@Dullstar: Indeed, exactly what I suggested!
For the official level design contests, IchoTolot has the power to put his own claim to the test
- make such a contest and see how many people participate!
The main thing preventing people from participating at this point in time, though, may also be the technical shortcomings of version 1.43 in general, compared to the convenience of 10.13 and New Formats. Flopsy for example was really keen on gimmicks, but still quit the pack not only due to recording-related difficulties, but also due to the absence of things like true physics mode, splat ruler, skill shadows etc.
So for him, the drawbacks of version 1.43 seemed to outweigh the interesting aspects of gimmicks and ghosts. For me, obviously, they didn't - otherwise I wouldn't have created a pack of 170 levels for it
. But I can imagine other people not willing to make that tradeoff.
Because yes, that version is still available on the NeoLemmix homepage; it's the one used in my pack Lemmicks. The link in my signature will take you to the pack thread, and there you can find a link taking you to version 1.43.
Lemmicks also includes quite a few levels with ghosts, so give it a shot if you're interested!
[/shameless self promotion]
@GigaLem: I think IchoTolot infers they were disliked from the fact that only the two of you, namida and GigaLem, used them.
That's not necessarily the case, though; a lot of people may just have been indifferent to them, or didn't know about them in the first place.
That's also the logic that leads to things being removed if they are only barely used - the default assumption is that no one else likes them, everyone who doesn't outright support them is counted in the "against" camp, and then it seems like a majority decision to remove this stuff, irrespective of the fact that it has no additional use for the remove-faction, but does irreversible damage to levels of the keep-faction.
There haven't been a lot of culls lately, but I can understand why you kept some of your packs in very Old Formats (1.43), because you didn't see a way to reasonably convert these levels to something not involving a ghost.
I don't think there's any rule stopping regular users from setting up unofficial contests.
There are some users who believe content should only be created for the latest version, but I'm not the only one "rebelling" against that
. Some people still like to use the old 10.13 editor, for the piece-replacement feature, if nothing else. I don't even know whether Arty might actually still be working on ArtLems in Old Formats.
And frankly, I don't care either; I have all three stable versions installed anyway, because for each of them there's content that can only be played in said format (GigaLems, Resident Giga Lems, and bsmith's level pack for 1.43; Lemmings Stampede, CasuaLemmings, and Lemmings Squared for 10.13; Clammings and Integral Lemmings for New Formats). So if I have to keep all of them installed anyway if I want to be able to play everything, I can just as well create content for either of them.
I don't regard any version as "outdated" or "old-fashioned" to use; I don't judge these different versions on the basis of their release date, but on the basis of features they can offer. With the impending introduction of the shimmier, New Formats is becoming more attractive to me now, but I still don't have any issues with 10.13 either, and I am always willing to do without some of the modern conveniences if someone comes up with new and interesting stuff that can only be done in 1.43.
Older stable versions are only outdated in the sense that they will no longer be updated and maintained, so issues that still exist in them won't get fixed; but in turn, for a level creator, that also means reliability, because he can be sure nothing will get removed or altered in its behaviour either
.
EDIT: So, I just discovered that apparently, it is no longer possible to open new topics in the "Levels for v10 or older" forum. Well, that won't stop ghost-friendly members; we can simply collect our level ideas elsewhere. But this also affects people who have started working on packs while 10.13 was still a thing - ArtLems, GemLems, and Lemmings Evolution come to mind.
This extremely authoritarian behaviour of its proponents is what turns me off New Formats the most! If New Formats were genuinely that superior, there wouldn't be a need to shut down competition like that. People were already gravitating to it by themselves in large measures, and even I have become more accepting of it. Let the free market of ideas take care of that!
Looks like I was really lucky to be able to sneak out Lemmings World Tour into that thread before this change was imposed. Maybe even the release of Lemmings World Tour was what caused that change in the first place.
PS: Although I see that GigaLem is a moderator in the v10-subforum as well, so he could probably remove that limitation again, since he seems to be
veeery friendly towards ghosts
...