, sort of:
- line visibility (I don't really understand the application for scenery lines, but it might be cool to have track lines that were visible in edit mode and not in play mode... Not sure if this would make it less accessible though)
The example I drew clearly shows why it would be great for scenery lines. Did you even look at it? Or did you just reply to all of this without reading/understanding some of the ideas anyway? That's the vibe I'm getting from you.

Totally a fan:
- better look for tools (though this really isn't a big deal tbh)
For you. I would personally love a more clean/simple look. I do not like drawing with the pencil and erasing with a solid black circle.

- select tool (as long as you can't copy something from one track and paste it into another )
This would hopefully not happen, and even if it did I don't know why this would be a big deal that we would dismiss it entirely. People do it all the time in all mediums of art and in workplace. Not that I encourage it. People would be able to tell if someone copied someone else's work, .sols could be shared privately, or other steps to decrease plagiarism.

by rabid squirrel Wed Dec 09, 2015 7:31 pm

FreakingKoalaMan wrote:The goal of erasing part of a line is to try to cut back on creating another one in the first place.

FreakingKoalaMan wrote:It's not the same. free form drawing as in draw a path and it creates a single line instead of multiple.

I think (?) you have in mind a different system for drawing and erasing. Instead of drawing a straight line or a continuous stream of pencil lines, you want to be able to draw ONE pencil line, and then erase PARTS of it. AKA treating the track like a big jpeg file and you have an eraser and paintbrush tool. If this is correct, my question to you is, how is this better than what we currently have, especially if we implement the ability to split a line into multiple lines, and the ability to move individual lines around?

FreakingKoalaMan wrote:It's not just invisible lines it's toggling them on and off.

FreakingKoalaMan wrote:The example I drew clearly shows why it would be great for scenery lines. Did you even look at it? Or did you just reply to all of this without reading/understanding some of the ideas anyway? That's the vibe I'm getting from you.

If anything is disrespectful it's your comment here. Of course I looked at it. I don't understand though - you select an area of scenery lines and they are invisible now? Why would you want that? How do you select them again if you can't see them?

FreakingKoalaMan wrote:It would be for making precise measurements of lines.. This would help with more accurate proportioning.

hm, interesting idea. would be complicated to implement, but I could possibly see this being useful to measure part of a drawing without making a line. Now that I think about it, I usually use my finger on the screen to measure proportions lol.

FreakingKoalaMan wrote:as you see in the picture Bosh would slide more to give more rotation, as if he were on "ice"

So it would basically increase his rotation if he's rotating in any direction relative to a line? Hm. Okay, that seems like it might be possible. But then, with this and wind lines - I don't really understand why you want them other than just... making Line Rider more complicated?

FreakingKoalaMan wrote:That would be the plan, and it would not be for the challenge. Not all tracks rely on how technically skilled people can be, and would be customizable. This is easily the best way to make the game more fun more newcomers and accessible. Would also open up more levels of creativity.

I sorta disagree that more slider-based adjustment features would make the game more accessible. Open up creativity, maybe... but usually creativity is opened up by adding constraints, not the other way around.

by **Conundrumer** Thu Dec 10, 2015 12:26 am

Ability to erase part of a line: Using lines to cut other lines is planned. You can currently angle lock a line and drag the endpoint.
This seems counter-productive. The goal of erasing part of a line is to try to cut back on creating another one in the first place.

Using angle lock to erase part of a line: http://gfycat.com/DefensivePerkyBordercollie
Demonstration of using lines to cut other lines: http://gfycat.com/AliveGrimyHackee
I think that the features I proposed above would allow you to be more precise than having a modified eraser.

Line visibility: How about white scenery lines/layers?
It's not just invisible lines it's toggling them on and off.

Sorry, I meant to say I want to implement layers like in Photoshop where you'd be able to show/hide layers, in addition to grouping lines.

Free form drawing: I don't know what you're suggesting here.
I find this as if you're trying to say what I drew is unclear, yet I don't know how it could be more clear.

I was confused by how a series of line segments could be considered 1 line, but now I see you mean lines drawn by pencils are grouped by default. I agree, that makes sense. Currently, in my version, when you draw a stroke with the pencil tool, the undo command removes all the lines in that stroke.

I'm wary of adding too many features. More tools makes the UI more difficult to learn. More freedom hinders creativity.
People are smarter than you think. And I disagree in our case about freedom hindering creativity. In this case it would benefit more.

About adding more tools:
We have two types of Line Rider players: The casual user and the power user.

The casual user can stick with the traditional set of Line Rider tools. It's proven to work for the past 9 years, and it's what people expect, so I'm not inclined to change it, hence why the initial toolbar in my version is the same.

The power user (everyone on wrtl) would want to learn all the tools to optimize their workflow. That is what I made the advanced toolbars for. I understand we're willing to put in more time and effort to learn the tools, but that doesn't give the designer (me) the excuse to add in a lot of tools for potential use cases (that often end up being single-use). I had bad experience using software that has tools for every specific thing. I trust that people can be smart and creative, but good design means trying to make the user think as little as possible about the tool itself (in this case, the editing tools of Line Rider), and more about the medium itself. It's also good design to make the tools composable (see ruler example below), since composition is an effective way to create complex things from simple parts (in this case, complex editing from simple but flexible tools). I don't want to burden myself and fellow power users with learning another Photoshop, another Illustrator, especially since we're only drawing lines to begin with. This is my rational for being defensive about adding new tools.

Ruler: You don't need a ruler if you can angle snap and duplicate lines.

It would be for making precise measurements of lines.. This would help with more accurate proportioning.

I think a grid would be more useful. That being said, when you are able to create perfect squares (or triangles, or hexagons, or any arbitrary tessellating polygon) after this is implemented and after selection/duplication is implemented, you can build your own grid (and put it in a separate layer) Smile

About adding more line types/having more track settings

Wind line: No
you could have just said why you didn't think it was a good idea.

Ice line: lines already have zero friction, for the sled at least
Obviously it would not be the same as a normal line, as you see in the picture Bosh would slide more to give more rotation, as if he were on "ice"

durability feature (Doesn;t the challenge of Line Rider quirk disappear when you have this? I hope we would at least have an indication of a default durability? or a reset button?)
That would be the plan, and it would not be for the challenge. Not all tracks rely on how technically skilled people can be, and would be customizable. This is easily the best way to make the game more fun more newcomers and accessible. Would also open up more levels of creativity.

This is more of a philosophical issue. In fact, rabid and mhenr recently briefly argued about it in the lra thread. I think we should all talk about it in a different thread, the spirit of Line Rider and the nature of "creativity."

durability feature (Doesn;t the challenge of Line Rider quirk disappear when you have this? I hope we would at least have an indication of a default durability? or a reset button?)
That would be the plan, and it would not be for the challenge. Not all tracks rely on how technically skilled people can be, and would be customizable. This is easily the best way to make the game more fun more newcomers and accessible. Would also open up more levels of creativity.

No one at WRTL, including myself, understands the casual user as much as we would like. We can't make definitive claims on what potential features would attract new players. We'd have to do actual user studies (like interviewing our friends) to really understand their mindset.

I hope we can continue to have productive discussion without commenting about tone of language (that means you too, rabid). We're all here for Line Rider.

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