Lemmings Forums
NeoLemmix => Bugs & Suggestions => Closed => Topic started by: Proxima on January 22, 2021, 05:18:58 PM
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I've spent a long time today thinking about the algorithm for calculating which postview message to display (https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=4796.0), and whether I could get the results I want with the current algorithm, simply by reordering the messages in the postview.nxmi, maybe even with duplication of some messages.
And, as far as I can see, it's impossible -- hence the request for an engine change.
The big problem is the "You got pretty close that time" message, which original Lemmings displays when you are within 5% of the requirement. But NL works on absolute counts rather than percentages, and it's become conventional for levels to have smaller lemming counts than the old "default" of 80 or 100 (and in particular, Redux reduces lemming counts to 50 or below except for a handful of levels that required leaving it unchanged). Because of this, the NL default is to display this message when the player is 2 to 5 lemmings short of the requirement.
I'm fine with this change in most cases, but it means that on a level like Speed Trap (15 lemmings, 15 required) you get the "pretty close" message even when you saved 10, which is not close at all.
I should note that this is a small nitpick, and I'm okay with it if the outcome is "no change". In that case I will replace Redux's postview.nxmi with the default one and just accept that there are oddities on levels with a small number of lemmings.
However, just in case, I would like to put forward the suggestion that conditions in the postview.nxmi can be boolean: for instance, "CONDITION -20% AND -5" would mean this message displays if N (the number saved) is at least R - 5 (R is the requirement) and N is at least 80% of R (and, of course, if the player doesn't meet the requirements for a higher message that would override this one).
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I'm going to reject this one, seeing as it's very minor to you, no one else seems to be particularly concerned about it, and it would be a fair bit of work to implement for ultimately a minor cosmetic gain.