nice; I think you have; but if you haven't played a randomizer before they are SUPER fun

for the record: I have no interest at the present moment to convert my pack(s) (Mobilems 1&2) to the new format.

I hereby allow anyone who wishes/able to update this pack themselves, you have my permission. You may even edit the levels/add stuff if you want (though if you do that I demand you put your name on it also )

Almost forgot: Actually if anyone really does decide to do this; please contact me first because I actually started converting but never finished.

Recently had a few interesting (well maybe not that interesting but memorable) ones.

I was on a boat on a river; possibly in autumn, in a rural place. Another boat was ahead of us on the river and this other boat was either our enemy somehow or being captained by some evil man whom I could hear talking as if in my head.* He said something about a plan to thwart us. I don't know why we were fighting in the first place; but anyway I saw the boat ahead swerve a few times and spill something shimmering like seeds or something into the water, then continue ahead. The water remained shimmering. I got a freighting feeling. Then as we approached the area I could clearly see the water boiling. I became very scared and somehow knew this meant we were in trouble. As the water was boiling I felt myself spiraling around down to the water; the boat now was gone and I was alone floating or flying.
Then I don't remember if immediately next or if other events occurred that I don't remember but I heard the evil captain (speaking in a high pitched voice and laughing insanely) now speaking of some new plan and saying "I wouldn't want to be in that river now!" I was still scared yet I was no longer in the river. I was in a building of some kind; a long hallway, fairly well lit, perhaps partially outside. The walls were white, or maybe metal. There was a large tall cylinder thing like a silo and four men came out of a door on it and huddled around it like they were sort of hiding or something, some looked around the corner. They were looking away from me and I don't think they saw me. I believed one of them was the captain.
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These were very brief because they occurred while I was dozing off and out after pressing the "snooze" button...

Woopie Goldberg and me was inside a large strange feeling green walled room with doors. She was talking (like from her 80's standup, so not like you're probably thinking of her) and opened a door to look inside.
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I was watching a car from a distance high above barrel down a highway and go down an enormous hill. It was going so fast it got air born then flew down the hill flying above the road. I was very scared; as if I was inside the car even though I wasn't from my visual view; yet I felt like I was in it. I was terrified and felt like I was flying at high speed. Eventually the car touched back down to the ground.

*I mentioned long ago that I often hear voices coming from inside my head in my dreams and only recently; I attribute this to listening to talk shows all day at work with headphones.

Three people so far expressed interest; (SQRon, Nessy me and 607) so if all play we have four [the limit for one game]. But if you're interested there still may be room if someone quits early.

How about a game of UCH this Sunday June 2 around 18:00 UTC?

Hard-binding Esc is conceivable, I have no opinion on this.

Removing dir select buttons: Careful. What you remove from the UI, the new player will not try. People will not read manuals. Level designers get crazy about making their own skill tutorials (unnecessary, skills are in the panel, tutorial pack exist for skill subtleties that level designers can miss anyway) but haven't/won't make directional select tutorials (with good reason, it's the job of the engine to explain it). Also people won't play tutorials; people play packs, and not every pack has that; if every pack had that, people would skip it. Lix has tooltips for dir select whenever two opposing lixes are under the cursor, but I haven't user-tested those tooltips.

Splat ruler should get a button?

I feel it important to point out that people have been using the directional select literally years (it first existed in the windows port? so 1996ish) before it ever gotten buttons on the skill panel in NL. Again I point out that many games nowadays features so-called hotkeys and no buttons. Pressing keys without any kind of visual button the screen is very common.

Tooltips is an excellent device for new players. I usually find them very helpful in any game/program.

Since everybody is in disagreement over the skill panel maybe making the whole game size bigger as namida suggests in the best solution.

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another idea on 'removing' a button is to place the release rate change function up to overtop of entrances (this is how Revolution worked--you left or right clicked the entrances and the number appeared temporarily above it). That would free up one more space.

Then we would need another way to tell the player that wrap is active though.

Sorry but if a player cannot tell the level wraps around... are they dumb? you scroll and it never stops, how long can it take someone to figure out what's going on? When they play for the first time sure, it takes some getting used to like everything but not after that. I never had a problem like this when playing lix. (single or multiplayer).

In any case if this was a feature I'd be okay with (but still not prefer) a rectangle to indicate boundaries but definitely insist this option (in one or any direction).

You can definitely do some interesting things with it, just look at some Lix levels or some from Revolution (bounce around the world, turn on tune in switch on). But I also agree it's not the biggest thing on my list at least that could add fun stuff to the game.