@geoo

What would writing such a script entail? Would it be a lot of manual matching 16x8 squares to images or could it be automated somehow?

I can’t remember how many levels there are in each tribe, but I’m sure it’s no more than 20.

L2 has 120 levels in total, with the 12 tribes having 10 levels each.

The L2 level/style format has been long known (see here - note that you'll have to decompress the levels/styles first using lem2zip, which you can also find there). The challenge will be that the levels are defined as a grid of 16x8 tiles, while (from what I understand) the existing NL L2 tilesets use pieces that are usually composed of multiple of such tiles. The L2 style definitions do define such pieces in terms of the smaller 16x8 tiles, however, I don't know if the NL L2 tilesets were created in a systematic way reflecting these definitions, or just ad-hoc.

All the L2 graphics (both 16x8 tiles and the composed pieces) have been ripped long time ago: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=6588.msg102252#new

A slightly ugly way would be to write a script to create 12 new tilesets where all the tiles are of size 16x8 (you could use the ripped graphics as input), and then write another script that converts L2 levels into NL levels using these 12 tilesets, automatically creating the terrain and object placements (assuming the existing NL tilesets are consistent with the L2 ordering of objects, otherwise you either have to manually create a mapping between the two, or extend the first script to also generate the NL objects -- I don't know how NL would deal with fling objects and the chain and cannon though). The skillset you'll have to tweak manually either way as I guess you don't support the full palette of L2 skills.

OK, this is still happening in v2.7.3 (screenshot attached).  I have been able to replicate this numerous times now.  It seems to occur when I browse through the different level pack/groups, expanding and then contracting different levels in the tree structure on the left.

OK, I've added this to the list of known bugs and will try to find a fix at some point.

It will work fine to start with, then will temporarily freeze/lock up, and the level select window will get the "...(Not Responding)" message in the title bar.

I've noticed this as well, it's been happening for quite a while. I've also added this to the list of known bugs; the level select menu in general could do with some debugging and bottleneck fixing. I'll take a look at it and see what can be done.

would having a level set in SuperLemmix, divided into groups named for each of the L2 tribes, that visually resembled the L2 levels, had the same music/sfx, etc but just using the closest equivalent skills that are already available in SLX - thus avoiding extensive new skill coding/interaction coding/testing - be a feasible option?

Yes, absolutely.

This has previously been suggested by Strato as a project for NeoLemmix, but that was back in 2020 and not much has happened towards it since then, as far as I'm aware.

Given the scope of SuperLemmix to introduce more L2-like skills, features and mechanics, such a project may be better suited to SuperLemmix anyway.

The bulk of the work then would be recreating the levels themselves and SLX-tweaking them as required.

This is indeed the rub. It would require a lot of manual conversion work, since there doesn't yet exist a way to rip the level maps directly from any version of L2 (that we know of).

Ideally, we'd have a team of as many people as there are tribes, and each person would recreate all levels from just that tribe. Even then, it's a lot of manual effort, quality control, testing, etc. It would be an enormous project, and so far there simply hasn't been enough sustained interest to get it off the ground.

With that said, I'll keep nudging the idea forward now and again, and might begin work on the Beach levels at some point if I have enough time. That should help to get things moving if it ever happens, and it isn't a promise by any means.

I don't know if a similar plan would work for L3 as I have hardly ever played that, and not for many years.

I imagine it would involve essentially the same process: manually recreate the levels, assign suitable skillsets to make them playable.

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Just going to throw this out there one last time: does anyone know of a way to rip the maps directly from one of the many L2 source disks?

DOS, in particular, seems promising, and we can rip .lvl files from L1's Amiga .adf so I wonder if the same thing can be done for L2 and L3?