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NeoLemmix => Community Edition => Topic started by: Guigui on November 09, 2025, 11:29:50 PM

Title: [✓][CE] Running CE and NL 12.14 from the same directory
Post by: Guigui on November 09, 2025, 11:29:50 PM
Hey there WillLem and Simon. I would like to try the CE, but do not feel like having a folder for regular NL and another for CE. That would mean having duplicates of all levels, styles, and music (often heavy) folders ... a big mess for my ocd brain.

Is it possible to just put the NeoLemmixCE.exe file in the same folder as NeoLemmix.exe and have everything work for both CE and regular with a single folder ?
I tried it but I guess it creates a conflict because of the bass.dll which is not the same for CE and regular. Maybe just rename the bass.dll for CE and everything will work ?
Title: Re: [CE] Can CE and NL 12.14 run from the same directory?
Post by: WillLem on November 10, 2025, 02:31:17 AM
Quote from: Guigui on November 09, 2025, 11:29:50 PMIs it possible to just put the NeoLemmixCE.exe file in the same folder as NeoLemmix.exe and have everything work for both CE and regular with a single folder ?
I tried it but I guess it creates a conflict because of the bass.dll which is not the same for CE and regular. Maybe just rename the bass.dll for CE and everything will work ?

I can't replicate this. Adding CE to the NeoLemmix 12.14 folder, or vice versa, allows both programs to work just fine. Try it again - the bass.dll error that you may have seen is actually fairly normal when running NeoLemmix (or CE) for the first time; sometimes, bass.dll doesn't fully initialize. Running the program again fixes this.

The only thing you might encounter is the "It appears you have installed over an earlier version" error message when opening NeoLemmix after opening CE. This is because CE will have reset the config file with a different version number. A fix would be for us to simply rename the settings file something else for CE, which we may end up doing anyway at some point. That way, NeoLemmix and CE settings can be kept separate.
Title: Re: [✓][CE] Can CE and NL 12.14 run from the same directory?
Post by: Guigui on November 10, 2025, 11:41:44 AM
Thank you for your answer WillLem, and for moving the question to an adequate place.

So I did some tests :

* NeoLemmixCE.exe in its own folder (the one included in the .zip file) : everything works fine. I get the welcoming message telling me to set some graphic options for the first time. I also note that the title screen has a special CE background. Options, Level Select and Play menus work correctly.

* NeoLemmixCE.exe in the NeoLemmix.exe folder : title screen launches correctly. Access to Options menu works fine.
But the Play menu gives a single "Invalid pointer operation" error. Then the program closes by itself.
The Level Select menu gives a window with a list of my installed packs, but no screenshots appear. I also get about 30 "Invalid pointer operation", then the program closes by itself.
I also note that the CE does not have its special CE background, but the background I chose myself for the regular NL.


Could it be that some settings I chose in regular NeoLemmix.exe cause the CE to crash ? Also it may be worth noting that I run all those programs on Ubuntu OS, via Wine.
Title: Re: [✓][CE] Can CE and NL 12.14 run from the same directory?
Post by: Simon on November 10, 2025, 08:10:23 PM
My money is on missing images/resources that CE expects and that aren't in namida's NeoLemmix download. I too run the binaries in Wine, on Arch Linux. I can't build from source.

I've looked through my trees for some candidates, and the following files exist in CE that are not in a fresh extraction of namida's NeoLemmix:


WillLem: Is missing file likely here? You tried dropping CE's executable into a fresh extraction of namida's download and it worked; have you tested only the main menu, or also the level selection and the play? I don't know if CE crashes with nice error on missing file; if it does, then the null pointer crashes must come from something else. Do you see CE as a drop-in replacement for namida's NeoLemmix or as a fork? Is your vision of CE so that dropping the executable into namida's tree is enough, or do you recommend more directories to come from CE?

I deem null pointer crashes always a bug. Even if we consider this a user error by Guigui, CE should produce a better error message.

CE has different settings than namida's NeoLemmix. I don't know if settings can produce crashes.

Guigui: You can work around this: Extract both games, delete levels/ in one, and create a symlink to the other game's levels/. Then do the same for music, and again for tilesets.

-- Simon
Title: Re: [✓][CE] Can CE and NL 12.14 run from the same directory?
Post by: Guigui on November 10, 2025, 11:37:32 PM
Quote from: Simon on November 10, 2025, 08:10:23 PMGuigui: You can work around this: Extract both games, delete levels/ in one, and create a symlink to the other game's levels/. Then do the same for music, and again for tilesets.

-- Simon

Thank you for the advice Simon. I think I understand what you mean : run CE from its own folder, but direct it to regular NL for the levels, music and styles folders that I do not want to have duplicates of on my machine.

Though I dont know how to "create a simlink to the other game's folder". Sorry, kind of newb here.
Title: Re: [✓][CE] Can CE and NL 12.14 run from the same directory?
Post by: WillLem on November 11, 2025, 01:19:41 AM
Quote from: Guigui on November 10, 2025, 11:41:44 AMBut the Play menu gives a single "Invalid pointer operation" error. Then the program closes by itself.

This is most likely due to the Sleeper sprite, which is present in CE but not in NL.

The easiest fix is to copy the default style from CE\styles to NL\styles. All other sprites are identical, only the Sleeper has been added. When prompted, choose Merge or Replace.

That should do the trick. Let me know if it doesn't.

NOTE: Simon's suggestion of making symlinks is usually done using a .bat file or similar. It's a decent idea for keeping the directories clean, and may come in handy later. We could also add an instruction to automatically copy the default style across as well.

@namida: If the above fix works, would you be happy to include the Sleeper sprite in the default NL style download? It shouldn't affect NL users at all, and would prevent CE users from running into this problem in the future. Please note that there are no plans to add any more sprites (and there are unlikely to ever be), so this should be the only update necessary.
Title: Re: [✓][CE] Can CE and NL 12.14 run from the same directory?
Post by: Simon on November 11, 2025, 09:02:41 AM
Quote from: Guigui on November 10, 2025, 11:37:32 PMhow to "create a simlink to the other game's folder"

I assume: In CE's directory, you've already removed/moved away the subdirectories levels/, music/, replays/, and styles/.

I assume: Next to CE's directory, you have an extracted namida's NeoLemmix directory, and it's named nl. If it's named something else (not nl): In my commands below, replace all ../nl/ with the proper path to namida's NeoLemmix.

Open a terminal. Navigate into CE's directory (cd path/to/your/ce). Run:

ln -s ../nl/levels
ln -s ../nl/music
ln -s ../nl/replays
ln -s ../nl/styles

To verify: List the CE directory with ls. You should now see symlinks levels, music, replays, and styles next to your NeoLemmixCE.exe. Symlinks are special files, not regular files nor directories. You can ask about the nature of a file with the file command: file levels should tell you: levels: symbolic link to ../nl/levels.

If you ever remove NL because you prefer CE, you'll lose the pointed-to content. Before you remove NL, first, in CE, remove the symlinks (rm levels, rm styles, ...) and move the four NL subdirectories into CE.

-- Simon
Title: Re: [✓][CE] Can CE and NL 12.14 run from the same directory?
Post by: Guigui on November 11, 2025, 07:14:10 PM
Quote from: WillLem on November 11, 2025, 01:19:41 AM
Quote from: Guigui on November 10, 2025, 11:41:44 AMBut the Play menu gives a single "Invalid pointer operation" error. Then the program closes by itself.

This is most likely due to the Sleeper sprite, which is present in CE but not in NL.

The easiest fix is to copy the default style from CE\styles to NL\styles. All other sprites are identical, only the Sleeper has been added. When prompted, choose Merge or Replace.

That should do the trick. Let me know if it doesn't.


It works fine now, thank you !
Title: Re: [✓][CE] Can CE and NL 12.14 run from the same directory?
Post by: Guigui on January 22, 2026, 12:03:12 AM
I'm coming back to this installation where I'd like to run both the CE and the regular NL from the same folder.

The CE works ok as mentionned above, except that the sounds do not work (the music is ok, but not the sfx sounds like "let's go", "oh no" and such).

My 2 cents is that in my folder where the regular NL is installed, the folder containing all those sfx .wav files is called "sound", whereas in a fresh installation of the CE, this folder is called "sounds". After changing the folder name from "sound" to "sounds", the CE has the sfx ok but the regular NL does not.

So a quick fix would be for the user to duplicate folder to have both a "sound" and "sounds".
Title: Re: [✓][CE] Can CE and NL 12.14 run from the same directory?
Post by: namida on January 22, 2026, 12:25:07 AM
^ This needs to be fixed. I would consider it a data file incompatiblity if NLCE expects the sound folder to have a different name, as it means NL files can no longer be used as-is.

Seems like it might be an SLX change that accidentally got backported to NLCE?
Title: Re: [✓][CE] Can CE and NL 12.14 run from the same directory?
Post by: WillLem on January 22, 2026, 02:42:32 AM
Yeah, I'll make sure that CE can read from "sound" as well as "sounds" in 1.1 proper.

Scratch that, I've already done it! In commit 5d091f3, full cross-compatibility with legacy NL directories has been added. This was done after the release of 1.1 RC-1. I don't even remember doing it, but it's there and it works! EDIT: Thinking about it, it was probably done in response to this topic. I've made directory cross-compatibility a fairly high priority in general, since it does make a lot of sense that people would want to run both NL and CE from the same directory.

One thing to note is that some of the sounds themselves may have different names or may use different sounds for the same thing. It's worth combining all sounds from CE and NL into the same directory (whichever one you use) to ensure that both programs can access the sound files that they need. You should only need to do this once, and thereafter add any sound that may later be added to CE (this would need to be done for regular NL anyway).
Title: Re: [✓][CE] Can CE and NL 12.14 run from the same directory?
Post by: WillLem on January 22, 2026, 05:11:33 AM
Settings are now stored in "NLCESettings.ini" to prevent clashes when loading settings (Commit c30628a). CE will initially read from "settings.ini" if it exists (to prevent you from having to do the config again), but will save to the new file and use that one from then on.

N.B. Both programs will continue to read/write to/from the same userdata.nxsv and hotkeys.ini. If running from the same directory, it's most likely that users will want this, since both programs will show the most up-to-date completion progress for all levels. As far as hotkeys are concerned, even if new ones are added to CE, NL would just ignore any lines it didn't recognise in hotkeys.ini.
Title: Re: [✓][CE] Can CE and NL 12.14 run from the same directory?
Post by: Guigui on January 23, 2026, 06:46:54 PM
I am playing CE 1.1.0 RC1 from the same folder as regular NL installation.
In the CE I do not get any green checks next to completed levels in the Level Select screens.
If a level has already been cleared, there is no green check in CE but there is one NL.
If I clear a level with the CE, the green check does not appear either.

In short : no green checks at all in this CE ?
Title: Re: [✓][CE] Can CE and NL 12.14 run from the same directory?
Post by: WillLem on January 23, 2026, 07:31:00 PM
As an experiment, could you try moving userdata.nxsv and NLCE into their own directory (with all the RC-1 stuff) and see if you get the green checks then?
Title: Re: [✓][CE] Can CE and NL 12.14 run from the same directory?
Post by: Guigui on January 23, 2026, 10:20:57 PM
Yes all works good if the CE is put in its own directory.

Also some other things that did not work wuite well in the CE now work nice when CE is in its own directory, for instance fullscreen mode not able to overwrite the taskbar of my OS, or the text scrolling bar on the main at the bottom of the main page not displaying properly.

All in all, not sure if this idea of running CE from NL is that good. It looks like it leads to some conflicts and gives you some troubles.
Title: Re: [✓][CE] Can CE and NL 12.14 run from the same directory?
Post by: WillLem on January 24, 2026, 02:01:03 AM
Quote from: Guigui on January 23, 2026, 10:20:57 PMYes all works good if the CE is put in its own directory.

OK, I can confirm that running CE from a NL 12.14 directory results in checkmarks not being displayed in the level select menu. It turns out that it's because CE uses larger images (24 x 24 rather than 16 x 16) due to the treeview itself being larger (and having larger clickable areas). I forgot that I'd made this change, and it does result in the checkmarks not being visible if the assets don't match what's expected.

Quote from: Guigui on January 23, 2026, 10:20:57 PMthe text scrolling bar on the main at the bottom of the main page not displaying properly.

And yeah, this is due to the data\title.nxmi file being set up slightly differently to accomodate the CE menu graphics.

Quote from: Guigui on January 23, 2026, 10:20:57 PMAll in all, not sure if this idea of running CE from NL is that good. It looks like it leads to some conflicts and gives you some troubles.

I'd probably have to agree at this point. CE has been created with the sole purpose of being a UI upgrade, but it clearly needs to be able to load its own assets in order to achieve this goal.

It seems that the best thing to do would be to ask CE to check for a subdirectory (we could call it "assets-ce" or something) which contains all the CE-specific graphics, data files, etc required to run CE correctly. Mutual assets (levels, replays, music, etc) and NL-only graphics can be placed in the root directory as usual.

Then, when loading something, CE can check for "assets-ce" before checking the root directory. Anything that's found to be missing (Sleeper sprite) or different (title.nxmi, the checkmark .pngs) can be placed into "assets-ce". (Of course, running CE from its own directory will not require the CE assets folder).

That's something I can certainly look at for the release of 1.1 proper. It may be worth doing an RC-2 to check that it's definitely playing ball, if we decide to go ahead with this.
Title: Re: [?][CE] Running CE and NL 12.14 from the same directory
Post by: WillLem on January 24, 2026, 07:27:55 PM
OK, this should be fixed once and for all.

CE will now ship with an "assets-ce" folder which will contain all of the CE-specific graphics, data files, and overrides. CE-only users will actually not need this*, but anyone wanting to run CE and NL side-by-side can do so simply by placing the .exe and the assets-ce folder into the NL root directory.

It works a treat, and is set up for future-proofing should we need to add or update any more assets in CE.

Implemented across commits 3e70709 - a32d957.

*On second thoughts, the root folder should be identical to NL 12.14 to keep things as simple as possible. "assets-ce", then, will contain everything CE needs to run, whether in its own directory or an NL one (which will be identical anyway!).
Title: Re: [✓][CE] Running CE and NL 12.14 from the same directory
Post by: namida on January 25, 2026, 09:34:18 AM
Quote from: WillLem on January 22, 2026, 02:42:32 AMYeah, I'll make sure that CE can read from "sound" as well as "sounds" in 1.1 proper.

Scratch that, I've already done it! In commit 5d091f3, full cross-compatibility with legacy NL directories has been added. This was done after the release of 1.1 RC-1. I don't even remember doing it, but it's there and it works! EDIT: Thinking about it, it was probably done in response to this topic. I've made directory cross-compatibility a fairly high priority in general, since it does make a lot of sense that people would want to run both NL and CE from the same directory.

One thing to note is that some of the sounds themselves may have different names or may use different sounds for the same thing. It's worth combining all sounds from CE and NL into the same directory (whichever one you use) to ensure that both programs can access the sound files that they need. You should only need to do this once, and thereafter add any sound that may later be added to CE (this would need to be done for regular NL anyway).

I would go a step further and say - discontinue support for the alternate "sounds" folder. Otherwise, it could cause problems if people use NLCE when creating their packs, and it works fine there but (due to the different folder name) doesn't work on standard NL.

There's no reason this should ever have been changed in NLCE in the first place. That's an SLX-type change; there's no reason for NLCE to be changing file/folder names or adding alternative options for them (it should only, where necessary, add entirely *new* files, not rename - even as optional things - existing ones), given the goal is data and physics compatibility with 12.14. It's too late to not do it in the first place; best to nuke it now while it's still early days (and might cause issues *once* for people upgrading from an older CE version) than have it become a long-term lingering problem.
Title: Re: [✓][CE] Running CE and NL 12.14 from the same directory
Post by: WillLem on January 26, 2026, 08:55:08 AM
Quote from: namida on January 25, 2026, 09:34:18 AMI would go a step further and say - discontinue support for the alternate "sounds" folder. Otherwise, it could cause problems if people use NLCE when creating their packs, and it works fine there but (due to the different folder name) doesn't work on standard NL.

The directories were renamed because every other directory in the tree is named "----s".

"Replay" (with its capital letter - why?) and "sound" seem like they shouldn't be there. It's purely aesthetic and, sure, doesn't really matter, but with CE I felt there was an opportunity to sort that out. But you're probably right, it's likely cause more problems than it's worth in the future, so by all means lets revert those folders back to "sound" and "Replay". CE will internally continue to support the use of "sounds" and "replays" folders for those who wish to name their directories this way (I see no reason not to allow this), but we will ship it with "sound" and "Replay" as the default to minimise issues going forward.

The solution here (regarding CE/NL data compatibility in general) is probably to keep the root directory of CE identical to NL 12.14, and add anything new to the aforementioned "assets-ce" folder (see this post (https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?msg=107755), above). This then becomes a necessary component of CE development which will allow us to update existing graphics and data files without risk of conflicts. CE will prefer this directory when looking for resources, so the rest of the tree can be identical to NL. This will ensure that anyone making content for CE that is then played in NL will add items to the correct relative folders (i.e. nothing should ever need to be added to assets-ce by an author unless it's to mod their own copy).
Title: Re: [?][CE] Running CE and NL 12.14 from the same directory
Post by: WillLem on January 27, 2026, 05:45:16 PM
Here's a transcripted Discord conversation between myself and Dullstar regarding NL/CE directory organisation:

Discord conversation
Quote from: Discord conversationWill — Yesterday at 12:04 PM
@namida Regarding CE/NL directories, how difficult is it to embed resources into the .exe itself? After giving it some thought, maybe the best option would be to make CE completely compatible with a 12.14 directory, and instead of shipping it with an additional assets folder, just bake those into the .exe and make it fully portable
...
Dullstar — Yesterday at 8:04 PM
I would personally advise against it, as it makes it difficult for users to modify them.
Better to just make sure the CE resources have unique names.
...
Will  — Yesterday at 8:15 PM
Hmm, this is a good idea actually 👍
...
Instead of an "assets-ce" folder, which could get messy, look for a "-ce" suffix on the item itself
Dullstar — Yesterday at 8:17 PM
Personally I'd suggest prefixing
...
Reason: sort by name will put same-prefix together
Will — Yesterday at 8:18 PM
Ah
Yes, that's good
...
The only thing with separate and unique data files is that users then have to hunt through the directories to grab the stuff they need (that is, if they're running CE from NL)
The thinking behind a separate "assets-ce" folder is that they could move everything in one go
...
It just makes it that bit more instantly portable
Dullstar — Yesterday at 8:22 PM
As long as anything that's different between a CE and vanilla NL installation has a unique name, they'll merge cleanly -- the OS might ask about overwriting files, but if the shared files are identical it doesn't matter which ones they keep
Will — Yesterday at 8:22 PM
It's also easier to keep track of what has been updated or added
With a single "assets" folder, that is
Dullstar — Yesterday at 8:23 PM
Particularly if you have a lot of them
Will — Yesterday at 8:24 PM
Hm, it's difficult to decide now. Unique names for individual files should probably happen anyway, but then it's do we just mix it in with NL stuff or keep it in its own directory...?
Dullstar — Yesterday at 8:24 PM
Another option might be a ce subdirectory
...
So, instead of having an "assets" and an "assets-ce" (both in the root folder) you'd have a "ce" folder inside of "assets"
Will — Yesterday at 8:26 PM
That could work, sure
We're adding more folders though, then
Dullstar — Yesterday at 8:26 PM
well both options add a folder 🙂 but the advantage of a subdirectory is that it doesn't add a folder to the root
Will — Yesterday at 8:27 PM
Yes, but NL has many subdirectories
Dullstar — Yesterday at 8:27 PM
There's nothing wrong with that though
Will  — Yesterday at 8:28 PM
So, if we update a menu image, do we simply add the menu image with a "ce" suffix, add it to a "ce" folder inside of "gfx/menu", or add it to a "ce" folder in the root
...
All have advantages and disadvantages I suppose
What I essentially want is for it to be as easy as possible for someone to drop CE into a NL directory and it just work
But, we do need to be able to update assets or there's not really much point in continuing development
Dullstar — Yesterday at 8:30 PM
Here's a question: by this, do you mean dropping CE into a NL directory to do an in-place upgrade, or do you mean running NL and CE from the same directory?
(i.e. should the vanilla NL installation remain intact?)
Will  — Yesterday at 8:31 PM
So, Guigui on the Forums has started a topic about running both from the same directory. I think this should definitely be possible
...
Dullstar — Yesterday at 8:33 PM
In that case, the only important thing is ensuring that all changed files have unique paths; how they're organized between them doesn't matter too much (though I suggest against adding new folders to the root to avoid visual clutter).
In order to install it, you can pretty much just drag and drop, and the OS should handle merging everything properly.
Will — Yesterday at 8:35 PM
The advantage with a single folder in the root is that everything ce needs can go into that folder. Portable, tidy, easy to maintain
Any time anyone's having issues I can simply pass them a copy of that folder with all the updated assets
It's likely to never be more than a few MB
Dullstar — Yesterday at 8:36 PM
If it's mostly gfx I'd say put it in that folder.
(ce folder with everything is fine)
Will  — Yesterday at 8:37 PM
It's a mix of text files, images and sounds
Dullstar — Yesterday at 8:37 PM
Now the big "don't do this" is "Oh hey, someone's running me on Linux! I'm going to make a hidden folder in the user's home directory!" (alongside 3,000 other applications that had the same idea)
Will  — Yesterday at 8:38 PM
Yeah I won't be doing that. Cba with trying to manage that mess
For me it's either: everything in one folder if possible, or bake everything into the exe
We could even have a combination of the two, where people who aren't bothered about mods can just use the exe, and those who want to mod stuff can add the assets folder
...
Dullstar — Yesterday at 8:40 PM
I feel like the assets folder is mostly stuff a user might reasonably try to reskin.
Will — Yesterday at 8:41 PM
The more we talk, the more I'm realising that's how I'd want to do it. Bake everything ce-specific into the exe, but also check for an optional "ce-mods" or "ce-assets" folder which overwrites the default
Dullstar  — Yesterday at 8:41 PM
Embedding defaults can be reasonable.
Will  — Yesterday at 8:42 PM
That way, anyone who isn't bothered about modding everything can just drop the exe into an NL directory and they're good to go
...
Dullstar — Yesterday at 8:44 PM
Of course, do keep in mind that "select all the stuff in the zip, and drop that in the NL directory" isn't any more complicated either.

Following this conversation, it's been decided that CE-specific assets should be uniquely-named, especially if they also exist in NL. Allowing CE to modify/rename any files/folders also used by NL is clearly a bad idea, so the next version (1.1) will at the very least have all CE-specific files and folders marked with a "ce-" prefix. Anything that can be used by both NL and CE (such as levels, sounds, music, etc) or that hasn't been modified for NL will be stored and named exactly as it is in NL 12.14.

From here, we then need to decide how CE-specific files should be stored. From the conversation above, I can figure 3 clear options:

1) Only rename the files, and store them in the same directories as NL. So, for example, the "data/title.nxmi" file has been modified for CE. We'd keep it in the data folder as normal, but rename it to "ce-title.nxmi".

Advantages: File system will look identical to NL | Internal loading is identical to NL, all that needs to happen is renaming the files.
Disadvantages: Harder to keep track of what has been changed/updated | Users might only copy NeoLemmixCE.exe into their NL 12.14 directory and find that things don't work because they haven't copied across the other files they need (so, we're relying on users merging directories correctly whenever there's an update). This could get messy.

2) Provide a single "ce-assets" folder which contains everything that CE needs to run. This is placed into the root directory of NL 12.14 along with the .exe, and can be modified if desired.

Advantages: Very easy to migrate CE stuff to the NL directory | Very easy to keep track of what has been updated | Very easy to debug.
Disadvantages: A bit of extra code (more possibility for loading issues) | User still has to manually copy additional stuff from CE to the NL directory (but at least it's all in one folder).

3) Bake all CE-specific assets into the .exe itself, don't provide any additional folders at all. All the user has to do to run CE from their NL directory is drop the .exe into the root folder. That's it!

Advantages: By far the simplest and easiest solution for the end user.
Disadvantages: Significantly more code (and, I'd have to learn how to embed assets in the .exe) | User cannot mod the CE assets.

4) A mix of options 1 and 3. Bake the CE assets into the .exe, but also provide the individual assets (with "ce-" prefix) in their usual folders so that users can mod files, graphics, etc. Then, only the CE.exe is necessary for allowing CE to run from the NL directory. Users would only need the individual files if they wanted to modify something.

Advantages: Best of both worlds in terms of portability and modifiability.
Disadvantages: The most code, so the most chance for things to go wrong program-side. I'd probably create a new resource management class and run everything through that when loading assets. That should help to at least make debugging easier.

Thoughts?
Title: Re: [?][CE] Running CE and NL 12.14 from the same directory
Post by: Guigui on January 27, 2026, 10:42:10 PM
It looks like I launched this whole idea of booting CE from the same directory as NL, so I'm giving my vague 2 cents here : either solution 2) or 4) sound fine to me.

1) could indeed turn CE things hard to locate, and 3) does not allow modifications (which I already did for some tiny things in the CE).

Please note that I am not a programmer at all so I may not understand all arguments when they become complicated like here, I'm just an end user who likes to keep things kind of tidy on my machine.
Title: Re: [?][CE] Running CE and NL 12.14 from the same directory
Post by: WillLem on January 27, 2026, 11:36:01 PM
Quote from: Guigui on January 27, 2026, 10:42:10 PMIt looks like I launched this whole idea of booting CE from the same directory as NL, so I'm giving my vague 2 cents here : either solution 2) or 4) sound fine to me.

Agreed. I'll probably go with 4. It's a bit more work for a lot more benefit.

Quote from: Guigui on January 27, 2026, 10:42:10 PMI'm just an end user who likes to keep things kind of tidy on my machine.

This actually makes you the perfect person to provide feedback, and I'm very grateful for it! :thumbsup:
Title: Re: [?][CE] Running CE and NL 12.14 from the same directory
Post by: WillLem on January 29, 2026, 07:32:46 PM
Option 4 has now been implemented (commits 4165202 - 4a634f3).

Here's how the file system now works:

It's possible to place the NeoLemmixCE.exe directly into a NeoLemmix 12.14 directory and everything will just work, no need to copy any files across!

The idea of an "assets-ce" folder has been abandoned as it creates unnecessary clutter for NL users, and potential confusion for CE users who want to run CE from its own directory. Instead, all CE-specific/updated assets have been renamed with a "ce-" prefix, and are placed into the same folders as their NL counterparts.

In order to support author/user mods, CE will load assets in the following priority order:

First Priority: Level Pack

CE will first check the level pack root folder for the expected asset. Both the NL-named asset (e.g. 'background.png') and the CE-renamed asset (e.g. 'ce-background.png') will be accepted, with no preference either way. The only exception to this is the level select checkmarks, which bypass this first priority stage.

Second Priority: File System

CE will then check the root directory file system for the expected asset. If it's a ce-specific asset, it must have the "ce-" prefix to be accepted at this stage. All assets that are the same for both NL and CE will be accepted as normal.

Third Priority: Embedded Resource

Finally, if all else has failed, the embedded resource will be loaded. For this to happen, the expected CE resource must be missing from both the level pack and the file system.

Overall, this seems to be the simplest and most future-proof way to handle this. I'll mark this topic as resolved and we'll give the new system a try in the next update.
Title: Re: [✓][CE] Running CE and NL 12.14 from the same directory
Post by: Guigui on January 29, 2026, 11:39:29 PM
Sounds good WillLem, looking forward to trying this CE version straightforward compatible with a previous NL installation. Good job  :thumbsup:

I've been playing the game with the CE for some weeks now (CE installed in its own directory) and I like the visual enhancements and such. I can not remember a moment where I thought that I was better in vanilla NL, so this means that even if the CE is not better than NL, it is certainly not worse !
Title: Re: [✓][CE] Running CE and NL 12.14 from the same directory
Post by: Guigui on January 31, 2026, 11:49:47 PM
Quote from: Guigui on January 29, 2026, 11:39:29 PM... I can not remember a moment where I thought that I was better in vanilla NL ...

Oh well, can I actually express my ocd here ?

Why is that indentation wrong on the result screen ? The "you needed" line is not properly aligned with the 2 others as it used to be in NL and the games of my childhood. My eyes and heart hurt every time...
Title: Re: [✓][CE] Running CE and NL 12.14 from the same directory
Post by: WillLem on February 01, 2026, 03:40:44 AM
Quote from: Guigui on January 31, 2026, 11:49:47 PMThe "you needed" line is not properly aligned with the 2 others as it used to be in NL and the games of my childhood. My eyes and heart hurt every time...

No worries, fixed (commit 340a17c) :)