How else would you suggest that level designers make players aware of how they would prefer people to experience the levels and styles they've likely spent many hours creating?
You can write a recommendation for high-res mode in the opening post of the thread in which you upload your pack. That's it. I think you've already done that for Lemminas anyway, though
.
especially since NeoLemmix is, at its core, an engine which promotes user-created content.
Yes, but the engine is there to enable the player to play it - not to enable the designer to design it. That's what the editor does, but usually, nobody except the pack author will open someone else's level file in the editor (not because it were forbidden, just because there is no need for it, aside from maybe curiosity or looking for inspirations for someone's own levels).
Thus, NeoLemmix mainly exists to allow players to play more levels than the original games could offer to them. Not for the authors to express themselves. And I say that as someone who probably has created more levels than he has played.The player is your "customer" (or maybe more comparable to an artist's unpaying audience, but either way, the creator is dependent on them being there, because otherwise a creator would be the only one to solve his or her levels. Which isn't really that much fun if you know the solution already. We play our own levels to test them and create working replays, not for the cognitive challenge).
You can't make any decisions on how they should enjoy your "product".This is inherent in the game and actually becomes most apparent when it comes to backroutes: While there is a component of "
authorial intent" in every pack, meaning that the author determines the intended solution and can constantly rework levels to enforce said solutions, as long as those solutions aren't sufficiently enforced by the level, any alternative solutions are equally valid. It's not like NeoLemmix had a built-in feature to make the level fail unless the solution found by the player matched that specified by the author, after all. This would be a very powerful tool to stop backroutes and enforce intended solutions, wouldn't it?
This is of course an absurd and extreme example, but I'm using it
just to illustrate how far "enforcing the author's wishes on the player" could potentially be taken if authorial intent, i.e. the author's wishes, were the prime criterium for custom levels.
Instead, the fact that new backroutes constantly pop up demonstrates that NeoLemmix is much closer to "death of the author" than to "authorial intent". (And sometimes, there is indeed "digital death" of the author, if the creator of a given pack is no longer active on the forums, or at least is no longer maintaining this specific pack.)
Once the pack has been released, any solution to a level that isn't blocked by the terrain and objects inside it is valid. Any way of playing the pack that allows the player to solve the level is valid, too. Whether someone likes to play at maximum zoom, at minimum zoom for maximum overview, or whether they like to play every level in clear-physics mode
. The author simply no longer has any influence on it. And even if a level designer goes back to fix a backrouted level, no player is under any obligation to resolve that level. They've already "beaten" the pack author once, and if it was only due to the author's own mistake, because they overlooked something.
You put a lot of effort into the high-res-graphics, we acknowledge that. I put a lot of effort in the music for Lemmings World Tour, yet of course, it was Flopsy's
prerogative to exchange the tracks for his own playlist when LPing the pack. And with an LP, the creator at least has a slightly more understandable motivation to see all of his effort showcased, because it's going to be on YouTube for everyone to watch. Regarding how regular forum members play your or my packs in private, I don't have any influence on that, nor would I want to have it.
For example, if somebody switches off the music in Lemmings World Tour entirely, e.g. during the Noisemaker rank because the constant repetition of those five ONML tracks is getting on their nerves, I completely understand!
I really just wanted to start the main rotation off on level 01 of a rank instead of introducing it somewhere in the middle. I'm not completely happy with the way the music rotation for the Noisemaker rank turned out, but it was the optimal way I could think of.
So in your case, you can ask people who have already announced they want to LP a pack of yours to do so in high-res mode. But to me, that's somewhat of a "little finger, whole arm" scenario, because putting in the effort to make in LP of someone's pack (considering the few views LP videos of custom Lemmings packs get) is already a big favour on part of the person playing the pack.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.