Got around to finishing Version 4

I reverted the (dumb) layout change to Sweet 1/Sour 1 and simply altered the skillset for Sour 1. I also altered the terrain of Sweet 3/Sour 2 and changed the skillset and other properties quite a bit for Sour 2, so hopefully it's a little more backroute-resistant now. I also simply made the backroute the intended solution on Sour 4. I appreciate everyone's kind words about the pack a whole lot, so thank you. 

My apologies for the bitterness, that was uncalled for I need to learn to step back from the keyboard for a bit when I get frustrated.

I appreciate the kind words from you both. And Guigui, that is indeed essentially the intended solution for Sour 2. Thank you SO MUCH for your suggestions, genuinely. I'll be sure to try them out tomorrow and see what works.

Very few of the updated solutions are intended, but almost none are worth patching out. Sour 2 in particular feels impossible to ever be fully fixed, as it will always be possible for some precise lemming spacing to cheese the level (and might even be everyone's first thing to try no matter what), even if I make the save requirement as strict as possible. Kinda sucks because I thought the intended solution was clever, and if this level were in the original game that precise lemming spacing wouldn't even matter, but it is what it is, and it's not worth touching the level ever again.

Sour 4 is the exception. It might take a while, but I think I can make it work, we'll see.

Finally got around to backroute fixes and other little tweaks.

Affected levels:
Sour 2 / Sweet 3 (a single steel plate )
Sour 4 / Sweet 5 (RR increase)
Sour 5 / Sweet 2 (major design change, Sour 5 solution change)
Sour 6 (design tweaks, solution overhaul)

Nice to hear from you, JawaJuice Really glad you enjoyed the pack. You sure had some fancy solutions A lot of your solutions weren't exactly intended, but they usually involved some precise timing that I'm not expecting most players to shoot for. If that expectation turns out to be foolish, then I'll actually try to fix it. Your only true backroutes were Sour 5 and Sour 6. I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do with Sour 5, but I have ideas for Sour 6.

Guigui, I really appreciate your feedback on individual levels, so thank you so much for that.

My responses

Sweet 2: Yeah, this level is definitely the most gimmick-y level of the pack, essentially just making sure the player internalizes the fact that they can lose half their lemmings, since you almost never are forced to lose so many.

Sweet 3: Saving the Basher is perfectly acceptable; in fact it better prepares you for the intended solution to this level's repeat.

Sweet 4: Indeed, the Builders are the only real skill crunch here, nicely done!

Sweet 6: The solution is intended, and the resemblance to the mobile Lemmings game is indeed intentional, nicely spotted! I play the game occasionally and thought this level would be a fun nod to it.

Sour 2: Not quite intended, the finicky timing is not at all necessary The easiest thing to do is compress the crowd after building across the first two gaps (taking advantage of being able to lose 10 lemmings) then find a way to separate one lemming from the bunch after getting past the traps. Not sure how or if I'm gonna enforce that though.

Sour 3: Glad you really liked this one! I think it's the level I'm most proud of. I think I did a good job recreating the feel of an actual ONML level with this one... aside from it having a slow RR and being taller than 160 px, both of which are required to make the level work at all.

Sour 4: Oops! I made the save requirement too lenient. You still got the core of the solution though. Shouldn't be too hard to fix.

Sour 5: I think I'm just gonna have to leave this level open-ended.

Sour 6: Indeed another backroute; I think my idea for JawaJuice's backroute will stop yours as well.

Didn't expect Sweet 5 to be so tricky, whoops

Here's a hint for you Guigui

Sweet 5 Hint

You can't get over the tall column right before the goal with the skills available, so you'll have to go through it If you're still stumped let me know

Really happy to hear you enjoyed the other levels! You are very welcome to post your replays here I already found a backroute in Sour 5 right after posting the pack (because of course I did) and will likely leave it as is, so I'm hoping you found the same backroute

edit by kaywhyn: Removed the V3 attachments in order to tidy that section up so that only the latest version is available for download and hence eliminates confusion



After a few months of intermittent work, my first ever fully original level pack is complete.

It's very small, consisting of only 12 levels (with only 8 unique layouts) split across 2 ranks. It also features a barebones "special" level (with an accompanying special style containing the necessary objects), music from various Lemmings versions, and an additional music track composed by me for the final level.

It should be a relatively quick and easy completion for most players, but hopefully it's enjoyable nonetheless.


Sweet 3 "Long road to nowhere" / Sour 2


Sweet 5 / Sour 4 "The Ball Pit"

Below are multiple downloads of the level pack. ALL of them contain the levels themselves and the special style, so if you want the music, you only need to download ONE of these ZIP files. Regardless of which one you choose, it must be unzipped into the main NeoLemmix folder.

This download contains no custom music.
SweetNSourV4_CoreOnly.zip (123 KiB)

This download contains the two music tracks that are NOT alternate versions of default music.
SweetNSourV4_SpecialMusicOnly.zip (9.45 MiB)

This download contains all the music tracks.
SweetNSourV4_FullMusic.zip (21.4 MiB)

Have fun!

Changelog

03 DEC 2025: Version 4 release. Reverted Sweet 1; updated Sour 1, Sour 2/Sweet 3, and Sour 4.

26 NOV 2025: Version 3 release. Updated Sweet 1 and Sour 1.

09 NOV 2025: Version 2 release. Updated Sour 2/Sweet 3, Sour 4/Sweet 5, Sour 5/Sweet 2, and Sour 6.

30 OCT 2025: Initial release.

Played through the whole pack in a few days (didn't have the energy to record, sorry!) and just wanted to say these were some lovely levels, even if I may have janked my way through a couple of them.

Your level construction reminds me of Sunsoft's levels for the Super Nintendo and Mega Drive/Genesis, which, if you're not sure, is absolutely a compliment.

A conversion of the first ten levels of each tribe in The Lemmings Chronicles to NeoLemmix, complete with reworked solutions and brand new titles.




The level pack is attached to this post, and the music can be downloaded here. The music used is CD-ROM soundtrack of The Lemmings Chronicles, with the Shadow and Egyptian tribes each getting an additional music track from different versions of Lemmings 2 so that each tribe has 3 tracks. Enjoy!

The CD-ROM image is available on archive.org along with a pre-packaged playable version. The only way to view the intro sequence as intended is to mount the disc image as its own drive within DOSBox with the IMGMOUNT command. For example:
IMGMOUNT D "C:\the full path to the CUE/ISO file" -t iso

At that point, you do not install the game to the C drive in DOSBox, but you play it directly from the disc image, making sure to run either L3CD.EXE or L3CDGUS.EXE depending on whether you prefer SoundBlaster or Gravis UltraSound audio for the intro (and whether you have GUS enabled in your config file.)

Unfortunately, I can't seem to get the intro music or game sound effects working no matter what my DOSBox audio set up is, no matter which executable I run, and no matter which fork I use. Will update when I figure out a way to get that working. I have not tested the pre-packaged version yet; perhaps it works just fine.

I won't delete the thread then; thank you both for the support I'm tidying up the original demo pack and it should be released in the next few days.

Bumping this topic to let everyone know the pack is cancelled. If it's acceptable to do so, I want to post the demo version as a standalone pack, making sure to change some text and whatnot. Once that's done, this topic will be deleted.

V1.4 has been approved on RHDN! https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7748/

This version includes the classic "Let's go!" speech sample that we all know and love, without requiring any increase in the size of the ROM! I'm really proud of that, honestly; it took a clever trick to make work. There's some slight bug fixes and QoL improvements as well! The PAL-optimized patch has been updated appropriately as well and is still included in the .ZIP file.

Nice to see this game get brought up here. I have a LOT of things to say about it, a lot of mixed feelings, a lot of things to like, a lot of things to not like (in fact, I'm planning to make a video essay about it like the J2ME games now that it's available on the Microsoft Store... for some reason). I won't wear you all out with every thought I have, but I'm happy to share some of what keeps me playing (and my biggest specific gripes), as someone who's been playing it on-and-off for a couple years by now.

I don't mind the Energy system too much; it is an artificial limit to playtime, sure, but I like how it incentivizes solving levels efficiently even without fixed skill counts. It opens up more options for solving a given level, allowing the player to reason out which one(s) will minimize energy use or minimize the risk of lemming death. Also, the game introduces new skills (yes really!) the more you play. Sadly only 2 out of 5 of them are available without having to pay, but they are mostly interesting and have different energy costs to consider. The most surprising thing about them to me is that NONE of them originate from L1 or are boring variations of L1 skills! We have tile-based equivalents of L2 skills in a modern Lemmings game!

The "Challenge" levels introduced each season are a fun way to break up a monotonous world; the goal is not to solve them efficiently but simply to get all your Lemmings out alive, as using skills does not cost you energy in these levels. Sometimes you do get a pathetically easy one, but most of the time you have to really think through your route and/or be very careful when navigating. You only get a limited number of attempts at playing these levels--not in the sense that there is an absolute maximum number of chances throughout a season, just that chances are hard to come by--so the pressure is on. Even more fun than the Challenge levels though are the Mayhem levels, which are previous seasons' Challenge levels with different additional rules. Some rules are annoying (random portals, gross) but among these are a simple time limit and a STRICT energy cap (independent of your main-game energy) which feels VERY classic and I quite like it. The energy capped levels are some of the most fun times I have playing this game.

All ads are indeed optional now, which is super nice. Most of the prompts you see between are only asking you to watch an ad for extra Energy or Lemmings, which I'm fine with. Admittedly, I'm not above watching an extra ad here and there to extend my playtime or to get through an annoying world faster, especially considering most (but not all!) levels are procedurally generated...

Speaking of which, here's my biggest problem with the game as it is. It's not THAT most levels are procedurally generated that's the problem; it's a necessity to make a game structured in this way work. What bothers me is how the few hand-crafted levels are distributed across the game. Almost always, you KNOW when you get one, as they tend to have unique terrain layouts and are sometimes even genuinely really clever puzzles. These really serve to break up the monotony of some of the worlds; it's always a pleasant surprise to see one. The problem is that when you start the game, you barely get any of them for a long time. And I mean a LONG time.

The first 4 worlds of the game each have a fair amount of hand-crafted levels. They're pretty unremarkable, but they're designed to ease the player in, because that's just good game design. After that, there are a few tutorial levels to show off a couple new mechanics and a couple "hand-crafted" levels that only exist because the procedurally generated levels they replaced were accidentally impossible to complete; they're procedurally generated levels with, like, one or two troublesome blocks removed. Aside from those unremarkable exceptions, the player goes through. NINETY. FOUR. WORLDS. Before seeing a SINGLE hand-crafted level. That is several months of your life assuming you're playing pretty frequently. That is a LOT of time for people to decide that the game is boring and never touch it again. I've managed to make it out of that drought, and from what I've heard the newest worlds they've added have TONS of well-made handcrafted levels. That's good that they're focusing more on those now, but it will take me LITERAL YEARS to get there. For most people, that time investment just isn't worth it.

Regardless, I do have fun with the game and think there's a lot to like about it. It's definitely flawed in a lot of ways, but it's not soulless.

Quote from: GigaLem on October 12, 2023, 01:30:42 AM

Quote from: The Tomato Watcher on October 11, 2023, 12:19:59 AM

Quote from: GigaLem on October 10, 2023, 03:02:17 AM
I noticed Super Nintendo Lemmings isn't on the list

Yeah, I didn't feel like including soundpacks from versions that exclusively (or almost exclusively) just reuse the original samples at different pitches and audio fidelity. If there's interest in that, however, I'll go back and make those

Wouldn't hurt to have, even if you can't have the ascending task bar

There's also some sound differences of the PC Engine version

I never replied to this, but I did in fact take your suggestion into consideration! So... I now have sound effects from every official version of the game in this folder, with only a couple exceptions:

• Toshiba J-3100 - as of today, it only exists as a collector's item and is unplayable by the general public.
• Game Gear - it technically has different sounds than the Master System version, but they are just glitched versions of the same sounds, and recording the Master System sounds was annoying enough.
• Windows - it would be pointless
• Any version of the game whose sounds are literally exactly identical to another version's (e.g. Acorn Archimedes, PS2, etc.)