Lemmings Forums

NeoLemmix => NeoLemmix Styles => Topic started by: Nessy on December 19, 2017, 03:57:55 AM

Title: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: Nessy on December 19, 2017, 03:57:55 AM: Hi! :)

I've been working on some custom lemming sprites for fun. I'm planning on making some more and will update this thread accordingly, but anyone is welcome to contribute as well!

L2 Shadow Lemmings

(https://www.dropbox.com/s/f8ox1likkkyvdeg/l2-shadow-lemmings.png?dl=1)

We have the tileset, now you have the night crawlers themselves for NeoLemmix!

L2 Highland Lemmings

(https://www.dropbox.com/s/26eydz87s7glcbp/lpv-highland-lemmings.png?dl=1)

We have the tileset, now you have the highlanders themselves for NeoLemmix!

How To Use

1) Extract the "lemmings" folder

2) Place this extracted folder in the appropriate style folder located in the main "styles" folder (but really you can use them in any graphic set you want)

3) In the "theme.nxtm" file of your chosen style change "LEMMINGS default" on the top to "LEMMINGS <style that contains the lemmings folder>" For example: if I download "l2-shadow-lemmings" and put them into "l2_shadow" style folder then my theme.nxtm file will say: "LEMMINGS l2_shadow"

4) Enjoy!
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: L2 Shadow Lemmings)
Post by: Nessy on December 20, 2017, 09:47:53 PM: New: L2 Shadow Lemmings

You can now use the night crawling, ninja-like lemmings from the L2 Shadow Tribe in NeoLemmix! See the original post for downloads, previews, and instructions.
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: L2 Shadow Lemmings)
Post by: IchoTolot on December 20, 2017, 10:08:45 PM: As I stated in IRC:

If an additional sprite for the athlete is covered as well for these in the future, I vote gladly for them both to even become standard! :thumbsup:

One small disadvantage is that all traps and objects have normal lems in their animations, but zombies have the same problem and because of tileset mixing it's pretty impossible to always have the right colored animation for the Lemming, unless they are all standard. But this is just a very small thing and doesn't bother me that much, as animations are mostly very short anyway.
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: L2 Shadow Lemmings)
Post by: Nessy on January 21, 2018, 10:40:00 PM: Quote from: IchoTolot on December 20, 2017, 10:08:45 PM
If an additional sprite for the athlete is covered as well for these in the future...

Done :)

Thanks to Nepster for fixing this bug in NeoLemmix V12... all custom sprites now recolor when you hover over them, when they are zombies, and when they are an athlete. The original post has been updated.
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: L2 Highland Lemmings)
Post by: Nessy on January 23, 2018, 01:47:55 AM: New: L2 Highland Lemmings

You can now use the brave highlanders from the L2 Highland Tribe in NeoLemmix! See the original post for downloads, previews, and instructions.
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: L2 Highland Lemmings)
Post by: Strato Incendus on January 23, 2018, 07:15:52 AM: You're really busting them out, aren't you? :)

These are starting to become an incentive to switch to the New Formats version. I am still going to create my next regular pack - Lemmings World Tour - for Old Formats, due to some levels relying on radiation or fake objects, the latter mainly for decoration. (For example, since you mentioned it, I used loads of fake Highland hatches to put barrels into the hold of a ship.) Also because I have created an Old Formats tileset in the meantime which hasn't been completely finished yet, and I would have to convert it to New Formats first for these levels to work.

But there will probably be a New Formats version of that pack, too, eventually - once it has enough distinct features to create New Formats-specific levels as replacements for those using radiation. In other words: Once we have at least got the Shimmier, I can start designing those :) .
Title: Egyptian Lemmings
Post by: Strato Incendus on July 30, 2018, 05:11:20 PM: As a proud Lemminist, I really thought this game needed more "diversity" *, so I made some Egyptian Lemmings ;) ... Probably Nubians, more specifically.

(https://i.imgur.com/ftgHVkP.jpg)

The Zombies have a blue-ish grey skin colour, so that they look more like mummies; the traditional grey was too indistinguishable from the regular lemmings in this tribe, at least to my liking.

Put these into L2 Egyptian, L3 Egyptian, and anywhere else you'd like to use them!

Funnily enough, when these lemmings become athletes, they look pretty akin to the "Acid Lemmings" from Lemmings Revolution.

Speaking of it, I am also considering to create the "Water Lemmings" (white shirts, light-blue hair) from Lemmings Revolution. The question here is:

1) Should their regular appearance be that of Lemmings Revolution Water Lemmings? That means if they're to become swimmers (or any other athlete), they'd have light-blue shirts and white hair.
2) Should their regular appearance be "light blue shirts and white hair", so that they look like Lemmings Revolution Water Lemmings when they are swimmers?

*I actually find this concept pretty ridiculous, but I wanted to create some Egyptian Lemmings nevertheless... :evil:
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: Nessy on July 31, 2018, 02:55:07 AM: These Egyptian Lemmings look neat... and mysterious :thumbsup:

I think the only feedback I have is that while I like the mummy appearance of the regular Lemmings, the Zombie Lemmings actually look too "normal" let's say that I easily confused the two of them for a moment. Doesn't bother me though.

In regards to the "Water Lemmings" Colorful Arty has already made those types of lemming sprites for his Underwater tileset (https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=3123.0) :)
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: Strato Incendus on July 31, 2018, 08:16:45 AM: Thanks, Nessy! It is in fact supposed to be the other way round: The regular lemmings simply have darker skin; the zombies are the ones who look like mummies (i.e. pale).

The Underwater tileset was the one I would have suggested pairing the Water Lemmings with anyway, so thanks for informing me! ;) Less work for me then! :D
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: Strato Incendus on August 09, 2018, 09:19:34 PM: Wow, good thing I uploaded these before my hard drive crash, otherwise they would have been gone indeed! :D I mean, this didn't take too much time, compared to the creation of my levels, all of which I could restore fortunately. But still, it would have been annoying to recreate them from scratch, or using my own PNG image to get the exact colour codes! :D

Well, anyway, now I'm back with a new SSD installed, so... does anyone have ideas for how to treat the other L2 tribes?

As far as I remember, the Beach lemmings only had a slight tan (or they were supposed to be sunburnt :D ), meaning more peach skin than completely white.

The Polar lemmings had light-blue / grey-ish hair, and dark-blue shirts.

And then there's also the enemy lemmings from Lemmings Paintball, of course, meaning red pants and standard green hair.
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Beach Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: Strato Incendus on October 24, 2018, 06:11:20 PM: Summer is over, and these Beach lemmings spent some good deal of time in the sun :evil: :

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
(https://i.imgur.com/ZdvbIZB.png)

I tried to get as close as possible to the original skin tone from Lemmings 2: The Tribes; sadly, I don't know how to make my old Photoshop 7.0 replace a colour with a specific colour I've selected before. I can only alter Hue and Saturation, i.e. relative to the current colour (not enter specific RGB values, which would be absolute), while having the extracted colour as my selected colour, and then doing a visual comparison.
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: Strato Incendus on December 31, 2018, 07:19:37 PM: I've updated both my Egyptian and my Beach lemmings sprites to include Nepster's and Raymanni's newly introduced Shimmiers! :D (See the respective posts above.) I also fixed the Beach splatter in the process, that animation was still lacking the tan for some reason.

For simplicity's sake, I've uploaded the entire styles folder for Beach and Egyptian, so that the modified theme- and scheme files are also included. Just drop these into your overarching styles folder and they should work! :)
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: Strato Incendus on May 09, 2019, 02:02:52 PM: @Nessy: Just wanted to ask, have you had the time to update the Highland-, Shadow-, and Machine lemmings to include the shimmier yet? ;) By that I mean "take Raymanni's sprites and apply the same colour scheme to them which you applied to all the other skill sprites".

Because since I have the version with the Shimmier installed, I'm currently facing the problem that whenever I encounter a level by any creator in any pack that happens to contain Highland-, Shadow-, or Machine lemmings, I can't play that level because the Reacher (and of course also the Shimmier) animation can't be found.

The only way around this is to reset the lemmings sprites for that particular style to default (or any other sprites such as my Beach or Egyptian lemmings which already contain the shimmier).

In short: The Highland-, Shadow-, and Machine sprites aren't usable as of now for anyone who has the Shimmier version of NeoLemmix installed. (Even if the level doesn't actually contain any Shimmiers; the game file seems to look for all skill sprites beforehand and prevents you from playing if any of those skills, used or unused in a given level, is missing.)

Can you help out there?

I would happily do the addition of the Shimmier sprites to those three tribes myself; however, I recoloured my sprite mods with the "replace colour"-feature in Photoshop, which only works relative to the current colour through changes in Hue, Saturation, and Brightness. Meaning I can't simply enter certain RBG values that I selected with a colour-picker tool from e.g. one of the Highland sprites. I could only manually "fill out" the single pixels with a selected RBG colour - not only would this be tedious to do, though, but also, Photoshop then usually colours in the surrounding pixels in a lighter shade of that colour (=with reduced opacity), so that I'd actually end up filling out more pixels than intended, thereby making the Lemmings larger and out of shape.
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: namida on May 09, 2019, 07:53:41 PM: Quote
I would happily do the addition of the Shimmier sprites to those three tribes myself; however, I recoloured my sprite mods with the "replace colour"-feature in Photoshop, which only works relative to the current colour through changes in Hue, Saturation, and Brightness. Meaning I can't simply enter certain RBG values that I selected with a colour-picker tool from e.g. one of the Highland sprites. I could only manually "fill out" the single pixels with a selected RBG colour - not only would this be tedious to do, though, but also, Photoshop then usually colours in the surrounding pixels in a lighter shade of that colour (=with reduced opacity), so that I'd actually end up filling out more pixels than intended, thereby making the Lemmings larger and out of shape.

Paint.NET has a "replace color" tool that does the job great for this. You will want to change a few of the options on it - antialiasing off, tolerance to zero (or maybe very low, if zero isn't quite working right), and I find it easier to use the "replace 2nd color with 1st" than "replace clicked color with primary color" mode though either one is useable for this task.
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: GigaLem on May 09, 2019, 08:33:44 PM: Quote from: namida on May 09, 2019, 07:53:41 PM
Quote
I would happily do the addition of the Shimmier sprites to those three tribes myself; however, I recoloured my sprite mods with the "replace colour"-feature in Photoshop, which only works relative to the current colour through changes in Hue, Saturation, and Brightness. Meaning I can't simply enter certain RBG values that I selected with a colour-picker tool from e.g. one of the Highland sprites. I could only manually "fill out" the single pixels with a selected RBG colour - not only would this be tedious to do, though, but also, Photoshop then usually colours in the surrounding pixels in a lighter shade of that colour (=with reduced opacity), so that I'd actually end up filling out more pixels than intended, thereby making the Lemmings larger and out of shape.

Paint.NET has a "replace color" tool that does the job great for this. You will want to change a few of the options on it - antialiasing off, tolerance to zero (or maybe very low, if zero isn't quite working right), and I find it easier to use the "replace 2nd color with 1st" than "replace clicked color with primary color" mode though either one is useable for this task.
I've been using Paint.Net for over a year and I never knew of this.
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: Strato Incendus on May 10, 2019, 12:19:20 PM: Thanks, I can give it a try! :thumbsup:
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: namida on May 10, 2019, 09:14:58 PM: Quote from: Strato Incendus on May 10, 2019, 12:19:20 PM
Thanks, I can give it a try! :thumbsup:

...and now that I think about it, if you're wanting to do an entire image, there's an even easier way - use the flood tool. Again, needs antialiasing turned off and tolerance low or zero; then also change the flood mode from "continguous" to "global". Then, select the new color, click a pixel of the old color; repeat for each color.

(Antialiasing isn't labelled with a name, only an icon. The icon is the curvy line with three dots on it, which turns to a more rough line when antialiasing is disabled.)

For the record, unless you specifically choose to save them, these tool options don't get saved when you exit Paint.NET, so you don't need to worry about remembering the defaults to change back.
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Shimmiers added to Machine)
Post by: Strato Incendus on August 15, 2019, 08:57:13 PM: Okay, Nessy apparently took care of the L2 Highland and Shadow Shimmier sprites already! :thumbsup: So I only had to do the Machine Shimmier and Reacher sprites.

Thanks to namida for explaining the Paint.Net use to me!

Apparently no-one used the Machine sprites? Because the thread for the "bug" of missing Shimmier sprites was closed without Machine ever being mentioned, however my latest download of the style folders did not feature Shimmiers. I guess nobody noticed because the theme still selected default lemmings as the sprites, despite at the same time providing a folder with the machine sprites, but missing the Shimmier.

Anyways, now they're here, and so I hope Nessy's Machine sprites get a little more love... :P It seems they might just have been forgotten otherwise, with everyone believing Machine was just using regular sprites.

EDIT: Name changed to "nessy_machine", new download provided in my post below. ;)
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: namida on August 15, 2019, 09:14:28 PM: namida_machine does not, or at least should not, contain custom lemming sprites. They need to be under a different name, as does any theme file that points to them. I recall that custom sprites for it got included by accident with one version of the styles download; this should have been removed subsequently?

If nothing is actually using them, there's even less reason to keep them where they are. Move them under the actual author's name, while there's still nothing using them.
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: Nessy on August 15, 2019, 09:54:29 PM: I wish to completely remove the machine/grayscale lemming sprites from this thread and have them no longer available anywhere. When I made them I didn't think it would be a big deal but now I realized that I might have overstepped without meaning to so I just want them out.

Sorry... but yeah I would like to focus on the L2 stuff since that's official :)
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: namida on August 15, 2019, 09:59:11 PM: Before creating any further ones, take a look at this topic: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=4342.0

It relates to a proposed feature that might simplify things for doing the remaining L2 sprites, since they're all (as far as I'm aware) recolors anyway.
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: Proxima on August 15, 2019, 10:41:13 PM: Quote from: Nessy on August 15, 2019, 09:54:29 PM
I wish to completely remove the machine/grayscale lemming sprites from this thread and have them no longer available anywhere. When I made them I didn't think it would be a big deal but now I realized that I might have overstepped without meaning to so I just want them out.

That seems a bit drastic, since they are very nice. Now, I don't really understand how custom lemming sprites work in NL, since I've never used them myself; I don't see any way to select custom lemming sprites in the level editor, so I guess they are associated with a style and (if present) will be used for all levels in that style? In that case, the Machine sprites obviously shouldn't be associated with Machine in the default download (since it's namida's style and he doesn't want that), but I don't see the harm in keeping them available for users to decide whether they want to install them?
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: namida on August 15, 2019, 10:55:00 PM: Quote
That seems a bit drastic, since they are very nice. Now, I don't really understand how custom lemming sprites work in NL, since I've never used them myself; I don't see any way to select custom lemming sprites in the level editor, so I guess they are associated with a style and (if present) will be used for all levels in that style? In that case, the Machine sprites obviously shouldn't be associated with Machine in the default download (since it's namida's style and he doesn't want that), but I don't see the harm in keeping them available for users to decide whether they want to install them?

They're selected at the theme level. In turn, the theme will generally correspond to the primary style of the level, although nothing enforces this. So for example, if you were to select "Xmas" as the theme for a level, you'd get the Xmas sprites. A custom style's theme file can point to any style for lemming sprites, be this its own, "default", or a third style (but this cannot be chained - if "style1" refers to "style2" for lemming sprites, "style2" must actually have lemming sprites; it cannot in turn refer to "style3").

This is why even if the sprites are in namida_machine, they don't get used for such levels; because namida_machine's theme file points to "default" for lemming sprites.
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: Proxima on August 15, 2019, 11:05:43 PM: I see. But there's nothing stopping the end user modifying the theme file for themselves; that's always going to be possible when everything is split up into text-only files.
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: namida on August 15, 2019, 11:10:15 PM: That's absolutely correct - users can do so freely; if they wished, they could modify namida_machine's theme file to point to nessy_machine for lemming sprites. Likewise, nessy_machine could contain a theme file identical to namida_machine, except that it points to nessy_machine instead of default for lemming sprites. All of that is fine - just as long as it's being done as a user modification or "3rd-party" modification, or a distinct style, and not shipping as if it were an official part of namida_machine in any way.
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: Strato Incendus on August 16, 2019, 08:36:31 AM: Yes, I remember there being objections about Machine lemmings on namida's part. Indeed, I just shared the modified version here as an optional "mod" for any player who likes to use them.

Of course, we can put them into nessy_machine - that would probably not be a style of its own, though, I guess? Since we're trying to avoid duplicate terrain pieces etc., and Nessy wasn't the one who created the graphic set either. So it would be a style that only contains a "lemmings" folder, plus a "theme" file.

My Egyptian lemmings fall into a similar category: They are not a contribution to another user's style, but they're a modification of what L2 Egyptian lemmings would actually look like.

I'm fine with the official, download-included sprites for L2 Egyptian being the L2 recoloured ones, and then my sprites will remain available in this thread for anyone who wants to swap them out. Everyone who wishes to do so, including me, will probably have to re-download or re-extract my Egyptian lemmings again after every update, though, because of course, if you just unpack the entire styles folder, the Egyptian lemmings will be overwritten every time.

But I'm used to doing that from the Magic Set Editor - a software created for designing custom Magic: The Gathering card sets. One template added an extra colour (Purple), and at some point in time the community swapped out the card frame and mana symbols for that. I always preferred the old ones, so I had them as a backup, and then had to re-insert them into their respective folders after every update. :D

Based on that experience, though, I'd like to keep as many alternatives available for players to choose based on individual taste. Not like "one is the official thing that eveyone is encouraged to use, and the other thing is the somewhat 'illegal' variation that maybe some random guy still has on his computer, so you have to ask that specific person to get it" etc. :evil:

Since this is merely about aesthetics and replacing image files, a player using different sprites for their individual play experience shouldn't mechanically affect any levels they build or play, as long as the way the sprites are named is consistent.

It's basically no difference to people who use the custom edits of the ONML tilesets (I've seen the slightly "soft-edged" versions of both Brick and Bubble in YouTube Let's Plays several times now).

So, how do we go about this? Do we agree on simply calling this "nessy_machine" and making it a separate "style" that only includes lemmings sprites, rather than any actual terrain or objects? ;)
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: namida on August 16, 2019, 09:00:41 AM: I see no problem with a style containing only a theme and lemming sprites. We already have the Xmas style, which has no terrain (though it does have objects).
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: Strato Incendus on August 16, 2019, 09:16:25 AM: Great, then! I've deleted the namida_machine download from my preceding post, renamed the ZIP archive and the style to nessy_machine and deleted all the terrain, objects, and backgrounds. Only lemmings plus the theme file remaining.

To the two people who have downloaded my namida_machine update in the meantime: Please delete the custom sprites from that folder, and if you want to continue to use these sprites with the namida_machine tileset, simply open the theme-file in the namida_machine folder in Editor, Notepad etc. and point it to "nessy_machine" instead.

(And, of course, I'll have to do the same for my namida_machine folder as well.) ;)
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: Strato Incendus on December 16, 2019, 11:02:00 AM: Now that re-colouring has been implemented, I just wanted to quickly ask what happened to my custom Egyptian sprites, or rather, how to re-introduce them? ;)

The L2 Egyptian tileset now obviously has the standard Egyptian sprites from L2. I haven't checked the L3 Egyptian tileset yet, but I doubt my custom sprites would be added to any other of the official tilesets.

If no other style can host them, I'd be happy to simply include them with my strato_generalmd set of special graphics. I'd just need to know how to adapt the sprites (see my post on the first page of this thread) to the new re-colouring scheme. ;)

I'd like to have them back, among others, for my Lemmings World Tour level "Diggas in Paris"... for obvious word-play reasons... :D This in general is another mark in favour of the New-Formats version of the pack: The ability to use a greater variety of sprites, rather than just Default and X-Mas.
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: namida on December 16, 2019, 04:52:44 PM: Take a look at the theme.nxmt file in a style that uses recoloring (NOT one that uses outright custom sprites like Xmas - so your best bet is the L2 styles, or arty_underwater).

If you're wondering "what's the right keyword for {so-and-so}", take a look at the "scheme.nxmi" file in styles/default/lemmings.

I think with the above pointers you should be able to work out the rest (it's pretty simple), but feel free to ask here or on Discord if you still have further questions.
Title: Re: [New Formats] Custom Lemmings Sprites (New: Egyptian Lemmings by Strato)
Post by: Strato Incendus on December 16, 2019, 07:22:11 PM: Thanks a lot, namida! :thumbsup: I'll try my luck with it, and then I'm probably going to make these the custom sprites for strato_generalmd, given they are the only custom sprites I have created so far (aside from reconstructing the L2 Beach sprites, which is now superfluous, anyway).