The next round is up!

Moving on to rule 3 now.

Removed the "getting the non-standard NL tileset part (zanzindorf_agony)" from the download links + installation guide as it now part of the standard library of NL tilesets.

Speaking of tiebreakers: The next round is up!

V 1.2 is out!

Thanks to Colorful Arty's stream a few issues in rank 1 have been fixed:

Level swap:

- 1 18 <--> 1 27

Level fixes:

- 1 01 visual error fixed
- 1 29 backroute fixed via builder pick-up skill

Sorry I saw this topic very late.

I'd suggest adding alternative hotkeys for editor Zoom In/Out, apart from mouse wheel. Maybe regular and alphanumeric +/- ?

Autohotkey script that simulates mouse wheel when you press +/-

You don't need scripts for this.

In the options menu (F3 in the main menu) you can configure the hotkeys and you can assign as many keys as you want for the desired functions.

If needed: A guide how to change hotkeys can also be found in the manual (Point 5.2): https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=4081.0

"-" currently rewinds back for 1 sec by standard as I recall, so that would be a double assignment.

Thanks for the replays and kind words!

Great job on the first rank, everything intended or acceptable except: 1 26.



Thanks why V 1.1 is out! With following changes:

- 1 26 backroute fix (moved a pair of arrows a bit higher)



As far in terms of replay steal: I doubt the first (or even 2nd and 3rd) rank will ever be the area of problems in terms of 100% completion + I look through all of these in detail and I am very confident that I will recognise duplicates.

... but eh, this is exactly what I repeatedly keep telling people is going to happen: New players find out about gimmicks and wanna toy around with them.

Nobody doubted that. That's why the older versions are still available.

The NeoLemmix developers discourage level creation for older versions,...

It is discouraged yes, but if people were strongly against it, the version wouldn't be available anymore. 

Contest wise: For official contests I just won't allow multiple versions of the same engine. Especially if I don't have the time and patience to set up and mage X-ammount of different versions during that. Also this will result in the playing phase being a bigger hassle for players as well.


Explanation for Metallica why gimmicks were culled in newer versions:

Back in the days the gimmick number exploded. There were numerous gimmicks with a lot of them providing neglegable changes, unfair elements (clock gimmick especially) or confusing elements. A few of them had a bit of possible puzzle potential, but still resulted in lots of extra code to maintain and more player confusion. I experienced this confusion first hand when I played some of the earlier gimmick packs. There was no way to reliably inform the player which gimmicks were active and for a lot of them what exact consequences they had.

As a result we decided to do a hard cut here, culling everything except the most valuable gimmick in most eyes: Zombies.
This resulted in less options, but also less player confusion, an easier maintainable code and a clearer game.

After that we focused on either new skills, tilesets and objects for new features.
We also discussed a feature in depth before to decide to simply add stuff. Example discussion questions:

- Does the new feature has a lot of puzzle potential, or is it just a minor gimmick?
- Is it easy to make the function of the feature clear to new users?
- Has the new feature a reasonable effort to code and maintain?

So new features have a higher quality now as a result. Code and gameplay wise.

In general the focus shifted more from quantity to quality and I think this fits the general mindset (of most people at least). There are even quite a few people who still prefer to restrict themselves to original skills and tilesets despite all the new features.

I hope this makes it clear why newer versions don't have the abundance of gimmicks anymore.