Quote from: Simon on June 09, 2026, 07:08:16 AMCan you find something better for replay-to-level association that doesn't give such opportunity for mistakes?

Lemmini's replay-to-level matchups have always been led by the level's title and pack position. It has caused problems, particularly with external levels.

RetroLemmini patches the replay matchups for external levels, but still relies on level name and position. Here's the current match flow:

1) Check the DMA levels for a matching name and position -> fallback to external levels if no match is found
2) Check all levels for a matching name and position -> fallback to external levels if no match is found
3) Check all levels (including external) for a matching name only

This is somewhat tighter than (Super)Lemmini(Too)'s replay matching and rarely results in mismatched or unmatched replays.

I did consider implementing an ID system, but given the size of the back catalog it does seem a bit too late (and complex) to introduce this now.

Matching by name is now about 99% successful for individual replays, but yeah for a mass checker it probably does need something a bit more foolproof. Suggestions welcome.

Quote from: Simon on June 07, 2026, 12:02:37 PMInstead, CE should ship a thin stick. Attached is what I use. I call it the Caveman Stick in honor of mobius's push for simplicity, and I wield it with valor and satisfaction.

This stick is only 1 white pixel wide in the long middle. It's white-black-white at the end.

Looks good to me.

Let's hear from Proxima regarding this as he's the OP, and anyone else who feels invested in this discussion. If they're also happy with Simon's Caveman Stick, we can make it the default ruler from 1.1.2 onwards.

I'll leave this open for 2 weeks for replies, then will close it as resolved.

Ah, OK. The only time I ever used Delphi at work was back in the early Noughts, and that was for a black box wargame simulation rather than a GUI. I've sure the language has evolved out of sight since I last looked at it! In my general course of work now I don't actually do much GUI development, just the odd utility app in C#, I'm mostly on back-end development, which is all C++. Interesting to know what people are using though!

Quote from: Simon on June 07, 2026, 11:31:37 AMMaybe reword the options to Show Backgrounds and activate by default, instead of Hide Backgrounds and disabled by default. It's the classic preference to word bool options positively: I want backgrounds, check, I don't want backgrounds, uncheck.

I thought I'd already done this. Will make sure this is done for 1.1.2.

Quote from: Simon on June 07, 2026, 11:31:37 AMPlease let me hide the animated decorations!

Added to the to-do list.

Quote from: Simon on June 07, 2026, 11:31:37 AMWith the CE 1.1.1 set of options, I would have expected the hide-backgrounds option to also hide the unanimated decorations. Reasoning: Either we want to see the level exactly how the designer made it, or we want the bare-bones functionality.

I don't know if anybody wants to see one kind animated/unanimated background, but not the other.

Fair enough. It should probably be "Hide (rather: Show) Backgrounds and Decorations", then. Probably no need for separate options.

Note to self: see if this happens in NL 12.14 (expectation = it doesn't).

Suspected cause: update to screen transitions in CE, plus now only checking for missing pieces at level loading (to prevent repeated popups for the same error). It's likely an easy fix.

Visual Studio is great for creating GUI-based Windows apps, but its own GUI can sometimes be a bit janky, especially when it comes to repositioning form elements. Delphi's GUI is actually way better for this. If I'm making a simple tool with a GUI, I often reach for Delphi first.

Quote from: JawaJuice on June 10, 2026, 11:17:34 AMWhat language is NLEditor written in out of curiosity? I'd be interested how the Random ID button is implemented, presumably some kind of seeded rand function.

As kaywhyn said, it's C#. Which version are you using? The source code for the latest version is here:

NLEditor Source Code

The bit you're interested in is this:

        private void btnRandomID_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            CurLevel.LevelID = (ulong)Utility.Random().Next() +
                               ((ulong)Utility.Random().Next() << 32);
            txtLevelID.Text = CurLevel.LevelID.ToString("X16");
        }


Quote from: heart66 on June 09, 2026, 08:18:52 PMNew level 49

Firstly, welcome to the forum, heart66, and thank you for the new pack - much appreciated!

I'm glad you posted this update to Level 49 because I have to say I suspected the previous version was impossible with the skills given (i.e. not enough constructive skills). This updated 49 is much more in keeping with the stated difficulty of the pack imo. As 92Dexter11 pointed out, the previous version of that level was way harder than anything else in the pack. Any chance of updating Level 68? I encountered the same issue as Dexter in that, as far as I can see, no exit_vortex object exists in the orig_crystal style. I fixed it locally by changing the style to psp_crystal, which does have exit_vortex, but using a standard exit from orig_crystal would work just as well. I'm up to level 87 currently (will post replays etc later) but I did not encounter any style issues with this level - maybe that's down to the recent Styles update, not sure.

( Discussion on programming language preferences / experience has been split off into a seperate topic: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=7473.0 )

No worries about the derailing - this can easily be split off into its own thread.