I'm currently playing Hades II on the Nintendo Switch.

I have already cleared Hades I some years ago when it came out, and Hades II is a "more of everything" sequel, which is perfectly fine to me.
If you do not know those games Hades I and II are "roguelite" action games : you start a run and try to clear the game with your character. This run consist of a series of rooms in which you encounter various ennemies that you have to clear to access the next room. Sometimes you encounter boss, friends, story events and more. Sounds simplistic and it is, but more than enough to keep you on your toes.
At first you do not succeed in clearing the game and get a gameover, but you have gained more knowledge of the game mechanics, gather materials that allows to unlock character and weapon improvment, and meet more characters who will help you on your journey. Then you start another run and repeat.

The whole setting of the game is in the Greek Mythology which is both really well respected and sometimes made fun of. All characters from the mythology have interesting background, picturation and voice acting.

The game is still very engaging, gameplay and its loop are perfect and rewarding, story unfolding is great, the numerous combat and bosses phases are expertly crafted and clearing foes is addictive.

Very high recommend if you love action games.

Quote from: hrb264 on August 20, 2026, 08:00:17 PMi dont think id use it and dont really like the idea but i'd probably be ok if it was added as a mode you could turn on and off

Quote from: Flopsy on Today at 10:50:27 AMI'm still of the mindset that rewind is not needed. Just having a faster fast forward option is preferable for me.

I like that RetroLemmini preserves the classic Windows 95 Lemmings

Yes, preservation of this gameplay style should be RetroLemmini's main goal, given that the other engines/clones already provide a wealth of player assist tools to make the game easier and significantly refocus the play style.

I can think of 2 possibilities (of a Rewind system that preserves traditional gameplay style):

1) Don't add Rewind, just add a 'Nitro' fast-forward speed which can be used to blast through the replay to the desired point. This is essentially what backwards framestepping actually does, but we add it as a manual control for the player to master.

2) Add Rewind, but lock it behind a 'Modern Mode' along with forwards Framestepping (which Charles made optional in SuperLemminiToo for some of the same reasons that are being discussed here; he saw the need to preserve the traditional gameplay style). A player must complete the level at least once in 'Classic Mode' before the modern controls are unlocked for that level. The player can choose to keep them locked, if desired.

(2) is much more work. I'd prefer to go ahead with (1) for now. We can trial this in the next RetroLemmini update and see if it's sufficient enough that we don't need (2).

Could this be built into the program itself? i.e. When closing, cache everything (as a background process) so that the next time it opens it's much quicker? How expensive/ethical would this be?

The Level Select Menu going unresponsive is something I've been continually working to prevent ever since I started working on SuperLemmix. It's come a long way, but clearly could go further. I discovered the other day that the Search feature can still crash; I thought this was sorted, but it isn't.

This seems to happen most often with large level collections; measures have been taken to make larger collections more manageable, but there is still more to do.

Best guess: the message queue is being flooded with each click, and the UI doesn't have time to fully update before being given more clicks to resolve. I imagine that the best way to handle this is to find a way to actively ditch the existing queue whenever a new click is made. I'm not even sure if that's possible (or if it's standard programming practice), it's just what I'm guessing.

I'll investigate this again soon. Optimizing/improving the Level Select menu is one of my favourite things to do.

So I was recording NeoLemmix 30 episodes today and I encountered crashes during one of my videos. The video is not live until mid September but I did record another video replicating what I did. It does seem to happen pretty randomly but when I click to open a tree of levels, the window might sometimes freeze and if I were to click again in this timeframe, I'll get the (not responding) on the window top line. Pressing X on the window then leads to the NeoLemmix is not responding window popping up.

This happens when I clicked the God Save The Queen pack in the embedded video, it's nothing to do with that pack, it's just a random thing that happens.

NL, Lix, RetroLemmini, ... all contain loose level files and loose image files for tiles. When you load a level for the first time, Windows takes ages to load the files from disk, even on a fast SSD.

To speed it up, make Windows cache the files:

• In a Windows file browser, navigate to your NL/Lix/... folder.
  
• Navigate into the tileset subfolder:
      for Lix, navigate into images
      for NeoLemmix, navigate into styles
  
• Shift + Rightclick into the folder.
  
• Select: Open PowerShell here.
  
• Copy and paste the following command into the shell:
  
  Code Select Expand
  Measure-Command { Get-Childitem -path . -recurse | Get-FileHash -Algorithm MD5 | Out-Default }
• Hit Enter.
  
• Wait until it has printed how long it has taken. (It might take 5 to 20 minutes or longer.)
  
• You can now close the Powershell or leave it open, your choice.
  
• Run the game.
  

Levels should now load significantly faster.

This can be handy before you begin a long uninterrupted play session, e.g., before a livestream. You want the game to load the levels fast, and you don't care if it takes several minutes of preparation.

Technically, this only makes Windows look at each of your files and do something nontrivial with it (compute its checksum). This typically makes Windows cache your file. But it's not a direct request that Windows keep it cached at all times. Windows forgets about the cached files after a reboot, or after you've worked with many other files than NL/Lix/... for a long time. You'll have to re-cache the files by following the instructions again.

Source:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/77295307
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19825862/is-there-a-way-to-force-windows-to-cache-a-file

-- Simon

I'm still of the mindset that rewind is not needed. Just having a faster fast forward option is preferable for me.

I like that RetroLemmini preserves the classic Windows 95 Lemmings which I experienced and allows custom content, I couldn't ask for much more from this engine.

Thanks for your replays Will and I'm glad you think the converted levels are of excellent quality so far!

Spoiler

1. Back to Paradise - Nice 100% solution and trying to avoid bashers at the end for some reason.
2. 13 Little Stars - Again determined for the 100%, glad it's possible without too much trouble!
3. Welcome to the Highlands? - Not seen someone dig through the entry platform onto a splatform below before. It's always amazing how new methods come through in these early rank levels. Also 100% again
4. Cake Shop Visits - Usually other players come entirely from the right, you came from the left and then turned back to the left. Really thought you were going to go for the right hand exit which no one ever goes to. 100% also 
I then noticed your 2nd replay which goes to the right hand exit, nice to see someone do this at last and save 100%!
5. In the Dead of Night - everyone seems to get the same solution for this one. Not much to say really
6. T-Shirt Level - that was smart mining into the metal support before the fire pit and one way wall, made a turnaround crowd less problematic! 100% again!
7. Lemmtris 3D - First level which wasn't 100% but I'm not sure if 100% is even possible so 79/80 is still great!
8. Party in my Head - 100% is definitely impossible on this one, interestingly Simon played this level on Lix yesterday and managed to not use the Blocker, made a double bridge surrounding the water pit on the right instead.
9. It's the Name of the Game - Wow first time I've ever seen 100% on this level, it's nice to know that it can be done. The save requirement is so low that you can just lose lemmings to the first pit usually.
10. Hurry Up and Wait - I can see why you provided 2 replays now after seeing the first attempt. The exit...

Quote from: WillLem on August 08, 2026, 07:16:04 PMfrom the Editor (using F12), it will show a clickable text 'Show Skills Used', which opens a dialog [...]
for normal gameplay [...] show the 'total skills used' count and make it clickable anyway.

Right, why not show it for normal play, too. NL rewards challenge solutions (solve with zero builders) and that gives sense to showing it.

I take it that you're going to show the total number of skills used directly on the end-of-level screen, and the number of builders used in the dialog. Sounds good!

-- Simon

Close around to this time of year last year, within the last 1-2 weeks, I had an itching to revisit an educational game that I played so much in my childhood: Bodyworks Voyager: Missions in Anatomy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodyworks_Voyager:_Missions_in_Anatomy

You can easily find and download the game online. The game is for Dos, so Dosbox is the way to go to play it. To this day, I still have the physical CD of the game even about 30 years later! However, I either ended up simply copying the files off the CD to a directory on my hard drive to run the game, or I downloaded the game and ran it from that. Can't remember now. That reminds me, I should really make a CD image dump of the game, similar to how I made one of my physical Lemmings/ONML CD earlier this year

Picture of my CD of the game that I've owned since my childhood attached

   

If you haven't heard of this game, you're forgiven, as it's a super obscure one. Basically, it combines answering questions about the human body along with an arcade-like style of shooting and destroying various microbes in order to save the patient. There are two types, ones that attack the ship, and ones that attack the body/patient. In any given tour, there are 60 missions total, so it can feel super redundant and repetitive, but honestly the arcade style gameplay, the part of the game when you're not answering the medical quiz questions, is the main part of the game that keeps me addicted It's still a lot of fun, and I must say the soundblaster soundtrack is excellent! Unfortunately, only Midi versions of the soundtrack is available for download. The soundblaster version isn't anywhere to be found, as apparently no one has ripped the soundblaster soundtrack. Such a shame, because the music is so good!

Playlist link of my LP of the game:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbp2m4KlFpJsHcaATpDEt_ajOoaRd_5R_

I also posted a more in-depth analysis of the game in my LP topic:

https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=5180.msg102249#msg102249

Quote from: Swerdis on Today at 07:58:38 AMBesides Lemmings, I play several games, mostly role-playing or strategy. I'm glad to hear that people still like Age of Empires, and I do so as well. I play the Definitive Edition of AoE II for some years now. I don't play free mode, only the campaigns and on hard difficulty - only gold medals count.

Age of Empires is a classic! While I do have the definitive edition, I ended up scouring around the web to find the original, as I just missed the original sounds/music of the game too much. I honestly think the AoE DE doesn't do them justice sadly.

As for AoE 2, I need to rectify and play through that and its Conquerors expansion. I only played through the original AoE last year and I just stopped there without continuing through with AoE 2 as well. I have only played custom maps and the tutorial campaign. I still haven't played any of the other AoE 2 campaigns, though I believe I played a bit of the first AoE 2 campaign before I stopped out of frustration with the UI of the DE of the game.

Besides AoE and AoE 2, the only other game I owed in my childhood was Age of Mythology, which is kind of a spin-off of AoE but the gameplay is very similar.

I haven't bought AoE 3 or 4, so I don't know how they compare to the first two AoE games.