Greetings from a Lix neophyte, and thanks for making this website possible and keeping the Lemmings family alive. I didn't know how deeply the Lemmings fanbase was! Like most of you probably did, I loved the original Lemmings. I'm an absolute Lix newbie and, looking at the Lix general postings, I feel like a first-grader listening to an algebra class.
Quick intro: My name is Ken, I'm an old retired guy, playing "Lix" casually, mostly designing long paths without traps, and sending the little Lixes off marching. The fiddling with designs is my favorite part. I'm using Lix 0.10.30 on a Fedora laptop from the official (I think) repository. Zero problems.
My questions will seem dumb to you tech folks, but I'm wondering if there's a patch or modification or update that might have any of this--advice welcome, thanks in advance!
A.) I'd like Lixes that could dig *upward* on an angle, that is, miners going up on an angle instead of down, if they exist.
B.) Can "splat height" be adjusted somewhere, such that falling X onto steel kills the little Lix but falling the same X height onto a tree or bush does not? (this may exist but I don't find it)
C.) Is there a way to control how many Lixies emerge from each entrance hatch? Or control spawn speeds for individual entrances? Or to give our Lixes different colored shirts or something for different entrance hatches?
I rarely add traps; I mostly make little pathways for my little Lix amigos, watch them marching around as I fix paths and think of new things, and then usually get tired of any one level and start a new one before finishing or refining the first. I rarely get one level really finished. If it's OK i'll include a link to screenshots; if not allowed, please delete and my apologies. ("It's my first day!")
https://kuzenski.org/lix_levels
Thanks! --ken ac4rd
Welcome to the Forums, Ken! :thumbsup: No question is too dumb, we're glad to have you here and you're welcome to ask anything you like.
I'll let Simon field these questions as he's Lix dev.
EDIT: A workaround for hatch spawn order is to have multiple hatches overlap each other. So, you could have 5 hatches in the same place, and 1 in another place. Then, 5 Lix would spawn in succession from the overlapped hatches, then 1 would spawn from the single hatch, and then this cycle would repeat. A bit of a hack, but it does work ;)
Quote from: ac4rd on January 27, 2026, 02:55:04 PMA.) I'd like Lixes that could dig *upward* on an angle, that is, miners going up on an angle instead of down, if they exist.
Such a skill does not exist. Simon is open to suggestions for Lix however (Simon being open to suggestions also applies to pretty much all your points here).
Quote from: ac4rd on January 27, 2026, 02:55:04 PMB.) Can "splat height" be adjusted somewhere, such that falling X onto steel kills the little Lix but falling the same X height onto a tree or bush does not? (this may exist but I don't find it)
No. You can use the transportation beam
(edit: after reading Simon's reply I learnt also the white steam clouds have this effect) item to reset the Lix's fall height mid-way during a fall to get the same effect, but you'd have to put it the same height above every single tree and/or bush, and the item is not invisible so it might ruin the effect. There may? be a way for you to copy this item and make it invisible so you could give a seamless effect. If it is, I'm not sure if other people need to have the copy item downloaded and place in the ...\lix\images directory to play your level (which would be more of a problem for multi-player levels). I have to admit this one of the few aspects of Lix I'm unsure on. Simon will probably clarify this for me and you when he sees this post.
Quote from: ac4rd on January 27, 2026, 02:55:04 PMC.) Is there a way to control how many Lixies emerge from each entrance hatch? Or control spawn speeds for individual entrances?
You cannot adjust the ratio of total lix each hatch gets. The spawn interval is a per-level setting which is the same for all hatches and can't be adjusted during normal gameplay in Lix. This is unlike Lemmings where it could be adjusted during gameplay.
Quote from: ac4rd on January 27, 2026, 02:55:04 PMOr to give our Lixes different colored shirts or something for different entrance hatches?
Only in multi-player.
Welcome!
Happy to see Lix working well on Fedora, and that you aren't running into any problems even with your grand level designs.
None of A, B, C are possible in Lix 0.10. Silken has already explained it well while I was typing, but I'll post the full answer nonetheless.
A) I have no satisfactory explanation for why there is no upwards digging. The best argument is historical. I reimplemented the 8 skills from Lemmings 1 and then a few things from Lemmings 2, and that is it so far.
B) Splat height is fixed. Even a fixed height is hard to eyeball. It needs the splat ruler in play, and I still have an open bug report for how the editor lacks the splat ruler. It's the nastiest part of running physics mentally, and I'd prefer not to exacerbate.
What exactly do you want to do with adjustable splat height? Do you need falls survivable in specific places? You can catch lix at the bottom of a long fall with steam (the white steam clouds, or the blue transportation beam, both are in the traps dialog) and it resets the lix' fall distance.
C) More control over entrance hatches is interesting. I feel that the existing system is too simplistic: Round-robin across all hatches from the same initial count of lix. At the very least, it should become possible to place a single lix into a level outside of the existing round-robin.
You can already have different shirt colors by making multiplayer levels. You can run them in singleplayer, you control every team. You can't make puzzles in this way (multiplayer levels don't have a goal number of lix to save), but you can still make pretty paths.
-- Simon
Quote from: Simon on January 27, 2026, 09:11:48 PMC) More control over entrance hatches is interesting. I feel that the existing system is too simplistic: Round-robin across all hatches from the same initial count of lix.
I definitely feel as if being able to adjust the ratio of initial Lix for each hatch would be a good, low-hanging fruit-type suggestion which could maybe be added within the next few updates :lix-smile:. I'm surprised no one has thought of it already honestly.