QuoteWould you mind always having to airclick to cancel the replay? (i.e. the proposed 'single replay mode' would no longer cut the global future on lem assigments or RR changes).

Note that airclick-to-cancel is staying, and will be default behaviour (just to be clear).

That is a very though question that I cannot answer with certainty.

I am used to also canceling the replay by assigning stuff and use it automatically by now as an LMB alternatve. I can see me adapting, but do not know the final impact and if it gets on my nerves.

The biggest problem I see is conveying the information better on that you are in replay mode and how to get out of it.
It existed before, but the issue was smaller as a result due to more ways of exiting it.

On the "advance gameplay by 1 frame whilst paused" side: I use the LMB for that frequently and mostly only switch to the dedicated key when I am frame stepping inside the red "R".
I never had the LMB clash negatively impacted my gameplay so far.

What I naively started over a year ago is finally finished. 
I just released my PICO-8 demake of Lemmings, recreating all 100 levels from the NES version!
A huge thanks to Eric Billingsley for the amazing soundtrack, and to MissMouse for the incredible CANVAS and PAKRAT libraries that made this project possible.
You can play it directly in your browser or download it from itch-io Pico-8 Lemmings.
or check it out on the Pico-8 Lexaloffle BBS Pico-8 Lemmings.

Hope you enjoy it! Would love to hear what you think!

Quote from: namida on July 23, 2026, 05:41:05 AMIf the editor can determine a fallback, it may as well just handle the entire auto-selection logic.

Agreed, the Editor should handle it, and it should be as visible as possible to the user.

With that in mind, if the theme is set to 'Auto', could it still change even after the level has been saved for the first time? Is there any point at which the Editor decides 'this is the theme for this level' and then stops assessing for an Auto-theme, or is it an ongoing process?

There is also the following scenario to consider:

User places 10 pieces from l2_sports (a style with a relatively bright blue background) into a level for which the theme is 'orig_dirt' (or some other default with a black background). They place fewer than 10 pieces from other styles, leaving l2_sports as the most likely 'Auto' candidate.

They then save the level, at which point the Auto-theme is applied. Suddenly, the level has a bright blue background and the user doesn't necessarily know why.

Or, if we set the theme on a per-piece-placement basis, the background colour keeps changing as users place pieces from different styles. Granted, this one is a fairly unlikely scenario, but it could happen.

I'm thinking the best way to handle the problem of 'user never set the theme during level creation' is simply to prompt for it when saving. A custom dialog with options to always use the chosen style as a default, etc, could suffice. It's also fairly easy to grab the colour values from the .nxtm and preview them in the dialog for the user to see.

Another idea would be to explode 'Theme' out into its own tab. This tab has the dropdown, plus some panels showing the theme's main colour scheme (background, masks, etc), maybe other information like whether it has custom sprites, etc. This wouldn't be too difficult to do and would certainly make it stand out as 'this is important, don't forget to set it'.

Should the user not want to have to worry about theme, let them choose a default, and let the default default be as universal as possible.

The issue with letting the game handle it is that the editor would still need to set a fallback for 12.14 compatibility. If the editor can determine a fallback, it may as well just handle the entire auto-selection logic.

My thought - the main use case for this would be "user does not need to manually select it, they just start placing pieces in their preferred style and the theme is assigned automatically". As such - I would say, invoke the automatic decision when a level:
- does not have a manually assigned theme (when loading a level, it could in practice just be assumed the theme was manually assigned)
- and does not currently contain any pieces from a style with an associated theme
- and the user places a piece in it that comes from a style that does have an associated theme

In the event of a copy-paste causing pieces from multiple eligible styles to be pasted at once, I would say determine it by whichever such style has the highest number of non eraser pieces, and break any ties with an arbitrary factor such as alphabetical order or which one has the first (relevant) piece in the raw data. Keep in mind that this is a convenience feature, not a critical one.

Alternatively, it could be invoked when first saving the level if it doesn't yet have a theme assigned. In this case, determine it based on which style has the highest proportion of non-erase pieces.

Just giving this a bump. I'd like to look at adding it in the next Editor update.

A few questions:

1) When should the Auto-theme be applied? Every time a piece is added? Only when saving? Either way, what if the Auto-chosen theme has a wildly different background colour, for example?

2) If the theme is set to 'Automatic', does the Editor ever need to know what the output theme is, or should it be handled entirely by the Game? If the latter, again - what about wildly different background colours, or other potentially unsuitable theme properties?

Alternative suggestion:

Leave the theme blank by default. Then, let the existing Validator system handle un-set themes. Yes, it means showing the user a popup, but prompting them to choose a theme would perhaps get users into the habit of always choosing a theme as part of the level creation process.

Users can disable the Validator, or not use it. In this case, we set a default theme which is as universal as possible.

Thoughts and suggestions welcome.

EDIT: Fixed broken link, apologies to anyone who tried to download in the meantime.

---

Get RetroLemmini 3.2 here.

Version 3.2 update

A small but chunky update!

Here's what's changed:

Batch Replay Checker

• RetroLemmini now features a 'Batch Replay Checker' which can check, and display the results for, an entire folder of replays!
• The process is very fast and the results list is displayed in a dialog
• It's possible to organise the replays into folders from the results list, although they cannot be renamed from here (yet!)
• It's also possible to load a replay directly from the results list
• Batch Replay Check can be run from Level > Batch Replay Check or via a configurable hotkey (Ctrl + B by default)

Styles/Mods

• 'Classic' style expanded to include all tiles as individual pieces - thanks to ericderkovits for porting the style over from NeoLemmix
• Bugfix - 'Flapper' is now 'Ohnoer' and 'Flipper' is now 'Hoister' in the xmas mod following the 3.1 update

DMA Levels

• Lemmings 2: Classic Tribe levels re-converted by ericderkovits using the expanded 'classic' style
• Music for the Classic Tribe levels is now included with the download

A reminder of what's new as of 3.0.

---

Get the latest version here.

Quote from: WillLem on July 22, 2026, 10:11:55 PM

Quote from: Simon on July 22, 2026, 04:17:27 PMThe default shouldn't remove a useful shortcut (global-future-cutting air click) that does no damage for them: They won't LMB into the map for other reasons.

Not so! There is at least one more reason to airclick, and that is to advance gameplay by 1 frame whilst paused. Sometimes, this is done after rewinding, and with no intention to erase the global future. This is one of the main reasons I engage insert mode, and don't want airclicks to cut the replay.

I strongly suspect that those who don't sympathise with this only use either non-mouse hotkeys or the dedicated panel buttons to framestep.

Ah, I didn't have this LMB-stepping in mind. Yeah, I single-step by hotkey.

It's an odd design history. The usual meaning of LMB into the map to cut/assign. After assigning, it makes sense to advance one step to show the physical result of the assignment. I don't remember who/which program started to advance on airclick in general. At the end of the replay, the airclick cuts (nothing to cut) and advances. And this is common enough to make it natural to rely on it. I believe that namida relies on it, too.

And finally the two meanings of airclick clash in the new mixed mode. After decades.

I'd like to hear namida's opinion.

-- Simon

Quote from: Simon on July 22, 2026, 04:17:27 PMI recommend that you keep the default that airclicks cut the global future.

This seems to be the consensus, so yeah let's keep this as the default. It's what users have come to expect anyway, particularly those that don't use insert mode.

I almost exclusively use insert mode, so I would toggle the option off. Here's why:

Quote from: Simon on July 22, 2026, 04:17:27 PMThe default shouldn't remove a useful shortcut (global-future-cutting air click) that does no damage for them: They won't LMB into the map for other reasons.

Not so! There is at least one more reason to airclick, and that is to advance gameplay by 1 frame whilst paused. Sometimes, this is done after rewinding, and with no intention to erase the global future. This is one of the main reasons I engage insert mode, and don't want airclicks to cut the replay.

I strongly suspect that those who don't sympathise with this only use either non-mouse hotkeys or the dedicated panel buttons to framestep.

Quote from: IchoTolot on July 22, 2026, 05:37:37 PM- For shorter and medium sections: I often rather just replay the section than using the blue "R" as I tend to play faster than I editing the history by now.
- For longer sections I do use the blue "R", which is only a minority of levels though.

Would you mind always having to airclick to cancel the replay? (i.e. the proposed 'single replay mode' would no longer cut the global future on lem assigments or RR changes).

Note that airclick-to-cancel is staying, and will be default behaviour (just to be clear).

Quote from: Guigui on July 22, 2026, 09:13:44 PMNever tried insert replay though, mainly because I do not even know how to trigger it.

This is probably the main reason it should be a single mode. Users should get the benefit of NeoLemmix's replay editing capabilities whether or not they know the hotkeys.

Quote from: Guigui on July 22, 2026, 09:13:44 PMAlso I have trouble imagining how inserting an assignation may not break the rest of the coming replay.

Sometimes, it does! Most of the time though, it doesn't. It really depends on the situation.

Quote from: Guigui on July 22, 2026, 09:13:44 PMFinally I am very used to airclick for replay cancel and never use anything else, please do not remove it.

Again, to be very clear, airclick-to-cancel is not going to be removed from CE. The proposal is only to make it optional.

Meanwhile, I've replied to your replay-for-playtesting suggestion here.

Good idea.

The question is really how to do this. We can store a temporary replay file in the directory which always keeps the same name, updating the internal data whenever a level is playtested. If we're in Playtest Mode and the replay data matches the level, we load the replay. Otherwise, we only overwrite.

There may be a better way, though. My goal would be to not litter the directory with temporary replays, ideally.

Suggestions welcome.