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.

Quote from: kaywhyn on June 10, 2026, 01:04:21 PMI personally only have experience with C++, but I haven't coded in that language in over 15 years now, as the last time I did so was back when I was in college/university. Hence, I'm not sure how much it has in common with C#, let alone C, in terms of syntax, though it wouldn't surprise me if there are some similarities, especially with C. I recently re-installed Visual Studios on my machine again and am pleased that most of my assignments from the computer programming course I took all those years ago still compile properly

Not wanting to derail the thread, but this is an interesting chat to me, so hey! As a C++ coder, C# is fairly easy to pick up because both languages share a common root in C. C# actually has a fair bit in common with C++ in terms of its syntax, the main architectural difference is around memory management, so C# is more like Java in that it's a managed language where garbage collection is automated. In C, you don't have that luxury at all and are completely responsible for your program's memory allocation and management through pointers (which makes it easily the most dangerous of the three to use if you don't know what you're doing!). Modern standards of C++ have introduced smart pointers, which makes memory management significantly easier, though it's still not fully automated. The reason C# is more suitable for GUI development though, is that it's closely tied to the .NET framework so has GUI elements built in that are almost drag-and-drop through Visual Studio, compared to C++, where you'd have to plug in third party libraries like Qt. Back in the day, we used to use MFC to build GUI apps but no-one in their right mind would choose that over C# these days! Good to hear that your old projects still compile in VS - I think you mentioned that before

Quote from: 92Dexter11 on June 09, 2026, 06:09:13 PMI personally didn't really mind the lack of titles. Design-wise, the levels have a minimalistic feel that I quite enjoyed, and I feel the lack of titles helped complement that. That's just my opinion, though, I'm not really sure what the consensus of the lemmings forum is on levels without titles.

This point of view of yours is fine of course. I did think the level titles are for thematic reasons and hence are intentional. The only other pack I can think of that does something somewhat similar is All the Styles, where IIRC every level is simply titled the name of the style the level is made in. In fairness, the author did try to enroll the help of this community for better level titles, but when no one accepted their call for help, ultimately they just named every level of their pack with the graphic set name.

Admittedly, I'm a bit of a hypocrite since I myself am not so good with coming up with great level titles, though I personally wouldn't create an entire level pack where every level was called 01-Easy, 02-Easy, etc. Just my opinion here as well, and I know for certain I'm not the only one here with this viewpoint The user who played through and gave feedback on the All the Styles pack also thought the level titles could be but still found the pack to be good, for example.