QuoteI think Noisemaker 4 - Going under is the first level that will likely stump many players, as it really requires you to think about how to get through the multiple obstacles with the extremely limited amount of destructive skills. The level certainly does a great job of enforcing the idea needed, though, it's just a bit harsh with the very limited skillset IMO.

This level uses the same logic as "Basic economics" from Pit Lems, which, granted, appears a lot later in its respective pack. Since it is more efficient at enforcing its solution, though, I think that should make it easier in comparison. I remember it being one of Arty's favourites during his LP.

QuoteI also consider Noisemaker 8 - Glide and joy to be another unusually difficult level

I agree, which is why I made the pre-level text more explicit about the required trick.
Sadly, I'm pretty sure the precision you mentioned here is required to actually enforce Glider usage at this point: If the lower platform of steel just stuck out slightly below the steel pillar, you could just build over there regularly and wouldn't need the Glider - a regular Faller would also survive. Can't have that!

QuoteFinally, not a difficult level per se, but I consider the trick needed in Noisemaker 33 - Mein kleiner gruener Kaktus to be an extremely obscure one for less experienced players.

This particular trick I actually discovered by accident while playing one of IchoTolot's levels. And that one didn't include an introductory hint.
I agree this trick is obscure, which is why the level is rather late in the Noisemaker rank. But since this is one I actually found myself without any hints from the forums, replays etc. (in contrast to many of the other tricks featured in this pack!), I'm inclined to consider it easier than some of the other tricks the player is supposed to learn here.

QuoteI got to say the nicest looking level in this rank is Noisemaker 15 - Octopus's Garden, with Noisemaker 39 - Vegas Lights a close second. I absolutely love the former song, as I'm a huge Beatles fan. Written primarily and sung by none other than Ringo Starr too, the one who contributed the least but occasional vocals as compared to his 3 bandmates in their songs. Hidden traps here, but the real saving grace is that it's a very short level and plus the locations of the traps in the octopus are kind of easy to guess at, although the level can still be a bit annoying to pull off. I'm not sure if my very temporary digger pit on the clam is intended, as well as getting past the trigger on top of it, is intended, though.

Yay! Finally someone who enjoys the octopus level!
I guess that actually makes Vegas Lights the worse offender by public opinion, precisely because of those four fire traps...
But if you simultaneously say these were the two pretties levels in the rank, that's confirmation the nuisance factor of those levels is totally worth it!

QuoteIt surprises me that you even know about singers like Katy Perry, Duran Duran, and Joan Jett.

Katy Perry was pretty much omnipresent in the charts during my high school years.
Duran Duran's "Ordinary World" was covered by a bunch of other artists I knew (Gregorian and Norwegian singer-songwriter Kurt Nilsen, for example), so that's how I became aware of the original. Flopsy mentioned in his LP that he's somewhat acquainted to one of the band members, if I remember correctly?
"I Love Rock 'n Roll" is simply a classic; I think I've heard it first on the iPod / iPhone game "Guitar Rock Tour 2". Of course, being an actual guitarist, I never would have bought one of these games out of my own effort, but the previous owner of my first iPod touch had it pre-installed, I tried it, and thought it was a nice way to get to know some more songs while enjoying a different form of "finger challenge".

QuoteI think this is the third level that has Katy Perry as an artist, so you're apparently a fan of her, as am I.

Not necessarily a fan - it's just that somehow, a lot of her song titles lent themselves well to level names. Plus, given her medial omnipresence, I can always be reasonably confident people will know the song when I name a level after one of them.

Quote
Finally, a big issue with the pack is that it tends to take quite a while for the level preview to load up. The worst offenders in the Noisemaker ranks are the two artistic levels I just mentioned, Octopus's Garden and Vegas Lights. The latter takes the longest out of all the Noisemaker levels to load up.

In these cases, it's because of tileset mixing. Occasionally, this may even lead to Old-Formats NeoLemmix crashing, as mentioned in the starting post. It's not going to affect your progress / save game, though; simply restart NeoLemmix and open the level again.

Some of the graphic sets simply have long loading time becaues of high resolution, though, even if you're not mixing them. For example, all of GigaLem's Freedom Planet tilesets. You may have noticed that the Pit Lems levels "Arigato, Lemming-san!" and "You want it, you got it!" also take a good amount of tile to load for this reason.

QuoteOne final thing regarding a level. For Noisemaker 38 - Rock, Paper, Scissors, the trigger area of the vine traps seems way off. Instead of being right on top of the vine, it's a little off to the side. Is this intended? I'm not sure if it will affect the level's solution either way.

I guess this is the way it has always been in the ONML Rock tileset. I don't even think the trigger area was moved during New-Formats conversion. I definitely didn't tinker with the vine trap; I made my own version of the Rock chameleon trap, because some of these animal traps relied on having just the head available as a separate piece (as it used to be in Old Formats), instead of the whole lizard as one.

QuoteAlso, since you later teach that the water breaks falls with Amateur 12 in the pre-text, I'm wondering if these levels should switch positions. The only problem here is that this would break the already neatly placed levels according to movement of skills for the first three levels (up, down, and horizontal), so unless your intention is for the player to figure out that water always breaks falls, I would say this can be a huge step up in difficulty for the less experienced players. Luckily, if the player manages to figure that out, the rest is easy.

Indeed, this is precisely the reason why those levels haven't swapped places. "Smoke on the water" wasn't made to introduce water breaking falls, though - I just needed it to be "about something". When I made the pre-level text, I forgot I had already required knowledge of this trick on an earlier level. A similar thing happened to me in the first version of Pit Lems, where "Blocking all over the world" came before "On the fence", thus casually introducing the Fencer before it was officially introduced. nin10doadict spotted that right away during his LP. In case of Pit Lems, though, this actually let to the levels swapping positions. But it was easier then, because they were already back-to-back anyway.

QuoteFor Amateur 2 - Timber (It's going down!), the only difficult part is the leftmost entrance. It's not easy to figure out how to delay the lemmings long enough for a worker lemming to mine the tree obstacle before anyone turns back and drowns. The other two entrances are very easy to figure out. Then again, this is also the very first time I have played a level in your Autumn tileset, which means I need to get used to recognizing the objects but most importantly the trap, which blends in very well with the other leaves, although I correctly suspected the bottom one on the left since it really stand out, even if the top trap took me by complete surprise, since I have never played this tileset ever.

This is not my Autumn tileset, it's GigaLem's remake of namida's Lemmings Plus Tree tileset. So namida is to blame for the leaf trap blending in with the trees (kind of reminding me of the boulder trap from the Dirt tileset) . GigaLem just adapted the trap faithfully.

QuoteAmateur 8 - Who let the dogs out? is quite a difficult level and I would even say is a huge step up in difficulty compared to the previous levels of the rank. It's not easy to figure out how to navigate the terrain and around the dog traps with the extremely restricted skillset. Truthfully, the missing disarmer was the very first thing I noticed in the level, so naturally I scanned the level to find the disarmer pickup. Surprisingly, I couldn't spot it myself, so at first I thought you were trolling and made an error for the level. I did suspect that it was the mound next to the last dog before the exit, but I wasn't certain. It should be obvious to you that I resisted turning on CPM, and I played the entire level without the aid of it. Indeed, the "boing" pickup sound took me a bit by surprise after I passed the mound I suspected where the pickup was. I then rewinded a bit and took another quick look, and I finally did see the disarmer icon in the mound. Quite well-hidden, if I do say so myself.

The pickup skill being a leaf, however, was one of the decisions made by GigaLem when he made this stylized version of namida's Lemmings Plus Tree tileset.

QuoteAs for the level, I got to say that it definitely shouldn't be a surprise that indeed there are hidden traps in the dogs, particularly since the pre-text somewhat hints at it. It's also as you say, your animals are hungry for lemmings. I got to say, though, that you did a great job of depicting dog poop at the barrel, and when the trap went off, my reaction was, "Eww, the dog pooped on the lemming and killed it!"

YES! Finally someone who got to experience a "crap trap" in all its glory!

Although, since you mentioned the barrel, I think you're referring to the dog on the balcony? That is actually supposed to be the dog peeing on the lemming. Hence it's yellow, and there's the little puddle on top of the barrel. I think I used a different water drop trap on another level featuring a dog from either Paralems or Pit Lems.

That said, there is indeed an actual dog poop trap on the level, though, and I used the chocolate trap from namida's Candy tileset to create it... I've also placed a piece of terrain under it that is slightly triangularly shaped. So that it could either be earth or a dog turd.

QuoteI say Amateur 13 - Ayo Technology is a pretty difficult radiation level. It's definitely not easy to work out how to manuever the lemmings with the radiation coundown to get them to explode in the places that will get the crowds from either side up to the exit. The save requirement might seem very lenient, but even with the cloners it's pretty tight. Nice looking level though, with the depiction of the atom and referencing lemmings being blown into atoms with the radiation.

Just to be clear, that's not just any atom, it's the "Atomium" structure in Brussels. Hence the Belgian flag. Also, Milow is Belgian, but he only covered this song.

QuoteAmateur 18 - Tears in Heaven is yet another difficult level and I would also say is a huge step up in difficulty to the previous difficult ones I just mentioned. The right crowd is easy, but the left crowd is quite difficult. It took me quite a while to figure out how to get all of the left crowd to the miner tunnel on the right side.

Yes, I'm aware - this one also managed to stump Flopsy on his LWT LP.

QuoteAmateur 23 - Fields of gold is a difficult level in figuring out how to navigate the honeycomb and getting the right crowd up to where the left crowd can get up. My solution is probably quite fiddly and there are probably much easier ways.

Good to know - I always thought this level was too easy in comparison!

QuoteAmateur 24 - Wonderwall Not necessarily difficult, just tricky, in regards to getting the basher/blocker trick to work at the very beginning, but I was already aware of this trick and so this level wasn't as hard. Definitely for less experienced players it will be a very hard level. The one thing I didn't know about was

Precisely, new players would be completely stumped by this if the level didn't tell them about it. I never knew it was possible until I saw it done on a level - a level which I had considered impossible before that. The digger trick you mentioned in the spoiler isn't actually part of the intended solution. Nice to know, though - and yes, given the behaviour of Blockers, it makes total sense.

QuoteFinally, Amateur 28 - Zombie is quite a difficult level to finish off the tutorial-like puzzles. Once again, compression for the win here and releasing the crowd at the right time to avoid infection. Before that, I kept trying to actually get rid of the zombie by making him drown, but I wasn't able to.

I've become used to people using timing-based solutions on my zombie levels, but usually I do indeed put in a way of killing the zombie. So getting rid of him is actually part of the intended solution. Compression method is taught on the level right before this one, but good to know that knowledge can be applied again here, too.

QuoteMy favorite level of the rank in the first batch of 28 levels was Amateur 19 - Holding out for a hero. Decent looking level and also a very nice, easy puzzle on top of it

Thanks a lot; you seem to be in agreement with Colorful Arty on that one! Shipping up to Boston was another one, and you seem to agree about it being challening - you may have found an alternative solution to it, though, I'll have to check.

QuoteAmateur 31 - The Great Indifference The 0 save requirement was what immediately caught my eye. Is that intentional? Upon loading the level I immediately exited. It's still a very easy level, so I might just go back and actually do the level for real later on.

Yes, it's completely intentional. This level simply "doesn't mind at all".
And whoever set the minimum save requirement in New Formats to 1 lemming completely ruined that!

So be aware that your current "replay" will not work in the New-Formats version...
There is a talisman for saving everyone, though, in both versions. It's just that New-Formats tells you that right on the pre-level screen; Old Formats didn't have this feature yet, you have to go to the Talisman window to check - or simply save everyone out of your own ambition, as Arty did.

QuoteAmateur 32 - Ich und mein Holz Nice level with a great solution! You, Simon, Icho, Nepster, or eric can translate the level title for me.

The translation is already included in the pre-level text: It means "Me and my wood".

QuoteAmateur 40 - God gave Rock n' Roll to you Very nice level to finish off the rank. Somewhat difficult and definitely not trivial despite the 5-of-everything skillset of what you're given. At first, I was wondering where the exit was in the level. I spent a couple of minutes digging through the terrain, as well as the guitar picks at the top. I then experimented and tried going to the very last guitar and to my surprise the worker exited. To be fair, this is the very first level in the music tileset that I have ever played, and so I was completely unaware that the vertical standing black guitar is the exit. It should also be clear that I didn't use CPM at all. I simply wanted the challenge of finding the exit without the aid of it

Okay, thanks for your patience, but this tileset is not meant to be obscure at all. I simply had no better idea of what to use as an exit without breaking the music theme - or having to design an exit animation from scratch. I thought the sound hole of an acoustic guitar might still be a comparatively intuitive choice. I probably would have made it more apparent if CPM didn't exist. Note that the exit guitar can of course also be rotated, so on some future levels, it will be horizontal, but it's still the exit.

Sometimes other tilesets can be confusing in this way, too, though. For example, I famously remember Nepster confusing the airlock trap from the L2 Space tileset as the exit on the Paralems level "The Phantom Lemace". And I thought "What? This is a long-established official DMA tileset!" Granted, the actual exit was hidden on that level, but still - I assume everyone knows the official traps...

QuoteProfessional 6 - Walk like an Egyptian Probably my second favorite level of the rank in the first half of the rank Can be tricky to figure out how to get the lemmings down to the lowest floor before the exit, but it's still an easy level with a really awesome solution

Good to know, because this particular level used to be very prone to backroutes! Judging from your enthusiasm about it, I hope it may finally have succeeded at enforcing its intended solution...

QuoteProfessional 12 - Block around the clock Too easy. I even got the talisman too even though I have not taken a look at the list beforehand. It's so not a gold talisman, it's way too easy for one.

That, in contrast, sounds like you've found a backroute. The level is supposed to enforce usage of a previously-taught trick, while at the same time adding something new and complex. However, in doing the latter, it seems to add too many degrees of freedom to continue reliably enforcing the trick.

QuoteProfessional 13 - Tulpen aus Amsterdam I really like this level too, both the artistic quality and the solution The builder/platformer for both gaps are a bit precise, but luckily you only have to do the combo twice. Here, the flag pole was solid, so something really needs to be done about this in being able to differentiate whether it's solid or not. Although, if I'm not mistaken, only the white ones are non-solid, while any other color pole is?

Correct - the white flag pole is an object from the L2 Circus tileset, whereas the other ones are solid terrain.

This issue goes back all the way to the original design of Lemmings 2: The Tribes: On the Circus tileset, it was just the flag poles. L2 Shadow is an even worse offender with its street lights (switched on or off), phone boxes, clouds, the moon with a face, and the windows from "Georgia on my mind", all of which are objects - while the trash cans and hydrants are solid, as well as the moon from the L2 Polar tileset.

We cannot "fix" these tilesets because they are official ones. I could have refrained from using the Circus flag pole, but too often, an actually solid flag pole would have been in the way, and providing an additional destructive skill to get rid of it might have opened up backroutes. Of course, I could have refrained from using solid flag poles at all, then - but in this case, the landscape was so flat (well, duh, it's the Netherlands ) that I needed to add at least some form of altitude gain to make this more than just a "build across the water canals" level.

QuoteProfessional 17 - Surfin' bird Whoa, that's a cool looking exit. Another easy level.

Thanks, this is the exit from namida's Mineshaft tileset, turned on its head to look like an owl. One of the reasons why I insisted on exits continuing to be invertible in New Formats.
I think you still can't rotate them, though, so my guitar exit from the music tileset is always horizontal in the New-Formats version, I believe. This may or may not result in your replay for "God gave Rock 'n Roll to you" breaking when you run it over the New-Formats version of the level.

QuoteProfessional 18 - Sur le pont d'Avignon If I'm not mistaken, the title is French for South of the Avignon port? I don't really know French, I took Spanish all 4 years of high school. Anyway, another really easy level, as well as a very nice looking level, especially with the lemmings swimming in the lake.

"Pont" is not port, but bridge. It means "On the bridge of Avignon". And yes, that bridge referenced in the song nowadays actually only covers half of the river it's supposed to cross, just like in the level - the rest of it collapsed. When I was in Avignon in 2012, I only saw it from above and at first confused it for a pier for ships to dock at. Thus, this is not a lake; it's the river Rhone.

This last one I need to put in an additional spoiler tag again, because it contains info about the solution:

Professional 19

QuoteProfessional 19 - Atte katte nuva Wow, I really like this level! My favorite level of the rank so far. Not only does it look really cool with the snow falling in the background, I really love the solution! Very easy, and I like the releasing the blocker with the fencer trick from the other side which I recently learned in a United level in the Bonus rank.

Yes, this is why I consider the Fencer a criminally underrated skill, and heavily oppose people whenever they claim it's superfluous.
It's a reverse Miner, folks! Use it like a Miner!

- Stacker-Walker staircases. Only in small amounts, though, basically only as a way to quickly gain a little bit of height where needed. Nowhere near as extreme as other packs, including my own, have taken them.
- assigning Blockers right beneath the hatch so that they continue walking in the correct direction when freed with a Walker at the end
- turning a worker lemming around with a Walker before he gets to work (e.g. with destructive skills) - because there are only enough Walkers to turn him around once. Thus, he needs to look into the correct direction before he starts e.g. digging, then bashing etc., so that he looks into the correct direction for all the skill performances, instead of having to turn around between skill performances. The latter would consume an additional Walker, because Walkers can always only either cancel a skill or turn a lemming around, never both at once. This is a great thing to keep using, though! A small detail that can easily trip the player up, and it's always hiding in plain sight!
I'm personally more familiar with a variation of is, which is timing the assignment of a Climber carefully, so that a lemming turns around whereever needed while he's still a regular lemming, until you change his status for good. Official examples of this include "Take care sweetie" from ONML; the epitome of this idea would probably be "Introducing: Climbers" from NepsterLems.

I didn't know Climbers could climb while in water. I just found out by accident while playing this level.
Although I guess I could have figured it out logically as well, given that I've done the inverse of this on an earlier version of one of my Lemmings Open Air levels: Climbers can climb up terrain that has water trigger areas placed upon it, but only if they are Swimmers. Otherwise, they drown, because the Climber's trigger is 1 pixel inside the wall.

I think in this case, the water trigger area actually only extends up to the wall; it doesn't cover the first row of pixels anymore. Thus, once the Climber is attached to the wall, he technically wouldn't even have to be a Swimmer anymore, I believe - because he's outside of the water trigger area at that point. He just needs to be a Swimmer to get to that position in the first place, because that path leads through water.

And yes, the part with the water being acid is one piece of the trolling puzzle. Although the idea to create water areas that actually act like fire was clearly by namida (the acid is taken from the Lab tileset). Or, more accurately, by the Lemmings developers themselves (since acid appears on Lemmings Revolution).
I would just have thought that our puzzle-fairness sensibilities would not necessarily argue for adopting such a misleading type of object into NeoLemmix. But I guess it was a different time when namida created the Lab tileset. If any new forum member created a tileset featuring acid today (and the precedent hadn't already been set by other tilesets including acid), that graphic set would probably attract quite a bit of criticism from our puzzle-fairness purists.