I think that animation would look a lot better if some horizontal movement was applied to offset the appearance of it moving backwards/forwards as it rises/falls.

Quote from: UGO on June 23, 2026, 08:46:30 PMIt's a good idea but this is not the solution for my level... There are many talismans and the player needs all solve-skills from the beginning.

You just need to expand on this a bit more, actually. You need to make it so the level itself can be solved without the pickup skill, but it is not possible to solve the level and collect the pickup skill unless you also use the pickup skill. For example, perhaps the pickup skill is a climber skill that's placed in a pit the lemming will have to climb out of.

You could however achieve this, still as a talisman rather than making it the only solution, without any new features. To do this, look at ways you can make the pickup skill substitute for an otherwise-required skill, and have a talisman for not using that other skill. For example - let's say we had a level that, at some point, there is a large wall you need to bash through. You could achieve this "must go to a specific point" by placing another skill that can destroy that wall - a Fencer, Miner, Laserer, or possibly even a Digger as a way to go around it - and then having a talisman for "No bashers".

Proxima's suggestion with the preplaced lemming also works on a technical level, but may feel a bit more "forced".

Also worth noting: Talismans don't always get the most attention. Many players will just solve the levels and not bother with the talismans. This is likely to be even more the case if you have "many" talismans on a level, especially if they're all fairly similar in nature.

I think you're going to need to provide some actual examples of how this adds value to a level (eg. by uploading a level that would have such a talisman in a way that contradicts the below points).

As far as I can see - there are basically two ways any kind of talisman that forces use of one or more skills might play out:

1. It requires some very specific trick to be exploited (such as the trick of assigning a bomber to a digger who falls into an exit before he explodes). Once you know the trick, you're going to know what to do in every level that uses the talisman, because it's just a "do you know this trick?" check.

2. Or, the skill can just be assigned in a way that does nothing besides using up the skill. Most skills are easily wasted either by assigning them where they won't achieve anythign (eg. a basher not near a wall, a permanent skill to a lemming who's about to exit anyway, a blocker to a lemming who was going to die anyway).

And I think in practice, even most attempts at #1 would turn into #2.

Oh wow. Yeah, I can see why it was cancelled. I honestly would've thought that was something a (very young) fan made up as "fanon" if it weren't for the video links, especially with some of those skills!

From memory, I believe Utility.Random() is a custom function for the editor, which likely uses an already-seeded RNG.

( Discussion on programming language preferences / experience has been split off into a seperate topic: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=7473.0 )

No worries about the derailing - this can easily be split off into its own thread.

Quote from: WillLem on April 29, 2026, 03:43:34 AMUpdate to 'special' - added crystal exit as separate base/top images for upcoming RotL reissue.

As with the other proposals, changes to the official styles would need to see some discussion. And in this particular case - I feel like I would probably veto it anyway, on the grounds that the appropriate place for this piece, if it really must be used at all, is a (user)_special or rotl_special style, not an official style. (Any further discussion on this subject will need to go in its own topic, not this one.)

The other two have been updated in both the all-styles ZIP and the style manager.

It is extremely unlikely that a duplicate ID will arise between two levels made from scratch.

The main cases where it's likely to come up:
- Variant levels (eg easier / harder repeats)
- Levels derived from an official level

It is possible an author might do an all-packs check by combining the packs into a single large one (rank / pack structure doesn't really matter for this, they could just copy the levels) and running a check against it. In this case, the IDs would matter again.

Mass replay check is the only time an ID issue will outright break anything. In all other cases, it will at worst cause a warning to be displayed. But this would arise from the replay having a wrong ID; not two levels sharing an ID. That being said: Keep in mind that even if you don't want to mass check your levels, other users might.

Ah, yeah.

They weren't gitignore'd properly in the repo, but weren't generally being copied manually when updates were occuring. They also weren't being included in the backups. I fixed the backup script to include them while doing this update, including that the backup I ran just before the update was with the new version of the script - so this time, I am able to restore them (and have now done so). And going forward, they should no longer be a problem (but can be restored from the backup if they are).

The upgrade is now complete. Please report any new issues that arise.

Attempting to use SMF's built in upgrade did not work. I thus proceeded with the usual method of branch / merge wizardry. But it occurred to me - it makes more sense to keep a branch of vanilla SMF in the repo, to make it quicker next time around. So that's what the "smf-vanilla" branch on the repo is for.

At some point in the next hour or so, the forum will be temporarily unavailable while I upgrade to SMF 2.1.7.

This will only affect LemmingsForums.net; other sites on the server (such as NeoLemmix.com) will not be affected.

Quote from: geoo on June 07, 2026, 08:54:08 PMI somehow missed this topic, but remember having seen documentation for this before.
A bit of digging and I found the documentation and code by Herman Perk from 1994, see attached.
I haven't checked but maybe worth comparing to see if there are any insights that you discovered that are missing, or vice versa.

For reference, this is the source of the commentary I saved here: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=7043.0

Rather than just disregarding it for existing levels, could they be padded / shrunk accordingly?

"Shady Facade". It's a Lost City / Sunset Vista style level, though in a Crash 2 gameplay style. With a few twists of course.

Link on NexusMods

Requires the PC version of the game (Steam or Game Pass, either should work). Difficulty-wise I'd say it's harder than Future Tense but easier than Stormy Ascent.

There's a few minor fixes needed (I'm just trying to figure out how to get the dynamic difficulty adjustment to properly apply to one particular part of the level, then the fixed version is ready to upload) but yeah, I think it turned out really good.