Well, it's time. V12.7.0 of NeoLemmix is here!
The first "flagship" feature is neutral lemmings. These are sort of half way between regular lemmings and zombies; and can be identified by their greyscale clothing; entrances that spawn them can be identified by a hollow diamond appearing over them. Like zombies, the player cannot assign skills to neutral lemmings. However, unlike zombies, neutral lemmings can be saved, and are not infectious.
The second is that custom pickup skill objects are
officially supported now. A system has been implemented that allows for designing these, such that they won't need any updates if/when new skills are added, or the skills are reordered, etc. At the time of initial release, the only pickup skill objects present (other than the default one) are in namida_bridge, namida_basement and namida_garden; but I'm aware of several more that are in the works and will likely be in the next styles update (and probably available to download manually from the forums even sooner).
Moving onto smaller details, antisplat pads - a feature we had in old-formats that got culled in the move to new-formats - are back! We also have a few minor changes with zombies - they're now affected by the nuke, and a zombie that bounces off a blocker always infects that blocker (addressing an edge case where sometimes they wouldn't - this edge case resulted from the physics behaving exactly as intended so this was not a glitch, but was an illogical result, so there is now a special rule here). We also have an explicit rule for overlapping one-way arrows; one-way arrows
of different directions that overlap each other now cancel out, instead of combining their effects in various (and visually-obscured) ways.
We've also had some tweaks to the styles and level formats. For styles, all styles included with NeoLemmix have been updated - but if you have any unreleased work-in-progress styles, there's a tool to auto-update them attached to the 2nd post. For levels, we've got a new feature - "Cleanse Levels". This is activated by pressing F8 on a pack's title screen; this loads and re-saves a copy of every level in the pack. Cleansed copies of levels are saved in a "Cleanse" folder, they do not overwrite the originals. This isn't a blind "make a copy", but rather a load the level, then re-save it, so the output is completely up-to-date format-wise. Files other than levels are just directly copied, except for automating replacement of $RANK with $GROUP in levels.nxmi files.
This can also be used as a way to mass convert old-formats or other engine levels, without having to build an NXP first. The engine retains full support for non-updated content for now, though this will be dropped in the future for styles (V12.10.0 most likely) - it will be kept as long as possible for levels and packs; while the editor does mostly support it, support on the editor side is not guaranteed and could be dropped at any time (including that some things might already not work) - if the editor doesn't seem to be loading a level properly, and that level was created before V12.7.0's release, run the level through Cleanse Levels before reporting a bug.
In short: Styles need to be updated before V12.10.0, but any included with NL are already updated. Levels don't
need to be updated with any urgency for game compatibility, though may need to be updated for editor compatibility.
Editor-side, we've finally got talisman and preview / postview text editing in the level editor - a feature that's been sorely needed for a long time.
Do note that the addition of these has broken the non-tabbed view, this will be fixed in a near-future update to the editor. We've also got
much nicer handling of secondary animations now. Unfortunately, we still don't have proper alpha channel handling.
And of course, for both the engine and the editor, we've got plenty of bugfixes too.
FEATURES
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- Antisplat pads - an inverse of the splatpad (these used to exist but were removed; they're back now)
- Custom pickup skill objects are now officially supported, see: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=4435.0
- Neutral lemmings (lemmings that can be saved and interact with objects, but cannot be assigned skills except the nuke)
- Recoloring of lemming sprites - styles can just specify custom colors instead of having to provide recolored spritesheets, if their lemming sprites are just palette swaps of the default ones
PHYSICS CHANGES
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- If one-way arrows of different directions overlap, they now cancel out instead of creating a combined state
- Skills cannot be assigned to former-ohnoers, even if they revert to a state in which a skill usually could be assigned
- The nuke now affects zombies
- Zombies always infect any blocker they bounce off, regardless of trigger areas
FORMATS
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- Tweaks have been made to the formats of several files. Backwards compatibility will exist up to and including V12.9.X.
STYLES (Official / Lemmings Plus styles only; please see authors' topics for other styles)
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- All custom pickup skills have been removed, so that they can be re-added with the appropriate V12.7 updates
- All L2 styles use the L2 lemming colors for the respective styles
- Changes to some trigger areas in official styles (default:button, orig_crystal:trap_03, orig_pillar:rope_trap)
- Changes to the graphic of orig_fire:firepit and orig_fire:firepit_blue (no physics change)
- Changes to trigger areas and resizability in various namida styles
- Default and Xmas have a new Disarmer sprite, thanks to WillLem
- Fix to one-way arrow animation in l3_shadow
- namida_bridge, namida_basement and namida_garden all have new pickup skill objects
- Removed a duplicate piece in namida_circuit (will automatically be replaced with the non-duplicate version in levels)
- xmas:lights is now horizontally resizable
BUGFIXES
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- Assigning a skill to a highlit lemming when impossible did not queue the assignment
- Auto-saving of replay was not prevented when playing a level twice in a row
- Clear physics mode color shift sometimes freezes if game is paused
- Cloner-stacker and Cloner-builder skill shadows are sometimes off by one brick
- Fixes to the postview text selection algorithms
- Levels in unordered packs still tried to use rank/position for replay filenames
- Level select menu could still be accessed in test mode via pretext / posttext screens
- NeoLemmix may hang when switching rank from the preview screen under certain conditions
- Several fixes to alpha-blended terrain
- Skill panel icons may use zombie and/or athlete graphics in some cases
- When a specified music file cannot be found and the standard rotation is empty, the previous level's music was reused
- When attempting to assign a new skill on a frame where an assignment already exists, the old assignment got priority
OTHER
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- "Cleanse Levels" feature. Press F8 on a pack's title screen to save an up-to-date-format copy of all levels in the pack. (You can create a pack with old-formats, (Super)Lemmini and/or Lemmins levels, and run this on them, to quickly convert them all to up-to-date NXLVs!)
- Color of objects in clear physics mode is now slightly darker
- "No Hotkey Assigned" in preview texts is now "None"
- Skill panel graphics have been moved from "styles/default/panel" to "gfx/panel" - Cleanse Levels now copies (and updates, in the case of levels.nxmi) files other than just levels in a pack.
- Cleanse Levels now saves all feedback to a text file, and just shows a single message when completed to tell the user if there are any errors or not.
- Missing pieces in levels are replaced with placeholders instead of causing crashes / cleanse failures.
- Translation table for namida_wasteland now uses the restored antisplat pad.
- Fixed bug: "Go to previous rank" goes to different pack when on first rank of a pack. (Applied to both menu and preview screen.)
- Fixed bug: Incorrect data saved for levels without a background - doesn't affect in-game but may affect editor or other tools.
- Fixed bug: Piece auto-replacement doesn't work for terrain, unless it's a "replace the entire style" redirect.
- Draw priority order for lemmings (front to back): Selected lemming, then highlit lemming, then regulars, then neutrals, then zombies. Within each category, athletes are drawn in front of others.
- Slow motion functionality added. Is not assigned a hotkey by default.
- Fixed bug: Directional select / force walker are applied even to replay assignments.
- Fixed bug: Terrain pieces in terrain groupings may be replaced with fallback when they shouldn't be.
- Fixed bug: When frame is advanced or skill is assigned immediately after a paused RR change, the replay and gameplay will desync (the release rate change is lost in the replay data).
- Fixed bug: Cloner pickups, especially when providing multiple skills, can interfere with the save requirement
EDITOR CHANGELOG
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- Editing of preview / postview texts and talismans is now supported.
- Fixed most (or hopefully, all) incorrect implementation details in saved level files.
- Greatly improved handling of secondary animations.
- Supports the new V12.7.0 versions of formats. Note that this means levels edited with this version will NOT be compatible with V12.6.5 or earlier.
- Fixed bug: Editor always thinks levels containing specifically-paired teleporters/receivers haven't been saved.
- Fixed bug: One-way arrows with the "no overwrite" flag are rendered incorrectly.
- Fixed bug: Resizable objects' trigger areas are assumed to be the same size as the object itself.
- Changed the wording of the buttons that alter the order pieces are drawn in. (Their function remains unchanged, only the text on them is different.)
- Empty space around objects is trimmed (unless this would cause the object's size to drop below 8x8).
- The fallback placeholder object is no longer shown in the object selection list.
- Fixed bug: Non-tabbed display was broken.
- Resizable objects, or objects with a trigger area size the same as the size of the object itself, no longer get cropped.
- Object NXMO files can specify "EDITOR_CROP true" or "EDITOR_CROP false" to specify if the object's graphic will be cropped or not, overriding the above check.
- Fixed bug: "Draw first" actually meant "draw last" and vice versa.
Download:
https://www.neolemmix.com/download.php?id=379 (Permalink to V12.7.4)
Styles:
https://www.neolemmix.com/download.php?id=374 (Permalink to 2019-12-11)
Editor:
https://www.neolemmix.com/download.php?id=376 (Permalink to V1.18)
Upgrade from earlier V12.7.X (stable only!) -> V12.7.4:
https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=4504.msg79276#msg79276The styles must be downloaded in full when updating from V12.6.5 or earlier (or from V12.7.0-RC builds); there is no "upgrade" download.It is VERY HIGHLY recommended that you create a new folder for V12.7.0 instead of using your existing folder when updating from V12.6.X. You can use the same folder if you're updating from a V12.7.0-RC build, but to be safe delete the "styles" folder first. You can copy the "settings", "music", "levels" and "replay" folders, and the "NLEditorSettings.ini" file, from your old folder if you like - those will work with the new version no problem. It's the "styles", "data" and "gfx" folders that should be cleaned out.
As usual - please report any bugs you find, with the new features or otherwise, in the Bugs & Suggestions board.