QuoteFor manual steel and invisible and fake objects, it would require additional effort to include support for them in the new-formats editor,

See, these are the types of changes I can totally understand. Extra work for something barely anyone uses? The cost-benefit analysis clearly says no. But additional required effort, as far as I remember, wasn't on the list of problems concerning slowfreeze.

QuoteThat's a loss, but it's one we're prepared to accept because of the gain to puzzle possibilities. After all, there are lots of other games that reward execution skill, but not many playgrounds for the kind of puzzle design we enjoy.

Well, I'm working on "Pit Lems", refering to another such puzzle game "Pit Droids". That one will be purposefully more puzzly, and I shall see how that one is received by the community. It does have quite a lot of radiation and slowfreeze though, so I hope people keep their 10.13 version for quite some time, still .

PARALEMS has also been overhauled, but there are a couple of people still playing the current version, so I want to include their feedback before I upload the new version. That one obviously also still has slowfreeze and anti-splat pads, and I'm not planning to change that.

In case new skills or similar would be added to the new version, I'd try it out and see what ideas I come up with, for example for the shimmier in case it should be implemented. But should the new version only be a "reduction", while it would be understandable for me considering all the effort it takes to add new skills, personally I wouldn't see a purpose in using it when 10.13 could simply do more.

QuoteSize also doesn't define difficulty - the tricks and entropy of the level does.

I never claimed it does . I'd actually prefer more "contained levels" like "Mining company". Huge levels are great when they match the provided resources exactly, so that there's a danger of running out of them, like on "Final Frustration". However, a lot of puzzly levels I've seen so far are just "huge landscape spanning the entire screen, here's XX of every skill, go!"

These levels take a long time to solve mainly because of their execution . Scarcity of resources only rarely makes these levels more complicated, usually playing along a couple of general guidelines is enough to save resources (like "can I afford to go down here? Then I should use a miner and save the bashers for where I need them.").

QuoteUnfair things have to go, I'll make no prisoners here and I just despise them.

Well, I appreciate people standing up for their opinion, and even when they're convinced of it to a missionary extent that could be called a "crusade" for "puzzles only". Different players have different playing philosophies . However, as soon as one philosophy proclaims itself as the only "right" one, and this idea coincides with the removal of features that would be feasable for alternative views, that is what I call enforcing an ideology.

Having just played through the gimmicks rank of the old 1.43 introduction pack (thanks again to Nepster!), now I'm even less inclined to blame specific features for shortcomings of levels: A lot of these gimmicks that are gone now, at least in the form they were conceptionalised in, actually increased the amount of puzzling for me, even though on the surface all these gimmicks may just seem like random crazy stuff. Meaning: Sometimes you might throw out something just because you currently believe it conflicts with your philosophy, but it might turn out later that is not actually the case.

I admit that for radiation and slowfreeze, that probability is lower because they overlap with the discarded idea of timed bombers. If you're for an all puzzle approach, it would make more sense to me to throw out radiation and slowfreeze together and keep anti-splat pads and splat pads as a unit, rather than one of each, which feels kinda half-hearted.

QuoteI absolutely hate cheaters and abusers of unfair elements.

But the "cheater" in that scenario is the level creator, not the player, if I get that correctly? All the stuff we do with our nice convenient NeoLemmix features would totally be cheating by original Lemmings standards. And if the standards for what is cheating and what is not aren't universal, neither are the standards for what is fair or not.



@Nepster: Yes, I think you've summarised my position pretty much spot-on . The idea is: If 10.13 has radiation and slowfreeze and the new version has neither, there will be more differences setting apart the two versions, thereby more players who are on the fence about radiation / slowfreeze who will keep 10.13 installed. Different iterations of NeoLemmix for different uses, I'm fine with that! (1.43 for gimmicks, 10.13 for radiation / slowfreeze, new-format for shimmiers and whatever you might add ).

That was it, perfect, thanks a lot!

I can totally see now why this feature got out of hand... but that is just more motivation for me to try a more systematic approach. Like 1 gimmick per rank, 10 levels in sequence featuring the same gimmick, so the player can get used to it. The name for such a pack kinda picks itself - "Lemmicks" .

Since the player 1.43 is still available, I think I'll try building such a thing. And if it's just for nostalgia purposes for the other forum members .

QuoteWouldn't photo editing tools require then a tool to add scratches, if they have a tool to remove them?

Actually, my version of Photoshop does indeed have such a scratch tool. And that is even just a very old version from Photoshop, from 2002 or so. So yes, in general I think for everything you can do in a programme, there should be some kind of counter-measure to balance it. We have a destructive skill that kills a lemming (bomber), and a creative skill that kills a lemming (stoner).

While original Lemmings didn't do this - building could only be done upwards, mining only downwards - we have started to move into that direction, by adding things like the platformer (moving along the same plain of motion as a basher) and the fencer (=a miner in reverse). A stoner is a bomber in reverse, and can actually be used in much more diverse ways than the bomber (break falls, turn lemmings including stopping climbers, build bridges etc.).

Therefore, if we want objects that assign skills, we should either have both or none of them. Taking this beyond lethal skills, one could even imagine timed objects that can assign any temporary skill to a lemming passing through - like slow-build, slow-bash, or slow-dig . A countdown over their head, and after 9 seconds the lemming starts / tries to dig / bash. This would e.g. allow to clone diggers, something that isn't useful so far. I know this won't be implemented, it's just a thought experiment.

QuoteSorry, but I totally disagree here. Players are the gods and we have to do all we can to make their experience as pleasant as possible.

Okay, it's good to know this. In my view, the level creator is the god - but only in the sense of "with great power comes great responsibility". I see this a bit like being a game master in Dungeons & Dragons: The level creator's job is not to defeat the players (that could be easily done because you have the power to put them into impossible situations), but neither to make the experience a cakewalk. The game master should challenge the player in a fair and transparent way, I think that's something we can all agree on.

Where we seem to differ is what counts as "fair": I don't consider reaction time, multitasking or somewhat precise placement of skills unfair to the player. They are just different skills a player of the original Lemmings game needed to have, just as he needed to have problem solving / puzzling skills, and, coming from a psychologist background, I want to "measure" these skills with my levels as well, not just the competence of problem solving. Good estimation of the position where to assign a skill is a mark of visuo-spatial imagination that at least some levels in a pack should reward.

While the puzzly packs I have seen so far are by no means a cakewalk as far as figuring out the route is concerned, they certainly are with regards to the execution. Even "Save Me", the hardest level on original Lemmings, is a complete joke with NeoLemmix tools. And while I view framestepping and replay features as overall convenient, I don't believe the only challenge the introduction of these options leaves us with is creating huge levels that visually confuse the player on purpose and make them count the skills they use. I enjoy that from time to time, but I think there are more different types of challenges than that, many of them unexplored so far. After all, frame-stepping also allows us to do much more mean things with regard to pixel precision than the original Lemmings could have ever afforded, and your level "Ninjas in the attic" is a prime example of that ^^.

Trolling (i.e. making normal terrain steel or steel normal terrain, hiding exits / traps, invisible & fake objects etc.) I would consider unfair, but not to the point of banning them. I just think such levels should be clearly identifiable in advance so they adress only the target audience they are designed for an that will enjoy them. Once again, "with great power comes great responsibility": Just because you CAN create something trolly as a level maker, it doesn't mean you should. And if you decide you want to, you should carefully consider how to go about it. Outright "banning" stuff, in contrast, in my experience just makes people crave more for what has been formerly available and is now forbidden / impossible.

QuoteFinally I have to confess: All these further discussions make me wonder whether it wouldn't have been better to cull radiation objects as well. They really are out of place in NeoLemmix.

Well, as I have already cynically predicted: That will probably be the first thing to happen in the next NeoLemmix release then, won't it?

Perhaps paradoxically, I support that decision. As I've said before: Be consequential. Either remove both of them in the name of combating execution difficulties, or leave both of them in for future creators to explore.

And perhaps more people will speak out in favour of keeping something if their own levels are on the chopping block, too , which is the case with radiation more so than with slowfreeze. A lot of mine use slowfreeze and radiation in combination, so those levels are destroyed either way. Since I have nothing left to lose in this regard, I can just as easily openly support the removal of radiation from future versions of NeoLemmix!

I asked Flopsy on YouTube whether the original version of the introduction pack, i.e. the one featuring the "Gimmicks" rank, was still available anywhere. I know the official one has been updated (or should I say: The last rank just has been completely removed :/ ) in order for it to go along with the current version of NeoLemmix. But now that I've finally gotten the old version to work, I'd like to try some of the gimmick levels myself. So does anyone of you still have it on his PC?

1.43 has some interesting benefits and restrictions compared to the current version - no fencer and no option to combine terrain and objects from different tilesets obviously are a downside, but gimmicks certainly make up for that! ^^ I was originally hoping I could transfer PARALEMS to the older version, even if I had to rebuild all the levels manually. While I see now this won't work, I'm tempted to build something entirely new exclusively around gimmicks. To make it a little more predictable, perhaps a specific gimmick will apply for an entire rank before changing to the next one (a rank of all wraparound levels, a rank of all anti-gravity levels, and so on).

QuoteUpshot is, that for all other objects, their color is completely irrelevant and they can be recognized by their form.

Well, that would be easy to solve: Use the stars animation only for either radiation or slowfreeze, and the other one gets the "machine" look that for example radiation & slowfreeze objects on the Purple and Lab tileset have currently.

That's confusing enough, after all, that on some tilesets, the star design is used, on others the generator look. That said though, other objects differ between tilesets, too, from exits to one-way blocks and -fields all the way to traps.

I do believe though there should be some similarity between those two objects on purpose, because they have in common that they are deadly to the lemming passing through, more specifically "death by skill use", which sets them apart from regular traps.

That's also the reason why I don't get "removing slowfreeze, but keeping radiation", just like I don't understand "removing anti-splat pads, but not splat pads". Both are logical counterparts of each other, like Yin and Yang. Why should a bomber be assignable by an object, but not a stoner, if these are the only two lethal skills?

Concerning anti-splat pads: They may be redunant with updrafts in theory. But for a new player, since you've adressed you want to consider their issues as well, it should be much easier to infer that an anti-splat pad does the opposite of a splat pad than to figure out that an updraft can be used as the opposite of an anti-splat pad. Think about it: Triggered traps also always do the same thing, yet we have loads of different triggered traps available .

QuoteAnd I noticed, that you didn't respond at all to my point:
  - Slowfreeze objects require very often frame-precise positioning, making solutions hard to execute.

Indeed I didn't, because that is the only part not adressed by my suggestions - difficulty of execution is a much wider topic in my view that goes way beyond radiation and slowfreeze.

However, the suggestion has been made to add skill blueprints to slowfreeze and radiation objects, like for the other skills. Meaning when you hover the mouse over a lemming that has a countdown, you'd see how far it is still going to walk / fall until it explodes / stones. Kinda as if skill blueprints had been introduced before timed bombers were abolished: Then bombers probably also would have gotten a skill blue print, wouldn't they?

So far, I don't see how slowfreeze positioning is more or less difficult than radiation positioning: Both give lethal skills to a walking lemming, that is the root of the execution issue. For a walking bomber, there's usually some leeway or "confidence interval", as is for a falling stoner that is e.g. supposed to break a fall. Of course, a level creator would have the option to measure out the exact fall height so a stoner would have to land at one specific pixel. But that's a d*ck move by that level dessigner then, and not a problem of the tool itself.

If you want to cut down on execution problems, this would have to be done consequentially - which would mean throwing out radiation AND slowfreeze, but probably also teleporters, since they require a couple of seconds to execute their function and are sensitive to release rate and other timing factors, i.e. how close lemmings are to each other. Also cloners, especially when used to duplicate skills, can be very pixel-precision-y... and gliders also, despite their skill blueprint...

You see, we could go on and on with finding features that cause execution problems. If a level creator wants to be mean, he will always find a way. I in contrast have edited "Airborne aid", because the original version combined slowfreeze and gliders, and that was really a pain. With floaters, it's a lot better. So I wouldn't say slowfreeze or gliders per se are problematic, there are only certain combinations of skills and features that we could generally advise not to (over-)use.

QuoteRule 0 in programming: Users never read anything!

That may be true. However, if you are the user and cause damage for not reading the instructions, that's still the user's problem. We all know the stories of American companies sued by some random person because they didn't write upon their microwave "don't put your cat in here to dry its fur". The same is true for medicine, it is always advised to read the package leaflet.

I don't think it is our job as level creators to provide all-around comfort to players, especially not on higher difficulty ranks. Yes, we should be fair and tell them if certain physics changes apply in levels that don't apply otherwise. But we don't have to make up for mistakes committed by the player, especially harder levels are usually unforgiving in this regard. Players who have come that far can be trusted they have some sort of own agency, and they will know they have to use all the information required. For example, also level titles sometimes give a hint on how to solve a level - if the player clicks right away without reading the title, that's his fault, not the creator's.

Quote"Action" just isn't something I'd associate with Lemmings, even the original game; it's too slow-paced for its action to be thrilling.

Just wanted to comment on this: Since I saw the cover of the original Lemmings again recently, it was actually sold as an "action puzzle". The puzzle element is certainly there, still.

QuoteGimmicks can be changed via "View -> Gimmicks Window". Then select the desired gimmick and click on "Activate this Gimmick".

Thank you very much, I'll try it right away!

QuoteIf you have any suggestion how to make everyone happy, please tell me! But simply keeping slowfreeze objects doesn't do this!

Gladly so! I think this statement of yours outlines the core of the reasons for our differing opinions:

QuoteThat's actually a very good point. It needs to be easier to find out permanent skills that zombies have, or we will have to remove skilled zombies from the game, too.

You want to get rid of things that are currently confusing. That's understandable; I just ask "Why get rid of something if it could be improved?"

- I agree that radiation and slowfreeze look similar as objects. So why not simply make the colours of the graphics more distinguishable? Make the slowfreeze stars more blue, the radiation stars more yellow / orange. Also, the countdown numbers above the lemming's head could be adapted: A yellow / orange countdown for radiation, a blue one for slowfreeze.
This should solve nearly all of the problems you mentioned:
1) Slowfreeze and radiation could be more easily distinguishable without having to do much work on the graphics themselves (just some "hue/saturation" shifts in photoshop should do it).
2) The player would know right away what object he is dealing with, not only due to the distinguishable colours, but also as soon as a lemming walks into the object, you'd see judging by the countdown colour whether it's radiation or slowfreeze.
3) If you're worried about new players, you could place pickup skills over the object, like you do with hatches, to tell them on the introductory levels what this object does. This means: The first level with a radiation object in a pack should have a Bomber pickup skill placed above it, the first slowfreeze object should have a Stoner placed above it. Obviously it would be even more user-friendly to do this on every level featuring radiation or slowfreeze. Alternatively, you could incorporate the graphic of that pickup skill into the graphic of the object, so that whenever someone places a slowfreeze object while creating levels, there'd be some kind of stoner-graphic attached to it, and for radiation it would be a bomber.

Please tell me if there are any programming challenges related to this that would make it particularly hard to do. But my estimation is, since we're only talking about colour-shifting and a new "etiquette" as far as pickup-skill labeling is concerned, all of this should be comparatively easy to do?

- For Zombies, I'd suggest to spell out the skill just as for regular lemmings, but with a "-Z" attached. The type line seems to be long enough for that.

- While we're at it, we could consider how to label athletes with the skills they have. In original lemmings, "athlete" could only mean "climber + floater", but with swimmers, disarmers, and gliders in the mix, "athlete", "triathlete" or "X-athlete" doesn't tell us anything. An "X-athlete" has all the skills, but it's still unknown whether it is a glider or floater. Here we could use the initials of the skills, as it is currently done for zombies, so for example "Triathlete-C-F-S" for a lemming that is a climber, floater, and swimmer. This would be a little inconsistent with the method I proposed for labeling zombies, but at least everything would be identifiable.

Quote
Fun fact: When I played Paralems, I knew that there would come a trolling level somewhere, but while playing through the pack, I didn't find it. Only afterwards I actively looked for the trolling level using the clear physics more and then found it.

That's why I gave the level a pre-text ("Beware! Forget all you've learned so far and all you believe to be self-evident! Nothing in this level is as it seems!"). I agree that being surprised by a trolling level and wasting hours on a level with rigged rules is annoying. I'd simply introduce them the same level gimmick levels were introduced back then: With a pre-text that tells you what you're getting yourself into. Of course, a trolling level, in contrast to a gimmick level, wouldn't necessarily tell you how the rules are rigged, just that the rules are rigged on this particular level. And then everyone could decide whether to play it or not .

QuoteGimmicks were removed a long time ago. Anyone who wants to design new levels with the old gimmicks has to dig up 1.43, and the maintainers of large packs had to remove or rework gimmick levels.

I have downloaded the 1.43 editor, and there is a field called "gimmick" in the level preferences, however it is set to "0000" and can't be altered . Do I need an even older version of the editor to actually create levels with gimmicks myself?

QuoteAs far as designing new levels goes, Lemmix is dead.

That's what I thought. So it's quite funny then that I was pointed towards Lemmix for all my timed bomber needs . Creating levels with timed bombers thereby wouldn't be possible, not to speak of combinations of timed bombers with the new skills. Radiation is the only thing that kinda emulates this in NeoLemmix, and that might go on the chopping block sometime in the future, too. Even though it seems like it survives this round and people promise "what stays now will stay for a long time", what does "long" really mean in this context? The older versions that feature a lot of the stuff I've grown to like are from when, 2016?

QuoteExcuse me, how can you remove objects that are used in several levels like that? In my mind, culling something because "very few people use it" is a terrible reason to cull it, because it will break several levels while giving literally no benefit to anyone else. If few people use it, then why remove it any destroy the levels that do use the feature just because not enough use it? I do not see the rationale for that decision I must say.

Thank you !

Indeed, the only reason I see to remove something that barely gets used anyway is being afraid of what people might come up with. If it's just something less favoured by the community, so what? No one forces any member of the community to play the pack. Even troll levels, as much as they can be hated, can just be skipped - I know a lot of people did that with the trolling level from PARALEMS, and I'm fine with that. That doesn't necessitate nor justify taking the option of trolling away completely .

And who says level creators only build for the Lemmings forum? I've given my pack to my brother and a friend of his, who is a lot more casual in his playing of Lemmings, it mainly has nostalgic purposes for him. If I just serve him puzzles all day he will get a knot in his head after a couple of them and quit before finishing the first rank.

Of course, those who do the programming have the power in the end. I just can't get rid of the feeling that you simply don't want to see any remotely execution-based levels pop up. Yes, it will likely be new level designers who use these objects. Yes, their levels will probably look stupid to the seasoned players involved in the programming. What does it hurt you to let the kids have fun? Their packs will probably be too easy for you anyway. You're simply a different target audience.

I also think level packs providing a greater variety of challenges could also help the YouTubers here on the forum in growing their channels. Watching someone think about a puzzle for half an hour isn't really that much fun, is it? You could just play the pack and think about it yourself, then. Watching someone trying to execute an idea that has a little more action to it would make for a much more entertaining Let's Play experience, I think!

QuoteYou are comparing apples with eggs here:
- Zombies are far more often used, so the hurdle to remove them is far higher.
- They are considered useful (and are used) by far more people.
- They add something far more unique to NeoLemmix than Slowfreeze or Radiation objects do.
- They don't cause any confusion.

Zombies don't cause confusion, really? Pre-skilled lemmings caused a lot of confusion on my pack, so just imagine how much confusion skilled zombies can cause, because their labels can't even be read properly, aside from the initial letter .

QuoteUp to now, we almost only added features and almost never removed any.

Timed bombers, rising water, wraparound, anti-gravity, the "kill your lems rather than saving them" idea... if you consider all the gimmicks individually, quite a lot of features were removed in one big chunk, and now a second one follows. If you had never added them in the first place, this would be a totally different thing. But as we all know, "you can't contain ideas". All these objects existing inspired level ideas, perhaps for some more than for others, and perhaps more than could be put into practice until now. You're trying to put the genie back into the bottle here.

This is also what I meant by "rushing the creation of levels featuring slowfreeze will diminish their quality". Of course, the first iteration of these levels will have backroutes (thanks to nin10doadict for telling me, I'll put a wall of steel between the hatches! ). Slowfreeze is a largely unexplored item, I'm one of the first people who seems to have the courage / creativity to toy around with it. What does it matter that no one found a use for it during the last two years? Now, there are people trying to use it, and there may be more in the future.

Btw, the hopefully fixed version of "Airborne aid" is attached .

QuoteSorry, but if we wait until noone is creating a pack using some feature, before we remove it, no removal will happen at all.

Oh, I'm not asking for anyone to wait for me. I'm not asking for a delay. I'm asking for slowfreeze, anti-splat pads & their like to stay in, because, as Colorful Arty pointed out, I still can see literally no gain to anyone in removing them. "No removal will happen at all" sounds like "no removal" would be a loss. I have outlined to you how losing slowfreeze would be a loss, so can you tell me now how not removing something is a loss for anyone?

QuoteSadly, I don't think the odds are much in your favor when it sounds like it's mostly down to just you being the advocate.  Maybe you can do a pack of slowfreeze levels now to commemorate the feature's passing, when the current version of game is still in active use and not yet superceded widely by the new version.

The pack I'm currently working on, "Pit Lems", does in fact have a lot more radiation and slowfreeze use, but certainly not just to give them some "quota screen time". This is what I mean by "you're discouraging new level creators". And that can't be in anyone's interest, because it just means less material for everyone to play, especially for those who experts here on the forum who have already mastered every available pack, and tend to solve new ones in a couple of hours.

In order for anyone to play a slowfreeze-featuring pack at all, I'd have to rush the creation of it, from which the quality of the levels would obviously suffer, just to have everyone move on a couple of weeks later, rendering the pack completely worthless only shortly after its conception.

And that line of thinking continues for other features. What if one day, the majority of the forum decides to cut zombies again? That will destroy PARALEMS entirely. Are level packs really viewed as such throwaway stuff, considering all the time and effort that goes into coming up with them, testing them, refining and reordering them?

The original Lemmings and Oh No! More Lemmings obviously will always be playable on all engines, because those are classics. With regard to custom made packs however, there are already several that are either completely incompatible with new versions (like Copycat Lems), or have been severely trimmed down, like the NeoLemmix introduction pack that now completely misses the Gimmick rank. Even though I've downloaded the old version (1.43) where it should still be playable, the pack itself has been edited so I can't even take a look at those levels anymore aside from watching Flopsy play them on YouTube .

The thing I don't get is: The more features we remove from NeoLemmix, the closer it becomes to good old Lemmix again. Nepster's pack featuring only the classic 8 skills could be played on Lemmix perfectly, minus the instant bombers and the skill blueprints. But the rewinding features and all the other stuff that makes the execution so convenient these days are still there.

So I sometimes ask myself why the philosophies aren't "swapped": NeoLemmix has all the whacky features, so why isn't that engine the "playground" for whacky level ideas in the first place, and Lemmix the more restricted, conservative, strictly puzzly one?

QuoteYou will also never be able to try the combination of timed bombers and shimmiers. Or the Frenzy gimmick and jumpers. Sometimes we have to live with such things...

Not if there isn't an "active" reason to remove them. If things clash in the code so one has to be picked over the other, fine. But there can only be harm from removing something no-one uses (yet). It doesn't do damage if it's staying, if it's barely used anyway, but the option wouldn't be gone. Like you said: Now or never. This means if slowfreeze is removed now, I know it will never come back ever, because so far nothing that has been removed once has returned again. So I hope you can understand why I'm so insisting.

The difference between "fencer + slowfreeze" and "jumper + slowfreeze" is obviously that a jumper can get into mid-air, something a stoner is often used for. The fencer only needs to be combined with a stoner in the corner-case that two fencers cross each others paths, as we have discussed; apart from that, it wouldn't make sense to destroy terrain and then create new one.

Here's another use of slowfreeze with cloners, teleporters, and floaters. Still not creative enough?

Thanks, backroute removed!

You have a point that people haven't found much use for slowfreeze in several years. However, now that you're considering adding new features, they might! If you really get e.g. the jumper to work, imagine what could be done with those and slowfreeze... or with the shimmier...

I think we should at least try these new combinations before forever robbing ourselves of the possibility to test these interactions.

Okay, I've looked at nin10doadict's replay. Since I had already overhauled this level to avoid Nepster's backroute (i.e. added steel on the left so that the lemmings don't reach the teleporter from behind), in doing so I also made one of the pillars you fenced through a one-way block facing in the opposite direction. That was yesterday, i.e. before I watched your replay, but it happens to be this way now that your solution won't be possible in the new version of this level anyway - kinda by accident. A lot of levels need a bit more steel, both you and Nepster have shown me this especially with regard to "Maze of Omnipotence" and "IT'S FEEDING TIME!"

I was very impressed with your solution for "ELemEnts", nice alternative approach to what I had in mind!

For "Winter is here", yeah, the fire trap most definitely has to go. Your solution was mechanically fine, perfectly within the time limit, all fair and square - but just hiding from zombies and letting them kill themselves is just not epic enough for the last level ^^. Once again thanks to you and Nepster for showing this to me, I will modify the level to keep the zombies circling around the landscape, as promised.

@Proxima: Great, thanks a lot! I will send that link to my brother, it will save him a lot of work, hopefully!

PS: The intended solution for Abhorrent 24 ("Beam me up, Lemmy!") is attached, btw .

Spoiler for nin10doadict

Spoiler

Looks like what I said before about the chess players did in fact hold true: You were annoyed about having to go beneath the trap that you never considered going above it . That's the reason your level takes more time, because you have to turn the lemming around and mine into the second chamber just to get the swimmer before heading right again across the pont. In the intended solution, miner and fencer combined just get the swimmer right away and the pioneer is already facing into the right direction.

As I've promised, I don't want anyone's solution to fail just due to the time limit. For the current version of PARALEMS, the time limit was definitely too tight, simply because I didn't consider someone turning around to get the swimmer. In the next version however, due to the added one-way block, your solution won't be possible anymore, unfortunately - as will a couple of other solutions I've seen so far, simply because more steel or one-way blocks are being added to several levels .

EDIT: Just to catch up, who is still playing the current version? I have Colorful Arty's replays up to Disturbing, I don't know whether Raymanni got to take a look at the pack or not - he voiced his interest, but of course a lot of packs have been released roughly around the same time lately, and the time we have everyday to save some Lemmings is naturally limited .

The thing is, I have overhauled all the levels on the basis of your replays and feedback, but I don't want to cause confusion by uploading a new version while some people are still playing the first one. When I upload it, I will change the link in the starting post. I can already promise that no levels will be removed (basically, "don't remove it" seems to be becoming my second name here ), just all the backroutes we've found so far will (hopefully) have been fixed.

Thanks! I'll look at your replay tonight when I'm back at my PC. Sometimes players, especially seasoned ones, solve levels in a more complicated way than necessary, thereby requiring more time. However, if you still have to use all the skills as in the intended solution, it shouldn't be solely the time limit that stops you from solving the level.

Basically, it boils down to this: If I consider your solution a valid alternative solution to the intended one (which has about a minute left of leeway, so no problem with the time limit there), I will increase the time limit. If it turns out to be a complicated backroute, I won't . In the latter case, I would rather implement some additional elements or change the provided skills to discourage players from that alternative approach right away, so they don't find what would be a possible solution and then fail the level just due to the time limit. I'm all for saving players unnecessary frustration!

The main problem wih puzzly levels is that once a player has figured out certain elements, they are prone to starting each new attempt keeping that element constant - thereby probably losing the perspective for completely different solutions. I have experienced this on Nepster's "Mining company": I always start the level in a particular way of which I believe "this can't be done differently"; but in case that way is wrong, anything I try afterwards is bound to fail from the getgo.

There have been studies with professional chess players showing this phenomenon. It's a bit like playing Memory and always flipping the card first where you know the picture with certainty. A player really has to force himself to go back to the drawing board then and start from scratch .

With regard to "Winter is here", it's the other way round: Nepster has already informed me that currently, the time limit is generous enough so that the player can just wait for all the zombies to die without doing anything. Hence I will definitely remove the frosty fire trap and seal the gap on the right, so that they keep moving around the level in circles and the player will have to actively dispose of them. I want it to feel like actually killing the zombies rather than just "waiting for the storm to pass". After all, I'm pretty sure that strategy wouldn't work on the Night King either .

Concerning the music: Thanks to Nepster for the advice on how to drop tracks out of the rotation! I guess in order for nin10doadict to be able to do his, I'd have to send him the SYSTEM.DAT file?

Which of the original tracks are liked or not is obviously up to personal preference, in the end. Naming mp3 files as listed in the starting post would indeed be the way to have some personally favourable music provided by each level automatically without having to type something into YouTube or press "repeat" on each attempt.

On tracks you grew up with: My brother e.g. is always annoyed that when playing original Lemmings with either NeoLemmix or Lemmix, each rank starts with the Can-Can, rather than the rotation being continuous across ranks (for example, "This should be a doddle" should start with Forest Green instead). I suggested to him to dump all the level files and recompile them into a new pack with the Flexi tool. He said he might actually do that, all just to have the "correct" music matching each level as he is used to it .

Thanks for sticking with it, guys! I consider "no ragequits so far" a first mark of success...

Spoilers for Colorful Arty

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Thanks! You've found a backroute to "Have you seen my screwdriver?" that no one had found so far! I thought about adding a piece of steel above the trap to prevent the player from building over the trigger, forcing him to get the disarmer pickup skill. Having consulted my brother on this, however, we agreed to enforce his solution instead by making the pillar next to the trap a one-way block. Now the player will have to get the pioneer in the chamber with the exit first. It is still possible to solve the level without using the disarmer though, since there are enough builders - I guess Nepster will approve .

I have already started to overhaul a lot of levels. Levels that were over-generous with builders, such as "The Pit and the PenduLem", or just pointless, like "Twilems", have now both become a lot more challenging imho . In order to reduce the amount of building on certain level, I'd obviously have to know either the number and/or the name. While watching your replays, I found that "Across the seven seas" provides a lot more platformers than necessary, so I can easily reduce them, but that won't reduce the amount of platforming necessary to solve the level, of course.

QuoteAlso, I believe Disgusting 10 is impossible just looking at it. I even used clear physics mode to see if there were hidden exits which there weren't.

Clear physics won't help you on this one - unless you were to believe that the lava on fire levels was indeed a fire object.

So I guess you're also one of these guys "just looking" at a level with the hatch still closed?

Then you will love the levels where lemmings come out alternating between left and right !

Spoilers for nin10doadict

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QuoteI must say that Demented 30 was really fun. It looks intimidating, the title provides a good hint (which I didn't figure out for the first 20 minutes) and solving it felt really satisfying. The time limit was annoying and I felt it didn't need to be there, but at least it didn't actually bite me. I have no idea what music you intended for this level, but I played it with Id (Purpose) going and I think it fit rather well.

Thank you! I just don't get the second part... you said "the title gives a good hint" (at what this level is about, I guess), but you had no idea what music would fit this level?

Perhaps we think of this level referencing two different things?

Anyway, if you've picked a specific track to go along with "Winter is here", that track should in theory also be played automatically on a couple of other levels, and all of them overlap thematically - namely "The Wall" and "All Lems must die". I actually thought that was pretty obvious ...

QuoteA notable exception was on Abhorrent 24. It was a good puzzle and took me a while to figure out how to get all the pieces in the right places. Then, once I had done so, the time limit bit me and told me to do it again. I didn't have to change my strategy, I just had to be more precise. Having to replay a whole level for that reason is super frustrating... Also that trap should be made visible, seeing as how you have to go under it because going over it seals you off later. Trying to go under a trap you can't see with that kind of terrain is also frustrating.

Would you mind attaching your replay of that level? The intended solution doesn't actually require going beneath the trap, so I'd be interested in seeing how you solved "Beam me up, Lemmy!" Also, the time limit isn't too harsh if the level is solved the intended way. It's always a little tricky with teleporters, since they take so long to transport single lemmings anywhere, but that factor has been considered already when setting the time limit. There are later teleporter levels where the timing is more critical, most notably "You can't even" (Demented 27).

QuoteThis is why it's a nice thing to put pickup skills next to hatches that release Lemmings that have preset skills.

So that players don't have to bother waiting for a single second for the hatch to open? What's the difference between stopping before the hatch opens and stopping after the first lemming has come out?

Other players have also told me about this "etiquette" of labeling hatches with pre-assigned skills. I have decided that I won't do this on this pack because I couldn't do it consistently - and consistency is something the community cares about, as well, IIRC .

Some levels e.g. have lemmings coming out of a single hatch facing in both directions - no way to signal this to the player beforehand. In fact, the player can't even see whether lemmings come out just facing left or just facing right. Furthermore, there are pre-placed lemmings (and zombies) with skills. There is no way to label these with pickup skill signs without placing pickup skills in the landscape that could be collected - and making them fake objects, which has been suggested, too, would be inconsistent with actual pickup skills again.

In general, I find it funny that "Skies aflame" seems to cause so much issue. Without knowing what pre-assigned skills lemmings have, other levels would be "impossible", too - like "Volunteers first!" or "Point me to my training course", both of which appear earlier in the pack. Yet, "Skies aflame" is the first one causing trouble, apparently .

I'm currently working on a more puzzly pack following Pit Droids philosophy, but even those levels will have differently skilled lemmings coming out of the same hatch sometimes (as this also happens in Pit Droids). Such a hatch could also not be labeled, because placing all the skills of the lemmings coming out of that hatch above it could mean two things: 1) All the lemmings in that hatch have all these skills, 2) The hatch spits out a sequence of just-climbers, just-floaters, just-swimmers etc.

In short: Simply letting the lemming come out and hovering your mouse over it (which you will have to do anyway to actually try solving the level) will provide you with much more information than any label applied to the hatch.

It's quite baffling to me that people claim a level were impossible even before they have actually tried to play it ^^. And no, calculating through everything in your head might be "trying to solve it", but not "trying to play it". Even pure puzzle levels often require some trial and error, e.g. because a player can easily under- or overestimate the length of a builder / platformer, or the angle of a miner / fencer, or just the time a lemming needs to get somewhere. Even some of Nepster's levels, which I would consider the epitome of "puzzly", have such timing challenges involved. How would you be supposed to solve these types of levels just by thinking through everything in your head?

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I kinda wish you hadn't used copyrighted tracks for the custom music. It's better than nothing, but if you don't own any of those tracks (like me) then there's no difference. And some of the default music tracks are pretty lame IMO, so I don't want to listen to it for a long time while trying to figure out a hard level. I end up muting the music and picking other music that I think matches the level theme and have that play in the background.

I guess if NeoLemmix can't find a music file with the required name, it just plays the standard rotation of Lemmings songs? If it were only the main Lemmings music, I wouldn't consider that a problem - other packs work this way, too, like Nepster Lems. However, I believe if there's no track specified, NeoLemmix circles through the standard Lemmings songs plus those from Oh no! More Lemmings, doesn't it?

Yes, some of the Oh No-songs are indeed quite lame or annoying... if any particular music annoys you, you always have the option of deliberately failing the level so the rotation goes on to the next track ^^. Or you put some of your own favourite tracks into the music folder and name them like the tracks listed in the starting post. That should be less annoying than having to switch to iTunes in between levels .

Otherwise... there's always YouTube, just sayin' ...

I thought actions might speak louder than words. Attached are two levels in defense of slowfreeze - one of them is a fixed version of a level from Paralems. The original was solveable by only using the radiation - this one requires both radiation and slowfreeze.

The second level approaches slowfreeze differently - sometimes, a lemming dying through slowfreeze can be worse than if it were to die a different way. Because the stoner that results from this can become a hindrance. Try this level without bombing the second slowfreeze lemming and you'll see what I mean.

Since Nepster mentioned my level "Only over their dead bodies", it actually makes use of both radiation AND slowfreeze. The second zombie gets stoned to create a terrain above the water from which a platform can be built. In the current version of the level, the terrain next to the exit reaches so far beneath the bombing hole that the level can be solved by only using the radiation part; this will be fixed in the next iteration so that both the radiation and the slowfreeze will have to be used to solve the level.

Also, there's the level "Danger of breakthrough" where you have to navigate a lemming with walkers until it gets stoned by the slowfreeze, to both create a blocker at the right spot and to bridge across a pont of water.

These are only two very simple examples, I do believe there's still a lot of unexplored potential for both of these "skills". So why throw them out before they have been fully explored?

I actually believe one thing that might bar us from exploring these features creatively is getting stuck in one specific level building philosophy. In order to put radiation and slowfreeze to clever use, we probably will have to think out of the box.

"Only over their dead bodies" was one attempt of mine to encourage this line of thinking. I would in fact still consider this level a puzzle: The zombies, radiation and slowfreeze are all visible right from the start, there's no executin difficulty regarding these objects, the zombies will always explode / stone at the same point because the position of skill assignment is always fixed at the point where the radiation / slowfreeze object is placed.

PS: Regarding 1.43: I tried to use an older version recently, and for some reason it didn't open properly. Are there any additional files I need to make the 1.43 editor / player work?