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Messages - WillLem

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1
SuperLemmix / Re: [SLX] Upcoming features | Release schedule
« on: September 24, 2023, 06:34:47 PM »
Topic updated.

I've been concentrating on other things for a little while as I was beginning to experience a bit of burnout with SLX. This seems to have passed now, so I can get things back on track.

Release dates have been updated to reflect this. Thanks for your patience @ those who have been following SLX development so far.

2
General Discussion / [UK MEETUP] Another UK meetup for Autumn/Winter?
« on: September 24, 2023, 06:29:22 PM »
Due to the success of the Summer UK meetup, it seems like a good idea to get another one planned for Autumn/Winter. We can choose somewhere warm and indoors (ideally) but that still provides things to do, places to sit and chat, play board games, etc.

This is just to spark interest, we can decide on details once we know who's interested in attending.

3
Loap / Re: [EDITOR] Creating a Loap version of L3DEdit
« on: September 24, 2023, 06:22:59 PM »
there hasn't been much interest in making L3D custom content so far

It's probably that interest would pick up with the presence of a dedicated and feature-rich Editor that makes the process easy and enjoyable, much like the NL Editor.

4
SuperLemmix / [BUG] Builder shadow doesn't ignore disabled traps
« on: September 17, 2023, 09:51:55 PM »
This topic, basically.

Admin: please merge that one here. Thanks :)

5
Site Discussion / Re: Why this site enter me always off?
« on: September 13, 2023, 02:28:06 PM »
+1 for "Always stay logged in"

Regarding language, please feel free to type posts in your first language, or at least the parts that you're having trouble with in English. Most browsers nowadays have pretty comprehensive language translators.

6
Having given this a few days' thought, and looking at the votes so far, it looks like there isn't much support for removing the minimap so this probably won't happen.

A slight majority of people think that keeping it optional is enough, and I probably agree.

I'll call it here on any outlandish changes to the minimap's general appearance/functionality. If we're keeping it, we'll keep it as it is and switch to monochrome if graphical performance is taking a hit; at the moment, levels above a certain size (1600 wide or 640 high, to be exact) default to monochrome automatically - this seems to be enough to mitigate slowdown on larger levels.

In the meantime, I'll also investigate other ways to grab back a bit of graphical performance, perhaps there's a bottleneck somewhere or a rendering procedure that isn't as efficient as it could be.

7
Or, you could ONLY show the mini-map when paused. This should certainly fix all the issues. Have the map either freeze or completely disappear when unpaused.

This seems like a good idea, anyone have any thoughts about this?

8
What about a fully functional high-res map that only updates if you interact with the mini map? Maybe hovering the cursor over the map will make it update. Or click and hold. If you take the cursor out of that area the map will stay frozen.

Not a bad idea either. I'd probably add to this that, when the minimap is frozen, the lemming dots should disappear to avoid any confusion.

With that said, it has just occurred to me that the level layout will necessarily change when the player has interacted with it (by adding/removing terrain, for instance); this does put something of a spanner in the works regarding a completely non-animated, non-updating map.

So, Floyd's idea seems to solve this problem. But, then we have the issue of a player having to know that interacting with it will update it. Also, information from the minimap being available at a glance is probably a big part of its appeal/functionality.

At this point, the idea of finding something of a compromise between having the minimap and not having the minimap is still tempting, but let's keep in mind that it may end up being preferable/simpler to go completely one way or the other with it.

9
What about changing the mini-map so it's not animated at all. Just the map that highlights your location. No dots to represent all the lemmings movements. ?

This is a great idea since it retains the ability to quickly move around a larger level. It does sacrifice the ability to see where off-screen lemmings are, but this is perhaps a worthwhile compromise which might solve the graphical performance issue without losing the minimap altogether.

This would probably involve rendering the minimap only at the very start of the level, and then using that image thereafter rather than refreshing it every frame. If that's easy enough to achieve and people are generally in favour of keeping the minimap, then this seems like a good option.

I've added this option to the poll.

10
It's been suggested previously, with discussion here and here, but now that SuperLemmix has become quite heavy on the rendering (what with Projectiles, Freezer, Ballooner, Superlemming mode, Rewind, Turbo FF, etc.) it might be time to go ahead and retire the minimap.

As with NeoLemmix, SuperLemmix currently offers the option to deactivate the HQ minimap, instead showing a monochrome rendering of the level (as per most L1 ports). However, SLX also provides an option to deactivate the minimap altogether, in order to shrink the screen horizontally without resizing the rest of the panel. Both options also result in a graphical performance uptick that's most noticeable on larger levels and those with a lot of animated objects.

Particularly, with the minimap deactivated, the improvement to graphical performance is remarkable. And with SLX moving further and further into "Lemmings 2" territory, perhaps culling the minimap is something of a no-brainer to offset the increasing demands on the graphics rendering.


Reasons for:

:lemming: Significantly improved graphical performance

:lemming: More panel space - room for extra skill/function buttons if so desired

:lemming: Screen resizing becomes less problematic

:lemming: Tidies up the interface

:lemming: The ability to zoom in/out and fast-scroll pretty much obsoletes the minimap anyway


Reasons against:

:lemming: The minimap is a traditional Lemmings feature, and goes somewhat hand in hand with "Classic Mode", which aims to present the game as close to the OG as possible

:lemming: The minimap does occasionally come in handy for quickly jumping to another part of the level, and for seeing where lemmings are when they're offscreen

:lemming: It's already optional - maybe this is enough, with players able to decide for themselves whether they'd rather have the traditional L1 display or a graphical performance boost


Another option would be to keep the minimap, but provide the option for it to be toggleable on and off whilst in-game; I'm pretty sure that this is possible. Furthermore, the game could periodically check to see what framerate it's running at, and if it drops below a certain threshold, a popup message could prompt the user to toggle the minimap off in order to gain a performance boost. That way, it's dynamically available depending on whether or not it actually is impacting performance.

Thoughts?



Added a poll.

11
SuperLemmix / Re: [Sug][Editor] Cross Compatible Editor
« on: September 01, 2023, 02:20:07 AM »
For reference, here's a list of the changes that have been made to the SLX Editor (excluding those which deal with SLX-only features).

Most of these changes make a noticeable difference to the overall layout and functionality, which some users may consider to be an improvement:

:lemming: Widened dropdowns for Theme/Style for easier style browsing

:lemming: Widened horizontal and vertical scrollbars for easier access

:lemming: "Auto Screen Start" is no longer checked by default (but its state is remembered when opening a level in the Editor)

:lemming: Selected pieces can be moved horizontally-only and vertically-only by pressing a hotkey whilst dragging with the mouse

:lemming: Alt key is assigned to "custom move", which allows the user to specify a number of pixels by which the selected pieces will be moved when pressing Alt + Arrows (this feature effectively brings back the old "Shift Level" functionality from Editor 1.43, whilst also being useful for individual pieces, multi-selected pieces, and grouped pieces)

:lemming: The Talisman creation dialog now warns the user if no requirements have been set - the Talisman can still be saved with no requirements, but this helps to prevent users unintentionally leaving the requirements blank

:lemming: Moved "Clear Backgrounds" button from the "Globals" tab to the piece selection panel

:lemming: Various other UI tweaks - all popup dialogs (settings, hotkeys, about, etc) now display centre-screen, the About dialog and Validate Level feature now have their own dedicated hotkey combos, menu items have been grouped where possible to reduce clutter, etc.



To address Giga's specific suggestions in the OP:

:lemming: Piece search bar

Would this be something that could search for a piece by name, regardless of which style it's in? If that's the case, this would be great, but I might need a bit of help with implemention; it's by no means a trivial addition.

:lemming: Grid based Piece viewer

Do you mean draw the alignment grid onto the canvas, or something else?

:lemming: Force Lemming type

It's already possible to do this using the "theme" field, simply select whichever style the sprites are associated with (e.g. flopsy_soniclems, gigalem_millas, mantha_ghostbusters, strato_lems_spider-man, willlem_lemminas, etc) - maybe you mean something else?

:lemming: Pop out Stage viewer

Not sure what you mean by this one ???

12
SuperLemmix / Re: [Sug][Editor] Cross Compatible Editor
« on: August 31, 2023, 10:30:35 PM »
This could be done via a bool option in Settings, something like "Show SuperLemmix Features / Show NeoLemmix Features." The preference would be saved and loaded each time the Editor is opened, and would display a platform-relevant layout.

The only caveat is that it would still require 2 separate copies of the Editor; one for each platform, in its relevant folder, and with the relevant setting applied per copy. Otherwise, it would be necessary to switch between the two options on the fly (perhaps not the worst thing - a hotkey could be assigned to do this quickly).



I am, of course, more than happy to apply the various UI tweaks and improvements to the current NeoLemmix Editor, but any such version would exist as an alternative to, rather than a replacement for, the official NeoLemmix version (as per namida's Future of NeoLemmix Development post).

That way, those who decide not to bother with SLX can still benefit from any Editor improvements and upgrades.

13
NeoLemmix Main / Re: Longest custom level?
« on: August 28, 2023, 01:07:40 AM »
Mine is definitely “The Grand Puzzle”, the last level from Lemmings World Tour. Most solutions clock in at around 13-14 minutes.

Just had a go at solving this. From the outset, it looked like my kinda level, but then I realised it provides unusable Bombers (grr!) and, although there are clearly paths that don't require lots of Builders, there are still too few Builders (by my standards) for a level of that size, so I haven't got a solution yet. It's an awesome-looking level with an intriguing concept though, so I'll come back and have another look when I have a bit more time ;P

14
I'm pleased to announce that the Ladderer is now confirmed for inclusion in SuperLemmix 2.6 - we're still ironing out a few kinks in pre-release testing, but it's pretty much good to go! :)

15
Happy to have a session if it helps you dig into the bug.

Mumble: I can make Saturday, 09:00 UTC. (This is in the morning, i.e., it's not 21:00 UTC.) Or I can make Sunday, 09:00 UTC.

Can you perhaps do sometime in the evening during next week? I'll be busy pretty much all weekend and probably won't be able to find any time for programming.

The following weekend would be OK if weekday evenings are no good for you.

Regarding screen sharing, as long as you can see my screen and we can hear each other, that should be good enough. You can direct me as you wish (I should be fairly quick to respond as I'm much more fluent with Delphi/SLX codebase by now).

It's about time we got this one sorted! :thumbsup:

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