I never got round to announcing this, but since my last post in this thread was about playing Hollow Knight: Silksong, I should mention that I did indeed finish the game. Reached 95% by myself, then got some pointers for the last few things I was missing (just the names of the areas they were in), since combing all over the game world for things that could be anywhere felt like it would be a sour note to end on after such a beautiful game.

There are still achievements to go for -- similar to the first Hollow Knight, there's one for completing it in 5 hours, and there is a "Steel Soul" mode where your save file breaks if you die. Both of these will be much harder to achieve in Silksong as it's both a harder game and a much larger one. So I haven't yet found time to get back to the game to give them a serious try.

Meanwhile, in the last couple of weeks I have rediscovered and played through I Wanna Lockpick, a puzzle game I first tried a couple of years ago. Back then, I got stuck and eventually looked at hints and fell into a spiral of getting spoiled on solutions, and it stopped being fun. But recently, one of my Touhou friends was playing this game on Twitch, and that reminded me of it, and I felt long enough had passed that I could try again, this time without looking at hints at all.

I'm almost at the end now: 64 in-game hours, 207 of 213 puzzles cleared. I'm hoping I can go the rest of the way 

So, what is this game? Well, you take the coloured keys and locks idea from Chip's Challenge... and you make that the entire game. That might sound like it must get boring and repetitive, but it really doesn't, because it gets extremely creative by introducing new types of keys and locks (and I won't say more than that in case anyone wants to look into it themselves -- it really is most fun to go into it blind!) And since you are always manipulating numbers of keys and locks, the puzzles have a strong mathematical flavour that, I think, would appeal to a lot of the people here.

Quote from: WillLem on August 24, 2026, 02:27:44 AMDid I miss something? We're not talking about timed bombers here, we're talking about framestepping. The original point stands: a lot of L1 levels feature challenges related to general timing and crowd control, which are rendered trivial by the ability to framestep.

Right. I mentioned timed bombers specifically because those are the clearest example where the entire level is trivialised. Other than that, I can think of specific activities in levels that become not an issue any more (such as precisely placing a miner so that it outputs where the crowd can climb into the tunnel), but those levels still have puzzle aspects. I guess there are levels like "The Crossroads" that are are entirely an execution challenge, but still a small minority of the levels in the game.

Quote from: WillLem on August 23, 2026, 06:25:19 PMFramestepping, on the other hand, is tantamount to cheating in a game like Lemmings.

There is no such thing as cheating in a single-player game, unless it has some form of player-player interactivity (such as achievements, online leaderboards, etc).

QuoteWe all agree that the ability to framestep backwards immediately renders most of the original levels (which is what many players come to the Forums looking for) obsolete.

Out of 120 levels, there are five timed bomber levels in the entire game. ONML has only two out of 100.

QuoteHm. Maybe I disagree that it doesn't make for a good game. If that's true, why are we all here? The vast majority of original Lemmings ports don't even have a replay system, let alone per-frame control over the gameplay. It can't be that bad a game if there's an entire Forum dedicated to it...

I'm here for the custom levels (making, solving and discussing), the challenges, and the community most of all. I haven't played original Lemmings for years.

Of course, I loved it when I played it as a kid. I loved saving the cute creatures, the music, the graphics... but most of all, the feeling of being challenged to work out how on earth it was possible to solve these levels, and feeling great when I got those moments of insight that made everything fall into place at last.

It's true that the original game didn't have any kind of replay system, whether because it would have been too tricky to code given the limitations of the time, or because it wasn't a common feature in games, or because the developers simply didn't think of it. Still, if it had had replays from the beginning, I can't see that anything I liked about the game would have been changed or diminished.

But I finished the original games decades ago (not counting ones like L2 and L3 that didn't interest me enough to look into them), so the only reason I'm interested in modern clones at all is their ability to support creating and playing new levels.

I know that maybe it's not my place to say these things. I haven't played any Lemmings content for a long time now, and when I do come back to it, it'll be NL for sure. So my opinions shouldn't have much weight in the direction RL takes. I'm mostly contributing because I hope this discussion can help you reason out the decision, so that whatever decision you end up making, it's done for good reasons.

QuoteConversely - when I'm playing in NeoLemmix/Lix, I use backwards framestepping, of course - why wouldn't I. But, it makes the game feel totally different. Specifically: there are no real-time stakes at all. Nothing I do really matters because I can just skip back and redo it immediately. It feels like I'm editing a video clip rather than playing a video game. This is fundamentally a different way to play, and it matters.

This reminds me a lot of things that were said before the decision to add unlimited undo to Deadly Rooms of Death. Specifically, I remember one poster who was vehemently against UU because he wanted moves to feel "consequential". And then UU got added, nothing really changed, and it was still the same game, just easier to play.

It might surprise you, after the things I've said, that I actually don't use UU in DROD myself. But it does have single undo and checkpoints; if the choice were between enabling UU and having to restart the room every time I made a mistake, then I would have enabled it from the moment it was possible to do so 

But anyway. In a game like Lemmings or DROD where levels (or rooms) are distinct units of play, there are no "stakes" in any case. The only possible consequence for failure is loss of time. And that matters a lot more to me now that half of my life is behind me, and so much of my time is lost through feeling exhausted. I want the games I play to respect my time, and if I feel a game doesn't, I'm much more likely to close it and find one that does.

And while I appreciate that you prefer to play without replay features, that in itself isn't an argument for not adding them. If those features are there, people who prefer to play without them can still do so, while if they're not, everyone is forced to play without them regardless of what they prefer.

Quote from: Simon on August 23, 2026, 09:42:29 PMIn DOS Lemmings 1's We All Fall Down, I now believe that digger-digger cancelling isn't possible in a way to produce a permanent staircase. Your 2-digger solution is thus NeoLemmix-only.

Those are not the only two platforms! Digger cancelling is possible on Amiga, Mac, Genesis and SNES (although Genesis doesn't allow RR changes while paused, and I believe that means WAFD requires 3 diggers minimum).

Quote from: WillLem on August 23, 2026, 05:37:36 PMIt's basically a reward system (many games lock features behind progress - this is normal)

Features, yes. Solve the hard level, get the snazzy new costume or ability card or wave gun or whatever.

But not quality-of-life features. If the purpose of adding a feature is to improve quality of life, then it should not be locked.

QuoteThe first Lemminas pack and (particularly) Lemmings Recurring both feature levels which are basically impossible to complete in real-time. I've tried.

That proves that the task is difficult. You wouldn't have attempted it if it were impossible.

QuoteI resolved to only ever create levels that can be solved without even using assign-whilst-paused. [...] If a level requires an assignment on frame X, and another at frame X+n where n is less than about 10, it's too fiddly and annoying.

Right, that's where you have decided your threshold for "too annoying" is, and you have decided that all your levels will be solvable without assign-while-paused.

Are you going to set up a vetting system so that levels by other designers must pass this threshold before they're allowed to be published?

If not, then levels that don't meet your standards will continue to be made, and "I'd rather they didn't get made" isn't a good answer to the question of whether the engine should have better quality-of-life features.

(Sorry if this comes across as aggressive. I'm mostly annoyed at myself for not having expressed my point well enough in my previous post.)

Quote from: WillLem on August 23, 2026, 04:35:28 PM2) Add Rewind, but lock it behind a 'Modern Mode' along with forwards Framestepping [...] A player must complete the level at least once in 'Classic Mode' before the modern controls are unlocked for that level.

This seems like very much a "worst of both worlds". You put yourself to all the trouble of coding the feature and you prevent the player from using it. What's the point?

QuoteAdding the ability to step backwards one frame at a time allows replays to be finely edited (thus inviting all of the UI quirks we're currently wrestling with in NLCE), and - worse - allows for levels which require framestepping shenanigans as part of their solution.

There is, of course, no such thing as a level that requires framestepping shenanigans. Rubix has a Lix level that requires text-editing the replay file, because there is no other possible way of inputting 95 climber assignments in a single frame (unless this has changed in later Lix versions; I haven't been keeping up with developments), but if same-frame assignments are forbidden then anything that can be done with framestepping can be done without.

I'm not trying to be snarky; this is leading into a serious point. I think what you meant was on the lines of: "We don't want levels that are really annoying and fiddly to play without framestepping." And I approve of that thought. But there is no system in place that stops people creating such levels. People did create such levels, back in the Cheapo/CustLemm days before any engines had framestepping. And people came up with challenges on the original levels that required incredible precision. Besides, what counts as "too annoying and fiddly" is hugely subjective.

QuoteI can think of 2 possibilities

What happened to the checkpoint and jump-to-previous-skill possibilities mentioned in the first post? Unless those have been taken off the table for some reason, we have at least four possibilities (five if we count the "add nothing" option).

I don't play RL so I'm not going to vote for my preferences, but I'd like to suggest one more option: instead of time-based checkpoints, add a savestate key so that if a level is 8 or 9 minutes long, you don't have to go all the way back to the beginning for every mistake. Restart + fast forward achieves a similar thing but is a more annoying way of doing it; as Flopsy mentioned, it's easy to FF past the point you wanted and have to start again.

The colours in the latest post look fine to me. Green for the title and save requirement -- green is kind of the default colour for Lemmings, and it helps the important lines stand out. Yellow for time limit is good, as that catches the eye, and you want to be warned when there is a time limit. For the buttons, maybe green for the mouseover colour?

I like the austere appearance when the optional lines are not present. It shows that we're not bogging the player down in a ton of information; here's what you need to know, now start playing.

Might be better to just move the pack to the SuperLemmix board, since having radiation means it was intended to be played in SLX. Or are the pieces merely decorative?

My thoughts:

The fewer colours, the better. In particular, it's nice for the default (most often seen) colour to be green across the board: lemmings in hatch, lemmings alive (when there are still enough to win), lemmings saved (before meeting the save requirement), timer (when there is no time limit).

Colour change on its own doesn't convey any information, unless it's easy to work out from context alone what it means. Number of lemmings going green -> red when there are no longer enough to win is fine (unless you are red-green colour-blind, but we can design the normal feature first and add optional tweaks for colour-blind players later).

For the save requirement, NL goes from negative to positive, so no colour change is needed. NLCE adds a tick to the flag, which is also good. (I would still prefer the negative numbers, as "-5" conveys "5 short of the requirement" a lot more easily than just "5" does, but maybe there's already an option for this?) Anyway, no colours needed here and that's great.

The timer needs to indicate (at least) three possible states: infinite; time limit counting down; overtime. There is already a different timer icon for the "infinite time" case, but I guess we are worried that with time limits being uncommon, a stronger reminder is needed. I am tentatively okay with using colours here, such as the suggested cyan for "there is a time limit" and blue or red for overtime. Of the two, red seems better as it's more consistent: the same colour for "not enough lemmings left" and "not enough time left". Both tell you that the level is failed and you need to rewind. Will argues that red shouldn't be used for overtime because red conveys urgency, while you can remain in overtime as long as you want; but the same is true for "not enough lemmings left" and we're fine using red for that. (Or should we change it to blue for both?)

Completely agree with Simon that there is no need for any "15 seconds left" indication. I grew up playing Repton 3 and I've had enough "15 seconds left" indications to last a lifetime    The player can tell time is close to running out because it says a number that is less than 15.

We have this sticky topic summarising the various ways to play original Lemmings on modern computers, with a little overview of the pros and cons of each. It's what a lot of people come here wanting to know.

But the topic doesn't (and shouldn't) recommend one engine over others; that's a matter of taste and a question of which features the user values most.

NeoLemmix does not imitate the physics of DOS Lemmings exactly. Levels that are 100%able in DOS Lemmings might not be in NL. This is why we keep separate maximum saved records for NL; the ONML levels haven't been added to that yet, because no-one has yet gone through them to confirm what is possible.

If you want to play the levels from the original games in NeoLemmix, this conversion is the most up-to-date and recommended.

Quote from: Simon on July 17, 2026, 03:26:50 AMI don't believe there is a user option that nails the window to a given size.

I already mentioned it: WindowWidth and WindowHeight in the settings.ini file.

Quote from: WillLem on July 14, 2026, 09:06:10 PM'Level by Author in Pack' makes more sense because we have several compilations available on the Forums, and many packs by singular authors feature the occasional collaboration level.

The proposal at the bottom of your post doesn't include the pack name (unless you are proposing that the "Position" line should include this).

In fact, I think we should at least consider including the pack name somehow; "Taxing 4" isn't very helpful when many packs have a rank named Taxing.

The obvious solution is to structure the "Position" line as [pack]: [rank] [number]. However, there are two issues: what happens when the pack or rank name is long, and what happens for packs with more complicated structures?

(Possible solution: read the full tree and structure the line as [top-level folder]: [sub-folder]: [rank] [number], and allow this to go over two lines if necessary.)

Quote

Quote from: Simon on July 13, 2026, 10:26:35 PMIf author is anonymous, you can hide the author line entirely

I'm about 50/50 on this. Printing 'Anonymous' is redundant, but it may indeed prompt an author to include their name.

I am not at all 50/50 on this. When a pack is single-author, the author's name doesn't need to be displayed on every preview page. The author can add their name on every level if they want, of course, but if they choose not to, the engine should not force them to. (If I were actively making levels at the moment, I would have complained about this very loudly before now.)

QuoteIncidentally, the latest NL Editor automatically populates the 'Author' field with the username from NeoLemmix/CE's settings. However, it's likely that not everybody will have the latest Editor.

No. If you want this to be a thing, take the username from NLEditorSettings; then for people who don't want it, it is obvious how to disable it.

Quote

Quote from: Simon on July 13, 2026, 10:26:35 PMRelease rate/spawn interval feels irrelevant. I'd ditch that entirely. I believe it's a leftover from Lemmings 1 because Lemmix replicated that screen and nobody had the guts yet to cut it.

Strongly disagree. It is in fact the exact opposite: it was removed from NeoLemmix and I had the guts to put it back in!

It was removed by group consensus after discussion, so you shouldn't have put it back of your own accord without discussion.

And the reason for removing it is clear: it's clutter, and it doesn't give the player any meaningful information while still on the preview screen, because they haven't seen the level yet, don't know what skills they have, where the lemmings start -- nothing except a vague impression of the shape of the level. The release rate becomes helpful when the level is opened and the player can begin to strategise. The preview screen also doesn't need to show whether the release rate is locked, because the player can see this as soon as they begin.

QuoteSave 14 of 67 Lemmings
4 Normal, 10 Neutral, 53 Zombie

Zombies can never be saved, so 4 normal + 10 neutral + 53 zombie should be displayed as "Save 14 of 14".

Quote from: Simon on July 13, 2026, 10:26:35 PMStrict English punctuation can produce unclarity, too. Above, I wrote {"Save N",} instead of the rules-abiding {"Save N,"}.

The latter is only rules-abiding in American English.