I think the word you're looking for is bullshit.

What I mean is. They are animations, but, there is a model too that... I don't know why I'm trying to explain it, other people know a lot more about it than me.

Sprites ?

Its more than just a sprite, I think. I'm not too sure, wait for Kapteeni or Paul or something.

I think they're called Entities. Animations with hit boxes that interact with the foreground and I believe where the balls can kill abe are called death zones, if i'm correct.

I don't know if your terminology is correct, but you have the right idea.
The swinging balls are just animated props, and only certain frames of the animation trigger the command to make Abe fall/die.

I thought they were sprites, anyway please remove them or replace them with falling rocks or moving bombs or something

I thought the swinging boulders were a great challenge, and it had a very Indiana Jones feel, which was appropriate for the temples. It was also a more realistic alternative to falling rocks. I think falling rocks should be confined to levers/switches only, because an endless supply of them dropping at perfect intervals is another one of those game mechanics that would just seem silly by today's standards.

It might work for Rupture Farms where those carcasses were falling, there's a number of reasonable explanations as to why that might occur. However, in the Monsaic and other native places, it makes less sense. Nevertheless, it seems over analytical to get rid of them, they were a fun mechanic and of course they weren't exactly overly complex or difficult. Those swinging balls were great as well, I'm playing through AO on and off at the moment, and I'm stuck on that area, although it's not always to do with the swinging boulders, the slog won't follow me unless I pull the lever, which gives me no time to escape before it kills me.

I absolutely hate these, as they're pretty painful in a 2D environment, but in 3D they should be much less frustrating. Perhaps giving their swing a slightly higher amplitude would make then more obvious.

At least remove the bats from one of those levels. It always puts a downer on my playthrough up until that point because I know its coming. I hate Paramonia anyway.

Sounds like the way FMV games worked, I always found it hard to tell exactly when the "Death trigger" would be there, I simply rolled when the ball was as far away into the background as it could be, but that wouldn't always work, because you had to watch out for bats as well.

I always just ran as soon as the balls appeared on screen,
it works for the most part.

They're animated sprites with variable collision. I don't think they're actual 3D objects, given that the engine is 2D.

EDIT: Oh, new page.

Bats moving along a precise path is a little silly. We need something else, really.

What's the big deal with them? Why do about 80% of the people want anything that makes the game remotely hard removed? Jesus, if it's such a chore go find one of those baby games where you have to put the right shaped blocks in the right shaped hole. I don't get why you lot seem to want to water down the difficulty so much?

Bombs would be ok. But that would be stupid in the middle of an old abandoned temple.
Edit
Scrabtrapman you speedy shit.
I think there is a line between challenging and fustrating, don't you?

I don't mind the "avoid the flying objects by tracking their path" puzzles. That one with the flying mine where you have to whistle is great.

I just think they should be something instead of geometrically obsessive bats.

Artificial Difficulty ≠ Hard

what

Difficulty = Hard

Artificial Difficulty = Hard

Does that fit the description for you?

I don't see what's wrong with it, if the only reason a to why they shouldn't be included is because it's hard or, 'it's not very realistic'...I think you need to realise that Oddworld, is not steeped in realism.

E: MM got there first.

My problem with the swinging balls is that they were either hard to judge or inconsistent. Or both. I have been killed at strange times by them.

I think LIJI was trying to make a statement about fake difficulty, but expressed it poorly.

I've been killed when they were actually out of range length ways, if you know what I mean.

Artificial Difficulty makes the player do the same thing over and over for reasons other than being "hard" or "challenging", such as requiring excessive trial and error, requiring an absurd amount of score, lack of sufficient check points, etc.. In the Z-Ball example, the player is required, at least in the first time playing the level, to guess which frames are "safe" and time it correctly, since it's not very obvious in a 2D environment.

So something tht should be incredibly easy, made hard for no other reason.

Something that is hard due to poor design rather than being a fun challenge.

You can't be serious, it was hard enough working around them knowing where they were going to be, having them going where they feel like is just ridiculous and would rely more on luck than the skill of avoiding them.

Avoiding the bats wasn't the hard part, the boulders were the annoying things.

I was referring to bats in general not just the screens with the spiked boulders.

I dunno why you people find the boulders hard at all. I learned very quickly to just roll into the ledges and avoid the bats and boulders with one swift motion. And the puzzles where you have to pull the lever with the slog right next to you are easy to, if you've kept rocks from one of the previous rooms. Just throw one at it to piss it off, ala the same thing from Stockyards.

I've never had a problem with the spike boulders. It was usually the bats. But much like that secret area at the end of Rupture Farms just before entering the FFZ for the first time, it took me quite a while to realize it's much easier to just jump across the gaps. Every time I did the roll and hoist method I'd get clocked by a boulder or a bat would go off course and fuck me up. Jump, duck, jump, duck, jump.

Also, this game and all it's puzzles kind of revolve around timing. If the bats didn't have a set course it would take away the whole timing aspect and you'd just have to hope you were fast enough to make it over those gaps and escape the bats before reaching the next screen. But wait! There isn't a 'next screen' this time around because it's going to be side scrolling. If you find what's currently in place incredibly difficult, the bats not having a set course would amplify that difficulty.

Edit:

Can't you just chant or talk to the slog to get it's attention? Every time I run into a slog and it doesn't respond to walking I just say hello or some shit and it comes chasing at me.