CE 1.1.2

During play, in the panel at the bottom of the screen, above the skills:

Number of lemmings turns red when it's not sufficient for winning. Okay.

Clock turns red at arbitrary time (1 minute? 15 seconds?) and turns purple when it's not sufficient for winning. Instead, ditch the arbitrary threshold. On different maps, different thresholds will feel like too short anyway. Consistently use red for insufficiency.

Save requirement is printed in blue? Blue makes it hard to read; the digits 5, 6, 8 look similar. And the blue makes the panel look more colorful than necessary. This removes the meaning of other colors. Practically every number is now a funky color at whim.

Clock is yellow when it is a time limit. Okay, we must pay attention. And it matches the yellow hourglass. (As said, don't put a blue save requirement; it makes the yellow blend in, the yellow becomes yet another irrelevant color next to the blue.)

Lemming count is yellow when there are neutral lemmings. Why is this important? Why do we have to pay attention? I would understand it becoming yellow when there are only neutral lemmings left.

Lemming count also becomes cyan in some cases? When and why?

-- Simon

CE 1.1.2
NL 12.14

After playing one level, NL displays the postview screen. It tells you:

Lemmings saved in your recent attempt
Lemmings saved in your record
Time taken in your recent attempt
Time taken in your record
Skills used in your record

It should also tell you the number of skills assigned in your recent attempt.

-- Simon

CE 1.1.2

This is a minor typesetting bug. All presented information itself is correct.

Go to a preview screen of a level that has exactly 1 regular lemming and exactly 1 zombie. It will say: "1 lemmings, 1 zombies".

The issues here are:

• Both "lemmings" and "zombies" should be singular. This is usually excusable ("found 1 files" is fine for me) but NL already has code to handle singular/plural in this line. For example, NL will say "1 lemming" when the zombie is missing. It's a bug proper.
• The words "lemming"/"lemmings"/"zombie"/"zombies" should all be title-cased, i.e., the first letter should be capitalized. Everything else on the screen looks like it has proper title case.

The exact rules for title case can vary. I believe I use: Capitalize the first letter of every word unless the word satisfies all of the following: It's a preposition/article/some other niche type, it's not the first word of the phrase, it has 4 or fewer letters. If you're unsure, ask Proxima. Or ask me, but I'd have to find a style guide first.

Neutral lemmings can also appear here; the same fixes should apply to neutrals.

Proxima and I decree title case important! Lest our monocles plunge into our champagne classes, splashing our tailcoats.

-- Simon

CE 1.1.1

This is serious data loss.

Here is a typical settings dir from vanilla NL 12 or from NL-CE 1.0.x:

NL/settings/hotkeys.ini
NL/settings/settings.ini
NL/settings/styletimes.ini
NL/settings/userdata.nxsv

Now:

• Have such an already-set-up NL or CE 1.0.x.
  
• Extract CE 1.1.1 over the existing directory structure.
  
• Run CE 1.1.1's executable.
  
• CE 1.1.1 detects a missing ./settings/NLCESettings.ini.
  
• CE thinks that you're a new user, and shows the following dialog.
  
• In the dialog, CE lies about existence of ./settings/settings.ini.
  
• On OK, CE overwrites all of your custom hotkey bindings with one of its 3 premade sets.
  

Step 7 is the data loss. It arose from splitting CE settings from vanilla NL settings. I have several NL trees and, after that loss, could copy an old hotkey file into CE 1.1.1 as a workaround. Not everybody will have that.

I believe that CE should import from settings.ini when CE can't find a NLCESettings.ini. It should consider you an old user when either exists, and a new user when both files are absent.

Ignore the lie in step 6 until you've designed such an import. Presumably, in step 6, you want to print both filenames here. You'll show the dialog less often than now; you'll only show it when both files are missing.

-- Simon

CE 1.1.1

There is the option to hide background tiles. This hides non-animated background, but it still shows animated background. There seems to be no way to hide animated decorations.

Please let me hide the animated decorations!

With the CE 1.1.1 set of options, I would have expected the hide-backgrounds option to also hide the unanimated decorations. Reasoning: Either we want to see the level exactly how the designer made it, or we want the bare-bones functionality.

I don't know if anybody wants to see one kind animated/unanimated background, but not the other. Maybe it's better as a separate option, even if it's more clutter and more work for the user?

Maybe reword the options to Show Backgrounds and activate by default, instead of Hide Backgrounds and disabled by default. It's the classic preference to word bool options positively: I want backgrounds, check, I don't want backgrounds, uncheck.

-- Simon

CE 1.1.1

This works:

• Have a level without preview text, but with missing tiles.
  
• Go to its preview screen. The level image contains some checkered question marks.
  
• Attempt to start the level.
  
• NL asks you: Missing tiles, do you want to download the tiles?
  
• Click: Yes.
  
• NL downloads the tiles.
  
• We're back in the preview screen, and the level previews normally.
  

This is a bug:

• Have a level with preview text, but with missing tiles.
  
• Go to its preview screen. The level image contains some checkered question marks.
  
• Attempt to start the level.
  
• NL proceeds to the separate screen that prints the preview text without the level preview image. We can read the custom text.
  
• Click again.
  
• We're playing the level and see lots of checkerboarded question marks instead of the terrain.
  

Expected instead: After step 3 of the failure, NL prompts us to download the missing tiles. You can download the tiles reasonably around step 3, 4, 5, but definitely before step 6 of the failure.

Throughout all this, I have activated the online features in the options.

Example level with preview text and downloadable tiles is Re-Enlistment by Giga. It's in the Level of the Year 2025 pack.

-- Simon

Hi,

Lemmings is wonderful and we should all play more. I'll livestream the Level of the Year 2025 nominations (download the levels) and try to solve them live. I believe that every single level will be new for me.

The first stream was on Friday, June 5, 2026. The second stream was on Sunday, 7th of June, 2026. The third stream was on Wed June 10. The fourth stream was Sunday, June 21. The fifth stream was July 1st.

https://www.twitch.tv/simonnaar

During the steams, join chat and help solve the levels. Share your ideas. Be a smarty-pants! If you already know the solution, join chat nonetheless -- merely give others a chance to sink teeth into the level. Later, you can give pointers or spoil it outright.

If you join chat and you're one of the level authors, I'll prioritize your levels.

-- Simon

It's possible to get Lix via Flatpak.

I recommend a native install over using Flatpak. That is: On Windows, you should download my releases of Lix for 64-bit Windows. On Linux, you should install Lix via your normal package manager, or build it from source yourself. Flatpak Lix works on all operating systems, but in late 2025, Flatpak Lix is outdated: It's only Lix 0.10.30 instead of the current Lix 0.10.32. Reason: On Github, the D toolchain for Flatpak is outdated, the builds for Flatpak happen with a 4-year-old D compiler, which is too old.

But! If you use Flatpak, you should know where your Lix directories are. Or, if somebody else uses Flatpak, I should know where he has his directories, for helping and troubleshooting.

Flatpak on Linux:

ReadOnly:	~/.local/share/flatpak/app/com.lixgame.Lix/x86_64/stable/ someHexChecksum/files/share/lix/levels/
Writeable:	~/.var/app/com.lixgame.Lix/data/lix/replays/

Flatpak on Windows:
I don't know, nobody has used it there yet.

-- Simon

In the early 2010's, I made a Lix smiley:

Then NaOH made one in 2015:

Then Mindless made a lot of Lix smileys based on it. They are all very nice, thank you!

Then we added all of them without weeding, why not, but they're too many now. It's better to put only a few of them directly on the post form. Makes the post editor load faster, and makes it easier to pick anything else that you need more often. Gives room for new smileys.

By gut feeling (I'd have to think before I could argue), I've kept on the post form:



And I've moved these to the MORE popup:



All of them still work, both in old posts and in new posts.

-- Simon

The following smileys used to be in the MORE popup. They are now hidden.



:compat-143: :compat-147: :compat-147-148: :compat-148: :compat-dual: :compat-new:



:compat-no: :compat-semi: :compat-ver-10-11: :compat-ver-10-12: :compat-ver-10-13: :compat-yes:

Hiding smileys means:

• Text replacement for them still works. Wherever a post author has typed the smiley's :code:, the post will still render with the image instead of the :code:.
  
• They still work even in new posts.
  
• But you shouldn't use them in new posts.
  

Reason for hiding these: namida hasn't used or maintained NL 10 or older NL in years. NL 11 and NL 12 don't rely on these smileys. These years, namida discourages format breakage in NL that would necessitate such smileys.

-- Simon

CE 1.0.1
NL 12.14

During Insert Mode between physics updates N and N+1, when you insert a skill assignment to lemming A that will affect physics update N+1: First erase the future of A in the replay (erase all assignments to A at N+1, N+2, N+3, ...), then assign to A.

This will fix two problems at once:

• The garbage will be automatically deleted. In existing NL, the player must now either go to the replay editor to delete the garbage by hand, or, worse, let it clutter the replay and hope.
  
• You naturally allow same-frame-same-lemming overwriting. CE 1.0.1 blocks same-frame-same-lemming, which is the most annoying type of failed assignment because the intention is clear.
  

If you're concerned about losing data, we can talk. The hunch is that you shouldn't worry, but I'm happy to be convinced otherwise.

Armani and I have already argued for this in Improve same-frame assignment behaviour in Replay Insert mode, which is now closed. That thread, anyway, became more about the sound for failed assignments and whether to advance physics on failed assignment.

-- Simon

NL-CE 1.0.1

The replay editor (what I call tweaker in Lix) sometimes prints some lines in blue (rather than black). I didn't find explanation anywhere in the program about what that blue means.

Ideas:

• Introduce a new column for this the information. You can still keep the blue if you want.
  
• Write static explanatory text in the tweaker.
  
• Ditch the information altogether?
  

It feels unsettling without at least one of these.

---

Speculation: It means that the assignment entered the replay during insert mode.

The support for this is the weak connection by color to the blue R in the panel. The meaning of the blue R is similarly mysterious, the program conveys information only by color without explanation. At least, the blue R had the connection to the hotkey that you mapped yourself by functionality name and then pressed.

If I'm right and a blue line really means that this assignment was added during insert mode: I draw moderate benefit from of it. Over half the replay ends up blue in complicated levels. After entering insert mode, I stay in insert mode all the time until I have to click air to cut. At least it gives some random structure to the list for finding assignments by eye.

If you stay in insert mode and fast-forward physics past the end of the replay, then assign more skills, these new assignments are still blue, even though you couldn't see the blue R in the panel.

-- Simon

Testers: crispweed (author), geoo, Simon, cobayeshimaru (presumably from crispweed's Discord group).

crispweed's game 0.0.4, received via PM.

Collection of loose ideas, to be split into topics when an idea gets traction.

Distribution:

• Please choose a name for your project! It's hard to call it "crispweed's game". geoo has begun to call it "client", you probably don't want that to stick. I put it into a directory "crisp", which is better but you should still consider if you want that to stick. If you choose a long name, people will abbreviate it. If you stay around and choose no name, I'll be tempted to call the game "Crisp", which isn't searchable, but it's clear at least to me.
  
• Sleep over whether you want to open-source it. There is no need to rush the decision.
  
• Store releases in a public place, then you don't have to upload it several times (e.g, as a PM attachment).
  
• My preferred way to get it would be either to fetch the source from a public git repository and build it myself, or to download binary releases from your public place.
  
• You told me in chat that you're fine with livestreaming (of such playtesting sessions) or with redistributing your binaries (e.g., for troubleshooting). That's helpful to know already.
  

Networking:

• It's smooth, there is no noticeable lag. I wasn't sure whether it's from a good lag-combatting algorithm or whether it's because we're all from Europe (France and Germany).
  
• Game freezes occasionally by design until all everybody's lag-spikes have clearerd. Felt fine, it hasn't been worrisome so far.
  
• There are two classic ways around the lag: Input delay (Starcraft, Clones) and recomputation of history (Lix). Clones's input delay became problematic when geoo and I in Germany played with the Clones devs in Canada. See me on Clones and geoo on Clones: "in the current implementation, the lag affects the assigning player with every single assignment. With the alternative, it only affects the other player when he happens to be watching the morph assignment in this precise moment, poised to react, which is a less frequent occurrence." And L++ was the precursor of Lix.
  
• The Online Players tab miscounts players, you already know about that.
  
• Confusing screen after play: You have two lists, one for players who haven't returned from game to lobby, and another for players who have. It looks like half the players have dropped from the networking altogether. As long as player X is in the room, X should appear on the visible list.
  

Physics:

• The rectangles (lemmings) get stuck in seemingly-traversible terrain. We estimate that your walker ascension height is too strict. Consider: Lemmings-1 lemmings ascend 6 pixels, Lemmings-2-the-Tribes lemmings ascend 4 pixels. Lix ascend 12 pixels but in hi-res, it's equivalent to Lemmings-1 ascension. Clones was overly strict, see geoo's Lend a Helping Hand remix.
  
• Long tunnelling is expensive because bashers/diggers run out of power after X pixels, and need reassignment to continue. That can be desired or a design bug, you decide. As it is, we, as players, plan the route to tunnel where the terrain is thin.
  
• Reassignment is hard. Reassign too early, and you shorten your reach. Reassign too late, then the lemming will have turned, and you waste an entire skill and opportunity (you can't re-turn him forward). If you're sure about running out of power (like builders do in L1 after 12 bricks), consider shrugging.
  
• Builders don't hit their heads, only their feet. That's refreshingly lenient. Makes it easier to get out of nasty holes or nooks. I have a soft spot for your choice. The builder's head bonk in Lemmings 1 is the design oddity here, not your feet-only collision.
  
• Absolute time timit is a simple and clear way to end stalemates. I like it. I expect that there will be problems with it eventually, but everything else is more complicated.
  
• Allow resignation in matches between exactly 2 players/teams.
  
• Free-for-all games have no straightforward resignation without unbalancing play. That's a design problem for later.
  
• Avoid physics options. It makes level design hard when the level author can't control how his level will behave.
  
• Avoid pushing too many design choices to players. If you must, then also pick really good standards, so the players can still avoid design work. Usually for a given multiplayer level, there is one good set of options (how many diggers, what spawn interval, ...) and players will play that setting over and over.
  

UI:

• Please add hotkeys for skills, and make them remappable. geoo and I play Lix with one hand on the keyboard (accessing ~20 hotkeys) and one hand on the mouse.
  
• I forgot that directional select was still on, and missed some assignments.
  
• geoo and I remember that we weren't able to assign because the selection rectangle didn't appear even though the mouse was near a lemming. But I didn't catch this on video: geoo didn't record, and my instance was earlier this week.
  
• Middle mouse button is hard to press. It's hard for me to scroll. Instead, I zoom out and hope.
  
• Map the scrolling also to the right mouse button by default. Better, make it also remappable.
  
• I don't see bridge holes when I zoom out. But you can consider this a physics bug, not a visibility bug, and make your bridges thicker.
  
• On the contrary, I see bridge holes where there are none, because the zoom will hide the tiny white bricks.
  
• I forgot on which team I am, and, once, what color I play.
  

-- Simon

crispweed's game 0.0.1, I received binaries via PM.

Running client.exe in Wine 10.12 on Arch Linux. Arch is a rolling-release distribution and has no particular versions. Steps:

• Extract archive into new directory. I have client.exe, entry.png, ..., all in same directory.
  
• I copied the credential file 'credentials.bin' (received via PM) into the same directory.
  
• $ wine client.exe
  
• Client starts without problems. It presents a graphical window titled "SDL3 application" and asks me to enter my name.
  
• I type "Simon" without quotes, with this exact capitalization, into the blue text entry box.
  
• I press Enter.
  

After 0.2 seconds, the same window tells me: "Fatal Error: Client version not accepted by Server, please update your client."

Expected instead: Probably access to the lobby? Something else than version mismatch. I've used client 0.0.1 to which you've linked me via PM earlier today. My internet connection is up.

But at least, yes, it looks like SDL 3 Windows binaries will run well in Wine.

-- Simon

• Start composing a private message to another forumer here.
  
• Attach a file: Click Browse, pick a file from disk, and wait for it to have uploaded successfully.
  
• Click Preview.
  
• Click Preview a second time.
  
• Click Preview a third time.

Expected: The attachment is still ready to be sent. It should be listed below the composed message text, and its checkbox (where you pick which attachments you want to send) should be checked.

Observed instead: The attachment is gone.

• In the first preview (= after step 3), it's ready to be sent, as expected.
  
• In the second preview (= after step 4), it's still listed, but its checkbox is off. This unchecking is the bug, because we won't send an unchecked attachment.
  
• In the third preview, the attachment isn't even listed anymore under the text. And again we won't send the attachment now. This is technically correct because step 4 unchecked the attachment.

Now I had to send a second PM and look like a dunce who announces attachments and then fails to attach them. :-P I compose bottom up: Attach first, then type the text, then type the subject line, then add the recipients. It's near-impossible to forget it this way, and I investigated and found this repro. Happy Simon.

-- Simon

CE 1.0.1
NL 12.14

Clear Physics Mode shows the silhouettes of all gadgets in rotating colors. There is a global timer, and the color of the silhouettes is that timer modulo N in the circle of fully-saturated colors (red, orange, yellow, ..., cyan, pink, red).

Enough with that! I use Clear Physics Mode when details matter, and I don't want this distracting color clashing.

In 1.0.1 Clear Physics Mode, lemmings are dark-blue (0, 0, FF). Instead, make lemmings medium-blue (80, 80, FF). That's easier to see than dark blue (this alone will be an improvement!) and it will remain sufficiently different from the cyan athletes (0, FF, FF).

Now you can make gadgets dark green (0, 80, 0) and you won't step on any toes.

Pick other colors than what I propose, I'm happy to try other choices.

-- Simon

CE 1.0.1
NL 12.14 and other versions from years ago.
Wine 10.6

• Play any level.
• Fast-forward 5 minutes.
• Press and hold the 1-physics-update-rewind hotkey.
• During this rewinding,
  
  • start to right-click scroll (press and hold),
  • or zoom with the wheel (rotate several notches),
  • or select skills by hotkey.

Observed for right-click scrolling:

• You have a 50 % chance that the starting click for hold-to-scroll fails. If this click fails, the subsequent holding also fails, guaranteed. You have to release right mouse button and re-click-and-hold.
  
• Rewinding continues correctly, it doesn't depend on the scrolling's failure or success.
  

Observed for zooming with the wheel:

• For each of the mouse wheel notches individually, you have a 50 % chance that it will fail.
  
• Rewinding continues correctly, it doesn't depend on the zoom's failure or success.
  

Observed for skill selection by hotkey:

• The skill has a 50 % chance to get selected.
  
• Rewinding stops. It doesn't depend on the skill selection's failure or success; it always stops.
  

Expected: Rewinding always continues, and the second input always succeeds.

The 50 % probability is on small levels: Automaton Maintenance, or Save Our Souls. On big, laggy levels, the probability of failing increases. I fail to right-click scroll with 70 % or 80 % on Space Program 10,000 BC.

The probability of failure increases during in-game times such as x:x9, x:x8, x:x7. It's lower immediately after an internal 10-second savestate around x:x1, x:x2.

-- Simon

---

For the record only: WillLem's first reply (= reply #1) was for my old and wrong report:

Quote from: Simon

• Start a level.
• If it's a small level, zoom in until you can scroll.
• Scroll with the hold-to-scroll feature. E.g., map this to the right mouse button in NL's options, then scroll by holding the right mouse button.
• While you hold-to-scroll, press a skill hotkey to select a different skill.

Observed: You have a ~50 % chance to select the new skill. Otherwise, the skill key has no effect and the old skill remains selected. (The hold-to-scroll will always continue to scroll correctly, whether the new skill selects or not.)

Expected instead: The new skill gets selected for certain. (And the hold-to-scroll will always continue to scroll.)

NL 12.14 on Ubuntu in Wine 10.0
CE 1.0.1 on Arch Linux in Wine 10.6

The splat ruler lags the entire engine as long as it's active.

Repro:

• Play different levels in NeoLemmix for 2 hours. (I believe? Some preparatory step here is necessary because I can't repro it here on a fresh program run. Or do I have to screenrecord NL? I doubt it.)
  
• Play Turrican's level Space Program 10,000 BC v1.01, it's attached. It's large and it contains many special tiles. The file alone is 400 KB.
  
• Scroll around (with right-click scrolling) to get a feel for performance without the splat ruler.
  
• Tap the key for the splat ruler.
  
• Scroll around (with right-click scrolling) to get a feel for performance with the splat ruler.
  

CE froze for several seconds. If I hold (not merely tap) the key for the splat ruler in step 4, CE froze for 10 seconds, then stuttered at 1 frame per second. It was severe in my livestream from 2025-05-28:

Video: Splat ruler freezes CE for 5-10 seconds (70 seconds long, 4.4 MB)

NL/CE return to regular performance (= less lag) after we release the key. And if we play more/different levels afterward, the ruler doesn't dent the performance anymore there, even after it had dented performance on Space Program 10,000 BC.

Backgrounds on/off seems to make no difference. Can't test again now because step 1 is hard to guess/repro. So strange that it doesen't reproduce immediately after a fresh game run. So hard to guess what's going on internally ... it's such lag, and only on Turrican's level. And why do other levels run fine afterward even with the ruler?

Quote from: Guigui on June 02, 2025, 11:43:07 PMon my machine, the ruler is a bit laggy. When I press the key it appears correctly, but it stutters when I try to move it accross the screen. To move it, I better make it disappear, then reappear again elsewhere, not very handy.
Is it just me (running NeoLemmix on Ubuntu + Wine) or all NeoLemmix users ?

-- Simon

Players don't remember the exact rules of overtime and nuke. People ask why the overtime doesn't start, or why the nuke doesn't work. I'll treat these questions as bug reports against the nuke/overtime design.

In 0.10, if you nuke, you lose all remaining skills immediately, and overtime starts once you have 1 or more points. This is too complicated. The original design goal in 2010 was (a) to prevent people from nuking before anybody can score, and (b) to challenge other players to beat your score. Yes, the 0.10 nuke solves this, but pays too high a complexity cost (it has too much if-then).

In a 4v4 team game (of 2 teams), if the newbie nukes on your team, all players on that team lose their skills. That must become impossible. The obvious answer -- changing the nuke button into a majority vote, i.e., more than 50 % of the players on your team must push nuke for the nuke to activate -- would pile even more if-then rules onto the existing unrememberable nuking system. We can do better.

But the whole nuke-overtime system is a hard design problem to solve.

I'm contemplating to ditch the loss of skills altogether when you press nuke. Your nuke still triggers overtime, but you keep your skills and continue playing. In 0.10, it's strange that the loss of skills doesn't always go hand-in-hand with the start of overtime: When you nuke and have 0 points, you lose the skills, but overtime doesn't start.

It feels correct to keep the nuke as a game element. It allows you to force the remaining players to bring an almost-over game to a timely conclusion. I don't want to ditch it altogether.

None of this solves the confusing overtime, i.e., when exactly the overtime starts. This is still too confusing to explain to new players. The first hunch is to start overtime immediately when somebody scores 1 point from his own lix (to prevent accidental triggering by others who start near your exit), but that, again, wouldn't be elegant to explain. I have no good answer.

-- Simon

School quiz! This is about the rules of multiplayer Lix. Consider a 4-team game, with teams red, yellow, green, blue. A red lix enters an exit.

Question 1: The exit shows the team colors of red and yellow. Who gets points for the red lix?

Question 2: The exit shows the team colors of green and blue. Who gets points for the red lix?

Question 3: Is Simon happy about this? Why?

Question 4: What design do you think he will propose instead?

Question 5: Why is wrong to implement the design that you think Simon will propose, and what should he implement instead?

Answers to Q1 and Q2

Exit has red and yellow, red lix enters: The red team gets 1 point. The other teams (yellow, green, blue) get nothing.

Exit has green and blue, red lix enters: The green team gets 1 point, and the blue team gets 1 point, too. The other teams (red, yellow) get nothing.

Questions 3-5 don't get a spoiler immediately. I will eventually write down my ideas. But I'd rather not stir the pot before I've seen other people's opinions. There will be no failing grade here; everybody who answers will pass the course.

-- Simon