Hi David,
Thanks for confirming what I have always been prophecizing: That new forum members would miss these former, now culled features after finding out about them ;).
Both timed Bombers and Rising water are things that would most likely be regarded by the majority of the NeoLemmix community as things that add execution difficulty without adding much to the cognitive challenge, i.e. the puzzle solution itself.
Rising water in particular was one of many gimmicks, which were pretty much removed all at once, as far as I know. The only gimmick that remained was zombies, because they were apparently comparatively popular. The others however of course caused lots of complexity, especially when several gimmicks were combined. If New Formats still had all the gimmicks, introducing any new skill would be a lot more effort, I reckon, because not only the standard behaviour of that skill and all its interactions with other skills have to be programmed, but also its behaviour modification under all possible combiations of gimmicks.
I doubt that rising water will ever be introduced into New Formats.
a) Because NeoLemmix is approaching its final version
b) Because most things that rising water adds to puzzles (=timing restrictions) can also be achieved by simply adding a time limit to a level (exceptions being using waters as "lifts" for Swimmers, to free Swimmer-Blockers, or break falls; or having fire objects rise as well)
You can still play levels with rising water and all the other gimmicks by using NeoLemmix 1.43. Go to the link in my signature to my 1.43 pack "Lemmicks - Lemmings with gimmicks!" You can also download the old editor there, as well as all the graphic sets that were available for that version. That way you can design levels with gimmicks yourself.
Just be aware that version 1.43 comes with quite a few drawbacks. Of course, there are no new drawbacks added to that version. But the furher New Formats NeoLemmix develops, the more "backwards" that old version will feel. ;)
- no Fencer, Shimmier, Jumper, Laserer, Slider, Spearer, Grenadier
- no skill shadows
- no true-physics mode
- no splat ruler
- levels have to be selected with the arrow keys in the play menu, or via entering a code (no level-selection list)
+ radiation objects (closest thing to timed Bombers NeoLemmix has ever had)
+ slowfreeze objects (same as radiation, but with timed Stoners)
+ Ghost lemmings (lemmings that can be assigned skills but ignore all objects; the push other lemmings ahead of themselves by intimidating them)
namida discourages creation of levels for "outdated" versions. I for one consider NeoLemmix 1.43 effectively a completely different engine by now: A different file format, different skill set, different objects (radiation and slowfreeze), Ghost lemmings, plus all the gimmicks.
So it's not outdated, it's just different. And yes, probably in sum inferior to New Formats NeoLemmix. Just like I consider SuperLemmini, Lix, WinLems, and Lemmix inferior to NeoLemmix. But at the end of the day, that is up to taste. All of these other engines enjoy just as much of a loyal userbase.
If you want to use gimmicks, you need to use NeoLemmix 1.43 (player, styles, and editor).
If you want to use timed Bombers (as I wanted as well when starting out), you can use Lemmix. That is the predecessor to NeoLemmix (not to be confused with Lemmicks, which is my aforementioned pack with rising water and other gimmicks for NeoLemmix 1.43 ;) ).