Regarding existing content, I see both sides but I'm a bit more on Will's side. NL levels were made for NL and are still playable in NL; being able to play some of them in SLX at all is a nice bonus but not something authors can demand. It's similar to how I converted the DoveLems levels to Lix back when Lix supported original terrain; a lot of them didn't work as intended (mostly because of one-way walls, but there were and are other differences between the engines) -- and that's okay because it was just a fun project, while the levels were still fully playable as intended on Lemmini.

(Talking of DoveLems, I should mention that Icho's NL conversion of DoveLems was on a different basis, because this was after Lemmini was no longer one of the community's main engines, so the intent was that the NL conversion should take over as the main version of DoveLems going forward. Even so, namida as NL developer was under no obligation to keep Lemmini behaviour in the engine just to make this conversion easier.)

* * *

Back to the shimmier: my first observation is that the existing behaviour (continue or fall, depending on step height) is obviously simpler than the proposed behaviour of continue, fall or turn depending on step height. Simplicity in skill behaviour is desirable; the best puzzles tend to be those where complexity emerges from how simple operations are combined.

It also doesn't feel right that a non-permanent skill can continue for ever.

But my main objection to the bouncing shimmier is simply that, from both the player and level designer's point of view, the purpose of the shimmier is to carry a lemming from point A to point B, and then stop (optionally, with the player having the choice of stopping the shimmier half-way with a walker or bomber, if one is provided). The bouncing shimmier fundamentally acts against what the skill is designed to do.

Plus, it's reasonable to assume that a Shimmier would "attempt" to traverse anything from 3-6px, but then realise it's too low and fall. Whilst, a 7px-or-more obstacle is clearly not traversable, so they simply turn around.

But if you're envisaging this in terms of the lemming making conscious decisions (always dangerous, because the whole premise of the game is that they are usually mindless and will walk straight ahead into any danger), it's not at all clear why hitting a wall is more likely to make the shimmier think "I should turn round" rather than "I've got as far as I can, time to let go". The lemming doesn't and can't know the overall layout of the level.

Cute 9 requires you to have the ray_spooky style installed. If you have online features enabled, you can do this from within NL. Otherwise, this link goes to the all styles download: https://www.neolemmix.com/download.php?program=52

Congrats Solution to Behind Bars is correct. I like the way you interpreted "behind bars" to refer to
...that had not been on my mind at all, but it fits perfectly!

It's actually possible to save 49/50 by using the digger on the left so that only the bomber dies. (The original game has 50 lemmings on this level.)

But this depends on the way steel was handled in the original game. Destructive skills would consult the steel map to decide whether to stop, or, in the case of bombers, whether they could remove terrain or not -- but any stroke of destruction that did go ahead would remove all terrain, including steel, within its destruction mask.

That behaviour is undesirable for custom levels because it makes it possible to create paths through areas that the level designer intended to be impassible, so NL instead makes each stroke of destruction remove normal terrain without removing steel. This makes it impossible to take any right-side solution on Compression Method 1.

It's worth remembering that clear physics mode was added in response to artistic but difficult-to-interpret terrain and backgrounds, not primarily as a weapon against bad level design.

Following on from a chat on the discord today, we are thinking of organising a meetup for those Lemmingsforums folks who live in the UK. It will most likely be in the north, since we discovered that at least three of us are located in Leeds and Liverpool, but nothing is set in stone yet. Some points to discuss before we go ahead with making definite plans:

* Who's interested?
* Anyone responding, please say where you live and whether it's possible for you to travel to a meetup location.
* What dates would be best / are there any dates we should avoid?