Lemmings Forums

NeoLemmix => NeoLemmix Levels => Topic started by: weirdybeardy on January 22, 2023, 01:42:39 PM

Title: Lemmings in Weirdyland (2023 edition)
Post by: weirdybeardy on January 22, 2023, 01:42:39 PM
Well, after much messing around and tweaking and fiddling and faffing, I'm basically re-releasing my old levels in a fun format that will basically work on current NeoLemmix versions. It's barely even a "new" release, because all of these levels were just scraped from the archives. But I've given them the proverbial spit & polish and they're ready for a revisit, I suppose. :thumbsup:

The general idea was just my own vanity project, combined with nostalgia - a chance for me to present my levels in the way I always wanted them to be presented, when I was younger and more active on the forums.

Features:
- 50 levels, in 5 groups of 10, with silly "difficulty ratings" attached (that aren't particularly consistent)
- A hand-picked music playlist taken shamelessly from the Acorn version of Lemmings (aka the version I fell in love with as a kid, and the version with the best music, in my humble opinion)... in other words, all the levels now have the music I originally intended them to have

And that's it, basically. If you're REALLY bored and have nothing better to do, check out my nonsense levels from 2008-2009, now in the neatly presented package. Feel frustrated or bored, just like I did. But also hopefully enjoy it a bit. Some of them ended up in Revenge of the Lemmings, after all.

Special thanks to kaywhyn and namida for giving me helpful and nudges on the road to getting this done.

Time for a nap, methinks. ;P

EDIT: The download should now be a Dropbox link. THIS is the version with the proper logo, and the proper music playlist, in the proper order.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tolbxzzxrb9fett/Lemmings%20in%20Weirdyland.zip?dl=1
Title: Re: Lemmings in Weirdyland (2023 edition)
Post by: weirdybeardy on January 22, 2023, 01:43:54 PM
I haven't added the music folder, purely because I'm the only person who cares about my music choices. It's all just Acorn tunes, which can be found elsewhere. My own copy of the levels has the music just how I like it. *shrug*
Title: Re: Lemmings in Weirdyland (2023 edition)
Post by: jkapp76 on January 22, 2023, 05:21:29 PM
Here's a quick logo for this pack...
Title: Re: Lemmings in Weirdyland (2023 edition)
Post by: jkapp76 on January 22, 2023, 07:25:04 PM
https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZPajMVZ1kKylbWgMJ5rENm0Ozjoe4PAAJpk

Here is a link to the acorn music and the music file to put in the level folder (or any pack's folder) so you can use these. This is the best quality version of these songs I have ever seen.
Title: Re: Lemmings in Weirdyland (2023 edition)
Post by: weirdybeardy on January 22, 2023, 08:00:56 PM
Thank you so much for the Lemmings in Weirdyland logo! Very thoughtful. Also, the Acorn music I've been using is a very specific playlist, but I couldn't upload it to the forum because the file size was too large. I might try again later once I've figured out how to use cloud storage properly. :P
Title: Re: Lemmings in Weirdyland (2023 edition)
Post by: kaywhyn on January 23, 2023, 01:22:28 PM
Congrats on the release, even if they all been released quite a while back :P Glad that I could be of service in helping to get your levels converted and into an up-to-date format for NL. I will definitely take a look at these sometime in the future, though it might not be for a while. I really enjoyed the ones that are in RotL, so I'm sure it'll be the same for the other levels of yours I haven't seen yet.

For the music download, I use Dropbox. Of course, this isn't the only way to do it. It just happens to be what I use to provide the music for download ;) Some others too, I believe.
Title: Re: Lemmings in Weirdyland (2023 edition)
Post by: weirdybeardy on January 24, 2023, 07:10:49 PM
I edited the original post and swapped out the original zip download for the latest version of the pack, with jkapp76's logo included (THANKS! :thumbsup:) and the music all in a folder, in the right order.
Title: Re: Lemmings in Weirdyland (2023 edition)
Post by: Turrican on January 24, 2023, 07:11:53 PM
I have tried the first 3 ranks of the pack , and here are the replays of my solutions.

Very nice pack , and very good job converting these old levels. The ones , that had appeared in "Revenge of the Lemmings" , I had played them also , in various versions of that pack.

Many good levels here! my favourites of these , are Drivel 10 , Blather 2 , and Blather 5. Also , my solutions for Drivel 9 and Blather 10 may be backroutes.
Title: Re: Lemmings in Weirdyland (2023 edition)
Post by: kaywhyn on January 24, 2023, 07:17:18 PM
Thanks for updating the download link :thumbsup: One more tip: Change the 0 to a 1 at the end of the link so that it automatically downloads for users. In this way, users don't need to sign up/in to Dropbox to download the pack ;)
Title: Re: Lemmings in Weirdyland (2023 edition)
Post by: WillLem on January 26, 2023, 04:08:36 PM
Completed the first 2 ranks, here are my replays. I'll come back and do the rest another time. Looking good so far, these are great levels! :thumbsup:
Title: Re: Lemmings in Weirdyland (2023 edition)
Post by: weirdybeardy on January 27, 2023, 03:08:49 PM

Completed the first 2 ranks, here are my replays. I'll come back and do the rest another time. Looking good so far, these are great levels! :thumbsup:

It's cool that you're enjoying it! And folks have been very kind in general. It's pretty strange to be back on the forums after such a long break; I feel simultaneously like a newbie, and an old fogey. :-[ It's particularly strange (and funny) to be interacting with Lemmings community folks whose content I've been enjoying for a while now - such as yourself WillLem - and the likes of kaywhyn, namida, Flopsy, IchoTolot, etc.

The Lemmings community has evolved so much in the time I've been away, and the high level of fun stuff that people are producing is always pretty intimidating. As well as the mediocre stuff that I've re-released for NeoLemmix, I also create a handful of levels for L2 back in the day, and I think the download links for them are still buried somewhere deep in the history of this forum! :P I might look into resurrecting them too, at some point.

TL;DR - I'm glad that people are playing my old levels, and vaguely mystified that people think that they're good. They're not. But I had fun making them.
Title: Re: Lemmings in Weirdyland (2023 edition)
Post by: kaywhyn on May 10, 2023, 07:40:11 PM
Hi weirdybeardy,

I have solved all of the pack. My replays are attached. Also, I did an LP of the pack: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbp2m4KlFpJstAY71mOBDfSgINWYYzvTg (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbp2m4KlFpJstAY71mOBDfSgINWYYzvTg). Enjoy! :P

General Feedback

Lemmings in Weirdyland is a level pack recently released by weirdybeardy, who returned to the Lemmings Forums after a very long absence, 13 years IIRC. As such, he is one of the very long-time level designers from way back in the days and has levels in the .dat files that are pretty much a way to play the mini 10-level Dos packs from when Lemmix was pretty much the prominent engine in use in the days. Some of these levels can also be found in the various versions of Revenge of the Lemmings, but most of these are ones that I don't think I've played before.

Because these are all Lemmix levels converted to up-to-date NL format, all of them have time limits, though I've told weirdybeardy that the NL standard practice is to remove them if they're not needed unless it's part of the challenge or to block backroutes. Or, yet another option is to simply make the time limit high enough that it's not a problem if one doesn't want to provide infinite time. Otherwise, if it doesn't do either of the two things mentioned, then it's best to remove the time limit altogether. The only level pack I'm aware of that was also back from the Lemmix days that has a time limit on every level is Deceit's Lemmings.

Regarding the time limits, during my LP I noticed a lot of them are unnecessarily very tight! Now, I don't mind time limits in general, but I will notice and mind if there's way too many tight timers in a row. A lot of the time, the only thing these do is force the player to 99RR and release the crowd early enough to finish the level on time, therefore blocking solutions that would had worked otherwise with more time. Thus, I suggested to weirdybeardy to either take them out or to increase them so that time isn't a problem. I haven't exactly verified, but I'm guessing plenty of the levels originally had a very generous timer, and if that's the case I would restore them to what they were originally. Yes, I do understand the point of increasing the challenge and making the levels harder by tightening the time limit, but again most of the time all they do here is force the player to max out the RR and release the crowd early enough, and it's not always clear when one can do so because of the design or sometimes the long distances involved depending on the size.

In any case, like some of the others who have played this pack before me, including WillLem and Turrican, I can recommend this pack of old levels from weirdybeardy, even if in his honest opinion he thinks they aren't that good. More importantly, the pack is on the easier side, which packs of this difficulty are especially lacking on the Forums, so those who aren't as experienced with the game would appreciate this very much. Again, I must emphasize, as I have plenty of times, that hard levels are the ones I enjoy and prefer, but I like levels of all difficulties in Lemmings :thumbsup: Even better, this is another recent level pack that sticks to only the classic 8 skills. The pack is many times easier than QFK (Quest From Kieran), but in some places it's nearly on par with its difficulty, as there's still some odd levels here and there that are harder than the ones surrounding it/them, especially in the later ranks.

Guff Rank Feedback

There isn't much to say about these levels other than they're pretty much just tutorial levels teaching the skills, but unlike the L1 ones in the Fun rank, these aren't your typical tutorial levels, as they are far harder and none are exactly trivial. These definitely remind me of the "tutorial-like" levels from grams88's Ski Sloping Lemmings pack, another pack that sticks to just the classic 8 skills, especially as this user is a traditionalist of the game and therefore it's by personal decision and design that they stick to the classic 8 skills for both level packs (Ski Sloping Lemmings and Nuked Lemmings). In addition, I must say that Guff 1 is a bit hard for its position despite being a digger tutorial, for two reasons (spoiler tagged below)! Now, I understand using the digger tutorial as the first level, since L1 did exactly that, but IMO I would switch it with another level that's easier, such as Guff 2, which is the floater tutorial.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

All of these culminate and come together as a 1-of-everything level in the rank finisher to see what the player has learned, very similar to what Shmoley did with Shmolems, where the final two levels of the first rank did exactly that, the penultimate one using just the classic 8 skills that were taught earlier in the rank, while the rank finisher uses the NL skills taught earlier in the rank. Overall, these levels still require some thought, especially the ones that aren't the floater or climber tutorial. The builder tutorial reminds me of the ones from Lemmings Reunion in the first rank.


Drivel Rank Feedback

Levels are a bit harder here, but not by much. The rank finisher is certainly the hardest one of the rank and very worthy of the position.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)


Blather Rank Feedback

A bit harder still, but still nothing too bad.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)


Vexing Rank Feedback

Now things get challenging here! Even though this is the penultimate rank, I felt this is the hardest one of the pack. Vexing 10 might even take the title of hardest level of the pack. Either that or possibly even Vexing 1, though the latter might be a close second. This is probably the most solid rank of the pack! :thumbsup:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)


Daft Rank Feedback

Despite being the final rank, it's not the hardest IMO, which goes to the rank before this one. Even then, some fun ones to figure out!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Thank you for the pack weirdybeardy, and glad to hear you're enjoying the LP. Again, please excuse me if I sound harsh, but as you have already told me it's me being honest, and you be correct ;) I definitely would be lying if I said the timers aren't very tight. It's been noted by others that my bluntness is what's appreciated about me. Read my detailed feedback on all the other level packs I've posted replays for and you might agree, especially if you have played through them.