Greetings from the CLONES developers! Just letting you know that I've added in the concept of 'Bonus Action' items which the clones can pick up by walking into. You guys mentioned that in this thread and i remember that from the WORMS games also so i thought i'd include it in CLONES. I think it will make multiplayer and singleplayer much more objective oriented and will really make designing levels more fun! In multiplayer each group might have to 'race' to see who can get the extra bazooker actions first as this would be a big advantage for sabotage.
In reply to the post about the 'Ghost clone' ("I am bewildered as to how that actually works in Clones"). The answer is 'yes' the ghost clone takes into account everything that is happening around them including other clones, landscape changes, etc. which accurately shows you where they will be if you give them an explode command. Basically (as you said) we are advancing the entire gamestate forward by 100 game ticks for that ghosted clone. In effect, this is like adding 100 new clones which makes it fairly computationally intensive but a very cool effect
Some clone action ghosts require an 'undo' to the landscape as well. Level designers can decide how much 'future juice' to give on a per-level basis so that if they don't want any ghosting they can set the juice to 0.
Also, you gain 'future juice' by saving clones so the more you save the more juice you get! (this can also be turned off)
I noticed you guys were debating the best way to give priority to lemmings. In CLONES you can select the clone via leftclick which puts an arrow over their head and then give the action later by pressing the keyboard shortcut or clicking on the action button. The keyboard is must faster and better for levels that require quick timing. You can also use the wheelmouse to select clones to the left/right or use the arrow keys. In addition, all clones very close to the selected clone are alpha blended out so you can see the selected clone very clearly. This makes it very easy to always select the clone you want!
You've also mention the concept of saving solutions.. this was a feature in CLONES since day 1
Every level you play is automatically saved to the savegame folder. We are also working on a feature where you can load up a savegame and then resume it from any point which would allow you to see if you could have won had you tried something different!
In fact, we have recently received a number of singleplayer solutions from fans who have completed the ultrahard levels.. it was very entertaining to watch them and several levels were solved in ways in which we did not intend! We plan to post the best solutions to ultrahard levels on the website too.
We are working on new levels and a new release with the Bonus Actions so watch for it soon!