If I recall correctly, Cheapo runs reasonably well on Wine, there was just a few UI annoyances I think.

Can't check right now as I got all the Cheapo stuff on an external hard drive.

Quote from: JawaJuice on December 25, 2025, 09:26:07 PMAre you purely focused on Lix now, @geeo? I haven't seen your levels crop up for a while in NL LDCs (although to be fair, aside from #33, I've only played up to about 15 - got side-tracked playtesting various packs).

I've never actually designed a NeoLemmix level (as far as I remember). The early contests were for Lemmix (and the "no glitches" rule was already a novelty), and in later contests I submitted Lix levels. The whole NeoLemmix scene passed by me. I migrated to Linux around 2014, generally became less active and with NeoLemmix not really working on my computer the little time I spent on lemmings was for Lix. Nowadays NeoLemmix runs reasonably well in Wine (not sure about the editor), so every now and then I try to at least look at the contest submissions.

I appreciate mobius (and probably occasionally other people) remaking some of my levels for NeoLemmix though so that the NeoLemmix community also get to play them. I wasn't particularly aware of this until kaywhyn pointed me to Revenge of the Lemmings just now. Thanks for that!
I was just looking at the level list and there are some levels attributed to me that I don't even remember creating, probably from the Cheapo days. I think that'll give me the chance to solve some of my own levels from zero, which I guess is not something one often gets an opportunity to do. I should definitely play this at some point.

kaywhyn, I watched your LP for Stroke at Retirement Age, and you basically had all the skill placements down after 20 minutes. Really interesting to see that the hard part was realizing that this works if only you change the timing. And similarly interesting to know that you had a hard time with Merge Sort. For Lix I actually made a small level pack exploring these flow control ideas if you're curious. It ships with the latest Lix release.

Back in the early days I had similar trouble with tseug's Oh No, Not Again (is that in RotL as well?); it took me 4 years to solve that as my intuition for how the lemmings moved was completely off and I never thought feasible what ended up being the solution.

JawaJuice, I'm surprised timing the basher was an issue as you can release it pretty much whenever you want and just savestate back if it doesn't work. I guess if your setup in the rest of the level isn't ideal then the basher timing becomes more difficult than it should be.

When I linked this topic, I was looking at the sticky topics in Level Design, which has Lemmings games, editors and setting everything up as a crosspost to this topic. I didn't even realize that this topic has a different title.

This is a bit of a mess.

In Lemmings Main, we have How to play Lemmings (1991) on a modern PC and How to play and create custom levels. I think this is a sensible choice (except that maybe we want to include other lemmings games in the first topic as well). At the same time, it makes sense to cross-post these in Help & Guides and at least the latter one in Level Design.

In Level Design, we have Lemmings games, editors and setting everything up which serves the same purpose as How to play and create custom levels but instead points to this topic. I think we should update the latter to include some additional information from this topic (maybe with outdated engines hidden in a collapsible tag or linking to this topic), and archive or update this topic (it has seen some updates in 2022, but is still not up to date).

In Help & Guides we have a whole load of sticky topics: This topic, one each for how to run L2/L3/L3D/Revolution, and Playing Lemmings 2 without L2-FIX (which I think can be unstickied and linked in the How to play L2 topic) and .lvl and .dat: How to play and edit (which I think can be unstickied and referenced by How to play and create custom levels. I'd suggest to update How to play Lemmings (1991) on a modern PC to include links to the corresponding topics for L2/L3/L3D/Revolution, change the title and also crosspost it in Help & Guides.

While technically it is possible to play (older) custom levels in WinLemm, I'd recommend installing NeoLemmix and/or Lix. More details in this post: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=1618.0

Most modern content is designed for NeoLemmix and Lix. WinLemm uses the .lvl format from the original game, which limits it to the feature set from the original game. You can find a lot of level packs compatible with the original game in the Lemmings level database: https://lldb.camanis.net/ But if you want to play those, you might as well just play them directly in the player that's part of the level database Otherwise, you have to download the packs, and either play them in Lemmix, or unpack the .dat files into .lvl and overwrite some original levels in WinLemm (which then has different physics so some level may not be solvable).

To give a bit of a backstory, in the early level design contents the goal was to make hard levels (rather than popular levels). The main aim was to solve as many levels as possible, so getting a hard level in gives you the edge over other players. I designed Stroke at Retirement Age with the aim that nobody could solve it, and while execution difficulty wasn't the goal it was a necessary evil I was willing to accept (especially after a few backroutes forced me to make the timing tighter). I didn't fully succeed as ccexplore managed to solve the level, but if I remember correctly it was still the level with the fewest solves in the content. Here's the old contest thread (as you can see it scored pretty low on the fun scale).

So congrats to you two for solving this one! I've always wondered how hard to figure out the level really is if you take away the execution difficulty. I feel like a lot of placements are forced, and the key novelty is the flow control which is complex but falls into place once you know when to place the key skill. Would be curious to hear your opinion.

The title was meant to be a clue to help with execution:

Spoiler

You assign the miner when there are 66 lemmings out of the hatch -- this is one of the statistics displayed in the original game and early Lemmix, I'm not sure if NeoLemmix still displays it.

In the Lix version, I could ease things up a bit by setting a fixed spawn interval to make the chain of lemmings longer, which should disadvantage the backroutes and thus allow me to give more wiggle room to the intended solution. Knowing the timing hint from the title I managed to execute the solution within 5 minutes, but I wonder how bad it is if you don't realize what it means.

The level design culture (and also my philosophy) certainly has evolved since then...

I'm curious to see what you've developed. Back in 2008 we tried to play Amiga Lemmings over network through emulators (and it was laggy and the gameplay wasn't great either, still good fun for the first time trying). Since then I've played a lot of networked multiplayer through Lix (and in the early days also Clones), and I think both engine and level design has come a long way since then!

Simon, the dev of Lix, might also be interested.

I'll probably be free the next two weekends. Only got Linux.

I'll be joining (in less than 3 hours from now).

I can definitely recommend it. It's a fun game, and even after many rounds, I still don't know what's the best strategy. You need to adapt to how the other players are playing.

I tried the simplified version (game ends when the pile is depleted, -1 for each remaining card) three weeks ago. They dynamics are definitely different near the end of the game, which is not necessarily a bad thing. What felt unsatisfying to me was that if you have something decent on your hand, you might not get another turn to play it (it's rather unpredictable when the game ends), so you either rip it apart to respond to some other player's sneak, or not play it at all. Counting 0 instead of -1 per card makes makes the latter option slightly less painful, but still not satisfying. But I'm curious how the scoring change affects the dynamics, maybe it simply becomes more predictable when the game ends.

Either way, this simplified version might be a good starting point for new players to get the hang of the game, and the final flaunting round can be introduced after one or two games. (Emphasizing "round": I'm not convinced by simply scoring the flaunts, as e.g. a flush and a straight flush get the same points then. The flaunting round is more strategic than it sounds and often brings interesting surprises as you have no clue what other players have left.)

While I'm not very visible here most of the time, I'm usually lurking and skimming the forum every day.

From now until mid-October, however, I'll be on the road and won't be checking the forum. The situation will probably be similar from mid-November to mid-December.

Thanks to everyone who's played my levels!

Everyone's got the intended solution for Misaligned (I mean there really aren't many options), and it was interesting to read your (different) opinions. It's meant to be a minimalistic level, and will probably appear as part of an ensemble of other levels that similarly focus on one single idea.

For Cycle Decomposition, everyone's got a different solution.
Armani's solution is slightly different from mine, but very much in the spirit of my idea for this level.
Icho's solution cuts out one main idea, but is at least still somewhat in the spirit of the level (I'd like to fix that though).
Kaywhyn's solution is, as you already suspected, an egregious backroute that needs to be fixed.

I want to fix the level at some point, but unfortunately, I'll be on the road for the next two months (and haven't had the time to fix it until now). So the update will probably only come once the contest is over

I think historically, one of the considerations for ditching direct drop in modern engines was that it had the tendency to cause backroutes in custom levels. There isn't really much of a reason for level designers to use direct drop as a feature, so with the backroute consideration it's more of a nuisance.

Regarding your table of where it works, isn't there at least some engine where direct drop only works if the exit trigger area is on terrain (so the lemmings go home instead of splatting, but they would fall through an exit that's in mid-air)? So I think it's more nuanced than "it either works or it doesn't".

Quote2) If falling lems can interact with traps, water, fire and other objects, then they should also be allowed to interact with exits. Any ports/engines/clones which feature one behaviour and not the other are therefore inconsistent.

Comparing permanent traps (like fire and water) to exits in this context feels like comparing apples and oranges. Many triggered trap on the other hand are quite similar.
Should triggered traps allow for direct drop? Arguably that depends on the design of the trap. For example, it makes sense for the ONML rock chameleon to catch lemmings in mid-air. It makes little sense for the 10-ton trap to squish lemmings in mid-air. Even without exits in the mix, you have to make a call which will feel weird for some traps (unless you want to introduce different trap types, which would be a whole new rabbit hole...).

I just saw the updated Pipe Dream in Simon's stream, I think this makes for a really good second level now!

More generally I think out early level progression isn't ideal. Historically we just had a bunch of introductory levels people made which I put in order.

I think in an ideal setting, we would map out a desired learning progression (what are the skills, etc, including reinforcement), and then have a sequence of levels that realize it. If we go by modern puzzle game design, this progression would probably cover at least a full rank, slowly introducing concepts (e.g. skills) and reinforcing them sufficiently along the way, keeping players hooked with interspersed simple puzzles combining the concepts they are already familiar with.

Thanks for playing! Notes on your solutions:

Day Care Center:

Spoiler

Intended, in particular the early jumper. The thing I find fidgety is having to bridge the miner tunnel with a platformer, especially while the miner is still at work and may destroy the bridge. It'd be nice to change that, but I'm too afraid to give a builder (or walker). I believe once you realize the goal (delay the second climber as much as possible), you can't overshoot (i.e. have the climber arrive too late) at least, right?

Undercut:

Spoiler

Close to intended. The 1 px ledge is actually only meant to break the deadly fall from the hatch, and you don't assign a miner there in my solution, so my solution is a bit harder probably but I'm not sure yet whether it bothers me enough to fix it.

Cellar Dwellers:

Spoiler

My intended solution is different, but it's needlessly complicated and harder to execute. I don't know if I want to enforce it or just downrank the level.

Construction Site Conundrum:

Spoiler

Funnily enough, I found this level in my WIP folder, but I believe I didn't have a recording for it, so I wasn't sure if it was solvable. The solution I found is the same as yours. I thought of moving it to the trashy folder, but I think it's unintutive but not hard to pull off, so maybe I keep it.

Btw, if you have suggestions for re-ranking levels, I wasn't confident in my original ordering so I'm happy to shuffle things around a bit.

I just caught up on the stream, most solutions are intended.

In Steady Supply, I'm less efficient at the very beginning (needing 3 bridges), that's why you have one left over. I don't see it as a problem though.

This Level Socks: It's meant to be a bit open-ended. This mirrors one of the solutions I found, with the spare skill.

Lab Map and Missing cubes exactly intended.

The Climber Predicament & The Floater Predicament: I don't actually remember what the intended solutions are, given they are contest levels from a long time ago. I re-solved them recently, but I need to dig deeper to see if I can find some older replays. Either way, it shouldn't be possible to solve both maps the same way, so I'll need to take a closer look at some point.

If you look at Lemmings 2 DOS version, you'll see there's a levels folder with one file for each of the 120 levels plus the 4 practice levels. After decompressing these files, you can read the level layout of each (as documented in the file format description).