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Messages - Strato Incendus

#1
@Gronkling: I've watched your replays for the Bronze rank thus far. No serious backroutes aside from the first Circus level, yet still some things I plan to fix (such as going underneath the airlock traps on "Walking on the moon").

I just wanted to notify you that your replay for "Back to the cave" (Bronze 7) is not functional for me.
At one point, the Basher hits the air, cancels immediately, and every skill assignment after that seems to be off. Did you play this on an older version than NeoLemmix 12.14? Because I'm running it on the release candidate. Perhaps it has something to do with the Fencer hitting steel, because that's where NeoLemmix 12.14 introduces a minor physics fix / consistency update.

Hence, I assume once you update to NeoLemmix 12.14, your replay for Bronze 7 will break for you, too. (As will any other replay that involves a Fencer hitting steel.)
#2
Wrote it from my smartphone, so I guess that's what auto-correct makes of your name...  ;P
#3
Thanks a lot for your replays, Gronkling! :thumbsup: Since kaywhyn was the only one who volunteered to test the whole pack, I guess the first post-release players will find themselves as "field testers". Meaning, I'm not surprised you still discovered some more backroutes.

Sounds like I have a lot of stuff to watch...  :D
#4
SuperLemmix Bugs & Suggestions / Re: [SUG] Rising Water
November 09, 2024, 10:51:00 PM
I see you used my Lemmicks levels as examples. :thumbsup: So I guess it's no surprise I support the reintroduction of rising water!

I assume it wouldn't be a "gimmick" this time, but simply a property that can be specified for water objects, much like their width can be specified already?

Keep in mind the rising-water gimmick also affected fire objects - Lemmicks not-so-subtly hints at this with the level title "The heat is rising...".
Will you extend this functionality to fire objects, too?

For water, there is the obvious puzzle use of using it as lifts for swimmers, which is exactly what the marble level "Need a lift" you showcased here requires. It's also close to the application of water in Lemmings Revolution (though in that game, water only fills up gaps which can be walked across by water lemmings, acting more like a bridge than a genuine lift).
#5
Thanks for the explanation! ;)
#6
Quote from: WillLemI assure you, the difficulty of most of your packs verges on the Extreme! ;P With that said, if you'd prefer to set the difficulty to something else, let me know what you have in mind and I'll by all means edit the OP title accordingly.

This is jkapp's modification of the pack, so I won't tell him how to judge the difficulty of his own modifications. :D That's me assuming it was him who picked the "Extreme" difficulty, not you as the developer of SuperLemmix?

Quote from: WillLemProbably not by the end of this year; I've updated the Release Schedule topic. It'll most likely be sometime mid-2025 that 3.0 gets released; I've put "summer" for now but as the year progresses I'll get a better idea of ETAs.

Thanks for the update! :thumbsup: I'm not in a rush to make a new pack, having just finally released Lemmings Hall of Fame.
That said, this also means it will take a while until I can create an SLX version of Hall of Fame.

This is probably for the best anyway, though, as it allows me to fix whatever backroutes NeoLemmix players might still discover in Hall of Fame, before converting the levels to SuperLemmix, rather than having to patch backroutes that are discovered later in both versions.

Just to clarify, are NeoLemmix 12.13 and 12.14 levels still compatible with SuperLemmix 2.8 (both the player and the editor), in the sense that player and editor can read and open them?
Assuming we haven't used any of the new NeoLemmix objects, such as portals, which SuperLemmix, as far as I can tell, doesn't have (yet)?
#7
Thanks for the exit fixes, WillLem! :thumbsup:

As Flospy has outlined, though, this is not an official conversion of Lemmings World Tour - and I'm kind of surprised to read the difficulty "Extreme" here :evil: (though I haven't looked at all of jkapp's solutions in detail). Extreme to me would imply it's harder than Lemmings Open Air and Lemmings Hall of Fame, which, as the original creator of this pack, I dare to highly doubt. :P

Speaking of, the reason I haven't continued converting Lemmings World Tour for SuperLemmix officially is because you stated that SuperLemmix physics aren't finalised yet. I noticed this with a few of the levels I had made for the SLX equivalent of Lemmings Hall of Fame (i.e., a Lemmings 2: The Tribes-inspired pack) - in between SLX 2.6 and 2.8, a few minor details seem to have been changed, so I had to redo a few of the replays.

I think I recall you stating that you were aiming for a stable version of SuperLemmix, SLX 3.0, by the end of the year. Are we still on course for that? ;) Just asking before I create too many levels, be it revising existing ones or attempting to make a dedicated SuperLemmix pack using the new skills it offers.
#8
Thanks, I guess I'll set my NeoLemmix player up this way in general, then! :thumbsup:
#9
Thanks for your kind words and recommendation, kaywhyn! :thumbsup:

While you had already told me Hall of Fame is even harder than Open Air, the difference wasn't sufficiently tangible for me to buff the difficulty up to "Medium - Extreme". As the design philosophy "based on Lemmings 2" means most levels offer a lot of skills, they also offer many degrees of freedom. It's usually the levels with the tightest skill set that are the most difficult, as they leave no such wiggle room - unless somebody manages to create a level with a large skill set, where still all the skills are accounted for. (Such as Nepster's infamous "Final Frustration".)



Indeed, the level order is more flexible this time, as there is no fixed music rotation - in Lemmings World Tour, back in Old Formats, I still had to set all the tracks manually myself, as relying on the rotation feature would always include all of the Oh No! More Lemmings tracks. Hence, due to the need to manually pick the track for every level file, whenever somebody proposed a level should be moved, a bunch of other levels would have needed to be edited, too, if only to change the track playing on them.

In Lemmings: Hall of Fame, in contrast, the music tracks are tied to the tilesets, just like in Lemmings 2: The Tribes — and, for that matter, in Lemmings 3D.

This means the levels in "Lemmings, Drugs, & Rock 'n Roll", which is inspired by Lemmings 3D, will be just as flexible in terms of level order. (Lemmings, Drugs, & Rock 'n Roll started development around a similar time as Hall of Fame, so I predict its development time will be even longer in total - that pack is still kind of a mess at this point in time.)

In other words, whenever a level changes position, it won't affect the track playing on it - I can simply move its position in the level order. It also won't affect the level name, since those are ordered by their position within the tileset style. Back in my earliest packs (Paralems and Pit Lems), I still included the level position in the file name.



Moving a level position will however affect the players, as the level numbers on replay files from before the change in level order will no longer match. This is why I prefer my replays to be named after the level titles, not the numbers - which happens automatically when playtesting levels in the editor. As for playing levels in the NeoLemmix player, I'm pretty sure there is a way to switch the replay-naming scheme to "level title", rather than "level number", but I don't know how?

In Lemmings Open Air, meanwhile, while the rotation could be specified outside the individual level files, I had deliberately picked the graphic sets in the same order as they appear on original Lemmings (mostly). This is the reason why e.g. Symphony of destruction, arguably the hardest level in LOA, appears as early as it does on the final rank: It was the last possible position a Fire level could appear, based on original Lemmings.
Of course, the final level of LOA is a fire level, too, but this particular level (and song title) was set in stone early, as the climax of the Hardcore rank. Thus, it effectively still substitutes "Rendez-vous at the mountain" in original Lemmings.
#10
After over five years in the making, it is finally done:



Lemmings: Hall of Fame is a NeoLemmix take on Lemmings 2: The Tribes: There are 10 levels for each of the 12 Tribe tilesets. However, the Tribe styles don't remain the same back-to-back, as they do when playing through an entire tribe in Lemmings 2. Rather, just like in classical Lemmings, there are 30 levels for each of the 4 ranks, for a total of 120 levels - just like original Lemmings.

The focus is on those NeoLemmix skills that overlap with Lemmings 2: The Tribes (Jumper, Shimmier, Slider, Laserer, Swimmer, Fencer etc.). Had the Spearer and Grenader made it into NeoLemmix, they would feature on a few levels, too. (There are a couple levels in here which used to feature Spearers and/or Grenaders briefly, during the time in development when they were available.)

There is of course still the option to convert this pack to SuperLemmix, once there is a stable version
- or create a second Hall-of-Fame-style pack for SuperLemmix. Some of the physics already differ quite a lot between NL and SLX (such as Shimmiers being able to turn upward corners and transition to Climbers, which is possible in original Lemmings 2: The Tribes). Thus, some of the Hall-of-Fame levels may end up with new backroutes, or become unsolvable, if they are simply converted to SuperLemmix as they are. One way or another, I definitely want to create Lemmings 2-style levels including the Spearer and Grenader eventually (I already have a few I prepared earlier). While Lemmings 2 didn't have the Grenader per se, the Bazooker or Mortar came somewhat close, and the Spearer of course does exist in Lemmings 2, albeit in a somewhat different fashion.

The music, much like on Lemmings World Tour and Lemmings Open Air, are my self-recorded versions of the Lemmings 2: The Tribes tracks. Most of these are rock versions again, though I did resort to MIDI files for the orchestra pieces (Space and Circus), to make sure the orchestra instruments played all the right notes (which were then once again fed into the Garritan Personal Orchestra 4 VST instruments). The Classic Tribe track is a combination of two of my Lemmings World Tour tracks - the same two that Lemmings 2: The Tribes combines for the Classic Tribe (tracks 02 and 04 from the original rotation). If I ever manage to complete a Lemmings 2-inspired pack for SuperLemmix, you can be sure I will re-use these tracks, the same way Lemmings Open Air re-used the tracks from Lemmings World Tour.

The link can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/774ehjwsqfaiud773oduq/Lemmings-Hall-of-Fame.zip?rlkey=v358v519pb94zeb69jepfn6xa&dl=1


A brief development history
Lemmings: Hall of Fame began development in June 2019; it was delayed multiple times, due to several skills being introduced during development - skills which I definitely wanted to feature in this pack (most notably, the Slider and the Laserer). I also took my time recording the music for it, though most of this was done last year in summer. kaywhyn's testing of the complete pack began in September 2023. Shortly afterwards, however, I moved house, so a bunch of other things had to be organised, only occasionally allowing me to look at tester replays, and fix the levels accordingly.

The final two delays were caused by a) Baldur's Gate III (that's on me  :evil: ) and b) the announcement of NeoLemmix 12.14; I was ready to release the pack for 12.13 when the 12.14 Release Candidate dropped. This brief delay however gave kaywhyn and me the opportunity to thoroughly patch up one particular level on the Gold rank, "Lemplars of steel" - and I think I can speak for both of us when I say the level is better for it now. :D

Finally, I just noticed while creating the level thumbnails that one of the Beach levels still had a black background - they're all supposed to have the blue background from L3 Egyptian, since the Beach levels in Lemmings 2 have a blue background, too. I hope I didn't forget changing the background on any of the Beach levels - if you still catch a black background on one, please report! ;)
Once again, the level titles are all based on song titles, this time songs that somewhat match the mood or topic of the respective tileset.
There are four ranks, ordered by the kind of award your music might earn:
Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum


With all of this out of the way: On to the tribes!

Due to the size of the level images, I put them in a spoiler tag
BEACH

Sunshine Superlem


Lembada

OUTDOOR

Wild frontier


Welcome to the jungle

EGYPTIAN

Can you feel the Lems tonight?


Go down, Moses

CLASSIC

The Well-Lempered Clavier


Lemmings was my first love

CIRCUS

Being for the benefit of Mr. Kite


Blue Monday

MEDIEVAL

Avalon


Ai vis lo lop

HIGHLAND

Highland Lemmy


Bonny Portmore

POLAR

Trapped under ice


Black winter day

SPACE

Ziggy Stardust


Anywhere in the galaxy

SHADOW

Bad moon rising


In the air tonight

CAVELEM

Bright eyes


Back to the cave

SPORTS

Start me up


Another one bites the dust

The pack should be compatible with both NeoLemmix 12.13 (stable) and NeoLemmix 12.14 (Release Candidate).

Many thanks to kaywhyn for the extensive testing (as well as to ericderkovits for early testing).
With that, I can finally once again say: Let the show begin!  8-)
#11
In Development / Re: Lemmings Hall of Fame [COMPLETED]
November 01, 2024, 06:34:14 PM
I just tested my replays for NeoLemmix 12.14 Release Candidate. No breakages except for the level "The monster is loose" on the Platinum rank. My replay here was from 2020, so it's possible the breakage may stem from an earlier change; however, the point in time within the replay when the solution broke was shortly after the completed execution of a Fencer. Hence, I suspect it may be related to the new fix regarding when exactly Fencers should turn around due to hitting steel.

These are the types of "micro-timing" changes that rarely cause a level itself to become unsolvable - they only require solutions to be re-done, since all the following skill assignments will now be off by a few frames.

In other words, because no level broke due to the switch from 12.13 to 12.14 RC, Lemmings: Hall of Fame should be compatible with both versions now.  :thumbsup:
#12
NeoLemmix Main / Re: NeoLemmix V12.14.0-RC Released
October 23, 2024, 09:03:59 PM
Thanks for the info, namida!

Also, thanks to kaywhyn for having already mass-checked your replays for my three major packs. This confirms they levels are all at least still solvable.
Of course, only I have replays for all the intended solutions, so I still have to check if any of those broke. ;)
#13
NeoLemmix Main / Re: NeoLemmix V12.14.0-RC Released
October 20, 2024, 10:51:16 AM
Okay, I didn't expect that one bug report of mine about the Fencer hitting steel to result in a new NeoLemmix version.  :lem-shocked:
I thought we'd simply have to live with the pixel precision of the assignment here (much like assigning a Builder or Miner can result in the lemming turning around or not, depending on a difference of just a few pixels).

I appreciate your commitment to solving this now, and even shifting what I thought would be the final version of NeoLemmix (12.13) to one version later (12.14). :thumbsup:

The Fencer and Shimmier however both feature heavily in my packs - the Fencer changes may even affect Lemmings World Tour - so the mass replay checks may uncover quite a few side effects.

I was planning to release Lemmings Hall of Fame for 12.13 today, but I don't think this makes any sense now, if 12.14 is on the horizon.
#14
Congratulations, @Swerdis, on beating the entire pack! And of course, thanks a lot for your kind words about it.  :thumbsup:

As @kaywhyn pointed out, I still have some things to fix about Lemmings Hall of Fame — not just checking out kaywhyn's new replays, but also fixing my remaining replays that broke due to the shift to NeoLemmix 12.13. I'm more confident about this now, now that I know neither the Shimmier nor the Fencer changed, so that only levels featuring the (new) Slider should be affected by the shift to 12.13, not packs that preceded the introduction of the Slider, like Lemmings Open Air.
#15
Sure, but sometimes such fixes have unintended consequences for other skills, rather than those other skills receiving direct intentional fixes. ;) The Slider fixes could have inadvertently affected the timing of Shimmier and/or Fencer assignment.

The Jumper going through a teleporter didn't crash the game for me so far — I have one level in Lemmings Hall of Fame that requires this, and it has existed for quite a while. Perhaps the crash was dependent on other additional context factors that weren't present in the level in question.