The L2 level/style format has been long known (see here - note that you'll have to decompress the levels/styles first using lem2zip, which you can also find there). The challenge will be that the levels are defined as a grid of 16x8 tiles, while (from what I understand) the existing NL L2 tilesets use pieces that are usually composed of multiple of such tiles. The L2 style definitions do define such pieces in terms of the smaller 16x8 tiles, however, I don't know if the NL L2 tilesets were created in a systematic way reflecting these definitions, or just ad-hoc.

All the L2 graphics (both 16x8 tiles and the composed pieces) have been ripped long time ago: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=6588.msg102252#new

A slightly ugly way would be to write a script to create 12 new tilesets where all the tiles are of size 16x8 (you could use the ripped graphics as input), and then write another script that converts L2 levels into NL levels using these 12 tilesets, automatically creating the terrain and object placements (assuming the existing NL tilesets are consistent with the L2 ordering of objects, otherwise you either have to manually create a mapping between the two, or extend the first script to also generate the NL objects -- I don't know how NL would deal with fling objects and the chain and cannon though). The skillset you'll have to tweak manually either way as I guess you don't support the full palette of L2 skills.

It's finally time for me to release the Lix levels that I have created over the years. Some of them are brand new, some of them are over a decade old, but better late than never. They are part of the latest Lix download in the level folder single/geoo!

The pack has 5 ranks, which are more like themes. Each rank is independent, and you can play the ranks in any order and freely skip between them. Within a rank, I recommend playing the levels in order.

• wrappy: Levels that make use of the horizontal and/or vertical wrapping. It turns out that even in single player, wrapping is more than a gimmick and gives rise to a lot of interesting ideas! If you only ever play one rank from this pack, this should be the one. The majority of these use 5 skills or less, but even a 3 skill level may stump you for a little bit here. These turn out to be primarily logic puzzles with very easy execution, except for maybe the last few.
• flowy: These levels make use of dynamic crowd control: stalling, redirecting, merging crowds without fully blocking them off. These levels require thinking about when things happen as much as where, and a lot of skill placements will be unintuitive, initially. Due to the nature of this, some levels may require a bit of trial and error to find the placements, but I tried to make execution as easy as possible, and the replay tweaker should help as well. Note: 4 of these levels are also featured in the lemforum pack, but I replicated them here for the purpose of the level progression.
• classy: More traditional and often larger levels with more skills where you need to figure out the skill placements.
• loony: Many of these revolve around some physics quirks or some other quirky idea. A good portion of these keep it very simple, though some of the later ones may end up taking some work to get the execution right.
• sketchy: This is where you find the levels that didn't really work out. Many of these may have some interesting underlying ideas, but somehow these ideas didn't translate into good levels. Feel free to skip this one.

The ranks are not sorted by difficulty, but rather by how interesting and fun I perceive the levels to be. Within wrappy, flowy and loony, the levels are ordered to create a level progression that gradually introduces and explores different ideas. This only loosely corresponds to actual difficulty of the level, but each of these ranks starts out gently. Classy and sketchy are sorted by how I estimate their difficulty, which may be different from how difficult.


I may add and shuffle levels in the future, so posterity, please refer to levels by their name rather than rank/number, as the number within a rank is likely to change in the future.

Thanks to Simon for playtesting, and Ramon for playing some of these during the races with Simon! The levels are part of the official lix release as of version v0.10.21 (for about a month already, so about time I make this topic), and can be found in single/geoo.

I'd be very happy to hear everyone's feedback and see your streams, videos or replays!


Just Mine (wrappy): This map wraps horizontally. Why do you have three miners here when it looks like two are enough? Play this level to find out and wish you had four miners!


Humpy Bump (wrappy): This map wraps horizontally. How can you safely build a bridge when lix are walking around everywhere?


Pommes Schranke (flowy): How do you fit your sausage (that comes with fries, ketchup and mayo) on a plate that's too small for it?


Roots of Life (flowy): Even though this level has only 5 skills, it stumped Ramon and Simon for almost an hour!


Bathroom Break (classy): Hurry before everyone else arrives!


Filter, Map, Fold (loony): The typical (functional) pipeline of reducing data to a single (summary) value. Can you do the same to this crowd of lix?

I remember having that issue back in the day when I first played Cheapo (which may have even introduced this behavior? Or was it in WinLemm too?) It confused the heck out of me, and it took me a while to understand what was going on. I thought it was a bug and restarted the game in order to restart levels.
At the same time, it's way too useful of a feature to disable by default (thereby making it extremely hard to discover).

I'm surprised that clicking the R does not cancel the replay, having that would be a good start at least (especially if the R sufficiently stands out visually). I think realistically what Lix is doing by displaying some text is a decent solution. It's slightly inelegant, but at least should leave no room for confusion.

Hah, sure! Do you happen to be free at that time? (Of course, unless Simon wants to have a chill stream.)

Otherwise I can also see how far Simon makes it, and then compile a level progression from those levels that Simon hasn't played for you to race

Saturday would work great for me. Sunday I got some other plans already.

Update to Dangerous Goods to fix Simon's Wurschtelei (and other potential flinging solutions). Basically changes the fling bomber into a normal bomber, and the other minor changes are just consequences of that.

I'm still contemplating reworking Origami Master as most people don't use the jumper and make the execution harder and messier, but I'll need to think about how to do this some more.

Solved both of geoo's Lix entries. Replays attached I don't smell any backroutes here!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Dangerous Goods - Not a difficult level, just one I struggled with only because I'm still learning new things about Lix. For example, I didn't realize that was a spring at the bottom and that one can use the steam to get flung upwards. After a while, I tried platforming over the trap at the bottom and that's how I saw what actually happens when I sent a Lix over there. When I saw where she landed my reaction was "oh, that's how you get a Lix onto the middle platform from the right!" Before I even discovered that, I was thinking perhaps the way is to bash and then bomb around the middle so to release the other Lix to get into the other Lix's basher tunnel.

Just out of curiosity, would the solution still work even without a fling bomber? It seems the fling isn't necessary at all. I know that the bomber holes are different for the skills, I just wonder if the solution could work with either skill

Origami Master - Ok, this one was very frustrating on the execution. I initially had trouble conceptualizing how the containment in the middle should work, but after a while I figured it out. Even with this, this took so many tries to get right because I either get one too many killed by the trap or at least 1 Lix kept escaping one of the flinging objects. In the end, I used the jumper on the final Lix in the train since she got killed by the trap.

With this level, I was like wow, geoo sure loves his Merge Sort puzzles The timing had to be right and assigning the correct Lixes the skills is very crucial here!

Both solutions are intended, though you made your life much harder on the second one (as long as you place the second blocker well, execution should have a decent amount of leeway):

Dangerous Goods should also work with the normal bomber, haven't tested though. If certain kinds of backroutes crop up I might change it.

But I believe (untested) that same-type challenging is crucial to the endgame. In the middle game, you have two tasks: Get points with smaller sneaks and challenges, and build your one true magnificent flaunt for the endgame. That flaunt can be even of a weaker type because the rule of same-type challenging protects it. It introduces a separate direction of hand management into Sneak.

This is what I'm not sure about. I have only played it with the same-type challenging, I think it would be interesting to see if/how the dynamics change without it. I don't see any clear argument in favor or against it.
The main reason I suggested trying to cut it was to simplify a game while cutting a mechanic what I perceived to be weak (at least mid-game).

And this build-up of tension -- you have exactly one flaunt during the game, at the very end -- goes in a great way with your proposed cut of mid-game flaunting for simplicity. It sounds wonderful on paper.

Downside: Same-type challenging is a special rule only for the very end, with unclear purpose. If somebody happens to make the same type of combination, you're hosed while everybody else's flaunt stands. That will feel random. If we remove the restriction of same-type challenging, more people get hosed. It will still feel random; will it feel better?

That's not really how it works in practice. Why would you build up to a big flaunt? You're better off using your good cards to catch a sneak (or at least sneak in the hope of catching someone else's cards), rather than just bringing them home. This is what happened in practice: good stuff was played to sneak or catch sneaks, while at the end the flaunts were just cobbled together with what was left. Unless you reward the flaunting at the end (everybody flaunts and the same time and the winner takes it all?), I don't see what you described happening at all.

Worthless leftover cards seem like the cleanest design, both for easy bookkeeping and to avoid extra rules like no-undercutting. I really want to make that work. I'm open to switching to negative points when worthless cards don't produce the desired strategic late-game decisisons.

Negative points for leftover cards was probably the single most significant rule change, and affected the whole dynamics near the end of the game. Our games were too close anyway to compare stacks by height, so you had to count. But we just removed the same amount from our point stack and then counted. Most played had nothing left anyway, I don't remember if anyone ever had more than 2 cards left. I think the negative points at the end are quite natural (and similarly the no undercutting rule), and adds barely any complexity. I don't think it's unelegant. It brings a great improvement to the game dynamics at (in my opinion) pretty much no cost.

I really found it interesting how the dynamics change as the game progresses, pretty easy-going at the beginning, people get more agressive as the game progresses, some exciting maneuvres as the pile draws to an end, and completely different dynamics in the final round. I don't see this happening if remaining cards don't score negative. The pressure to get rid of cards really adds to the later game.

After the rounds from the last days, the cutting of flaunting discussed above is really the only change I can think of at this point that seems promising (but for the reduction of complexity, I don't expect much of an impact on the game dynamics).