I agree with Guigui here that having everything in a single-mode can be very confusing for newer players and even seasonded ones at times.

As this seems to be a more advanced thing anyway and as dumb as it sounds:

I think having the 'Replay-single-mode' as an optional setting could be the best thing here - maybe as a sub-option to "click air to stop the replay".

Advanced players can choose to activate it.

It won't confuse newer players at first and at later stages when they get more familiar with the program they can choose to opt in.


I would regard the new player issue higher as the advantage to experienced players here.

Quote from: Strato Incendus on July 16, 2026, 04:30:41 PMNever would have expected that yet another Lemmings clone could look so interesting. Great job!

@mobius: I quickly discovered you first neet to click the fizzle and then the icon that pops up above its head. I guess this might be more challenging on levels that require quick skill assignments in succession.

I like your new take on the Builder, though! Reminiscent of the Ladderer in SuperLemmix, but of course the other way round.

Thank you very much! That is a great compliment, especially here in a Lemmings-related forum.

Fizzles is definitely inspired by the general idea of guiding small creatures through handcrafted puzzle levels, but I am trying to give it its own identity rather than make a direct Lemmings clone.

The control flow is one of those differences: in Fizzles, the player selects the individual Fizzle first, and then chooses the ability from the popup above that Fizzle. This was mainly designed with mobile controls in mind.

You are right, though: this can become more challenging when several skill assignments need to happen in quick succession. That is something I have to be careful with in level design and balancing. My goal is not to create unfair reaction tests, but the interaction should still keep some real-time tension.

I am glad you like the new take on the Builder. In Fizzles it became the Planter, because I wanted the bridge to feel more organic and connected to the world. The instant bridge also changes the pacing quite a lot compared to the classic Builder idea, which is intentional.

Thanks again for taking a look and for the feedback!

Quote from: mobius on July 16, 2026, 01:13:00 AMI took a brief look;

firstly; the graphics are amazing, great job on that. Music is great and fitting too. I almost get a Ori feel to it.

Unfortunately I'm totally confused; I can't even figure out how to make a fizzle do anything. Click on a skill doesn't do anything, I can highlight a fizzle but nothing else. How do you assign??

Thanks a lot for taking a look, and thank you for the kind words about the graphics and music. The Ori comparison is a very nice compliment.

The control flow in Fizzles is intentionally different from classic Lemmings.

In Fizzles, you first click or tap a Fizzle. Then a small ability popup appears directly at that selected Fizzle, and you choose the ability there.

So it is:

select Fizzle first → then select ability

not:

select ability first → then click Fizzle

In Level 1 there is already a small hint for this: if the player does nothing, a Fizzle is selected and a hand appears above it to show where to interact. But your reaction shows that this hint may still not be obvious enough, especially for players coming from classic Lemmings controls.

That is useful feedback. I will look at the onboarding again and think about how to make the first interaction clearer without adding too much text.

Thanks again for testing and for pointing this out. If the first action is unclear, that is definitely something I need to improve.

Guigui makes a good point.

Replay Insert mode arrived after the standard mode, when advanced players wanted more out of it.

Thus could be tricky for newcomers, sure. UI is key.

I'll come back to this.

I also use LMB to 1 frame skip a lot. I even set RMB to 1 frame back skip.

Now that I come to think of it, the clash for LMB is actually triple : cut replay, skip, assign.
I switch to hotkey for skip only when I want the cursor to be over a lemming during the skip, so this does not clash with assign.
I only see the replay as a mean to get faster to a certain point in the level to try something else after I cut it. In this sense the replay cut is a point of no return after which I take back the control of the level.
Insert replay changes a lot of things in that regards, but I'm willing to try it.


I fear how beginners will understand his though.
Every single new player I know, me included, had a hard time understanding the replay idea where getting back in time does not forget the future.
Now we add another layer where taking back the control of the level by playing it via assignment does not forget the future either. An example of how this may be very hard to understand :
- this obstacle may be handled with either a bomber, or a builder.
- lets try the bomber. ... Well this was not such a good idea.
- rewind, it is handy instead or restart all, thanks, and try the builder.
- skip the builder animation, it is handy thanks.
- what ?? I end up with an already destroyed bridge and I have lost a lemming ??

This is very weird when you think of it this way, fear this may unsettle newcomers.

Sometime ago i really wanted to play some of lemmings engines, but I never really got a computer  (at least yet), so my only option is my phone.
but now I do know a few things that let me run some lemm engines on the go.

1. Winlator
A actually pretty good PC emulator for android, it uses box64 and wine to run windows games.
Neolemmix worked pretty good on this emulator, however some issues started to appear, like for example, when I try switching levelpacks, the game just crashes, and also the skill hud was REALLY REALLY small and I didn't really know at the time how to change it, aside from that I guess it worked fine. 

As for Superlemmix, the game ran pretty badly on winlator, it was like in a snail's pace, and it had the same issue as NL where switching levelpacks causes the game to crash.. 

And lix.. lix simply did not work on winlator unfortunately  , when i try starting it up, it was basically just a black screen, later crashing.



2. Gamenative (my current "emulator" for lemm engines)
It's also a pretty good emulator, and as the name suggests, it lets you run games natively to your phone! 

Neolemmix worked fine, at first the hud was pretty small but I managed to fix it, the game's a bit slow even in low resolution and fast-forward doesn't work, but I'll probably fix it later.

Superlemmix also worked as well as NL, nothing much to comment about

I finally managed to make lix work, the game seems to run at normal speed, with fast-forward working and all! 



3. Other stuff

A. The lemmings level database works perfectly, it can be a little tricky to play it with touch controls, but you quickly get used to it
B. DHTML lemmings also works fine, nothing much to talk about.
C. For Droidlings, I couldn't get the original lemmings levelpacks to work there, but I could play the original levels from that engine.


I guess that's it, it was a bit complicated to get some of these engines to work on a phone, but i guess that's what you get for trying to run a PC program on a Android!

Welcome Valentin! Hope you enjoy the forums!

When you merge insert mode and regular replay mode, consider changing the default for the user option that keeps/deletes the garbage from keeping the garbage to deleting the garbage.

Definition: In this thread, with garbage, I mean assignments to the same lemming in the future of the newly inserted assignment. Usually, these will desynch because of the newly inserted assignment. In rare cases, they remain useful. (In other threads, it might mean any assignment in the replay that fails to resolve, or that resolves but does something else than originally intended, but those meanings are a different concern out of this thread's scope.)

Reason for changing the default to deleting the garbage: When you push the merged mode to users, this will behave more closely to how assignments behaved before merging the modes. This will be a new additional reason. Another reason is the same as before, the garbage is practically never useful, and you can play around fringe cases (assign climber early/late to preserve/lose it). Another reason is playtesting feedback from across 2 years now: Lix insert mode deletes the same-lemming garbage, I like the deletion there, and I've never gotten feedback that the garbage should remain.

Do you think you want the option (to preserve garbage) for yourself still after you make airclick replay cutting optional?

-- Simon

Hmm, we all found different habits around the LMB clash, i.e., around the two meanings (cut replay, advance) of left click:

• Icho clicks to advance if the click won't affect the replay. Icho presses the hotkey to advance otherwise.
  
• WillLem always clicks to advance. If that click would cut the replay, WillLem first enters the cut-preventing insert mode.
  
• Simon: I always press the hotkey to advance. I only click to affect the replay. I fear clicking.
  
• Guigui, I haven't asked explicitly yet how you prefer to advance by 1 frame. Do you click to advance? Do you press the hotkey to advance?
  

The click to advance seems popular.

WillLem's proposal still reconciles this. WillLem proposes: Create a user option for whether air click cuts the replay, and have only a single mode during play that always inserts. I don't know if this is ultimately best (well, when do you ever know that); it's the best I see for now. It's not clear if Icho is going to like this, but Icho is happy to try.

I agree with Icho that conveying replay mode in the UI is important. We're still in the early bronze age with this, even Lix, which displays "Replaying. Click to play from here." Post what comes to mind. If it's ultimately separatable from merging the modes, we can always split it to separate topics later.

-- Simon

Quote from: WillLem on July 22, 2026, 10:11:17 PMThere may be a better way, though. My goal would be to not litter the directory with temporary replays, ideally.

Maybe a dedicated folder (or subfolder of the replay dir) for these ones, and one file per level (perhaps tracked by level ID)?