"Lemmings Redux": A "remake" of official games for NeoLemmix.

[Proxima]

geoo's is basically the one I posted above; he used the digger to delay one lemming, where I used the extra basher in bsmith's version. My original solution doesn't work any more without the digger.

[namida]

If we're down to the last decision on whether to remove "It's the price you have to pay" vs "All the 6's" to remove in favor of "The Gate Trap Lemmings" (I don't see much need to add The Steel Mines Of Kessel if we're going to base the talisman on You Live And Lem; as the talisman is essentially just Kessel minus the blockers), I'd personally go with removing the former. All The 6's has quite a history / iconic status to it, and I think it would be a bit weird to remove it.

So, any objections to dropping "It's the price you have to pay" in favor of "The Gate Trap Lemmings"?

Once we've got a decision on this, I think we should start looking at what levels need adjustments. We shouldn't be overly heavy on these - they should either be to keep levels in line with newer trends (such as fewer lemmings, removing time limits, making traps clearly visible, etc), or for the purpose of fixing backroutes; not just because "removing this one skill enforces a really awesome solution". Basically - unless it's a clear backroute, a solution that works on the original version will ideally work on the Redux version too; if a level was too easy for its position, we should handle that by moving it to an earlier position

[Proxima]

All The 6's has quite a history / iconic status to it

...which mostly consists of it being removed in the majority of versions. In any case, I strongly believe we should select levels for quality and fun, not "iconic status".

So, any objections to dropping "It's the price you have to pay" in favor of "The Gate Trap Lemmings"?

No, I'm fine with that. But I still believe we should also drop "All the 6's" for "Where do you see lemmings?" and "Turn around, young lemmings" for another level, or at least see how many people are in favour.

[namida]

I'd argue in favor of keeping Turn Around Young Lemmings. While I am aware solutions that don't use it exist, I found the two-bomber turn around to be quite an impressive trick the first time I played. (Indeed, I've used this trick a few times in my own levels, and it's caught people out in several cases.)

"All The 6's" for "Where Do You See Lemmings" is not a change I'd strongly object to.

[bsmith]

It looks like we are still mulling over five levels.  My thoughts:

After some playing around I have grown to like Turn Around Young Lemmings. It can be completed with only 1 lemming lost. I think this solution is truly talisman-worthy.

All the Sixes has a really excessive number of skills for only 2/3 saved.  If we do not plan to change the stats then I can see this level being removed.  Earlier I suggested if we keep this level then to have 6 of each skill and 60/66 saved.

Reducing the builders to 1 in It's the Price You Have to Pay in my opinion makes the level more interesting (and harder).  However the change also eliminates solutions based on trapping the lemmings between the posts.

I like The Gate Trap Lemmings.  It is the only level that I would want to see added to what we have now.

I just don't like Where Do You See Lemmings?  Nothing specific, just not appealing to me.

With three of these five levels to be in the pack I would choose Turn Around Young Lemmings, It's the Price You Have to Pay, and The Gate Trap Lemmings (effectively swap out All the Sixes for The Gate Trap Lemmings).  This really screams make a poll to select which levels make the final list of 150 levels.

[namida]

After some playing around I have grown to like Turn Around Young Lemmings. It can be completed with only 1 lemming lost. I think this solution is truly talisman-worthy.

It can be completed with no lemmings lost. In fact, most of the levels in the original game can be; some of them that could on DOS no longer can on NeoLemmix due to the 100% solutions relying on glitches, though (Taxing 6 comes to mind here).

With three of these five levels to be in the pack I would choose Turn Around Young Lemmings, It's the Price You Have to Pay, and The Gate Trap Lemmings (effectively swap out All the Sixes for The Gate Trap Lemmings).

The main issue here is that we're already a bit short on easier levels. All The 6s, Where Do You See Lemmings and to some extent Turn Around Young Lemmings fill this role nicely (with the last one being more of a near-the-end-of-first-rank level). Ideally, we want to keep at least two of them.


Anyway, as you suggested, I've put a poll up. Get in quick, as I haven't set this poll to last very long (as I think we've been on the "level selection" phase for long enough already).

[namida]

I've also added source files from Redux (obtained by de-NXP-ifying bsmith's latest build) to the NeoLemmix git repo; check the "NXP" folder under the backwards-compatible branch.

I noticed that since all the special graphics levels are Level 16, the 16th music track will never actually play (except on Sega Four). So, I adjusted the music order so that orig_16 is in the list twice; essentially meaning the music rotation is just "delayed" by one level rather than one track being skipped. (This will no longer be nessecary as such if / when the "Mac style rotation" option is implemented.) An alternative option could be to put the special graphics levels always as Level 24 or higher, as that's when the default rotation restarts from the first track.

Speaking of Sega Four, if we're treating it as a special graphics level (which there are several reasons - people have mentioned treating it as such; it's Level 16 like all the special graphics levels are; and it's the only level in Redux using the Sega tileset), it should probably also have its own unique track, right? At the moment, I've put in the title screen music from the Sega Master System version of Lemmings for this, but if this is a bit weird, using one of the SMS-exclusive tracks could also be an option (however, this might have weird results with people who use the Sega Master System musics instead of the default Amiga ones anyway) - if we do go with this, I vote in favor of the track from Level 13/30 (seriously, that's probably my favorite Lemmings track from any game and any version).


I haven't uploaded an NXP of this yet as some code I wrote to quickly mass-fix certain things has had an unfortunate side effect of messing up the screen start positions of levels. Once I've got that fixed, I'll upload an NXP.

[namida]

Here we go.

Note that the screen start positions aren't yet fixed for the NES or L2 levels, since I fixed them by simply writing some code to copy the correct positions from the copies of the levels in other official game NXPs (which don't exist for these levels). However, in all cases, I've made sure the latest versions (based on the official game conversion NXPs) are used. I didn't include any of the proposed fixes for Let's Go Camping, nor have I done anything about the last few potential level changes yet (in other words, the level list, including order, is unchanged from bsmith's last build).

[Dullstar]

Despite not being a huge fan of either of the levels, I think in the interest of having some relatively easy levels, it's best if, out of the levels in the poll, All the 6's and Turn Around Young Lemming are kept.

[Proxima]

Since I've done a lot of griping in the past about the project moving on before I'd finished giving my input, I'd like to mention that today I had another look at the entire pack, and I'm very happy with the current selection of levels. (I also agree, now that bsmith has pointed it out, that "Turn around young lemmings" is worth including because of its interesting dual solution, with bombers or builders.) There are a couple of my favourite levels that haven't made it in, such as "Temporary peace" and "One way or another", but honestly, I wouldn't advocate re-including those at the expense of any of the current selection.

A couple of isolated thoughts....

"Lemming toast" (currently 1-29) is an easy level with several solutions, and that's fine. Still, I wonder whether it originally had a time limit that was part of the puzzle? [EDIT: The original time limit was 4 minutes, and all solutions fit into this. We could have a talisman for solving it in 1 minute.]

"Five Alive" is much easier with NL mechanics, so it should be down-ranked, but it's still worth including.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Bombing at the edge of the steel destroys the normal terrain but none of the steel, creating a sharp edge.

"Fall and no life" (both parts) could do with slightly enlarging so the pillar pieces aren't sharply cut off by the left edge. This wouldn't have any impact on the solution(s).

[namida]

So, from the poll it seems we have a clear decision in favor of including The Gate Trap Lemmings and Turn Around Young Lemmings. However, we've got a tie between It's The Price You Have To Pay and Where Do You See Lemmings.

Personally, I'm a bit more inclined towards the latter, simply so that we've got a bit more in the way of easy levels. (Counter-argument: The former isn't exactly that hard either.)

[bsmith]

Sounds good.  It looks like we can replace All the 6s with Where Do You See Lemmings and replace Its the Price You Have to Pay with The Gate Trap Lemmings and have an official final list.

I put the special graphic sets at level 16 in each rank thinking 'Here is something special for the halfway point'.  But that was never the case in the official games so I have no problems moving those levels within their ranks.  Although if in each rank we have a good finale level (like Going Their Separate Ways in the first rank) then it may make sense to keep the special levels where they are.

[Proxima]

In addition to finalising the level selection, are there any objections to finalising the selection for Rank 1? I think the current Ranks 2-5 are all over the place in terms of difficulty and will require a lot of discussion to come up with a final arrangement, but the current selection for Rank 1 (if "All the 6's" is replaced with "Where do you see Lemmings?" at the same position) is very solid.

I don't have any problem with the special graphics levels all being Level 16; it's quite a nice touch that the player can spot the pattern and learn to expect a special level at that point. The only objection would be namida's point about the music, but that won't be a problem once Mac-style music rotation is implemented.

Regarding the ordering of levels within Rank 1, the only change I'd suggest is switching "Lemmings in the attic" with "CindyLand"; the latter is a very easy level that should come earlier than its current position.

[namida]

Taking another look at it, I'm not entirely sure if LEMTRIS is Rank 1 material. I'm not sure what the best level would be to swap it with, though.

Anyway, here's an updated NXP. We now have rank signs, and if used with the recent V10.13.16 experimental, you'll get Mac-style music rotation. Haven't reordered anything, just made the switches. I did set the music order back to normal now, though.

[Proxima]

That's actually a good point In that case, I suggest swapping "LEMTRIS" with "Pillar talking".

Also, I noticed a typo on the main menu page: "By the Lemmings Fourms Community".