Considering how much use we've already gotten out of the Lemmings 2-Skills Thread, in this thread, I'm doing the same hypothetical consideration for the Worms games. Given that Lemmings and Worms belonged to the same company, Team 17 (perhaps, both still do?), the parallels seem obvious: Both games deal with small, easily expendable animal creatures.

I'm only referring to the 2D Worms games here (Worms Armageddon, Worms World Party etc. - the latter of which had a non-zero influence on inspiring both Lemmings World Tour, as the name shows, and a select few levels in my earlier packs).

The main limitation here is that, with these being weapons first and foremost, and skills second, a lot of these are basically only variations of the Bomber / Grenader: Their main purpose is to create craters and/or kill enemy Worms (in SuperLemmix, that would be Zombies). However, a few of these are also utility skills, and/or do indeed have the main function of being constructive of destructive skills.



Let's get going!



Bazooka - We've considered it for SuperLemmix already, as a ranged Batter. The discussion is still ongoing.

Mortar - It sucks in Lemmings 2, it also sucks in Worms! The main difference is that it breaks down into smaller projectiles on impact; I'll discuss the potential utility of that further down below.

Homing Missile / Homing Pigeon / Patsy's Magic Bullet - A homing weapon might be more powerful than the Grenader; in fact, also potentially overpowered. Most importantly, though, I don't see how to make this work without an extra click, like the Archer, Roper etc. require it in Lemmings 2: The Tribes.

Sheep / Sheep Launcher / Super Sheep / Aqua Sheep - Launches an explosive animal that either walks, or flies through the air, or can be steered with the arrow keys - much like the Super Lemming can be steered with the mouse. Where the Super Lemming only moves a lemming around, though, this would essentially be a grenade that can be moved around the same way as the Super Lemming (assuming we wouldn't want to bring the arrow keys into the game, since they are already occupied for the purpose of directional lemming selection). An Aqua Sheep is a Super Sheep that can also be steered through water. If applied to a Super Lemming, that would mean he could also fly through water if he happened to be a Swimmer, too.

Grenade - We already have this one in SuperLemmix! The only difference is that it has a fuse / countdown in Worms, rather than exploding immediately on impact.

Cluster Bomb / Banana Bomb / Super Banana Bomb / Salvation Army / Priceless Ming Vase - These are grenades that explode into further splinters, which then in turn do further damage / create further craters. While the Banana Bomb is pretty powerful in Worms, I don't see how this could be implemented in Lemmings - at least not without creating an overly complex skill shadow that also predicts where the shrapnel is going to land.



Battle Axe - Cuts a Worm's health points in half. Not useful in Lemmings, since Lemmings don't have HP.

Earthquake - Shakes the ground so that enemy lemmings (=Zombies) might fall off cliffs and splat, go into water etc. Would only work with tumbler physics, i.e., perhaps in Lix, but not in NeoLemmix / SuperLemmix.

Shotgun / Handgun / Uzi / Minigun - We've discussed this idea, but it would basically only serve the exclusive purpose of killing Zombies - which several other skills can do as a side-effect by now.

Longbow - Would be equivalent to the Archer from Lemmings 2; I think we've already ruled this out because of the double-click requirement.

Fire Punch / Dragon Ball - This is a skill I recall proposing in the "joke skill ideas" thread, where a lemming would jump upward, carve out a little path through a ceiling, but could also punch and kill a Zombie in the process. The Dragon Ball, meanwhile, is a projectile that flies in a perfectly horizontal manner. In contrast to the shotgun, this Dragon Ball is large enough that you could reasonably assume it would also damage terrain.

Kamikaze - Another skill I brought up in the "joke skills" thread: The Worm / Lemming goes in a straight line at a fast speed, even across gaps, creating a tunnel in the process, and exploding at the end. Basically a Runner-Basher that ends in a Bomber, but can't fall down along the way.

Suicide Bomber - Identical to the Lemmings Bomber, except it poisons the Worms around it, so that they slowly start losing health. "Poison" in SuperLemmix means "turn into Zombies", so that would be pretty useless.



Prod / Baseball Bat - Both are ways to shove Worms / Lemmings off a cliff, except the Baseball Bat of course has a much longer range. We're already discussing the Lix Batter for SuperLemmix, so this is basically the same thing.

Dynamite / Mine - You can set these somewhere and run away before they explode. Like the non-lethal Bomber in Lemmings 2. Since Lemmings aren't damaged by grenades, and you can drop grenades right in front of a wall, we basically already have this. Also, I think one graphic set literally uses the Worms Mine sprite as an exit button instead. I've turned that into a joke on my Paralems level "Funny little red buttons", where I placed such buttons and one-use traps side by side.

Mole Bomb / Mole Squadron - These are Bashers / Miners / Diggers turned into projectiles (and the Mole Strike features several of them): You can throw them, they start tunneling, and once they get out of the tunnel, the next time they hit terrain, they explode. That latter part would be optional for Lemmings purposes, I'd say.

Air Strike / Napalm Strike / Mail Strike / Mine Strike / Carpet Bomb / Sheep Strike: All of these are basically just salvos of various objects that drop from the sky at the point where the player clicks in the landscape, create craters of varying sizes, killing enemy Worms (=Zombies) in the process. Too unpredictable for Lemmings - and probably also too powerful for any "kill all Zombies" level. Again, since Lemmings don't have health points, a single "damage" would be enough to take a given Zombie out. Also, since the player has to click where the strike hits, this would fall into the same exclusion criteria as the Archer, Roper etc.

Blow Torch - Now this is where it gets interesting! I once proposed this in the joke-skills thread as a tool that could go through steel (and ONLY through steel). In Worms, it's Basher, Miner, and Fencer in one, because it carves tunnels while the player can steer the worm with the arrow keys. We wouldn't have any need for the latter (it would be too overpowered). But a skill that has the dedicated purpose of going through steel might at least be an idea worth entertaining.

Pneumatic Drill - Worms' version of the Digger, except it also does damage to enemies. I don't think we need a Digger that happens to also kill Zombies. We are still considering a drill as one potential tool an upward Digger could have, though the discussion currently seems to favour a propeller?

Girder / Girder Starter Pack - Worms' version of the Builder / Platformer, which can be rotated freely and placed anywhere in the level manually by the player. No need for this, we already have these functions in Lemmings, it just works slightly differently.



Ninja Rope - A very versatile tool a Worm can use to swing around the level. I once proposed a Rope Slinger as a joke skill, which would be essentially like an inverted Pole Vaulter from Lemmings 2: A lemming could attach a rope to a ceiling (e.g., one that's not Shimmier friendly), or even just a single point of terrain (Spider-Man style) to swing across a gap, or swing up a certain height, with the latter being more like the Pole Vaulter.

Bungee - Another thing I once proposed as a one-time-use Floater, to get a lemming down safely, without turning this into a permanent skill that immediately solves all later splat falls, too. The lemming could also jump off the Bungee rope, and then hold on to walls or ceilings as a Climber / Slider / Shimmier etc.

Parachute - Works the same way in Worms as in Lemmings 2: The Tribes, except in Worms, there is wind, which can't be controlled by the player, in contrast to the fan in Lemmings 2. No need for this, we have the Floater, Glider, and Slider.

Teleport - We have teleporters in Lemmings; this would be the same thing as a skill. Again, it would require clicking twice. And in Lemmings, it seems pretty overpowered. In Worms, it's counterbalanced by the fact that the game is turn-based, and teleporting immediately ends your turn.

Scales of Justice - Evens the score of the total health points of both teams. Not applicable in Lemmings, as again, Lemmings don't have HP.



Flame Thrower - In Worms, the flames do damage to other Worms. The Flame Thrower in Lemmings 2 just creates one crater somewhat similar to the Grenader at a close distance. I think we've already concluded that this would be too narrow to add any incremental utility.

Holy Hand Grenade - Basically what happens when you combine the Grenader with the "Nuclear Bombers" gimmick from NeoLemmix 1.43: The crater gets much bigger. Hallelujah!

MB Bomb - Just a big a** bomb that slowly floats down from the sky and moves with the wind.

Petrol Bomb - Explodes and creates flames. I did once entertain the potential use of creating fire object trigger areas with a skill, in order to create an obstacle for Zombies to walk into (or for regular lemmings to walk into in those corner cases where these lemmings would mess up the puzzle solution otherwise). Still, almost certainly too fringe.

Skunk - Poisons enemies, then explodes. In Lemmings, poisoning enemies, i.e., Zombies, is pretty pointless, since poisoning is precisely what turns lemmings into Zombies in the first place.

Mad Cows / Old Woman - Pretty similar to the Sheep / Salvation Army weapons, no additional utility here.



Concrete Donkey - One of the most powerful weapons in Worms, this is a Digger that works at a distance: It falls from the sky and removes terrain in a vertically downward manner until it reaches the bottom of the level (where there is usually water in Worms levels). All enemies in that area take a bunch of damage, and unless they're thrown out of the area by the repeated impacts, they'll probably end up drowning / falling out of the level at the end.

Indian Nuclear Test - This is the "Rising Water" gimmick as a skill: It quickly raises the water level by 120 pixels within just one turn. Could be used to turn water areas into lifts for Swimmers, and/or to kill Zombies, and/or to free Blockers / Freezers that are also Swimmers (see my Lemmicks level "Here comes the flood"). It also poisons all Worms so that they start losing health points (not applicable).

Armageddon - No, this is not synonymous with the nuke: A bunch of meteors fall from the sky, creating a bunch of craters in the process and doing a whole lot of damage. Too erratic for Lemmings.



Surrender - THIS, in contrast, is indeed synonymous with the nuke. Worms actually do explode when they die, too. I'm just not sure if they also die when you surrender, or if they just wave the white flag. Technically, it's closer to just pressing Escape.

Skip Go - Skips your turn. Not applicable in Lemmings.

Select Worm - Allows you to select a different Worm on your team. Not necessary in Lemmings, since we can always freely select lemmings (except for Neutrals and Zombies, of course).

Freeze - Freezes Worms in ice cubes. Guess what, SuperLemmix already has this in the Freezer!




In short, I'd say it's mainly the tools that are interesting to Lemmings, more so than the weapons:

- Freezer (already exists)
- Grenader (already exists)
- Baseball Bat / Batter (being discussed)
- Rope Slinger? (swing across gaps / inverted Pole Vaulter)
- Bungee? (one-use floater)
- Blow Torch? (go through steel)
- Concrete Donkey? (Digger at a distance)
- Mole? (Basher / Miner as a projectile)
- Teleport as a skill? (probably too powerful)
- Kamikaze? (Runner-Basher that explodes at the end)

Speaking of rewinding: I find it really odd (if not to say "annoying", "frustrating") that every replay automatically cancels when rewinding. In NeoLemmix, it only cancels when clicking. Also, there's the write replay feature (when the R icon turns blue) that allows to add skill assignments to a replay without cancelling the rest of it.

While I can understand that these features may go against the "more execution difficulty" philosophy of SuperLemmix from a player's perspective, these tools are also useful for a level designer.

• For example, I've just watched someone else's replay to one of my levels, and at one point I thought: "Wait, what did he just do there?" So I rewinded - and immediately cancelled the replay in the process. All I could do was reload the replay and watch the entire thing from the start again.
• Replay writing / editing is also useful while designing a level, to quickly test out different variations. Rather than having to go through the individual skill assignments countless times, just because you've changed one little thing. Luckily, it's still possible to save manual replays (by pressing "S" instead of "U", as it used to be the case in NeoLemmix). However, these manually saved replays of course also still get cancelled when rewinding. So you still have to redo a good portion of the solution a bunch of times, while all you're trying to assess is, e.g., the placement of a certain object.

Perhaps this is just something about my settings in the SuperLemmix player that I am yet unaware of? Or were some of these features actually removed, and deliberately so?

One of the "tricks" or uses that I keep overlooking consistently is whenever the Blocker is used to just "park" a lemming somewhere - rather than to actually hold back or turn around any other lemmings. Instead, it's supposed to only delay or detain this one particular lemming.

I only recall having used this once, on a level from Lemmicks, to facilitate timing by placing a worker lemming in one very specific spot, and locking him there until something else happens.

Much like the Builder has a separate state (Shrugger), I'd coin this application as "the Stander".

To me, this is a dedicated use, separate from more standard Blocker applications.
It seems even less intuitive to me than abusing a Shimmier as a Jumper (for height gain) or Walker (for skill cancellation).

Even when you do spot the potential for such an application, the challenge of freeing the Blocker again later still remains.
But I often don't even think of using the Blocker this way. If I remember correctly, at least original Lemmings never required this.
Perhaps it's a requirement on some ONML levels (I don't recall those nearly as well).



But it may be something that only became popular with the skill shadows, framestepping and rewinding features of NeoLemmix.
Nepster Lems requires this trick quite frequently, though, and that pack is available for SuperLemmini, too.

The point is that using a Blocker as a "Stander" is something you would only do if that lemming MUST be saved at a later point in time.
(Unless you're making him stand in order to run into a trap together with some other lemming later, in order to "overload" the trigger, but that's a corner case.)
In other words: Every "Stander" must be freed at some point.

And that can only be done reliably in engines with features like NeoLemmix / SuperLemmix etc.
In original Lemmings, even just timing and placing a single Miner correctly, such as on "Postcard from Lemmingland" or "No added colours or lemmings", can already be quite a challenge.
And aside from Walkers (which many custom levels don't provide), the most common way to free a Blocker probably involves a Miner.
Bashers and Diggers, meanwhile, require more setup to be used for freeing a Blocker.



It's quite surprising to me that I often overlook this , despite being aware of other, more obscure Blocker tricks (such as cancelling a Digger with a Blocker, or turning around a Basher by making one of the lemmings walking past a Blocker, without either of them remaining a Blocker for more than 1 frame).

The teleporter sound for the L2 Space teleporter suddenly seems to have gone missing as of the latest RC version (RC3).

Other teleporters (such as the one from orig_marble) continue to play their sounds as expected.

This is an issue that I think was dealt with a while ago, but now it looks like it's popped up again (current stable editor version 1.35):

When you open a level containing pickup skills that have their skill count set to more than 1, while those are displayed correctly in the player, the editor resets those to 1 per pickup-skill object.

Something that's easy to overlook until you notice your replay has broken for seemingly no apparent reason.

Hi everyone,

I'm getting the attached error message when I try to open my level "Holy Mountains" from Lemmings World Tour in the editor. No idea what it means.

I've updated the editor again to make sure I have the latest version, yet the error still occurs. The player meanwhile (latest stable version, not the Release Candidate yet) can run the level without any problems.

The level mainly uses one of GigaLem's Freedom Planet tilesets as well as the Sonic Angelisland tileset. The level itself is also attached.

Any ideas what might be causing this? I've edited the New-Formats version of this level before, so it definitely shouldn't have anything to do with missing or mis-named tilesets anymore. The conversion of Lemmings World Tour for New Formats has been out for a while now, after all, and it functioned perfectly fine, IchoTolot completed it long ago.

(Translation of the German parts: "Assertion error: Cancel = Quit, Repeat = Debug, Ignore = Continue --> referring to the buttons available at the bottom)

To start off, let me wax poetic about Lemmings Migration again, which is still one of my favourite packs to this date (yes, despite it only featuring classic skills, and that's saying something, coming from me! ). And for a while, I couldn't quite figure out why. Sure, it had great puzzles, but a lot of other packs do as well. Yes, the levels where smaller, which is not as annoying as having to navigate huge landscapes on the majority of levels of a given pack. And yes, the levels looked pretty colour-wise, without depicting anything specific (as in Arty's SubLems or Gronkling's new "Rodents", for comparison). So what was it that made this pack feel so cohesive to me?

And then, while watching kaywhyn's recent LP of it, I realised: I only uses a few different tilesets!
However, at the same time, it doesn't just take the easy route and stick to the original ones either. Instead, it uses a clever mix of original, ONML, and custom tilesets that all form a nice sequence of levels.


First of all, in my view, this gives the two tilesets by namida used so frequently throughout the pack loads of "street credibility", because they are just thrown into this mix of original DMA tilesets, and yet they feel like they've always been part of that group. This is different from the Lemmings Plus Series, for which they were originally created, because in that context, namida always made a couple of tilesets for one given pack and then only used those tilesets throughout. But of course, especially the earlier ones looked a lot more "rough" than original DMA tilesets, and therefore probably wouldn't have blended with them nicely if a DMA and an early namida tileset had followed each other back-to-back in two consecutive levels.

But the much more important discovery for me is here that giving your pack this a-priori limitation of "I'm only going to use these tilesets" can establish the structure and visual identity of your pack much more strongly than using a bunch of different tilesets in a seemingly random mix, as many of the larger packs do (Lemmings United, SEB Lems, my own Lemmings World Tour etc.). Those huge beasts can be pretty overwhelming, and it's easy to perceive them as chaotic if you as the player don't happen to get certain references that make the logic of why those packs are structured the way they are more apparent to you.

There are a few packs for which I've noticed this tileset-restricted design strategy - Lemmings Migration is just the best example for me. But I also remember e.g. SQRon's Snack Pack mainly sticking to ONML tilesets. Of course, as said earlier, there are the Lemmings Plus packs, each of which has a unique visual identity because each of them has its own group of tilesets. That strategy is just a little "all or nothing", because the styles were new every time, and since they're all that appear in a given Lemmings Plus pack, either the player likes them, or he/she does not.

I wouldn't really consider packs that only use original DMA tilesets (i.e. from classic Lemmings and ONML) part of this group, since a lot of them were created when no other tilesets were available yet. Meaning, the selection of tilesets to be used for the pack as a whole wasn't necessarily chosen by the pack author. By the same token, I wouldn't count Lemmings 2: The Tribes inspired packs either, like Nepster's "Return of the Tribes" or my upcoming "Lemmings: Hall of Fame", since the L2-inspiration pre-dictates what tilesets you can use (unless you want to create all new tribes of your own).

That said, there don't seem to be that many L2-inspired packs yet, and only using those tilesets exclusively will therefore still give your pack a strong and easily recognisable visual identity. Which is kind of the point of using this strategy.

Since LOA only uses classic and ONML tilesets (plus two of my own, not custom tilesets by others that I deliberately selected as my "chosen few"), and Lemmings: Hall of Fame "made that choice for me", I would argue that I personally have never actually used this strategy consciously yet. But now that I've become aware of it, I'm all the more eager to try it out myself!


I don't think Lemmings Universe, which is my idea of an astronomy-themed pack that got an overwhelming amount of support when I recently put my various ideas up for a poll, will be the right place to try this approach, though. Instead, that pack might become somewhat of a "Lemmings Space Tour", with levels trying to emulate the geology of other planets as much as possible in a visually convincing way. Meaning: Most likely by employing tileset mixing.

In contrast, I think it's safe to say that tileset mixing should be used very sparingly with the approach presented here! Why? Because it blurrs the pack's visual identity - and also that of the individual tilesets - blending them into one. Any piece can now appear on any given level, irrespective of what style it is officially part of.

Naturally, when you're aware of that, you can use this to your advantage, too: For instance, namida has already pointed out that Lemmings 3D doesn't really "think" in graphic sets; you have the different menu screens to establish the "styles" (and the two types of music for each style), but the pieces themselves can be shared between styles much more liberally. (Especially with the Army and the Golf tileset, I often have difficulties which piece is part of what.)


Finally, note that a top-down restriction, given our vast pool of different tilesets, will always feel somewhat artifical at this point.
The original DMA designers didn't have this problem; they were probably in a situation much more akin to namida when making Lemmings Plus: Design a couple new graphic sets, then make a new pack using those exclusively: None of the orig tilesets re-appeared in ONML, for example.

Now however, if we artificially limit ourselves to a specific selection of our favourite tilesets for a given pack, it would make sense to "justify" this in-game with a theme that has these restrictions as well.

Think back to the Lemmings 2: The Tribes example: Anything that involves established factions, tribes, people groups etc., anything that is split up into a few, vastly different looking regions - such themes will probably benefit from an a-priori tileset selection.



The first example that popped up in my mind was indeed to make a pack based upon the Lego Bionicle franchise, settled on an island with six different climate zones linked to the elements (which are the "standard" elements Fire, Water, Earth, and Air, but Stone and Ice are added to that and treated as if they had always been part of that group - everything in the Bionicle Universe comes in sixes, basically). Then you would have "Light" and "Shadow" as less common elements on top of that. And just like that, one could easily create a "Lemmings of Mata Nui" pack following the philosophy presented here with a consistent visual identity.

Alternatively, the "Lemmings: The Gathering" approach (which was one of the candidates in the poll that was won by Lemmings Universe) would also work, with Magic: The Gathering's five colours of mana, and/or with certain colour combinations (either the 10 two-coloured ones or the 10 three-coloured ones) being represented by different tilesets.

For Lemmings Universe, it would only work e.g. within the confines of our own solar system (as I briefly outlined in the poll thread already): One tileset per planet, and then, anytime that tileset re-appears, you know where you are again. But while we do have a Martian tileset, a Tree tileset for Earth, and a Rock tileset for e.g. the Moon or the Asteroid Belt, it's hard to make four visually distinct graphic sets that are all supposed to represent gas giants.

Don't worry, I still want to and I'm still going to do Lemmings Universe - I'm just genuinely intrigued by this approach now and feel like I want to try it.