Dragon Fogel
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The gentryii topic made me curious if it was possible to drop a gentryii in shallow water if it was on a bridge.

Well, the answer is, if you have a bridge and all the tiles around it are shallow water and thin ice over shallow water, and you drop the ice tiles, the bridge becomes regular water. So you just drop the gentryii in regular deep water

I'm not actually sure if this should be changed, but it seems worth discussing.

disoriented
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Yeah I think bridges over water predate the introduction of shallow water, and there was never any bridge over shallow water in the game.

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Dragon Fogel
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Well, bridges aren't actually "over" anything, unlike trapdoors or thin ice. Whether they become a pit or water when they fall is determined by the surrounding tiles. It only becomes water if all the surrounding tiles are water or shallow water; with even one pit tile, the bridge becomes a pit. You can actually change what a bridge falls into in-game if there are builders or script commands changing the tiles around it.

So what I'm noting here is that if a bridge is completely surrounded by shallow water, it becomes regular water. It feels a bit weird that it's not shallow water, even if it's understandable considering when they were introduced.

But I don't have a strong opinion on whether it should be changed. It just seems obscure enough that it might not have come up before, so I thought I'd toss it out there as something to discuss for 5.0.2.

disoriented
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If the water is shallow, I don't think anyone would have gone through the trouble of constructing a bridge over it.

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skell
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How do you drop a bridge surrounded by shallow water if there are no trapdoors over shallow water? Any other way than Builder/Build command?

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Insoluble
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skell wrote:
How do you drop a bridge surrounded by shallow water if there are no trapdoors over shallow water? Any other way than Builder/Build command?

Wouldn't thin ice over shallow water work?

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Dragon Fogel
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Yes, it does, that's what I tested it with.

blorx1
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This isn't relevant to the topic, but you can use an explosion to destroy thin ice under gentryii in order to drop them into shallow water. Not that it does anything.

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[Last edited by blorx1 at 01-24-2015 05:52 AM]

skell
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I can change it that dropping a bridge which is completely surrounded by shallow water turns it into shallow water. Does anyone know about any hold where this will be an issue? We'll check with spider but I am just asking in advance.

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mrimer
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This seems like a feature request, unless I'm misunderstanding what the bug is.

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Dragon Fogel
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It was more of a point for discussion and I wasn't sure where else to put it at the time.

Mostly I didn't know if it was an intentional programming decision or just something that hadn't been considered, and if it was the latter I thought it worth bringing up so it could be changed if that was considered the best option. I don't really have a preference on it myself.

skell
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I personally believe it's a bug. Bridge turns into pit or water depending on what it is surrounded with (with pit having preference over water as far as I remember). It's only logical the same should happen with shallow water.

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RabidChild
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If the water is shallow enough to wade in, where exactly would the bridge go when it falls?

Schik
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Clearly if a bridge falls in normal water, it should become shallow water.

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mrimer
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Hmm...well, what I want to know is whether a bridge that falls in the Forest style will make a sound when you're not watching the demo in progress.

Does a bridge ever leave shallow water behind when it falls? If not, I don't think we should add that. To me, that's clearly a feature, because we're considering new functionality.

I'm not planning on changing this.

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[Last edited by mrimer at 12-11-2015 04:49 AM]

Jacob
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I agree - bridges over shallow water don't currently exist at all, so I don't see why we should add them.

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skell
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I'll be the one to disagree here then. For me it's more of a bug than a feature. When the player knows in which cases bridges leave behind pit and water then it's just a simple logical conclusion what should happen if the bridge is fully surrounded by shallow water.

Then again it could really happen in very obscure cases so I am fine with leaving it as-is.

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Dragon Fogel
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Jacob wrote:
I agree - bridges over shallow water don't currently exist at all, so I don't see why we should add them.

There's no such thing as a bridge "over" anything in the first place.

There's just a bridge and what it turns into when it drops is determined by the tiles surrounding it.

Current rules:
-If there is at least one Pit/Platform over Pit tile around a bridge when it falls, it turns into Pit.
-Otherwise, it turns into Water.

Proposed alternate rules:
-If there is at least one Pit/Platform over Pit tile around a bridge when it falls, it turns into Pit.
-If not, and there is at least one Water/Platform over Water tile around a bridge when it falls, it turns into Water.
-Otherwise, it turns into Shallow Water.

On top of that, the only ways to drop a bridge surrounded by shallow water are:
-Have Thin Ice over Shallow Water tiles as the only "solid" tiles around it (not possible before TSS)
-Set up a bridge with Shallow Water tiles surrounding it in the editor; it falls as soon as the player makes a move
-Use scripting to change tiles around it to Shallow Water

I've played most of the holds made after TSS, and haven't seen anyone do bridge-dropping in shallow water. The other two are things you have to go out of your way to do, so they might well not have come up at all. Obviously this should be checked, but basically this is not likely to be a major room-breaking change.

So it's mainly a question of which ruleset makes more sense.

skell
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Dragon Fogel wrote:
So it's mainly a question of which ruleset makes more sense.

I think the better question is - what will be the average players' assumptions? Will the average player figure out the dependency between pit and regular water and bridge and extrapolate it for shallow water or will they not. That's why I don't feel strongly about changing this.

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Jacob
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Dragon Fogel wrote:
There's no such thing as a bridge "over" anything in the first place.

Good point. I guess what I meant was, there's currently no situation currently where dropping a bridge will create a shallow water tile, so why create this novel situation. But I realise this is kind of tautological!

Perhaps more importantly, there are no trapdoors over shallow water, so the ends of the bridge will always have to be water or pit. So a playet wouldn't necessarily expect shallow water under a bridge if they've dropped pit/water trapdoors in order to drop it. Ignore this - I've now read the rest of DragonFogel's comment.

I don't have strong feelings either way, but intuitively I wouldn't expect to drop a bridge into shallow water.

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[Last edited by Jacob at 12-11-2015 08:38 PM]

Moo
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Jacob wrote: I don't have strong feelings either way, but intuitively I wouldn't expect to drop a bridge into shallow water.

Even if it's surrounded by shallow water? I'd be surprised if it became deep water then.

How about... If there's any pit next to the bridge, it becomes pit (as it does currently). If the only water next to the bridge is shallow, it becomes shallow. Otherwise it becomes deep water.
This should avoid any changes for existing rooms, but increase the intuitiveness for shallow water.

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[Last edited by Moo at 12-12-2015 12:17 AM]

mrimer
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Thanks for explaining, everyone. This is definitely a new feature request because the way this is currently working is by design.

Moo wrote:
How about... If there's any pit next to the bridge, it becomes pit (as it does currently). If the only water next to the bridge is shallow, it becomes shallow. Otherwise it becomes deep water.

Ehh, sure, why not. Skell, if you'd like to implement this, please go ahead.

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[Last edited by mrimer at 12-12-2015 12:29 AM]

Dragon Fogel
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This hasn't been implemented in 5.1.0.6345. From the above post I gather it was left up to skell, and he didn't do it for whatever reason?

Just bumping this in case this was an oversight rather than an intentional decision not to do it.

mrimer
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I'd like to hold off on implementing this new feature until after 5.1 is released, if that's okay.

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skell
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Let's think about this again. Would it be intuitive that a bridge surrounded by shallow water becomes shallow water rather than deep water?

Oh and in the 4 years since last post here, were there any rooms created that would break because of this change?

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[Last edited by skell at 10-08-2020 11:40 PM]

Dragon Fogel
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I'd say that personally, I favor the version where a bridge surrounded by shallow water produces shallow water.

Although on further thought this is actually pretty minor, because someone could use the Build command to build water or shallow water on the affected tiles. (Maybe with some weird issues with the timing of when the script would trigger.) It's just that if an architect used non-default behavior, it would be on them to clarify that.

ThemsAllTook
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A room in Rival Startup uses this behavior, and would break if the bridge were to turn into shallow water instead of water. Secret text for secret room location:



The room would still work if gentryii parts would sink in shallow water. They don't currently, but if they did, that might be a problem for Blind Race #3, on the level Gentreadyii, Get set, Go!, room 1N2E. Gentryii in that room were pre-placed on shallow water, so I guess both rooms would work if only newly-created shallow water (as in, from a bridge dropping, or from it being built under them) would sink gentryii parts...but then that seems like yet another rule inconsistency.

Personally, I'd prefer to leave this behavior as it is. It feels to me like there's very little puzzle potential in the proposed new behavior compared to the existing behavior, which is already used in multiple published rooms.

navithmastero
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Intuitively, it makes sense that bridges drop to form deep water IMO (why build a bridge over shallows). The main issue for me though is what if the bridge is surrounded by a mix of deep and shallow water? Would we then have to use some sort of tie breaking to decide what's actually underneath the bridge? It's way more intuitive and simple to have one steadfast rule 'bridges drop to produce deep water' in my opinion.

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[Last edited by navithmastero at 10-10-2020 09:18 AM]

Dragon Fogel
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The thing is, there is already a non-intuitive rule about whether falling bridges become pit or water. The suggestion is to extend this rule.

A falling bridge becomes pit if there is a single pit tile next to it (including platform over pit). It can only become water if there are no pit tiles at all.

The proposed change would be similar to this. A single pit tile would continue to make the bridge become pit; if there is none, then a single deep water tile (including platform over water) would make it become deep water. Only if neither of those are present would it become shallow water.

There will be no need to count higher than one to determine what the bridge will become when it falls.

skell
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navithmastero wrote:
Intuitively, it makes sense that bridges drop to form deep water IMO (why build a bridge over shallows).

I am sure there are thousands of bridges built over shallow water in the real world (do bridges over shallow drainage ditches count?).

Nevertheless I err on the side of keeping it as-is:
* Discoverability - both old and new behavior are equally (un)discoverable, just drop the bridge and you'll see the results.
* Consistency - okay, granted, changing the behavior would make it more consistent in my eyes, since bridges then would become whatever they are surrounded by fully.
* Intuitiveness - I think both behaviors suffer from being unintuitive, since the rule "becomes water only if fully surrounded by water" is very arbitrary.
* Puzzle potential - Can't think of pros and cons for either.

Seeing from the comments so far that it would break existing puzzles and I have no strong feelings either way I just can't see the benefits of changing this. I am marking this as Not a Bug just to move it away from my view, but feel free to discuss this further.

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