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NeoLemmix => NeoLemmix Levels => In Development => Topic started by: Flopsy on January 06, 2020, 02:41:56 AM

Title: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Flopsy on January 06, 2020, 02:41:56 AM
(https://i.imgur.com/6hLwwVA.png)

So here it is, my attempt at converting this pack.
This is still a work in progress so I have posted this in "In Development" for now.

I have worked off what was sent to me by mobius and I have not changed any of what was sent to me content wise.

So what I did was I converted all of the levels one by one by loading and saving in the v1.17 editor, I then looked at the levels and saw which ones already exist in new formats and proceeded to replace those levels with the up-to-date versions which already existed (in this case, I took the levels from Clammings, Insane Steve World and MazuLems)

I need help from others at this point though because the following problems exist
1. I have no ordering whatsoever in this pack because the level list is significantly different to any level lists I have seen for RotL.
2. I have no replays whatsoever, I have asked namida if he has his replays from his LP from years back but he does not.
3. Because there are nearly 200 levels which have been converted to new formats, I need help testing these levels to see if they are still as robust as they are for back routes. This is technically a playable pack but I am trying to get it back to how it would have been in the old formats so I encourage anyone (even if you've never played this pack) to help test the levels :)
4. I have no idea what is going on with the music in this pack, there is a music folder in what I was given which I will post below.

I wasn't able to convert the following levels (only a few!)
land nightmares.lvl
persia.lvl
supaplex tricks.lvl

I'm sorry if this is a poor show because it feels like I have just converted the levels to new format and not really done anything else but I feel I don't know enough about this pack to be able to make "executive decisions" on how it should turn out so I'm asking for help especially from those who were involved with the original pack!

I've also posted the original pack executable I was given, this is a very old version of NeoLemmix but gives an idea of how the original RotL used to look.

So anyway, any help you can give in this topic will be appreciated, even if you have never seen this pack before then you are welcome to come and help out with this gargantuan task!
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: namida on January 06, 2020, 03:00:29 AM
It should be possible to activate a "cheat mode" in Revenge of the Lemmings EXE version that unlocks all levels, then you can navigate between levels, or possibly even use a level select. I'm not sure what NL had at the time in terms of this, and IIRC it was possible for pack creators to disable certain things like this. This should allow you to figure out level order very quickly (at least, without having to solve each level), and if you can be bothered, you could also match levels to musics this way.

It might also be possible to dump LVL files by pressing one of the F keys (probably between 4 and 7) on the main menu. Of course, these might not be of any use, depending on exactly how outdated they are - if they're 2KB, no good, if they're 10KB, probably okay but might not be (only way to be sure is to try it). A variety of different sizes, yep, they're almost certianly useable. Don't convert these one-by-one again - pop them all in a subfolder of "levels" (in current-version NL), which will appear in the list as a level pack. Go to this "pack"'s title screen and hit the Cleanse Levels key (F8 if I remember correctly).

If you can get the LVL files, but they aren't useful, don't throw them away. I might be able to write a bit of code that can at least get the level order / music information and apply it to your current-version copies. (Although I guess - if you can get the LVL files, I can just get them again the same way, so it doesn't actually matter if you do throw them away or not. :P )

Likewise, I can probably do something similar for grabbing up-to-date versions of the levels (but preserving RotL's author / music data) from other packs and integrating them here. I would, though, need someone else to actually identify the relevant packs.

I can have a go at / help more with this myself a bit later on tonight; just not right now. I could also try seeing if I can do anything useful with historical NL source code to extract data from it...

I want to make sure I draw a line here though: I'm happy to help with this kind of technical stuff, but it's back over to you for any editorial decisions (eg: replacing / modifying / reordering levels) - I'm just helping reconstruct and update the data of the existing version.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Flopsy on January 06, 2020, 03:09:19 AM
I've managed to dump the LVL files, they seem to be of variable size between 2-6KB.

Also I have the cheat mode already active on the EXE, maybe it is already active for other people also.
I'm able to scroll through the levels using the arrow keys.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: namida on January 06, 2020, 03:14:35 AM
Quote
I've managed to dump the LVL files, they seem to be of variable size between 2-6KB.

Yeah, those are definitely still useable. I'll see if I can do anything useful with them later tonight.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 06, 2020, 04:03:29 AM
Thank you Flopsy, it's great to see this back on new formats! :thumbsup:

I'm happy to help in any way I can, and I'll start by playing through as much of the pack as I can and taking notes as I go.

If other community members give their input as well, we should be able to get some idea of whether the current selection of levels is pretty robust as-is or might need changes. Finding additional levels to fill gaps might be tricky -- I'll summarise here a discussion we had on discord last night. RotL is a "best of" the community's work over a certain time period, and I (and others) think it should remain that way and not have newer levels added. For one thing, most newer levels are very different in style, making heavy use of NL features that weren't available yet when the levels in this pack were designed; it would feel odd to have one or two levels using new features in a pack that almost entirely lacks them.

However, it also feels weird to almost have 30 levels per rank with a gap here and there, so we should definitely put our heads together and see if we can find some favourite levels from the old days that aren't in the pack yet. I can certainly remake Labyrinth of Persia, using the Lix remake as a basis for the layout.

Anyway, I'll post again when I have some notes to share. I'll especially look at ordering issues, changes that might be necessary, and whether there are any levels that (I think) should be removed.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 06, 2020, 05:46:46 AM
So, my thoughts after playing the Picnic rank. I've attached a document with more in-depth notes, but I'll summarise the main points here.

All time limits in this rank were unnecessary.

Playing the levels in alphabetical order is actually a pretty good way to get an idea of the average difficulty of a rank. :P

Looking at Pieuw's feedback document (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BZ0kgVPd6KrvfwcU4YkP9eFFkdO72-MS1kxZqEV3lHI/edit#gid=0), I am reminded that for the most part, this entire rank was added after I last played the pack, since it was felt to not have an easy enough first rank. It contains a lot of N-of-all repeats of later levels in the pack; I suppose these were made specially for RotL.

It's always somewhat tricky for experienced players to make good easy levels, but for the most part, this is a very good selection. Most levels are 10- or 20-of-all (or 10-of-all with 20 builders), but they have a good variety of obstacles such as traps, death drops, steel and one-way arrows that a route has to navigate around; some levels have interesting unique* features such as one hatch rescuing another. A few levels that are not 10-of-all still fit in with the others in terms of difficulty and providing variety.

* Not unique in the sense of "only one level ever has done this", but "unique out of the collection of 10-of-all levels in this pack".

I'm not ready to suggest a full ordering yet, but I noted that "The Great Migration" and "Through Fire and Flames" are the easiest levels in the rank (other than "The Chopping Board", which is trivial and should be removed).

I have some thoughts about which levels to remove from the pack completely, and which to move to a higher rank, but I'll defer these until I've played more and (hopefully) other people have contributed some thoughts. It would be nice to have more of an idea of how many levels we're aiming for -- for example, if there end up being quite a lot of not-so-good levels throughout the pack, we could just trim the worst ones and leave ourselves with 25 in each rank.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: namida on January 06, 2020, 07:40:20 AM
I've managed to run most of the LVLs from the EXe through Cleanse Levels. 8 have given me issues:

0124 - Proxima, "Minesweeper Lemmings" - No translation table for "michaelxtnd" or vgaspec "preview13"
0226 - Insane Steve, "Flugtag!" - No translation table for "smb"
0231 - Insane Steve, "They just won't climb that wall" - No translation table for "smb"
0318 - Proxima, "Lemmings of Persia" - No translation table for "prince" or vgaspec "preview5"
0331 - Insane Steve, "Mental Process" - No translation table for "smb"
0431 - Proxima, "The Land of Nightmares" - No translation table for "michaelxtnd" or vgaspec "preview20"
0620 - Proxima, "Waltz in C Sharp Miner" - No translation table for "michaelxtnd" or vgaspec "preview13"
0712 - Proxima, "The Hotel In Hell" - No translation table for "michaelfire" or vgaspec "preview12"


Here's my conversion, preserving the rank structure / order from the EXE version. Levels that I couldn't convert have been replaced with a filler level.

I haven't examined the individual levels much - I fired up one level to make sure there's no obvious problems. Likewise, I have not attempted to import updated copies from other packs - this is just straight conversions of the LVL files extracted from the EXE (using NL itself to do the conversion). Levels that were originally secret levels, are put in a "Secret" sub-rank of each rank. Obviously, these need to be either merged or removed now, as NL hasn't supported secret levels for a very long time now.

I'd also like to suggest making the music loop properly, where suitable, for tracks that don't already do so. At least two tracks in there, I used for Lemmings Plus V, where I modified them to correctly loop, so you could take the versions from there. (Of course, this is a relatively low-priority thing - but personally I feel it's a bit jarring when the music suddenly fades out then starts again.)

Let me know if you'd like me to help with any more tricky stuff, eg. merging data between this and other packs (in cases where the other pack has newer versions of the levels), or merging parts from your existing conversions with parts from mine (eg. I think you mentioned yours lacks music data and ordering, this is something that would be very tedious to copy between the two manually but could be done pretty quickly with a bit of coding which I could do).
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Flopsy on January 06, 2020, 03:29:22 PM
So, my thoughts after playing the Picnic rank. I've attached a document with more in-depth notes, but I'll summarise the main points here.

All time limits in this rank were unnecessary.

Playing the levels in alphabetical order is actually a pretty good way to get an idea of the average difficulty of a rank. :P

Looking at Pieuw's feedback document (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BZ0kgVPd6KrvfwcU4YkP9eFFkdO72-MS1kxZqEV3lHI/edit#gid=0), I am reminded that for the most part, this entire rank was added after I last played the pack, since it was felt to not have an easy enough first rank. It contains a lot of N-of-all repeats of later levels in the pack; I suppose these were made specially for RotL.

It's always somewhat tricky for experienced players to make good easy levels, but for the most part, this is a very good selection. Most levels are 10- or 20-of-all (or 10-of-all with 20 builders), but they have a good variety of obstacles such as traps, death drops, steel and one-way arrows that a route has to navigate around; some levels have interesting unique* features such as one hatch rescuing another. A few levels that are not 10-of-all still fit in with the others in terms of difficulty and providing variety.

* Not unique in the sense of "only one level ever has done this", but "unique out of the collection of 10-of-all levels in this pack".

I'm not ready to suggest a full ordering yet, but I noted that "The Great Migration" and "Through Fire and Flames" are the easiest levels in the rank (other than "The Chopping Board", which is trivial and should be removed).

I have some thoughts about which levels to remove from the pack completely, and which to move to a higher rank, but I'll defer these until I've played more and (hopefully) other people have contributed some thoughts. It would be nice to have more of an idea of how many levels we're aiming for -- for example, if there end up being quite a lot of not-so-good levels throughout the pack, we could just trim the worst ones and leave ourselves with 25 in each rank.

I'll write a proper reply to this post later on, this hasn't gone unnoticed :)


0226 - Insane Steve, "Flugtag!" - No translation table for "smb"
0231 - Insane Steve, "They just won't climb that wall" - No translation table for "smb"
0331 - Insane Steve, "Mental Process" - No translation table for "smb"

I have managed to retrieve these levels from Insane Steve's pack in new formats

Quote from: namida
I'd also like to suggest making the music loop properly, where suitable, for tracks that don't already do so. At least two tracks in there, I used for Lemmings Plus V, where I modified them to correctly loop, so you could take the versions from there. (Of course, this is a relatively low-priority thing - but personally I feel it's a bit jarring when the music suddenly fades out then starts again.)

I'm not sure how to do music loops myself, I'm not really sure what is going on with the music at the moment.

I have managed to take your conversion and using it as a new ground pack rather than the one I created.

I have transferred over all of the levels which were grabbed from other packs and also the ones which weren't present in your conversion and put them in a rank named "unsorted"

This means the levels now have an order now so that is an improvement to say the least.

Please use the pack I have now uploaded to the first post for testing purposes. Thanks for this namida :)
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 06, 2020, 05:25:33 PM
A quick update and reply. I've fixed the backroute in Picnic/Somewhere Under the Rainbow, and I'll upload the fix later today. This is the only backroute fix needed for the Picnic rank.

0124 - Proxima, "Minesweeper Lemmings" - No translation table for "michaelxtnd" or vgaspec "preview13"
0318 - Proxima, "Lemmings of Persia" - No translation table for "prince" or vgaspec "preview5"
0431 - Proxima, "The Land of Nightmares" - No translation table for "michaelxtnd" or vgaspec "preview20"
0620 - Proxima, "Waltz in C Sharp Miner" - No translation table for "michaelxtnd" or vgaspec "preview13"
0712 - Proxima, "The Hotel In Hell" - No translation table for "michaelfire" or vgaspec "preview12"

I will do the work necessary to recover these levels, so please don't anyone jump the gun and do it for me. A few notes:

Minesweeper Lemmings / Waltz in C Sharp Miner (a repeat pair) -- These require the Minesweeper style, which was withdrawn as it wasn't ready for release. I promised to finish the style and I haven't done it yet. Now that this pack is making its way to new formats, I have a strong incentive to get this done 8-) so I promise I won't put it off any longer.

Lemmings of Persia -- The Persia style is already in new formats, so it should be simple enough to rebuild this level, using its Lix remake as a basis for the layout.

The Land of Nightmares -- This was a Cheapo level combining terrain from all four Orig VGASPEC levels. MENACING and BeastII have NL remakes, so the level could partially be remade, but it was a cheap hidden-trap level and I strongly urge removing it from the pack.

The Hotel in Hell -- This is a Fire level, and the only reason it was a VGASPEC in the old RotL is that my Fire style for Cheapo included a unique trap, which this level showcased. Bringing it to NL, the level should be remade in the standard Fire style, and the trap either replaced with another trap, or remade and added to proxima_tile. (Again, I am happy to do the work here.)
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: namida on January 06, 2020, 05:36:05 PM
Quote
The Hotel in Hell -- This is a Fire level, and the only reason it was a VGASPEC in the old RotL is that my Fire style for Cheapo included a unique trap, which this level showcased. Bringing it to NL, the level should be remade in the standard Fire style, and the trap either replaced with another trap, or remade and added to proxima_tile. (Again, I am happy to do the work here.)

This is one of the few levels from RotL that I actually remember upon seeing the name, I recall it being a really good level. I do hope it can be brought back one way or another. :D

Quote
I'm not sure how to do music loops myself, I'm not really sure what is going on with the music at the moment.

All the music for RotL is tracker formats (MOD, IT, etc), so someone familiar with OpenMPT (or a similar app) should be able to handle this part of things. It's pretty much a matter of finding the appropriate point to jump to, and adding a "Pattern break" and "Position jump" command. I might make a tutorial at some point.

In terms of in general "how the music should work" - if you use my conversion, together with my music download, you should get the correct music.

If you already have the music download from the 1st post, go into the subfolders until you find the actual music files (they're nested a few files deep). Put these into "<NL folder>/music/Revenge_of_the_Lemmings". They'll now work with my converted levels. The files in my download are the same, the only difference is my download also puts them into the right folder so that you can just extract the ZIP and they'll end up in the correct place.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Flopsy on January 07, 2020, 01:07:06 AM
Thank you Flopsy, it's great to see this back on new formats! :thumbsup:

I'm happy to help in any way I can, and I'll start by playing through as much of the pack as I can and taking notes as I go.

If other community members give their input as well, we should be able to get some idea of whether the current selection of levels is pretty robust as-is or might need changes. Finding additional levels to fill gaps might be tricky -- I'll summarise here a discussion we had on discord last night. RotL is a "best of" the community's work over a certain time period, and I (and others) think it should remain that way and not have newer levels added. For one thing, most newer levels are very different in style, making heavy use of NL features that weren't available yet when the levels in this pack were designed; it would feel odd to have one or two levels using new features in a pack that almost entirely lacks them.

However, it also feels weird to almost have 30 levels per rank with a gap here and there, so we should definitely put our heads together and see if we can find some favourite levels from the old days that aren't in the pack yet. I can certainly remake Labyrinth of Persia, using the Lix remake as a basis for the layout.

Anyway, I'll post again when I have some notes to share. I'll especially look at ordering issues, changes that might be necessary, and whether there are any levels that (I think) should be removed.

Concerning the gaps in the levels, now that namida has helped out with extracting files, we now seem to have the opposite problem, the updated new format nxp I have now compiled using what namida gave me now has a few gaps but there were a lot of levels which were in my original conversion and was not in namida's conversion, I have placed these levels in a folder titled "unsorted".

I have appealed to everyone to try and test these levels out, it is very important that as many as possible try and help de-back route the levels. You're doing a great job so far, keep it up! Keep doing what you're doing :)
I just apologise that I have compiled a new pack while you were testing the Picnic rank.
So, my thoughts after playing the Picnic rank. I've attached a document with more in-depth notes, but I'll summarise the main points here.

All time limits in this rank were unnecessary.

Playing the levels in alphabetical order is actually a pretty good way to get an idea of the average difficulty of a rank. :P

Looking at Pieuw's feedback document (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BZ0kgVPd6KrvfwcU4YkP9eFFkdO72-MS1kxZqEV3lHI/edit#gid=0), I am reminded that for the most part, this entire rank was added after I last played the pack, since it was felt to not have an easy enough first rank. It contains a lot of N-of-all repeats of later levels in the pack; I suppose these were made specially for RotL.

It's always somewhat tricky for experienced players to make good easy levels, but for the most part, this is a very good selection. Most levels are 10- or 20-of-all (or 10-of-all with 20 builders), but they have a good variety of obstacles such as traps, death drops, steel and one-way arrows that a route has to navigate around; some levels have interesting unique* features such as one hatch rescuing another. A few levels that are not 10-of-all still fit in with the others in terms of difficulty and providing variety.

* Not unique in the sense of "only one level ever has done this", but "unique out of the collection of 10-of-all levels in this pack".

I'm not ready to suggest a full ordering yet, but I noted that "The Great Migration" and "Through Fire and Flames" are the easiest levels in the rank (other than "The Chopping Board", which is trivial and should be removed).

I have some thoughts about which levels to remove from the pack completely, and which to move to a higher rank, but I'll defer these until I've played more and (hopefully) other people have contributed some thoughts. It would be nice to have more of an idea of how many levels we're aiming for -- for example, if there end up being quite a lot of not-so-good levels throughout the pack, we could just trim the worst ones and leave ourselves with 25 in each rank.

Looking over your feedback

First Things First - I've altered the author name, should show if I upload another update soon.
Food for the Gods - Proxima suggests the save requirement should increase to 40 from 35
Land of Confusion - in the updated pack, this has ended up in the unsorted folder so it's open season on where it ends up.
Lem Dunk - already in rank 2 in the update ;)
Rounds and Swingabouts - Proxima has suggested this should not be a rank 1 level, too much resource management
Somewhere under the Rainbow - This ended up in unsorted also.
Chopping Block - currently in unsorted, could be let go.
Training Zone Alpha - is in rank 2 in updated pack.

We now have an ordering for Picnic in the updated pack, we should use that as a basis and work off it.

A quick update and reply. I've fixed the backroute in Picnic/Somewhere Under the Rainbow, and I'll upload the fix later today. This is the only backroute fix needed for the Picnic rank.

0124 - Proxima, "Minesweeper Lemmings" - No translation table for "michaelxtnd" or vgaspec "preview13"
0318 - Proxima, "Lemmings of Persia" - No translation table for "prince" or vgaspec "preview5"
0431 - Proxima, "The Land of Nightmares" - No translation table for "michaelxtnd" or vgaspec "preview20"
0620 - Proxima, "Waltz in C Sharp Miner" - No translation table for "michaelxtnd" or vgaspec "preview13"
0712 - Proxima, "The Hotel In Hell" - No translation table for "michaelfire" or vgaspec "preview12"

I will do the work necessary to recover these levels, so please don't anyone jump the gun and do it for me. A few notes:

Minesweeper Lemmings / Waltz in C Sharp Miner (a repeat pair) -- These require the Minesweeper style, which was withdrawn as it wasn't ready for release. I promised to finish the style and I haven't done it yet. Now that this pack is making its way to new formats, I have a strong incentive to get this done 8-) so I promise I won't put it off any longer.

Lemmings of Persia -- The Persia style is already in new formats, so it should be simple enough to rebuild this level, using its Lix remake as a basis for the layout.

The Land of Nightmares -- This was a Cheapo level combining terrain from all four Orig VGASPEC levels. MENACING and BeastII have NL remakes, so the level could partially be remade, but it was a cheap hidden-trap level and I strongly urge removing it from the pack.

The Hotel in Hell -- This is a Fire level, and the only reason it was a VGASPEC in the old RotL is that my Fire style for Cheapo included a unique trap, which this level showcased. Bringing it to NL, the level should be remade in the standard Fire style, and the trap either replaced with another trap, or remade and added to proxima_tile. (Again, I am happy to do the work here.)

No problem with your plans there, only need to remake the levels which you feel should be in the new formats pack :)
It's only these levels really that we are missing from the pack since I have managed to retrieve ISteve's Mario tileset levels.

Quote
I'm not sure how to do music loops myself, I'm not really sure what is going on with the music at the moment.

All the music for RotL is tracker formats (MOD, IT, etc), so someone familiar with OpenMPT (or a similar app) should be able to handle this part of things. It's pretty much a matter of finding the appropriate point to jump to, and adding a "Pattern break" and "Position jump" command. I might make a tutorial at some point.

Yeah, I'm not touching that personally because I don't know the first thing about doing it.

I'll get onto extracting the music you posted though ;)
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 07, 2020, 04:22:27 AM
Thank you for the rapid update! :thumbsup:

I've played through Picnic in the new version and have more feedback.

Skill tutorial levels were added (in one case, repurposing an existing level) and some levels removed or moved up. For the most part, I agree with these decisions, but there are some exceptions. Again, my document contains more detailed feedback, but I'll summarise the important points here:

With a few exceptions, the order is really good and there is a steady progression of difficulty and required skill. Well done! :thumbsup:

1.6 "Play Bridge" is NOT a builder tutorial and belongs much later in the rank, or even in Rank 2. Since the pack contains a set of tutorial levels for each skill, it would be odd to omit builders, so we need to find a suitable replacement. None of the other levels currently in the rank are suitable, so it would have to be a new level or a new repeat of a later level.

1.17 "Let's get to the bottom of this" / "Somewhere Under the Rainbow" feels a bit harder than the levels around it (if backroute-fixed). It certainly belongs somewhere in Rank 1 though.

1.24 is the gap reserved for "Minesweeper Lemmings", and is a good place for it.

1.25 "Song of the Lemming" is much too easy for its place, and I am not sure it deserves inclusion at all. (It is an easy repeat of a later level, so removing it wouldn't destroy the work done on the level design, which is excellent.)

1.29 "Rounds and Swingabouts" is definitely too hard for Rank 1.

* * *

If my suggestions are followed that 1.6 moves later in the rank and a new level is added, and 1.25 and 1.29 are moved/removed, the rank will need one more level. I've looked at the levels that used to be in the rank and were moved out (this is in my feedback document), but I'll give more thoughts after playing rank 2, since there may be one or more levels there that deserve to move down.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: namida on January 07, 2020, 04:50:49 AM
Quote
1.29 "Rounds and Swingabouts" is definitely too hard for Rank 1.

I don't remember this level, but at a quick glance - it doesn't look like it's particularly hard? It looks long, but not hard. That's what she said.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Flopsy on January 08, 2020, 01:38:06 AM
Ok, got round to replying to the feedback.

1.6 Play Bridge - Moving this out of Rank 1 is a possibility. We'll need to of course find suitable levels from Rank 2 to move down or alternately, anything in the Unsorted rank could potentially replace this. Should we need to make a replacement level, I would not be comfortable doing this, I feel it should be someone who originally had involvement with the original pack.

1.17 Let's Get To The Bottom of This - thanks for clearing up the name, it can probably be removed from the unsorted rank now. Would this be better off around level 23 or are you thinking later than that?

1.24 this can be where Minesweeper Lemmings goes, no issues with that.

1.25 Song of the Lemming - this could be removed if you wish, especially if the repeat exists. See what other people think.

1.29 Rounds and Swingabouts - I also think this is more Rank 2 material than Rank 1.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 17, 2020, 07:00:13 AM
1.6 Play Bridge - Moving this out of Rank 1 is a possibility. We'll need to of course find suitable levels from Rank 2 to move down or alternately, anything in the Unsorted rank could potentially replace this. Should we need to make a replacement level, I would not be comfortable doing this, I feel it should be someone who originally had involvement with the original pack.

The point isn't just that another level needs to move down, but specifically that 1.6 needs to be a builder tutorial level (since the pack has the traditional set of tutorial levels for all the other skills). Also, I wasn't suggesting making a new level, but finding a new level -- new as in "not part of RotL previously".

I'm going to suggest the builder tutorial level from GeoffLems for this. It's an attractive level, appropriately easy, and GeoffLems is old enough that its levels are suitable for RotL -- indeed I believe some are already in the pack.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Flopsy on January 18, 2020, 10:23:51 PM
Ok I finally got around to playing the first 2 ranks of RotL in its current state.

01 06 Play Bridge - not that easy as an early tutorial type level, had to resort to builder spamming to keep the level under control. I agree that this should be moved later in the pack.
01 08 How I learned to love the bomb - Save requirement is very low on this to allow for only hatch to be considered, it should at least be 50% or above.
01 11 Through Fire and Flames - except my route completely avoid the lot, not sure if this is acceptable behaviour.
01 13 Long Way to Fall - Pointed out this one to see if my well timed 2 skill solution is ok :)
01 16 Eeny Meeny Miny oh - This one seemed a bit too trivial and without Clear physics mode I imagine would have been a very annoying level.
01 23 Stranded - I think I made this one super easy but I guess it is an ok route to take.
01 25 Song of the Lemming - This can be solved easily in 3 skills, without a major fix I think this level is unsalvageable
01 26 Codrin - First truely challenging level of the rank, it's not too hard though when you see Climbers = No of Lemmings
01 29 Rounds and Swingabouts - I'm with Proxima, this level is probably Rank 3 minimum, this is some high entropy stuff!
01 30 The Shaft - This one is quite difficult too because of the high save requirement, I'm not even sure if the right exit is even possible on this one.

No Solves in first 2 ranks. I have not resolved the MazuLems levels but I know I could solve them from my LP.
01 29 Rounds and Swingabouts - yeah....
02 03 Kung Fu Bashing - This one I just could not figure out.
02 05 Training Zone Alpha - This one is way beyond my ability as with 01 29
02 21 Turn It Around - Probably could have solved this one with more time but it is not my kind of puzzle
02 27 Crossing Paths - Couldn't comprehend this one.
02 30 Final Countdown - It's a Crane level, need I say more? I really did try to solve this one but his levels just rub me up the wrong way.

Easy rank 2 levels which could move down maybe
02 01 First Things First - maybe not because it is a good named level 1 for a rank
02 08 Crystal Caves - It's not too bad for multitaskers players.
02 10 Lem Dunk - This would make a good Rank 1 level and it's fun to play.
02 15 A Step Too Far? - I could see multiple ways to do this level and it can be solved with no destructive skills whatsoever.
02 17 The Endless Steps - This is SO EASY without Timed bombers.
02 18 Out on a Lem - This one wasn't too bad to solve.
02 24 Works on so many levels - Save requirement is generous, I was sloppy on this and still saved enough.
02 28 Altitude Training - Might be difficult due to no bashers but I found this one very easy.


I've also attached my replays.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 18, 2020, 10:50:40 PM
Personally with Song of the Lemming, it could probably have some left-facing arrows re-inserted, which were removed from the later repeat (there are left and right arrows side-by-side that effectively act as steel, since this level was made before the bubble tileset got its steel blocks).
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 19, 2020, 02:04:34 PM
Feedback updated to include Hootenanny. There are good levels here, but they are not well-sorted as to difficulty, with several harder levels coming at the start of the rank, and some towards the end that could move earlier.

EDIT: I just cross-referenced with Clammings (https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=3642.0), and both "Rounds and Swingabouts" and "Training Zone Alpha" are in the Insane rank there. :forehead:

Also, the Lix version of "A step too far?" has cubers instead of blockers. NL doesn't have cubers, of course, but we could just remove the blockers to make it less trivial.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 19, 2020, 05:26:59 PM
Oh, I think I've solved the mystery of Training Zone Alpha :P

Carnage 9 "Training Zone Omega" is this level's repeat, but it's almost the same level; there is a slight different in the skillset but not enough to justify the two being placed this far apart. Clearly, Hootenanny 5 was meant to be an easier repeat. Clammings contains only one of this repeat pair, and it's the hard version but it's called "Training Zone Alpha".

I would guess that at some point, someone imported the level from Clammings, didn't realise that the "Alpha" level there was the hard version, and saved over the easy repeat with a copy of the hard version.

Still no clue as to why "Rounds and Swingabouts" was placed in rank 1 though! 8-)
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 20, 2020, 01:59:09 AM
There's a lot of talk about "Rounds and Swingabouts" being too hard for the first rating.  I vaguely remember seeing it in another pack, where the skillset was quite restricted.  In Revenge of the Lemmings, the level has 20 of everything, but no Floaters, and you had to save 20 out of 30 Lemmings if I remember correctly.

Regarding "Eeny, meeny, miny... OH!", all of the traps are slightly visible if you pay attention, otherwise it's working out where to use the lone Builder.

Is "The Final Countdown" really that difficult? Granted, it is designed to be the final level of a rating.  The fact my levels rub you up the wrong way makes me feel sad.

ADDENDUM: The intended solution to "The Final Countdown" shouldn't give you time trouble, but if there's multiple solutions, then I guess I can't argue with removing or increasing the time limit.  Here's the intended solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zPaFEzAPh4
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 20, 2020, 02:25:57 AM
"Rounds and Swingabouts" has 1 climber, 2 bombers, 15 builders, 10 bashers and 4 miners, and the save requirement is 24/30. Looks like another case where the hard level was accidentally pasted into the slot intended for its easy repeat :P

My solution to "The Final Countdown":
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 20, 2020, 02:48:03 AM
I first made the level in DOS lemmings where Diggers would continue down that single pixel and (in my mind) would take too long to reach the bottom.  I would prefer the steel to be all the way across.

I myself was given the RotL files some years ago but just sat on them.  I originally helped möbius with choosing music and occasionally selecting levels, for better or for worse.  Now I'm struggling to find some of my original files - I had made some modifications to a couple of levels that appear in Holiday Lemmings '16 - now I need to find those files too!  Namely "A wave goodbye" (was "Someone must help us"), where a wall was made thinner and the time limit reduced from 4 minutes to 3:30 in order to patch a pair of backroutes (one of them finished the level with a few seconds to spare, so shrinking the time limit made sure to tell the player that this is not the way), and the other one was "Spiralling Snowstorm", where I added some icicles to the ceiling to prevent a backroute with a Builder hitting their head on the ceiling (before it became deadly), but this level will need some additional work in order to make the level actually possible to complete because of Climbers hitting the aforementioned deadly ceiling.

For "Rounds and Swingabouts", it definitely had 20 of everything (except Floaters) originally and a 20/30 save requirement, I believe, although 24/30 is fine too.  The harder version didn't appear in RotL at all.  For "Training Zone Alpha", it had a save target of 100% (also the reason why "Crystal Caves" is not in Picnic) but had 10 of everything, I believe.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: WillLem on January 24, 2020, 02:21:41 AM
Happy to help with this, anything that still needs doing?
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Flopsy on January 24, 2020, 02:48:00 AM
Happy to help with this, anything that still needs doing?

We are currently ordering the levels in the first 2 ranks, it would be nice to have more opinions on which levels are under-ranked or over-ranked. The more people that have opinions on the level ordering in the topic, the better the pack will be overall ;)
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: WillLem on January 26, 2020, 04:38:03 AM
Here's some feedback from the first rank, bearing in mind that I'm very much an intermediate solver. Hope it's useful:

Picnic

Level 6 Play Bridge: I like this level as it was originally - you can avoid it being a builder-fest by using the two blocks either side of the entrance as "blockers" (by having the first few lemmings build up to them) - this works best when the lemmings are coming out in both directions, as per the original level (N.B. My replay reflects this; I put the left-facing entrance back in to the level).

Level 7 Ups and Downs: Possibly a bit too difficult for the first rank as it requires keeping track of several miners at once across a large landscape. A good level though.

Level 10 Arrow keys will help you here!: Good level, but I solved it using mainly diggers and builders, which I feel misses the point slightly. I've attached an alternative version of this level which preserves its design but amplifies the point of it being an arrow-key exercise.

Level 25 Song of the Lemming: It's a beautiful looking level, seems a shame to get rid of it. I've attached a quick re-design to make it a bit more of a challenge but hopefully still in line with the other levels in this rank difficulty-wise - feel free to make any further necessary tweaks if the final decision is to keep this level in the pack.

Level 30 The Shaft: To be fair, this is a relatively easy solve once you realise that
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
, managed to get 100%! For that reason, I'm undecided as to whether I'd vote to keep it in this rank or move it up. See what others say...

Level 16 Eeeny, meeny, miney...OH!: I think this level is super! It's a welcome little change from the preceding levels, with its single lemming and generally different sort of puzzle than just terrain building/destruction. Well worth keeping, IMHO. :thumbsup:

Levels 11, 15, 20, 23,  - Through Fire And Flames, Gotta Save 'em all, Not a basher tutorial, Stranded- These levels are my favourites, and could be viewed as the difficulty standard for this first rank. Nice and easy but still require a bit of thinking through.

Overall, really enjoyed these. They're are the the kind of playable levels I'm hoping to get good at making. :lemcat:
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 26, 2020, 04:18:34 PM
I know there are some levels later on that might need replacing or reordering.  "Tribute to Benny Hill" wasn't too well-received, for example, and it seems not many people like "Oh No! Not Again!".

One thing that I'll mention about the Armageddon rating... I always felt that "Duality" works best as a penultimate level rather than the final level.  For the final level, I would like to suggest a previously secret level, "From the Brink", if only because you can then make the joke at the very end that you saved the lemmings From the Brink of Armageddon.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 26, 2020, 05:01:07 PM
In the meantime, here is my own fix of "Song of the Lemming" that fixes the most glaring problem.

Also find attached the intended easier version of "Rounds & Swingabouts"
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 26, 2020, 05:32:26 PM
For "Song of the Lemming" and its sequel, if the dual one-way arrows were intended to be, in effect, a steel area, why not replace them with actual steel now that we can do that?

I feel strongly that because this is a "best-of" pack, we should limit changes to ones that make the same levels work better, rather than redesigning them into our own levels based on the originals. For instance, unlimited time and steel in the Bubble set weren't available when these levels were made, but it's a reasonable guess that the designers might have used them if they had been. We can fix backroutes that the original designers may have not fixed because they didn't find them. But WillLem's proposed changes are too drastic. If there are any levels that can't work without drastic changes, we should accept that they don't belong in a "best-of" pack and cut them.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 26, 2020, 06:39:49 PM
It is true that the one-way arrows are intended to be steel.  I'll see if I can cleanly add in steel plates for Perfect Harmony.

For Song of the Lemming, I would argue for keeping the left-facing one-way arrows because putting steel there might make the level a bit too hard for Picnic, what with trying to navigate all the water pools, plus it would make the best solution too similar to its repeat (for an example where the harder solution is disguised, take a look at "Singularity" and its repeat in Armageddon, "Duality").

I have the raw files for Revenge of the Lemmings somewhere, given to me by möbius some years back, but I don't know which hard drive they're on.

Also, part of me likes to have a time limit in every level for this pack, even if it is far more time than you'll ever need, because it's meant to have a traditional feel to it, not least because of it only using the original 8 tools and no switches, zombies or neutrals etc.  Also, it disguises the levels that have a genuine time crunch to them.

UPDATE: Here's Perfect Harmony with steel instead of the mixed one-way arrows, and what I think is the intended solution.  I also shrunk one of the water pools to make the solution fairer (otherwise the second miner would be one pixel away from death).
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: WillLem on January 26, 2020, 07:01:19 PM
But WillLem's proposed changes are too drastic. If there are any levels that can't work without drastic changes, we should accept that they don't belong in a "best-of" pack and cut them.

Yeah, this is a fair comment as far as Song of the Lemming goes, I took quite a bit of creative licence with that one!

However, I'd maintain that my version of Arrows is probably more to the point of it being a tutorial level for using the directional arrows. The original can be solved by just using a digger pit and some builders. I'd like to see what the consensus is on this before it gets dismissed completely.

Perhaps these contributions serve as benchmarks for what might constitute a "drastic" change, in which case I've helped to define that, at least...! :crylaugh:
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 26, 2020, 07:30:05 PM
One thing you might find insightful is namida's playthrough of the pack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L2aDXG0VP0&list=PLVWvcY0oGEFzbrg5vKOjbwvKEFFn3mCm9
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 26, 2020, 07:42:25 PM
(for an example where the harder solution is disguised, take a look at "Singularity" and its repeat in Armageddon, "Duality")

I think we shouldn't get too far ahead of ourselves in terms of looking at the later levels when the early ones still need attention, but since you brought it up, I had a look at Duality.

I'm not sure what you mean by "disguised"; it seems very straightforward.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 26, 2020, 08:40:18 PM
What I meant in that regard is that, as a lower-level player on Singularity, you'd probably be tempted to build up the left hand side.  Even if you're more experienced, you probably wouldn't think to do Duality's beautiful sacrifice, mainly because of the number of tools you have.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 26, 2020, 09:01:14 PM
It was the very first thing that came to mind, precisely because you clearly don't have enough skills to go up the left side :P (It helped that the trick was fresh in my mind as I had played another level with the same trick last night -- "Coalburner" from Lemmings Plus I.)
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 27, 2020, 12:39:55 AM
One thing you might find insightful is namida's playthrough of the pack:

Thank you for the link! That's extremely helpful (as well as fun to watch). I've watched the videos up to the point I've reached in playing (midway through Devious right now) and there are a few things I've noticed:

* Hootenanny 15 "A step too far" is not meant to have any builders, which would prevent Flopsy's build-up solution :P

* Devious 9 "The Thin Red Line (Colorblind)" should have 10 builders, not 6. While it's possible with 6, it's really precise and fiddly and I didn't enjoy it at all. With 10 it would be a bit more tolerable.

On a separate note, I had an idea for how Picnic 13 "Crystal Clear" (to use my preferred title) could justify remaining in the pack. You could change the skillset to 1 basher, 1 digger, so that it becomes a tutorial on increasing the release rate, which would kind of fit with the way the pack has not just the traditional skill tutorials but also some mechanics tutorials (one-way wall and directional select).
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Flopsy on January 27, 2020, 02:26:30 AM
Ok I'm trying my best to keep up here, sorry for the delay in replying.

With regards to Training Zone Alpha/Omega, which would be recommended to keep? Or are we keeping both with Alpha as Crane suggested (100% and 10 of everything).

Similarly with Rounds and Swingabouts, I assume we are using the version which Crane posted as (Crane fix) and that will keep it where it currently is in Picnic?

I found "The Final Countdown" frustratingly difficult, it's just the kind of level where the most useful skills, you are always one skills short. No matter what plan I came up with, there was always a skill shortage somewhere. I did give it a good try but sadly I couldn't do it.

I'm with Proxima, we should keep away from the latter ranks for now, it's hard enough keeping track of 2 ranks without considering the whole pack.

I'm sorry if I'm very slow to reply and not saying much helpful stuff, feels like I'm really falling behind.
I'm purely acting as an adjudicator at this point because I don't feel like much help since I can't solve much past the 2nd and 3rd rank in this pack.

Would you like me to come up with a proposal for re-ordering the levels and post it here in the topic, based on all of the feedback by myself, Proxima and WillLem? I will obviously only do the first 2 ranks for now. Then at least we can work from there.

EDIT: This is all of the feedback I have collected which hints at movement or complete removal

PROXIMA

6. Play Bridge - WTF. Sure, it concentrates on builders, but this is NOT a builder tutorial level, it's about trapping
the crowd and it's not easy (especially with the tight save requirement). Move later.

11. Through Fire and Flames - Same level as in old version. I picked this out as one of the easiest levels, so this is a
good place for it. Fire pits need some decorative terrain as the gaps (due to the object's reduction in size) look odd.

13. It's a long, long way to fall! - This is "The Chopping Block" given the name of its repeat. Given how easy the early
levels of the new pack are, it feels less out of place, but it can definitely go if there's a better level to include.
If kept, rename to "Crystal Clear" (the name I gave it in GemLems).

17. Let's get to the bottom of this! - This is "Somewhere Under the Rainbow". I don't know why the title was changed
(because Nortaneous has a Lix level with the same title?) It belongs later (assuming a backroute-fixed version will be
used); getting down and building a landing platform is tougher than anything the player has had to do yet. I just noticed
that the terrain on the lower-left looks like it's covered by the water but isn't; I'll fix this.

2. Lemming in a Cone - Good level, but way too hard for 2-02. The correct route is not easy to spot without experience,
and builders need to be placed precisely. Maybe belongs later in rank 2, maybe higher.

3. Kung-Fu Bashing - This is all about the trick near the beginning; the rest is easy once that is done correctly. But
the trick makes this inappropriate for such an early placement.

4. Bat Country - The compilers really struggled with "What is a good early rank 2 level?", huh. Tight resources and
misdirection as to the correct route... it's a good level for later, but not here.

15. A step too far? - I think this is meant to be a tutorial on the digger-basher staircase, but as Flopsy pointed out,
it can be solved just by building up the side. Also, I don't think tutorials on tricks are appropriate for this pack,
which is meant to be a selection of the best of the community's work. (The Lix equivalent has cubers instead of blockers;
we could remove the blockers to prevent the up-the-side solution.)

17. The endless steps - Since this got repurposed as a miner tutorial (1-07), I would suggest removing the bomber version.
As Flopsy said, this is much easier with untimed bombers, but we don't want two versions of the level in the same rank.

18. Out on a Lem - This is very easy. Could be moved down to rank 1.

19. The Quiet Place - Nice minimalist puzzle. Pretty easy to spot the solution because there is not much available to
try; could fill one of the early slots in the rank if 2-02 to 2-05 move up.

22. A Long, Long Way to Fall - Remove "part 2" from the title. Tutorial on one miner releasing another. I don't like this.
(Could we maybe include this level's repeat from the Lix set, "Close to the Edge", in the pack? It dates from after RotL,
but it would allow this level's terrain to be used, since I am suggesting removing both existing repeats.)

24. Works on so many levels... - Neat study in the interplay between diggers and builders. Could be earlier in the rank
as it's fairly easy to solve. I would not increase the save requirement, as it's good that there is leeway to take
alternative routes or in case some lemmings slip by.

27. Crossing Paths - Great concept but it is not easy to spot the right places to bash and build. Move this one up.

28. Altitude Training - Nice use of multiple workers and making the player think about the limitations of having miners
but no bashers. It could come a bit earlier in the rank but I wouldn't move it down to rank 1.

WILLLEM

Level 7 Ups and Downs: Possibly a bit too difficult for the first rank as it requires keeping track of several miners at once across a large landscape. A good level though.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 27, 2020, 03:02:31 AM
I've attached my updated feedback document, with feedback through Devious 19. There is one new point that relates to ordering of the first two ranks: I had thought the gap at Hootenanny 26 was reserved for Lemmings of Persia, but after watching namida's videos, I realised that Hootenanny 26 is meant to be Flugtag, and Lemmings of Persia is Devious 18. I've added a note that Flugtag is a bit easy for late Hootenanny, and since we are struggling to find appropriate levels for the start of that rank, I've recommended placing it as 2-02.

I've rebuilt Lemmings of Persia using namida's video as a guide to the layout.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 27, 2020, 11:56:43 AM
Ok I'm trying my best to keep up here, sorry for the delay in replying.

With regards to Training Zone Alpha/Omega, which would be recommended to keep? Or are we keeping both with Alpha as Crane suggested (100% and 10 of everything).

Similarly with Rounds and Swingabouts, I assume we are using the version which Crane posted as (Crane fix) and that will keep it where it currently is in Picnic?

I think each version of the repeat pairs has to be considered separately on its own merits. If we end up with a gap in late Picnic that has to be filled, then by all means include the easier version of Rounds and Swingabouts there. If we end up with a gap in a later rank where the harder repeat would belong, then it can go there. Same thing with the Training Zone pair.

Sorry about the volume of feedback. I guess we didn't realise at the start how many issues would turn up with the current ordering, selection, backroutes and so forth :P

So I have an offer to make. If you, Crane and mobius agree, then I could take over the maintenance work from here on. I can't make any promises about when I would get things done, but keeping track of a volume of feedback and making decisions is something I can do, as I showed when I took charge of Lemmings Redux.

If I do end up taking charge, I would very much like to trim the least interesting levels, maybe getting down to 25 per rank. I think this is not a bad idea, considering the pack is so large at the moment, and there are several levels that feel like they don't really belong. I won't just remove any levels without consultation, though -- I would do what you just said, make a proposal for the ordering and selection one rank at a time and see whether there are any objections.

On the other hand, if you would rather continue as pack maintainer then I won't press the issue.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 27, 2020, 06:16:47 PM
Level files for Minesweeper Lemmings and its repeat, Waltz in C Sharp Miner. These require the Minesweeper graphics set (https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=4620.0).

For now, I've set the music for both levels to track 14 (Korobeiniki). This is the correct music for Minesweeper Lemmings. I recall there was a bit of a debate about which track to use for Waltz, and I can't remember what the outcome was.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: namida on January 27, 2020, 06:22:18 PM
I recall the second version of Training Zone being a good level that stumped me for quite a while - and considering I don't remember most of the levels in this pack, I'd say it says something if one stands out to me like that just from hearing the name. ;)

We had a bit of a confusion around the music on Discord, from WillLem. Assuming this is using the conversion I prepared from the EXE version, the music files should be placed in a "Revenge_of_the_Lemmings" (not case-sensitive) subfolder of the "music" folder. I posted a ZIP somewhere earlier in the topic that can be extracted to the base NL folder to achieve this.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 27, 2020, 10:22:14 PM
Level files for Minesweeper Lemmings and its repeat, Waltz in C Sharp Miner. These require the Minesweeper graphics set (https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=4620.0).

For now, I've set the music for both levels to track 14 (Korobeiniki). This is the correct music for Minesweeper Lemmings. I recall there was a bit of a debate about which track to use for Waltz, and I can't remember what the outcome was.
In the EXE file, the Waltz level had Tetris B as the music.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 27, 2020, 10:24:25 PM
While I like the thematic pairing, I remember calling that out as being too annoying to have playing on a difficult puzzle level :P
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 27, 2020, 10:34:59 PM
Hah, yes, it is an annoying tune.  Maybe someone needs to make a mod version of this variant instead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVDmjnCQ1g4&t=5m07s
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: namida on January 27, 2020, 10:57:53 PM
I recall that music being one of the few times I actually felt the need to turn off the music (though I could be remembering wrong)... it should definitely be nuked to heck.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 27, 2020, 11:03:25 PM
No, you remembered right, namida!
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Flopsy on January 28, 2020, 01:58:14 AM
Sorry about the volume of feedback. I guess we didn't realise at the start how many issues would turn up with the current ordering, selection, backroutes and so forth :P

So I have an offer to make. If you, Crane and mobius agree, then I could take over the maintenance work from here on. I can't make any promises about when I would get things done, but keeping track of a volume of feedback and making decisions is something I can do, as I showed when I took charge of Lemmings Redux.

If I do end up taking charge, I would very much like to trim the least interesting levels, maybe getting down to 25 per rank. I think this is not a bad idea, considering the pack is so large at the moment, and there are several levels that feel like they don't really belong. I won't just remove any levels without consultation, though -- I would do what you just said, make a proposal for the ordering and selection one rank at a time and see whether there are any objections.

On the other hand, if you would rather continue as pack maintainer then I won't press the issue.

To be honest, when I said I would do this project I didn't anticipate it would be this much work. I don't get much time to work on Lemmings stuff at the best of times so this project as it is now is very overwhelming for me to continue.

I feel like because I wasn't involved with the original pack like you and Crane were, I think I am lacking the knowledge and intuition to truly make a proper go at working on this pack's "polished update". Considering that, I think it would be better to hand things over to you like you suggested because you seem to have way more time than me to give this pack the attention it needs.

You did do a very good job with Lemmings Redux and I believe you are still maintaining that pack on an ongoing basis.

I have no objection to the levels per rank shrinking to 25 if you were to take over anyway. We'll see what Crane thinks anyway.

I'll send everything mobius sent me onto you anyway Proxima, thanks for the offer.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 28, 2020, 04:07:18 PM
Feedback through Frenzy 17. The levels are getting harder and overall higher-quality, but that also means more backroutes are popping up.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 28, 2020, 09:32:13 PM
I did patch Nemesis at some point, but I don't know where my files are.

Personally, I would like to keep the 30 levels per rating, being a traditionalist and this pack being traditional in a way, but with some trimming out of bad levels or fixing those with backroutes etc.

Just to note also... some levels in the Unsorted category are duplicates of other levels, just with a different name.

And as for the "Bet you can't save just one" level... the EXE file has a gold talisman for that one that challenges you to save three!

Regarding talismans, there was one I proposed with möbius once after the last version was released, and it partly justifies the placement of Duality at the end of Armageddon... complete with only 3 bashers.

ADDENDUM:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 29, 2020, 01:10:39 AM
With some advice from namida, I've uploaded some fixed versions of some levels.

- That Freezing Feeling: Builders reduced from 15 to 12, and time increased from 3:00 to 3:30
- A Bid Farewell: Middle wall changed to prevent a backroute, and time reduced from 4:00 to 3:30 to prevent another backroute.
- Spiralling Snowstorm: Some extra decoration, an extra steel block to prevent a minor backroute, and icicles on the roof to prevent "deadly ceiling" problems and to block a bigger backroute.
- Fill the Floor: Reverted back to its original design (we can't have new tools in this pack).

EDIT: See this post (https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=4582.msg79543#msg79543) for the latest version of "A Bid Farewell".
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: namida on January 29, 2020, 05:57:15 PM
Quote
- Fill the Floor: Reverted back to its original design (we can't have new tools in this pack).

I'd definitely try to lean away from it, but sometimes, new mechanics must be used to keep a level working properly. I had to accept this on Psycho 6 "The Bulldozer" in LPI - it was either use an updraft, or get rid of the level altogether, as the original solution relied on direct drop.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 29, 2020, 07:47:55 PM
In this case, nothing is really lost - the only difference is that the newer version has a platformer instead of a builder.  I'm not sure if the gap was wider to compensate as well, and it usually resulted in the platformer turning back, whereas that doesn't happen with the builder.

Thankfully none of the levels in this pack requires the use of a direct drop and doesn't use updrafts, switches, teleporters or the new tools.  Even vertically-scrolling levels are rare.  I think this pack was originally touted as a sequel to Oh No! More Lemmings in a way, and relies on traditional tools and older level designs.  There was some question behind the inclusion of 3 of my levels in Armageddon, "Prize Catch", "Overflow" and "JAILBREAK!, because they weren't released in previous patches, despite one being very old (well over 10 years old) and the other being an old contest level.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 29, 2020, 08:14:05 PM
Thankfully none of the levels in this pack requires the use of a direct drop and doesn't use updrafts, switches, teleporters or the new tools.  Even vertically-scrolling levels are rare.  I think this pack was originally touted as a sequel to Oh No! More Lemmings in a way, and relies on traditional tools and older level designs.  There was some question behind the inclusion of 3 of my levels in Armageddon, "Prize Catch", "Overflow" and "JAILBREAK!, because they weren't released in previous patches, despite one being very old (well over 10 years old) and the other being an old contest level.

Yes, I've been thinking about this too, especially regarding the question of finding a builder tutorial level to replace "Play Bridge", but also if we stick with 30 per rank, we may end up needing to find other levels to introduce. (I know we have the levels in the "Extra" rank available, but at the moment I'm only halfway through the pack and it's all guesswork as regards how many levels I would like to suggest cutting.)

I would like to consider RotL to be a "best-of" of the community's work from the pre-NeoLemmix days, and reject any new inclusions that were made later than October 2013 (the release of LPII, which marks the start of the transition from Lemmix to NL). "Prize Catch" is fine because it's from a contest run in March 2013 (and I believe three other levels from the same contest are also included, though my entry "Brute Fours" didn't make it).

That said, I'm not going to look at the levels already in the pack for release dates. I don't think anything is included that's really inappropriate.

Because Lemmix was the main engine before NeoLemmix, most of the levels are restricted to features available in Lemmix, but not all. My levels "Minesweeper Lemmings" and "Lemmings of Persia" were both made in Cheapo, and use custom graphics and vertical scrolling. I'm a bit unsure about their inclusion, but I guess it's okay as kind of an equivalent to original Lemmings' VGASPEC levels.

"Rounds and Swingabouts" also bothers me, aside from it being a level I didn't enjoy playing. I think it might be the only vertical-scrolling level in the original tilesets (unless there are more in the ranks I haven't gotten to yet). I don't know whether we want to consider that a problem, or let it slide.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 29, 2020, 08:55:19 PM
If it comes to the worst, we can always make our own Builder tutorial... preferably from a later level so Picnic follows its theme of repeating its levels later on, like the original Fun.

In the meantime, here's the original Rounds and Swingabouts ripped from the EXE file (with some minor terrain changes to account for the deadly ceiling, and trap repositioning, since the electrode and the actual trap are now one object).  No vertical scrolling!

I agree with keeping only levels before 2013, and I want to keep the theme of no new skills or mechanics like updrafts.  I can confirm that JAILBREAK! was made before that date.  I can't remember if Overflow was or not though.

A couple of my other levels have been fixed over the years, but I'm not sure where my files are, so it may be a while to find the fixes (one level that I remember I had to do extensive fixing to was "Oil Refinery").
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 29, 2020, 09:10:28 PM
Because Lemmix was the main engine before NeoLemmix, most of the levels are restricted to features available in Lemmix, but not all. My levels "Minesweeper Lemmings" and "Lemmings of Persia" were both made in Cheapo, and use custom graphics and vertical scrolling. I'm a bit unsure about their inclusion, but I guess it's okay as kind of an equivalent to original Lemmings' VGASPEC levels.

Bouncing on this idea: How about we try to have one special graphics level per rank? I think we almost have that already:

Picnic - Minesweeper Lemmings (Proxima) (Minesweeper tileset)
Hootenanny - Flugtag (Insane Steve) (SMB tileset)
Devious - Lemmings of Persia (Proxima) (Prince of Persia tileset)
Frenzy - Rainbow Road (Insane Steve) (SMB tileset)
Pain - ?
Carnage - Waltz in C Sharp Miner (Proxima) (Repeat of "Minesweeper Lemmings")
Armageddon - ?

For Armageddon, at the moment there is "The Top Shelf" in the Sports tileset, but it also has a Crystal version we could use. In any case, perhaps L2 tilesets don't count as "special". I would love to introduce "Ramico's Revenge" / "Bowser's Revenge", which is definitely a classic level from the Cheapo days, and we could easily import its remake from the ISteveWorld pack.

Not sure about Pain. It would be nice to have a special graphics level by another author, since the other six are all by me and Insane Steve. But if we can't think of anything, one possibility would be to remake the Repton tileset for NL (something I'd like to do anyway, but it is a lot of work) and use either "Toccata" or "Finale". (If you want to have a look at these levels, both are remade in the Lix community set).

Any thoughts?
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 29, 2020, 09:19:47 PM
I do like that idea of having only one special tileset per rating, akin to the original Lemmings.  For Armageddon, the only level that comes to mind is my own recent creation, "Dropship 12", which uses the L2 Space Tileset and only original tools and mechanics, but that would violate the 2013 rule, besides blowing my own trumpet again!

The other option is to have a look at some old contest levels... I remember there was one category where we had to make a level in a Lemmings Plus tileset (that's when I made my two Precarious Construction levels, but I personally wouldn't recommend either of them for Pain... part 1 is probably Frenzy difficulty, and part 2 is Carnage, I'd say).  I do remember one entry by someone that used a purple-coloured tileset that looked nice though.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 30, 2020, 12:49:47 AM
I found the level and, with some difficulty and a lot of help from namida, got it converted!  The level is far more recent than I expected though, but I hope it makes for a nice stand-in for a custom-themed Pain level if there isn't a better one available.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: namida on January 30, 2020, 05:25:05 AM
I found the level and, with some difficulty and a lot of help from namida, got it converted!  The level is far more recent than I expected though, but I hope it makes for a nice stand-in for a custom-themed Pain level if there isn't a better one available.

I'd definitely say too recent for Revenge of the Lemmings - but it'd be a good candidate for a sequel that focuses on newer levels.

I would note that Lemmings Plus I levels are definitely within the acceptable timeframe, so feel free to consider those. (Lemmings Plus II is a tricky case, lying right on the edge of it - but the use of custom graphic sets, which is a rarity in Revenge of the Lemmings, might push it towards going in the newer-levels pack.) A good start could be seeing what ones appear in Lemmings Plus Compressed, which is made up of the best levels from the Lemmings Plus series overall. Anything in Compressed that uses an official style other than Xmas, is from Lemmings Plus I.

For Pain specifically, "Bullet Lemming", "Die The Death Of The Damned" or "No Time To Die" could be a good candidate. Or else, while it's not in Compressed, "To The End!" could be a good candidate - the main reason it's not in Compressed is because a very similar concept level ("No Construction Zone" from LPII) is in there.

If you are using any of my levels, please keep the same music as plays on them in the actual packs - even in the case of packs that have a rotation rather than a set-per-level music. If you're specifically considering exact versions of the tracks, Master System for L1 tracks, DOS for OhNo tracks.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: IchoTolot on January 30, 2020, 12:36:55 PM
Quote
I found the level and, with some difficulty and a lot of help from namida, got it converted!  The level is far more recent than I expected though, but I hope it makes for a nice stand-in for a custom-themed Pain level if there isn't a better one available.

I'd definitely say too recent for Revenge of the Lemmings - but it'd be a good candidate for a sequel that focuses on newer levels.

May I suggest posting/submitting finds like these here: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=4148.0

The NL Community pack still is in the gathering phase, especially after quite a part of the previously submitted levels are still not converted and resubmitted by their creators. ;)
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 30, 2020, 02:11:33 PM
I would note that Lemmings Plus I levels are definitely within the acceptable timeframe, so feel free to consider those.

Thank you. We will definitely consider those if we do end up needing to import further levels. I would also note that Mild 7 "The Staircase" could be used as a builder tutorial, if it's okay with you to change the skillset to 20 builders only.

However, at the moment it's all hypothetical -- I intend to first finish playing through the pack, and then I'll be in a much better position to decide about how many levels total, and how many from each difficulty, we need to remove and replace.

Regarding "Medusa": I think it's much more important to be strict about the cut-off date rather than to insist on one special graphics level per rank. One per rank is a nice idea (and a neat callback to original Lemmings) but not something we have to have. But if we start letting in newer levels, there are so many really good ones -- even within our restriction of levels using only the original 8 skills and original tilesets -- that it would seem unfair not to include them -- and we could easily end up doubling the size of the pack. Much better to keep RotL as a "best of up to 2013" and, as Icho said, submit later levels to the community pack. An idea I mentioned on Discord last night -- a compilation pack specifically of contest levels -- is also a possibility.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on January 30, 2020, 02:40:15 PM
I intend to first finish playing through the pack

And on that note, here's my feedback through the end of Frenzy. Crane reminded me on Discord last night that I haven't posted any replays yet, so I've attached a zip of all my RotL replays so far, including all solved levels through Frenzy and a couple of later levels I've looked at.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 30, 2020, 09:36:24 PM
Here's a rehashed crystal version of The Top Shelf (Armageddon 16).

ADDENDUM:

Turns out that there's a major backroute and I didn't properly accommodate for it - made two additional changes to fix it:
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 31, 2020, 12:49:33 AM
A fix of "A Bid Farewell" that repositions the trapdoor and exit to their original positions (I had moved them for the Christmas version of this level).

I also forgot to mention that there's an extra bit of terrain on the steel plates below the one-way wall, so Lemmings can walk up over it.  This helps patch a backroute.  I don't know the full intended solution, but I do recall reading part of an interview with the level author once over a decade ago, and he mentions...
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The time limit reduction down to 3:30 may be unnecessary.  I can't remember what backroute it's meant to block now, but if it's deemed not to be a concern, it can be upped to 4:00 again.  I'll let Proxima decide when he comes to the level.

ADDENDUM: If anyone wants to try it or think it might work better as a final level for a rank, here's the Christmas version of the level as well!
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on January 31, 2020, 08:38:37 PM
I patched up The Floodgates Open to change the author's name from Clam to Clam Spammer, if just for the sake of consistency, and to restore the music track it used in Revenge of the Lemmings.

:tal-gold: I also put in the 3-minute time limit as a gold talisman named "617 Squadron", an oblique reference to the Dam Busters.

ADDENDUM: Alternative names "Dam Busters", "Operation Chastise", "Tidal Bore".
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on February 01, 2020, 02:47:06 AM
A backroute fix for "JAILBREAK!" and "Sharing a Climber?", and a deadly ceiling fix for "One Step Off".

ADDENDUM: For those curious, this is the major backroute that I fixed in "Spiralling Snowstorm".
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on February 01, 2020, 03:36:21 PM
Feedback and replays through the end of Pain. Just two levels here I haven't solved yet (22 Herculems and 25 Pipe Dream) but I thought I should post feedback anyway.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on February 03, 2020, 07:43:27 PM
Remake of The Hotel in Hell. I believe that's all of my levels done :thumbsup:

EDIT: Set time limit to 2 minutes and added another fireblower, to fix backroutes found by namida.

EDIT 2: Slightly lowered one platform to make execution a bit nicer, at namida's suggestion.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on February 04, 2020, 11:52:23 PM
Yeah, your solution to "A Bid Farewell" looks intended - I forgot about that one, since my own solution is a kind of backroute that saves a basher, although my own fixes to the level forces you to use all 6.  I can't remember what backroute the reduced timer is meant to patch, but I vaguely remember saving 2 bashers somehow.

NOTE: The replay is meant for the version that came with RotL, not my modified versions.

With your approval, I will up the time limit on my modified versions back to 4 minutes, and also increase the time limit of "That Freezing Feeling" to 4 minutes as well so we stick with round time limits.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on February 05, 2020, 12:12:42 AM
"A Bid Farewell" and "That Freezing Feeling" with time limits set to 4 minutes.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on February 05, 2020, 12:46:23 AM
Here are the original versions of "The Shaft", with a couple of extra twists, taking advantage of the ability to mix tilesets and flip and rotate pieces.

Also reduced the time limit on the first Shaft from 10 minutes to 9 minutes to it better abides by the rules of a "traditional" level.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on February 05, 2020, 02:07:18 AM
"Betcha can't save just one!" with the RotL music and a talisman to boot!
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Dullstar on February 06, 2020, 01:04:20 PM
All the music for RotL is tracker formats (MOD, IT, etc), so someone familiar with OpenMPT (or a similar app) should be able to handle this part of things. It's pretty much a matter of finding the appropriate point to jump to, and adding a "Pattern break" and "Position jump" command. I might make a tutorial at some point.

I saw this scrolling through the thread, and I don't get the impression this has been resolved. Technically, it's very straightforward.

There are a few issues that complicate things a bit. All of the files have the extension .it for some reason, regardless of whether or not they are actually .it files, though OpenMPT seems to be able to figure out what they actually are somehow. track_02, for example, is actually a .mod. This has to be checked before a pattern break can be used, since this effect depends on the format. Another problem is that, since some of these weren't designed with looping in mind, some don't really have good loop points to work with, though it's still often possible to clean up the restart process a bit so it sounds less abrupt. track_02, for example again, has a long silence after it finishes but before it restarts, and if you trim that silence out it loops reasonably well, though if you're actively listening it for it it's pretty obvious where it's looping (it sounds fine, at least, so it's not like it's an abrupt cut-off or anything).

Since there are 48 tracks, I don't plan on going through each of them and checking the looping, but I can try to make functional loops for anything brought to my attention.

Also, here are instructions if someone wants to try it themselves. These are a bit more informative than namida's, though still not quite at the level of being useful for someone who's never used a tracker before. It does explain the commands, but assumes you know how to input them, for example.
Instructions (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: namida on February 06, 2020, 06:02:33 PM
Quote
All of the files have the extension .it for some reason, regardless of whether or not they are actually .it files, though OpenMPT seems to be able to figure out what they actually are somehow. track_02, for example, is actually a .mod. This has to be checked before a pattern break can be used, since this effect depends on the format.

A long time ago, NeoLemmix only looked for "IT" and "OGG" extensions, even though it supported all the formats it does now if you changed their extension to the most similar out of those two. This has long since been resolved, but ROTL's music was compiled before this was fixed.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Dullstar on February 07, 2020, 12:51:44 AM
I'll probably eventually be able to get through all of the tracks simply by playing them while working on other things, but it will take a while, since there are 48 of them.

Here's what I've got so far. Probably won't upload anything until it's done.

No work required:
Already loops/restarts non-distractingly: [1, 3, 4, 9, 11, 12]

Work needed
Does not loop cleanly: [5, 6, 7, 8, 10]
Unchecked: [13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48]

Done
Done: [2]

Correct extension list (items on the unchecked list from above are omitted here)
.mod: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]

Notes (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on February 10, 2020, 11:16:31 PM
Fixed versions of Nemesis and its easier version, Dream Eater (besides matching the scenery, I increaed the rescue limit from 60 to 72 so it's more Tricky-like).

Also find "The Duct Rise Lemmings" restored to the first version (it looks neater in my opinion even though mechanically it's completely identical) and also another copy of "The Top Shelf" that has a different choice of music track (using track 01, which doesn't see much use in the later ranks).
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on February 11, 2020, 12:08:11 AM
- Fixed "Training Zone Alpha" and "Training Zone Omega".
- Made some minor terrain changes to "Food for the Gods" and "Finding a place to stay" to account for the higher-precision Blockers that didn't exist in the original Lemming.
- This is a Gate Level has had its deadly ceiling fixed.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on February 11, 2020, 01:26:11 AM
Feedback and replays through the end of Carnage. Since Carnage 30 "I am I.S." is the wrong level (the RotL level is called "I am I.S. Part 2" in Insane Steve's World), I've attached my replay for that level separately.

Unsolved levels: 9 "Training Zone Omega", 11 "A sea of purest green", 27 "Finding a place to stay" and 29 "Recurrent Sacrifice". The first three clearly belong in Armageddon, and I don't feel like tackling 29 at the end of a really long solving session.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on February 13, 2020, 08:40:55 AM
Got some talismans for you!  Most of them have been restored from the previous version of Revenge of the Lemmings

- The Shaft (Picnic 30): Silver - save everyone.
- Crystal Caves (Hootenanny 8): Gold - only use 4 Miners.
- MORE WEE CREATURES (Hootenanny 16): Gold - no bombers.
- Works on so many levels... (Hootenanny 24): Gold - no diggers.
- The Texas Lemming Massacre... (Devious 12): Bronze - save everyone.
- The One Way Block (Devious 21): Bronze - only use one of each skill.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on February 13, 2020, 08:45:44 AM
- About to Break (Frenzy 27): Silver - no climbers.
- Ups and Downs (Picnic 7): Bronze - save everyone using only miners

Also I've revamped "Ups and Downs" to match its repeat, "The Endless Steps" (a 4th trapdoor was added).  I've included the level to fix the music track and add a time limit (since thats a theme in Revenge of the Lemmings).  Originally I included a talisman to use only Bombers, but given that the only other skill are Climbers, I don't think it warrants it.

"Clonic Inferno" is more experimental (and doesn't include a talisman), but I've enforced my specific solution and want to see how it plays out in general.

I've also added an update to "Blast Furnace" - rescue requirement increased from 64 to 72 and the climbers have been removed in order to patch namida's backroute as well as my own take on it.  There was a talisman that tasked you to save 75 lemmings, but if you play the level properly, this should be easy enough to accomplish and so I don't feel it warrants a talisman. SEE BELOW FOR THE LATEST VERSION

UPDATE: Fixed Ups and Downs... also forgot part of the achievement.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on February 13, 2020, 08:13:49 PM
Mostly for Proxima's benefit, here is what I think is the intended solution to Clockwork Pink (Pain 15) - this level was a little bit harder when you couldn't bomb lemmings that were standing on steel.

Also, here's a fixed version of Herculems, and a version of "Hey, that's not cool guys" with a deadly ceiling fix.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on February 14, 2020, 02:26:01 AM
Another backroute fix to Blast Furnace - it's meant to be a more involved level than first impressions might imply.

Sometimes I just hate Builders!

Since Blast Furnace may now be too hard for Devious, here's the latest version of Deep Freeze as a candidate for Devious 30... if it works as a rank finisher.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Crane on February 15, 2020, 08:18:39 PM
A deadly ceiling fix for the two versions of The Shaft.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: jkapp76 on July 31, 2021, 12:39:57 AM
What's the best download for a working version of this pack for NL?
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: WillLem on July 31, 2021, 01:01:04 PM
What's the best download for a working version of this pack for NL?

The zip link in the OP (https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=4582.0;attach=12264) is the most recent version of this pack for current formats NeoLemmix, AFAIK.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on July 31, 2021, 02:16:24 PM
I am still, at least nominally, in charge of finishing the conversion. I'm sorry that it's taken so long; life is really hard at the moment (I'm sure people will understand that, as the last two years have been hard for everyone) and I am also involved with a huge DROD levelset project. But I do hope to return to finish this off, I just can't make any promises about when that will be.

If anyone else wants to step up and take over, I would be happy to discuss that with them, and I believe mobius is the pack "owner" and has the final say in who should be appointed.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on August 23, 2021, 01:36:45 AM
I am still, at least nominally, in charge of finishing the conversion. I'm sorry that it's taken so long; life is really hard at the moment (I'm sure people will understand that, as the last two years have been hard for everyone) and I am also involved with a huge DROD levelset project. But I do hope to return to finish this off, I just can't make any promises about when that will be.

If anyone else wants to step up and take over, I would be happy to discuss that with them, and I believe mobius is the pack "owner" and has the final say in who should be appointed.

while I don't like the term "owner" (everybody who contributed owns it :P ), I am the one who did most of the work for the original version of this pack and so I've contemplated updating this pack; but not without making some major changes, which I'm sure some people won't approve of; like removing all of Clam and Steve's levels (because they already exist (in currently more updated form) in their own packs), and cutting down on the huge size of the pack.

Also don't really know how motivated I am or if I have to time to go through this thread and see what's been done.

Another idea I had is to just make a new pack from scratch compiling some of these levels used here. I'm not sure if I will do any of this, just thinking about it.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: jkapp76 on August 23, 2021, 02:30:19 AM
I like the sound of all this personally.

I am fine with playing steve's levels and clam's in their own packs, and that's probably better. I really liked this pack on Superlemmini.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on August 28, 2021, 12:27:16 AM
After removing all levels by Clam, ISteve and Martin Z (his levels also present in "MazuLems" all three of these levelpacks downloadable and up-to-date here on the NeoLemmix levelpacks area "Clammings", "Insane Steve's World" accordingly.) there are still around 120 levels altogether. I also got rid of all of the "easy" versions of levels I made, adaptations of existing levels, to be repeated later and the "tutorial levels". That left so few levels in rank one I'll remove that rank altogether and merge the remaining levels. Each rank now has about 20-25 levels on average so I might remove another rank and merge more levels but I'm not sure about this.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on August 31, 2021, 01:50:53 AM
Open to suggestions about whether to aim for 6 ranks of 20-25(ish) levels or 5 ranks of 30+(ish) levels.

Also open to suggestions for the names of ranks. Since "picnic" is being removed; should "Hootenanny" be rank 1? I'm open to better name/title suggestions for that as well.

Before there were a decent number of levels (can't remember how many exactly but at least a handful) that I had wanted to include but didn't because the pack would be too big. I might add some of those (if I can remember/find any of them). Suggestions here are also welcome. Note that I don't plan on adding too many levels though, probably not more than a handful.

the extra rank is also getting merged so that will be gone. Levels by BulletRide and Dodochacalo here are not present in their own packs that's why I don't plan on removed any of those.

Some decisions I made on this pack originally I now think were not great like "fixing" levels such as "Patience Young Grasshopper". This level was modified heavily from it's original state and it was never known exactly what the intended solution of that level is and likely never will. Should levels like this be removed?

I will likely not include any special graphics levels as it's simply too much of a hassle to update those.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: jkapp76 on August 31, 2021, 04:07:27 PM
I like keeping all 5 rank names, keeps the memories better. Maybe adding a few levels will help to have enough levels so it doesnt't seem out of balance.
I'd recommend removing as little as possible, even if the levels were heavily modded.
I'm excited for the pack to be ready.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Proxima on August 31, 2021, 04:16:48 PM
It's really impossible to answer that without having a full list of levels, so we can see both how many are on the current list and whether there are any more we feel could or should be removed. I personally would prefer to go with round numbers, so if we have, for example, 174 levels, then finding one more and doing 5 x 35 appeals more than doing 6 x 29.

I am not sure why you are suggesting removing the easy repeats. It's true that RotL is a "best of" the community's efforts from the early days, and the easy repeats aren't authentic products of those days in the same way as the other levels; but they make the pack feel more well-rounded and complete in itself. I'd like to at least have some community discussion about this.

I think it's okay to fix some levels, but it's true that some will be unfixable. I think this is the kind of thing that needs in-depth discussion for each level. I know this is where the amount of work involved really starts to pile up, but as I've said, I'm happy to help out as much as I can, so long as people don't expect anything to be finished very soon. I should have a bit more time and energy once my move is finished.

I must strongly protest against the idea of dropping special graphics levels. As I said, I'm happy to help out with the work involved. Cheapo supported special graphics, so those levels are an authentic part of the community scene this pack aims to snapshot. And several of those levels are mine, so this would severely impact my representation in the pack. That doesn't seem fair at all.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on September 03, 2021, 10:02:41 PM
I don't plan on having a lot of discussion about this project. My reason is simple: my experience making this pack in the first place was honestly not great. Similar (but not as severe) as to the reasons why Nepster quit working on NeoLemmix and left the community. And that's why I avoided updating this for so long. So I'm sorry but this is how it is.

I'm removing so many levels for a number of reasons.
1) more levels = more work. Even with all these levels removed; this is still a massive pack.
2) Some levels were selected for this pack for reasons I didn't agree with like to make a nice round 30 levels in each rank or to get more levels of some particular graphic set. It meant levels of lesser quality or levels that frankly not a lot of people really cared for made it into the pack while others that might've been better didn't.
3) The first rank will still have plenty of easy levels; including some "fun" 10 or 20 of each. Besides we now have the NeoLemmix introduction pack which didn't exist before.
4) Except for a few most of the easy repeats weren't all that great 'fun' levels anyway. I had a real hard time actually looking for levels to make 'easy' cause most of them when given even 10 or 5 of each skill just became so trivial that weren't even fun in that way.

You're welcome to convert the special graphics levels. I have no timeline in place but since I'm currently working on updating InsaneSteve's world; it'll likely be a few months away at the minimum.

If I had the time and ability (not sure if Cheapo even will work on my current PC) I'd like to go through and gather and recreate more Cheapo levels to add to the pack. Because there's still lots there that deserve preservation. I might actually make that a separate project later, idk yet.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on September 07, 2021, 03:33:39 PM
oh yeah; there's another reason I've been putting this off. Dealing with NeoLemmix errors and updating. I'm frankly getting really irritated with constantly having issues. Over the past couple of years every single time I go to play a pack or edit one of my own packs I always have issues. I'm tired of spending most of the time figuring out why it's not working instead of playing the game. And waiting doesn't help because the game keeps getting updated and then while one issue may get fixed a different new one pops up. There are too many styles. Too many to keep track of; too many if it takes a freaking hour to download them all or the game can't even download them all without crashing.

I'm sorry for venting but I'm honestly not feeling very motivated to update this or ISteve's pack or any pack I've worked on because of this.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: WillLem on September 07, 2021, 07:23:41 PM
Don't lose heart, mobius :lemcat:

One idea may be to choose only your personal favourite levels from the pack and make a mini-pack of, say, 60 levels (10 in each rank). This would obviously be a lot easier to compile and maintain, and could even be given a new title to differentiate it from ROTL.

Either that or tag team development of the pack with someone who has more time/patience for the fiddly update stuff. I'd be happy to offer to help wherever I can; hopefully I'll have a bit more time for Lemmings stuff as the weather gets colder and I start increasing my laptop time again over the winter.

Keep up the good work.

Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on September 17, 2021, 01:17:24 AM
I was in a bad mood when I made my previous post and things have since gotten better. For the record I will be updating ISteve's pack and I do *at least plan* to attempt to update this pack.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on November 02, 2021, 01:57:30 AM
Ok after looking over some old files and stuff on the forum I forgot about how many levels I enjoyed playing when testing this pack; and levels I wanted to include but didn't for various reasons. So long story short; I definitely am working on this again and have major updates planned but it's probably going to take a while.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: WillLem on November 02, 2021, 10:58:53 PM
I definitely am working on this again and have major updates planned but it's probably going to take a while.

Good to know, mobius. Glad you're feeling better about it again!

Take your time with the pack, it's good to get it right and feel happy about it :thumbsup:
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on November 05, 2021, 06:10:38 PM
note: I do fully plan to look over this entire thread and gather the comments and replays found here, just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Here are a few levels to test. The first level is solvable albeit a slightly different way than intended [as seen from Yawg's youtube channel]. I thought this was still decently difficult
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Second one I solved as Yawg did.

Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Turrican on November 05, 2021, 09:55:58 PM
Here are my solutions for these two levels.

Very nice levels! I found their time limits to be a little tight , but probably this is a part of their puzzles.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on November 07, 2021, 06:54:52 PM
thanks!

the first one; yes the time limit is supposed to be a problem. The second not so much; I might eliminate that, if I include it that is..
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on November 08, 2021, 03:02:30 AM
Here's more levels to test.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Turrican on November 08, 2021, 08:37:40 PM
Here are my solutions fot these levels. My solution for "The Necromancer" is very probably a backroute.

Also , may I suggest some levels , that could be added to the pack ?
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on November 08, 2021, 10:37:13 PM
Thanks so much for testing/helping here btw! :thumbsup:

And just so this is clear; I'm not saying all of these levels I post here (or if I post any on discord) will absolutely get added to the pack. Some of them definitely will though.

-Food-- intended! [only minor difference at the top section]
-Beastial-- is a bit different; I'd like to hear your thoughts on the level/solution/difficulty?
-Niche - shucks I wanted to have a talisman on this level of "use 10 or fewer builders" but there's getting to be quite a few solutions (and of somewhat easier variety?); not sure. I attached a variant with only 10 to test. I found this one myself without trying all that hard, though I remembered the general gist of the level
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
-Necromancer--ah yes, major backroute... these types of levels always have that backroute don't they? I'll have to think about this one; may just end up scrapping it.


Two more levels attached for testing.

Also , may I suggest some levels , that could be added to the pack ?

Certainly. Just a few things to keep in mind;
-This pack was and still is focused on old levels; that is; basically anything around 2012 or earlier. Basically one of the points of this was to finish the project that had actually started (but never finished) on this forum before I even joined, and to highlight the levels people were making at that time. There have a been a few exceptions (like the 2013 contests and such).
-If you have a *lot* of suggestions I likely won't include most of them as I already have quite a few of my own (but I'm not certain how many of those will make it in either).
-I may bring a few levels back which had been eliminated from the first Lemmini version of this pack as well, as looking back some of those weren't all that bad.

---------

does anybody have a copy of a [LVL/Lemmix] level by Ellischant titled "Life as a Worm"?

EDIT:
attached one more I edited just tonight; Paitence Young Grasshopper; an existing level plagued by backroutes which I've modified a bit. Really curious about this one.

also none of these levels so far are the ones I've mentioned on discord which kaywhyn and armani responded to me about; that's a different matter altogether.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on November 10, 2021, 12:12:31 AM
I welcome the suggestion of some levels from Cheapo. Let me know if you remember a specific level or author who made levels there, whether a whole pack or what-have-you. I'm looking through these now, I may have questions about some of those later. Keep in mind some Cheapo levels aren't compatible with NL [upside-down gravity for instance]
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Armani on November 13, 2021, 06:13:32 AM
Here're some promised replays and feedbacks. 8-)

A Timeless Masterpiece is a nice time cruncher where the tight time limit is the main obstacle to overcome. I got a builder to spare which is I'm not sure where it was meant to be used.
My solution on Beastial Oblivion feels a bit hackish. But I don't think there's any other way to stop the crowd going to the right other than repetitively assinging diggers.
Food For The Gods is also a decent puzzle, not particularly hard but not very easy either.
Icy Tombs is probably the hardest and my favorite levels from this batch. I've tried both left exit-solution and right-exit solution, and they are both proven to be possible to reach. I think right-exit solution is a lot harder though.
I'm not sure if my solution to More Time to Kill is intended. There's a small hole in the terrain under the exit. So I was able to stop the basher without using any builder by assigning miner to the hole so the miner stops at the hole.
I attached two replays for Patience, Young Grasshopper. First one seems promising while second one feels not intended.
Also attached two replays for The Journey of Lem. Both of them are similar but the second solution spares a miner.

Nothing to say about Niche and The Necromancer coz I'm pretty sure I've backrouted them.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on November 14, 2021, 09:18:21 PM
timeless masterpiece is same solution as mine. A small variation is also possible.

I agree on Beastial Oblivion.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
That's the intended solution. Overall though the solution isn't all that different. I'm unsure about this one; leaning toward abandoning it.

nice solutions to Icy Tombs; I didn't know the right path was possible. I supposed I could enforce the right path (or just make it harder overall) by adding a trap on the left path, or is it fine as is?

Not sure what to think of Niche atm; it has many solutions, none of them are "easy" but many of them aren't totally like the intended. Your solutions seems so simple idk why nobody thought of that until now....

Journey: both of those are interesting imo

Patience grasshopper; gotta say that second solution (while clearly not intended cause in the original the steel area would've extended through the "terrain"] is pretty creative. I'll need to think more about this one and Niche.

I'm probably going to ditch The Necromancer.

I attached a quick fix to More Time To Kill [oh yeah that trap was there in the original but it was nastily hidden behind the exit... knew it was there for a reason...]

Food for the Gods is also intended.

I'll have more levels to test later.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on November 17, 2021, 02:11:19 AM
some more levels to test :)

[bat country is a fix of an old level, the rest are new]

Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on November 20, 2021, 06:55:00 PM
some more levels to test.

note; these are all levels I've tested myself to be at least solvable under current NL mechanics. They need to be tested for backroutes.
I haven't gotten around to gathering the "questionable" levels I've talked about on discord yet; those which have bad backroutes or I'm unsure if they're solvable. TBH not sure if I'm going to bother with those at all yet at this point.
---
Forgot to note any kind of difficulty with any of these. The past few batches I uploaded were probably med-hard. These here, some of them at least may be very difficult.
---
geoo's levels (Crossing Stairs, Twice the Same and Increasing step heights) have some minor adjustments to them to account for differences in NL mechanics. Well, Twice the Same is actually quite a bit different while looking almost the same. The solution that is; interestingly, far fewer builders are needed despite not needing any glitches, but I also have the save requirement 1 less.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Turrican on November 21, 2021, 09:45:01 PM
I have tried some of these levels today , so here are the replays of my solutions.

Very nice levels! Most of these , I had also played them in Lemmix , at the past.

I think , most of these , would be nice for the later ranks of the pack.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on November 22, 2021, 02:08:45 AM
nice job on those levels;
-Crossing Stairs; I think this works well as kind of "anything goes" type of level while still being pretty hard. Especially for new players unfamiliar with some of these tricks.
my solution used a floater and saved 1 or maybe 2 bashers
-Increasing Step Heights; nice one, very similar to one (of the 2 major solutions I know of) solution here.
-nnit2Winnit; same as mine. this one's much easier; I'm thinking early; maybe even first rank. I should put this comments on the forum instead
-House of the Lost Staircase - brilliant solution, clearly intended. That is really well hidden imo. I will definitely have to patch out the backroute on this one.
Twice the same -- wow I didn't see some far easier solutions to this level. And the bomber should be removed.
Thinking now; I can think of a way to save 7 but not sure if it's possible; would require some crazy timing. Hey! maybe good place for a talisman :D

I did kind of want to make talismans for this pack.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Armani on November 23, 2021, 03:40:41 AM
I've played rest of the levels 8-)

comments on some levels
iirc, bulletride's Lets Get To The Bottom Of This! got some fixes and it's now very different from the one you attached. You can see the latest version in the Lemmings Stampede level pack topic.
I solved both versions of Niche, and I extend both the basher and the miner in one of them. It feels somewhat intended. I only used 7 builders though.
Oh, the possibilities... is interesting disjoint union level. But I think it's pretty easy to completely rule out saving both second and third crowd. It's just too expensive to save them which makes the level somewhat obvious.
The Theft is the hardest and my favorite level from this batch.
I might have backrouted The house of the lost staircase. But I can see the how intended solution looks like; bouncing off the miner several times with some blockers on the builder staircase like zemming level in dovelem.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on November 25, 2021, 01:51:00 AM
thanks for the replays and comments.

I forgot to scrap "Let's get to the bottom of this" because it's present in Lemmings Stampede. [still must look through that levelpack to double check everything]

notable replays;

Bat Country: interesting trick to turn the builder around! My solution was having the blocker there and another method to save the crowd on the upper left. Either solution makes this more difficult than it was before I think, which was the point. Any thoughts on the difficulty here? Of this one and also "Patience Young Grasshopper"?

Crossing stairs; mmm interesting solution, makes it quite a bit easier; but idk about calling this a 'backroute' since three people so far haven't thought to try this [the method of stopping the bashers]; I wouldn't know how to remove it anyway. I think it'll be fine as is.

Niche; still unsure what to do about this atm. There's leaving it open to more possibilities which I'm very tempted to do. But some of these solutions seem too easy(?) so I'm also tempted to meddle with it more.

To Each his own; your backroute is easily fixable... But I just found another that is not. Nevermind; I just fixed it (maybe).
[I have yet to find a solution that gets each lemming to every exit; but I do have two different solutions that gets to all exits but one. Trying to get to every exit may be clever red herring]

-House of Lost Staircase; I'm aware of this backroute unfortunately, not sure atm the how to fix that. The "intended" solution blew me away at first, cause I didn't see it at all.

---------

I realized a possible fix for both levels; Desperate Measures and Necromancer, but still debating whether to even include either of these. That is; move the entrance closer to the edge of the starting platform so there is only one or so pixels for the lems to walk on. These levels are both kind of similar...
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on December 01, 2021, 01:26:38 AM
I found I think a clever "fix" for Niche. See what you guys think. I think there are simply too many simple solutions to it otherwise.

Added some other levels; Tilt is on the easier but stumped me a bit for while (because misdirection?)

Locked n Loaded: warning; I have not solved this level! I don't know if it's possible; but it really should be. Ben Bryant's Cheapo pack, where this came from, is mostly or all legit levels rarely if ever requiring unusual or Cheapo specific tricks or hidden/unfair traps. And his levels often are pure logic puzzles too (my personal favorite kind)

---------------------------

the "mysterious levels" are the levels I mention to a few people on discord; that fall under two categories; 1) I haven't solved or know of a solution, hence not sure *if* they are solvable (but evidence indicates they are, else I wouldn't be brining them up in the first place) or 2) are backrouted severely. In either case I don't know the intended solution but would like anybody's feedback/discussion on them.

BulletRide 1 & 2 : original had more decorative terrain on the left that was removed and removed a solution using only one worker. Can still save over the requirement and skills.

Vaccuum: change does almost nothing to change some core solutions except for building directly from the chains. What are all the blockers for?  Are the bars under exit supposed to play a part or is that just decoration?

Stranger Than Fiction: I don't know of a solution to the latter (5 builder) version at least for NeoLemmix. There is one for Lemmix but don't think it works here because you must use a walking digger next to a blocker to free him. The comment from Yawg was "the solution to this level is anything but normal"

Wall to Wall: easy backroute(?) by bashing/building into the starting staircase to trap the crowd in.

Compression Method X: can simply make a digger pit to trap them. What are so many builders for?
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Armani on December 04, 2021, 05:09:18 AM
I've thought I already posted the replays but I didn't :XD:
Most of them seem to be backroutes.

 - There's only 1 replay for Bullet Ride(Part1&2) and Stranger Than Fiction each. Since one replay solves both versions.
 - OTOH, there are separate two replays for Vaccum ver1 and ver2
 - Stranger Than Fiction and Stop, Drop and Blow are decent puzzles and quite difficult. I really enjoyed them.
 - Finally my solution to niche seems good! I doubt right-most exit is possible to reach. But you never know..

Quote
Bat Country: interesting trick to turn the builder around! My solution was having the blocker there and another method to save the crowd on the upper left. Either solution makes this more difficult than it was before I think, which was the point. Any thoughts on the difficulty here? Of this one and also "Patience Young Grasshopper"?
Pretty hard I would say. More specifically they have [hard] difficulty from standardised difficulty scale we are using on Neolemmix pack board imo.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on December 06, 2021, 02:10:32 AM
nice job on Niche. I have to make the final decision on this level.

Locked and Loaded; I have three backroutes including yours that I must remove. I found what I'm 95% sure is the intended or close to the intended solution; imo this is one of my favorite levels I've ever played actually.

tilt was intended.

Stop Drop and Blow; interesting different solution. [only possible of course because of instant bombers]

Farewell to Kings; backroute, because of the edit I had to make on the right pillar. I like this level; it's simple yet is a puzzle but originally utilizes climbers falling away from the wall; a glitch which does not happen on NL, but is not part of the solution...
------------

For the mysterious levels; I'm less interested in replays and more interested in discussion around the level; if there's anything that stands out to you, to try and figure out the intended solution, or just any ideas you might have. But I must say your solutions to Vaccuum and Stranger than friction were actually interesting and stimulating.

for Stranger Than Friction; at least this solution wasn't hackish. This is actually the sort of thing I was going for for a long time but for some reason couldn't figure that out. Looking at the replay though makes it look not all that difficult although there is some tight timing. Obviously there are skills leftover, something unlike Yawg to allow. How difficult would you say that was?

Wall to Wall: I got excited when you didn't pin them in at the start but then... eh
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Armani on December 06, 2021, 01:36:57 PM
Quote
tilt was intended.
Oh wow, I was quite sure my solution is a cheecky backroute..

Quote
or Stranger Than Friction; at least this solution wasn't hackish. This is actually the sort of thing I was going for for a long time but for some reason couldn't figure that out. Looking at the replay though makes it look not all that difficult although there is some tight timing. Obviously there are skills leftover, something unlike Yawg to allow. How difficult would you say that was?
I really have no idea where the leftover basher(and a builder for the second version) are meant to be used. At least I think bombing the faller to destroy the OWW is intended. If I'm in charge of this project, I think I would just cut the leftover skills. The difficulty of this level is pretty high imo. You need to use chain terrain cleverly to go down safely and the falling bomber trick is not easy to see.

I also have no clue on how the intended solutions look like in Bullet Ride and Compression Method. For me, it seems like they just give player too many powerful skills.

I attached another solution to Wall to Wall. I think this is somewhat intended. :D
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on December 07, 2021, 12:18:22 AM
:thumbsup: brilliant! thanks! Ugh I spent a decent amount of time on that one and couldn't see that; so clear in hindsight! Another well done puzzle imo.

Yeah Tilt does seem cheeky imo; took me a while to see that that was a possibility. [I kept trying to go up the left side and use the decoration to get up].

I think I can take at least those two levels [Wall to Wall and Stranger than Fiction] out of the "mysterious" category :laugh:

I'm very glad I decided to put in the extra work to take this on again; turns out I've found a lot of good levels I didn't know about before. I'm feeling like this will be the best version of the pack yet.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on December 10, 2021, 03:03:43 AM
A fix for Locked and Loaded, and another new Bryant level "Evacuation"
note; this is actually his level "Barricaded" which is a repeat of "Evactuation" the only difference is the save req. The harder solution is also possible in the first. I picked the title "Evacuation" cause I like it better; but I'm open to disagreement.

I found Conway remade a selection of his LemEdit levels in Cheapo and got to thinking there is only one of his many levels in the pack... [and it happens to be an excellently puzzling level]

"Conways_unsolved" are levels I have not solved [and cannot guarantee are solvable in their current state] Like the previous levels I posted; they almost certainty are, it's just a question of are they compatible with NeoLemmix.  To be clear; And I know I'm repeated myself; its just so I don't get yelled at (or when I do I can point to this post). All the levels I upload are solvable unless stated otherwise; like in this case right here.
3 are Lemmix conversions, the other is a Cheapo remake (and a combination of "A Real Breakthrough and 5,4,3,2,1 Uh Oh! BOP!" a level that some may remember was in the first version of ROTL

I've also *finally* gone through this entire thread and collected all the updates/levels/replays and notes on feedback.

I kept forgetting to say this but when discussing solutions to levels openly here; please use the spoiler tag. It's the nuclear symbol button on the middle-right.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Armani on December 11, 2021, 04:16:14 AM
attached my solutions 8-)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on December 11, 2021, 04:54:30 PM
Use Your Tools: after reading your hint I immediately solved this level! [should've solved it sooner as I was trying things similar to this but gave up....] aaaaand I see where another of ISteve's levels was inspired from!

Lets Split:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Can't Find Any Gaps; I don't know either; I'll have to take a closer look at this one.

Breakthrough; Because Cheapo is so annoying to use I have yet to figure out if the gap between the entrance area and the right side platforms is supposed to be two or three bridges wide >_< >_< . But I can say that the ceiling in Cheapo is in fact safe, so I may make that adjustment (Depending on what the solution actually is.)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
But you have no blockers on this version... I'm really curious what your idea is how it's solvable without moving the traps but without deadly ceiling; if that's what you meant.
---------

ah, evacuation was a backroute I can fix easily. The left side obstacle blocking the crowd in was originally steel. In cheapo when a climber bashes into steel; he does not turn around. So that needs to be an obstacle that does not allow a climber to turn around.

awww what a backroute to Locked and Loaded... I have no idea how to fix this atm... :XD:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
EDIT: and once again right after saying that I figure out a way to fix it. But I have several options....
version 3 has my fix plus cutting down the skills I don't use
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
. so version 4 has these remaining skills; in case somebody can find an elegant way to use these.

Also attached these others also by Bryant I made a while back but forgot about. Still a few more of his to remake; almost all of his 20-30 level pack imo is excellent. [One is renamed because *yet again* it had similar title as another level]
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Armani on December 13, 2021, 05:09:10 AM
Quote
But you have no blockers on this version... I'm really curious what your idea is how it's solvable without moving the traps but without deadly ceiling; if that's what you meant.
Ah yes this level could have been much easier with a blocker.
About this level under solid ceiling: It didn't work quite well as I expected; the solution is pretty fiddly and requires long waiting for the perfect timing. I attached both level(I fixed it so my solution could work.) and the replay anyway.

And for new levels:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on December 14, 2021, 12:53:49 AM
Great work on Evacuation and Deadly Detour! As for the latter that I would say is a backroute because it doesn't use the one area of the level at all; which Proxima found. And I'd say that's more elegant than digging the exit out. That one was deceptively tricky.

Locked and Loaded:
Gah! your second solution was so close to many things I tried but never succeeded to do earlier. It may be close to intended idk... In the process the solution I came up with imo is beautiful; it's so much more intricate and also fits in the original 7 minute time limit; which is somewhat unusually high for one of his levels. Maybe that's only my biased opinion...

Your first solution :( sadly another needle trap would fix that backroute but also disable my solution... Let me know if you want to see my replay. I'm torn between enforcing your second solution or trying to come up with a better fix.

Manifest. I think I'm gonna leave this open to multiple solutions. It's decently challenging as is imo. I'm guessing as to the original solution;
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I still have to spend more time on Conway's levels. I have maybe two more levels by Bryant I think I want to add.

a couple of notes in response to some comments from the past:
That Freezing Feeling; the time limit must be kept at 3:00 to enforce the intended solution as seen in his video. [you don't need two workers with 4:00]
With Crane's help I've backroute fixed some other levels; "Someone must help us" [I'm changing the title back to its original].
Also "Please Save Us" had an obvious backroute due to NL physics.
I've seen that the special graphics levels have already been redone so my earlier post was moot.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on December 19, 2021, 07:04:31 PM
some new levels; mostly fixes to previous ones. I'm not real confident in any of them though, heh.

I added 1 builder to A Real Breakthrough and use a solution that has a couple of interesting tricks imo. [and made a few other changes including yours to fit the original better]

Pit of Doom; the solution I found saves more than required and leaves a skill, but it looks like a classic Ben Bryant misdirection level; but I could be wrong.

I think I may leave "Locked and Loaded" open to multiple solutions. [if I include this at all actually] Armani's trick is definitely not an easy one to find. I'm tempted to remove Crane's route yet Armani didn't find that one so easily apparently either...

Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on December 27, 2021, 07:10:25 PM
Has anyone made any attempts at the previous uploaded levels to test?

Here's one more (possibly my last) upload of levels to test. Hole in the Wall, Short Journey and Dual Action are levels I have not solved.
The rest except for Another Impasse are easy levels (intended for the first or second rank) though some might be a bit harder than they seem at first (I thought this about "Just Old Fasioned Building"

I have only one more level that I'm testing out myself then hoping to wrap this up soon.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Armani on December 29, 2021, 03:02:07 AM
solved newLevels06.zip and testLevels09.zip

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on January 02, 2022, 01:26:59 AM
I'm forgetting the following levels;

Dual Action (no idea on the solution and Cheapo differences (With bashers) make this problematic)
Short Journey. oops! That's not supposed to work [the ledge should not have extended far enough for them to land there].
This one and "Capturing Difficulties" which I never finished remaking because there are no good terrain pieces to make building it simple. Short Journey also has lots of very precise terrain placement and I have no idea what bearing this has on the solution. All of these come from Cheapo.
-------

Real Breakthrough is not the solution I had in mind, but works I guess. I might mess with it some more.

Your replay for house of the lost staircase failed for me. I uploaded it again in case I had the wrong version in my last post (and changed the save requirement since I realized that was a possibility and backroutes may still very much exist...

the rest were intended or acceptable :thumbsup:

And as promised I have uploaded here what will be the last batch of levels. The pack will have 6 ranks of 35 levels each. [making 210 total], same as before (or in one of the versions at least).

Some of the levels are first or second rank so have multiple solutions and some I'm really not sure about including.

EDIT: Just for kicks I'm throwing this other level in here cause I haven't been able to solve it yet. [may require direct drop glitch, meaning would be impossible]?
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Armani on January 02, 2022, 06:03:05 AM
They are all proven to be solvable. If these are the intended solutions is different matter though :P

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on January 03, 2022, 02:53:10 AM
Take the Stairs; ....
wow dumbest oversight on my part ever. That's my fault; the level needed a minor change to accomdate for physics changes]. This level's kind of obvious (For a veteran) anyway, but glad I'm checking it jeesus...

Dangit; Your solution to Pillars of success was similar to mine but once again I overlooked something. I went and checked the Cheapo version (which I already did) but missed that there are some important differences I didn't copy over. I may edit this; not really sure on including this one.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

All others were intended or acceptable!

Working on level order now.

I'm afraid I've not kept a record of all the changes; I decided not to from the beginning cause there's just too many. I kind of wish I did but eh... I will summarize them as best as I can.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on January 08, 2022, 10:51:53 PM
here is a attempt to get A Real Breakthrough to be a bit more difficult, this tries to enforce the solution I found earlier. Now with only 4 builders.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on January 12, 2022, 11:11:12 PM
ok level selection and order is almost complete. I'm working on the finishing touches now. I'll take any volunteers to test the final version of the pack. Mainly I'm doing this for the purpose of saving replays. Since it's so large; how about anybody *remotely* interested, just work on one rank? There are 6 ranks of 35 levels each. I may ask some people via PM is nobody responds. These levels are all solvable [or supposed to be] and ready for the release. I have only a few issues yet to work out. Namely; moving a few levels around, decided on the order or swapping levels in and out and such.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on January 20, 2022, 01:04:05 AM
welp; scratch my last post, after some more though and discovering yet more interesting levels, I decided, again, why rush to finish when after all, that's sort of what I did the first two times and ended up making some really poor decisions. So I've been going through some more levels to add to the pack and pruning levels. Also thanks to people on discord and on the forum who've been helping me identify levels. :thumbsup:
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on February 06, 2022, 01:26:24 AM
ok several weeks later I decided to change it to 40 levels per rank, much like the Lix community pack, 6 ranks of 40. As there are just too many good ones to leave out imo. I will only be uploaded a couple more levels/folders to test.

Here's some more levels to test; not sure if all of these will go in the pack but some definitely will.
Note a lo of these levels I have not solved here. The ones I know are solvable are Two Teams' Towers, Bad Arrows,
syncronization, Sculptured Maze, Martyrdom, inversive surplus.

Now I'm still hoping this will only take a few more weeks as I promise this is the last time I'll get near the end and decide to go back and make a major change.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Turrican on February 06, 2022, 06:51:45 AM
I have tried 16 of the latest test levels , and here are the replays of  my solutions!

Most of these , I found them pretty nice. My favourites of these , are "Magic the Bombering" , "Manual Adventures" , "Synchronization" and "The Lemming Factory" .
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Turrican on February 08, 2022, 02:37:29 AM
I have tried three more of the latest test levels , and here are the replays of my solutions!

All three are very nice levels! My favourite of these is 'Two Teams' Towers" .
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Turrican on February 08, 2022, 05:16:40 AM
And here is the replay of my solution of "Three groups , two exits".

That's a great level! It's one of my favourites , amongst the latest test levels.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on February 12, 2022, 04:17:33 PM
new set of levels to test; only one I haven't solved is Illusive Paths; I know the intended idea behind the solution but haven't worked out the details yet.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: Turrican on February 12, 2022, 11:10:42 PM
I have tried the latest test levels , and here are the replays of my solutions!

Pretty nice levels , again! My favourites of these are "Illusive Paths" , "Stop , look and listen" , and "Everyone but the bomber" .
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on February 13, 2022, 03:21:44 AM
excellent!

The only serious back route is Illusive Paths; I'll have to take a closer look at that one....

Everyone but the bomber; I solved it a simpler way. That
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on February 15, 2022, 02:11:51 AM
a fix for Illusive Paths also trying a possible alteration to make the timing easier on the intended solution but its subject to change.

And Pipeworks is a new level that I passed over initially cause I thought it was too easy... but turns out I can't even solve it :( [I may be overlooking something really simple]
So I can solve this level without the 4:00 time limit, but with.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: kaywhyn on February 15, 2022, 04:10:44 AM
How's this for beating Pipeworks way under 4 minutes? :P Seriously though, I have a feeling this isn't intended in any way
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on February 25, 2022, 02:27:03 AM
quick update: Getting much closer now. Backroute and final testing is almost complete. I have a majority of the replays recorded and I'm currently working on the level order. I'm really hoping to release in just a few more weeks.

---

ok here's one more random level I could never solve; anyone know a solution?
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: kaywhyn on February 25, 2022, 04:18:51 AM
ok here's one more random level I could never solve; anyone know a solution?

Yup, replay attached. This was a pretty tough one, and interestingly took me only a good 5 minutes to think about, but ultimately

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also, I did get your Discord DM regarding testing, but as I didn't respond to it from a while back and it sounds like testing is almost done, I won't be needed for that anymore? If you could still use some more pre-testers, I'll likely have a better answer for you in a day or so.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on February 26, 2022, 03:29:14 AM
I ended up going through Fleech's whole levelset (which I did long, long ago but couldn't solve any of the levels back then or knew much about them) Now I've solved;
Send in the specialists, How to Kill a Lemming, and hypothermia. I have not solved the other two. Any replays or feedback is appreciated.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on March 05, 2022, 12:39:21 AM
quick update: I really am done selecting levels this time [and I swear i really am this time]. Working on the finishing touches; level order, sorting replays and the music and readme file. I'm hoping to release it within a few weeks
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on March 11, 2022, 01:26:18 AM
all my major issues have been solved so its finally getting very close now. Basically its just going over some final details; making sure the pack works and plays properly.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: mobius on March 12, 2022, 03:14:27 AM
So here's a question I could take some honest feedback on:

I've gotten another idea; since there are so many levels to deal with in total and this pack alone has 240, what if I broke it up into two or more smaller packs? This would also leave open the possibility of including some of the "outtake" levels and for releasing more packs in the future; as I mentioned before; there are still many more levels to look at from Lemmix and Cheapo and maybe other places too.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: kaywhyn on March 12, 2022, 11:39:14 PM
So here's a question I could take some honest feedback on:

I've gotten another idea; since there are so many levels to deal with in total and this pack alone has 240, what if I broke it up into two or more smaller packs? This would also leave open the possibility of including some of the "outtake" levels and for releasing more packs in the future; as I mentioned before; there are still many more levels to look at from Lemmix and Cheapo and maybe other places too.

Personally, I don't mind whether it stays as one huge 240-level pack or if it becomes multiple smaller packs, though honestly I'm leaning towards the latter since I do think 240 levels is a lot for one pack. Then again, I think the Lix community pack is also 240 levels, and it being 240 levels long isn't really a major issue with me. It just simply means that it will take some time to play through it all from start to finish, even with many of the levels I've already played from the Lemmini version of the pack. So, really it's up to you. I guess if there's multiple packs then I'm wondering how the community would be with numbering them as sequel packs, such as RotL 2 and so on. Of course, titles of the future smaller packs don't have to be this way. I can't think of any good titles, though, as I'm so bad with naming things in general :P
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: chrisleec728 on March 12, 2022, 11:56:40 PM
Also, it definitely wouldn't be the longest pack as Lemmings World Tour has 320 levels, so there's that comparison.
Title: Re: Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)
Post by: kaywhyn on March 13, 2022, 01:27:41 AM
Also, it definitely wouldn't be the longest pack as Lemmings World Tour has 320 levels, so there's that comparison.

Yes, but that's not the point. It has more to do with how I think after a certain number of levels I consider the pack pretty big, although it's like I said, I don't mind either way whether RotL stays at 240 levels or if it's broken into multiple smaller packs. Based on discussions elsewhere, it seems that mobius has made up his mind and will be releasing it as one big 240 level pack.