Here I Go Again!

[Pooty]

Forget the terrain textures, I want to play the game in this mode. That's old-school

I agree. It reminds me of the Spectrum.

I've discovered the dealie with the invisible walls. Turns out it's linked to the location digging tools were used, and only happens under two conditions: 1) the Lemming is below the 160th pixel from the top and 2) the current Tribe is Classic... The real bummer here is that it ALWAYS happens under those circumstances, which means Classic levels can only be one screen tall... Oh well.

Aww, darn. That's a shame. I was looking forward to vertically scrolling Classic levels, although that does make me wonder how blockers work in this game.

[ccexplore]

I've discovered the dealie with the invisible walls. Turns out it's linked to the location digging tools were used, and only happens under two conditions: 1) the Lemming is below the 160th pixel from the top and 2) the current Tribe is Classic... The real bummer here is that it ALWAYS happens under those circumstances, which means Classic levels can only be one screen tall... Oh well.

Hold on.  I still haven't tried the level yet (sorry), but it sounds like this only happens if the level uses diggers?

Basically I'm wondering whether it's the case that a taller level will be okay as long as you avoid certain skills.  If that's the case, then instead of disallowing taller Classic levels, a less restrictive thing to do would be to warn the user (level designer) of the problem, and remove offending skills (and disallows them to be added) if the level designer chooses to go ahead anyway.

(And actually, even this may be too restrictive, since it sounds like the lemming must be digging below the 160th pixel to trigger the bug, and the level may be able to guarantee that it will not happen.)

[GuyPerfect]

It reminds me of the Spectrum.

Check the filename of that image. (-:

Basically I'm wondering whether it's the case that a taller level will be okay as long as you avoid certain skills.

It's apparent that the game wasn't designed to allow for vertically-scrolling Classic levels for whatever reason, and there's some freaky memory mismanagement going on when using certain skills below that top screen's worth of pixels. I don't want to risk triggering any manner of memory leaks, buffer overflows, data corruption or the like by doing something that the game wasn't designed to do. At this point, misbehaving Lemming abilities are the least of my worries.




Traps are now shown with dotted lines while in reveal mode, even if they're hidden behind other objects. This should fully counteract anyone who's trying to be sneaky.

[Clam]

I agree. It reminds me of the Spectrum.

I never had a Spectrum, but I did see the pictures of those levels when they were posted on the old forum. I'm not sure why, but they just look awesome.

Aww, darn. That's a shame. I was looking forward to vertically scrolling Classic levels, although that does make me wonder how blockers work in this game.

As far as I can tell, they work in very much the same way as they did in the first game. They set up some sort of "force field", they push lemmings into walls, they prevent other blockers from being placed, and they turn lemmings around when they're using a skill.

I can't imagine there being a need for vertically scrolling Classic levels anyway. If you want a tall Classic level for whatever reason, you can always build it in another tribe and use the Classic skills. Assuming they let you use blockers in other tribes, that is (and I can't see why not).

[Pooty]

For the most part, that could work, except Exploders send other lemmings flying on the other tribes. To be honest, i'm not too worried about all that because I imagine i'd spend more time making levels that make use of the other skills than the classic eight.

[Dullstar]

Hey, GuyPerfect:  Can we see a shot of the editor in a non-Classic tribe level?

[GuyPerfect]

[Dullstar]

Nice!

Good luck with the editor, it looks like for the most part, you just need to implement a few more things, and then it's suitable for use.

[ccexplore]

Finally got around to playing GuyPerfect's level.  IMHO it was actually far tamer than the hubbub on the forum would suggest.  I think what probably offended Clam the most was actually the one thing that wasn't even intended--the phantom blocker fields.

I also think I now have better insight on that too.  I noticed that in the "Practice" screen of the game, nearly all the game's skills are available--except the blocker!  (Okay, maybe there is some 1 or 2 other odd skills that also aren't there, but humor me.)  All the other 7 Classic skills are selectable for Practice, and AFAIK only the Classic levels have blockers.  This suggest to me that the support for blockers may be specific to the Classic Tribe only.  The observed behavior with the "phantom blocker fields" suggests to me that they might have implemented blocker handling somewhat like Lemmings 1, using a map (2D array/grid) to keep track of blocker fields.  In that case, it's easily possible that they might have hard-coded this map to only handle a height of 160 pixels.  If that's the case, then positions below the first 160 pixels would calculate into memory addresses beyond that allocated for the blocker map.  When the game sees whatever other data's in that memory and interpret them as blocker fields, you would end up with these phantom blocker fields.  If my theory is correct, this does mean the game truly cannot support more than 160 pixels tall for Classic, no matter what the skillset is.  (This is basically similar to the "LemSteven ceiling-bashing syndrome", but a bit worse since the level area can extend a lot more below 160 pixels.)

I also like to warn people like Clam that, given this is the first time we have the ability to create new Lemmings 2 levels, be prepared to run into other such more oddities until we better learn the quirks and limitations of how the game handles certain things.  For example, in DOS Lemming 2's "Practice" screen, you may notice that when you start adding skills, the game may start disallowing certain other skills to be added, claiming "insufficient memory".  While it could conceivably be just a bug in the Practice screen (or perhaps how I set up DOSBox?), and that in fact the game could've handled the resulting skillset, it's just as possible that the game prevents you from using certain combinations in Practice for the reason it claims.

As no one right now knows exactly how to calculate the amount of memory needed by the game for a handling a certain skillset, don't be surprised if weirdness ensues from using a skillset that happens to violate the game's memory requirements.  (That said, I think the number of skills might matter just as much as the types of skills, because for example, I can't do "attractor, ballooner, fencer, scooper, roper, platformer, club basher, jumper" in Practice mode, yet those are the exact types of skills given in Beach 6, though not 20 of each as would be in Practice mode.)

[GuyPerfect]

Not quite an update today, because I want opinions and you guys are a pretty good resource for those. *Rimshot*



This is only a mockup. It's not part of the project yet.

After several days of brainstorming stretching from the time I started this project, I've invented the image you see above. I even exchanged ideas with a roommate to come up with this one! It's a mockup of what an interface might look like to allow the user to pick what preset object or tile they want to add to the level.

This interface was selected for the following reasons:

• The user is easily able to find and graphically identify which element they want to place. This was the biggest goal.
• It takes up little space. The 640x480 default window size is the targt size for usability, and if the interface is too bulky to use at that size, it's too big.
• Since elements come in various shapes and sizes (some of which are very large, like the Medieval yellow dragon), all elements in this interface are presented in uniform fashion. In the image above, larger presets or objects will actually be scaled down to fit inside the little square.
• Being docked to the edge of the window means it is out of the way while editing and will resize according to the window's dimensions.
• This interface can be used for all three of object, preset and tile selection.

.
If this idea is used, the user can decide which of the four edges of the window to dock to.

Now, where you guys come in... This mockup will become the real interface unless someone out there with magical imagination powers comes up with a better idea. If your might of brainstorming so completely surpases my own that I have overlooked some amazing way to handle the situation, then please do speak up!

As it is, though, I'd be perfectly happy with an interface like the one in the image.

[chaos_defrost]

Needs a scrollbar on the bottom so you don't have to click the left or right buttons dozens of times to get to the piece you need. Aside from that, looks good!

[GuyPerfect]

I opted for the buttons to save the vertical space. As for clicking a zillion times, I'd already planned to allow you to click and drag with the right mouse button to pan the contents of that box in much the same way you move the level preview around.

I hope that's a suitable alternative to a scroll box, 'cause I'm not liking the idea of putting a scroll bar in there.

[Clam]

At least let us use the wheel thingy on the mouse to scroll through the list. I'd say that's a much better use for the wheel than zooming.

[GuyPerfect]

Who said anything about using the mouse wheel for zooming? (-;

[Clam]

Well, that's what it does in Lemmix, unless you have another window active. Which looks as though it won't be an option in the new editor (at least not for terrain).