Split off from "Final new skill" topic after reply #28. Please keep all discussion of how the Slider might work in this topic rather than the other one.

This topic is more a "rough throw-around-ideas topic", a more streamlined topic to discuss specifics, akin to the current Jumper topic, will come if / when the decision is made to go with Slider for the 20th skill.

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similarly if multiple very strong candidates come up (they might even interact or complement each other in some way) then adding more than 1 is preferable.

I get that, but I don't think namida has the time or inclination at this point to implement more than 1, all that talk about an impending "final version" makes that clear.

I will say though, it may be worth considering forgoing a 20th skill if it means instead adding some other new non-skill element to the game.

A lot of challenge solutions here for PC/DOS Lemmings are presented in the form of a Lemmix replay file attachment (with extension .lrb).  They are basically like emulator movie files, but based on Lemmix Players, an almost 100% accurate reproduction of the games with all their glitches and quirks.  Here are some quick notes on how to view such solutions, for those who are new to Lemmix.

Part 1: setup and select level

First, download the player EXE for the level in question from this page.  The table on the page details which player EXE contains which levels.  So for example, LemmixPlayer.exe for the original 120 levels of PC DOS Lemmings 1, and LemmixPlayerOhNo.exe for the 100 levels of PC DOS Oh No! More Lemmings.

(Important tip: before you launch the player, note that it runs full-screen.  In order to switch away from the running Lemmix player to some other application like this web browser you are reading this on right now, without having to quit the player, hold down the ALT key and press the TAB key.  This is the Windows hotkey for switching amongst your running applications.  It really doesn't matter which application you switched to, once you switch away from the Lemmix player, the Windows taskbar at the bottom of the screen should become visible again, and you can pick the application to switch to using that taskbar instead.)

The player plays like the actual game and would normally require entering random-looking passwords to go to specific levels.  To bypass that, do the following:

1) On the main menu (the first screen you see when you launch the player), press the F2 key. A password entry screen should appear.
2) Enter with keyboard "CHEATCODES" and press ENTER. At the bottom of the screen, there should now appear something like "Cheatcodes enabled".

You only have to do this once for each player EXE.  The game remembers you've turned on cheat mode (even after you quit and later re-launch the player), so every subsequent time you go into the password screen it will say "cheatcodes enabled" at the bottom, allowing you to do step 3 below.

[Alternatively, you can open the corresponding .ini file (in a text editor) that the EXE creates when it runs, and replace the line "CheatCodesEnabled=0" by "CheatCodesEnabled=1".]

3) Enter with keyboard as a password [rank name][level number], so e.g. "FUN23" or "WICKED7". This directly changes the current level to the one you entered.

Part 2: play level and load replay for level

Once you've entered the level you want, next we start playing the level, and then invoke the "load replay" gameplay feature to play back the replay file you wish to view:

1) Back at the main menu, press the F1 key (or, you can just click anywhere with mouse [left button], even though no mouse cursor is displayed). This will bring you to the preview screen for the level.
2) Click again to start playing the level.
3) Press "L" key.  A standard Windows "open file" window will pop up, use it to browse to the .lrb replay file you wish to view.  Select the file and click OK to load it.
4) The game will instantly restart the level, and will automatically perform skill assignments at the right times to lemmings according to the loaded replay file, as well as automatically making other solution-impacting moves like changing the release rate and nuking, if they were captured in the replay file.  In other words, you are basically watching a movie of the solution captured by the replay file.

Note that some things that are not solution-impacting aren't played back:

• Screen scrolling or jumping--you need to do so yourself in order to view things that would otherwise simply happen offscreen
• Pausing and unpausing of game--if you see the release rate instantly jump from one value to another, or skill assignments taking place very close together in time, most likely the game was actually paused in between by the player when recording the replay.
• Location of the mouse cursor when assigning skills to a lemming--sometimes the cursor must be placed precisely to give the skill to the right lemming, but the mouse cursor position during skill assignments is not displayed in any way during play back

Part 2B: controlling the play back, and exiting the level when done

5) While the game is playing back the replay, you can press either F11 or P to toggle pause and unpause without interrupting the play back.  You can also scroll the screen at will (or jump to a specific part of level via clicking on the mini-map at bottom right) without interrupting the play back.  Do not click anywhere on the level though, or press any of the F1-F12 keys (which would invoke one of the buttons on the skills toolbar), as those actions will instantly stop the play back, and give control back to you the player to continue on with the level.

6) You can also use the following keyboard shortcuts to help you while viewing the play back:

• Press R to restart level.  The replay will still be active so you can jump back to the very beginning of it.
• Press Spacebar to jump forward 10 game seconds.
• Press N to advance time forward by one frame (the smallest unit of time where changes can happen in the level).  This is best used while game is paused.
• Press B to advance time backward by one frame.  Note that the game implements this by actually rewind all the way back to start, and then play everything back as quickly as it can until it reaches one frame before current time.  So it may be more sluggish to make the game step backwards in time compared to forward.
• Press - to advanced time backward by 1 game second.  (Note: only the - key between 0 and =, not the one at the NumPad)
• Press F to toggle between normal and fast-forward mode.  Fast-forward runs the game at 2x normal speed.
• Press S to toggle sound effects on or off and M to toggle music on or off.  You can also change the setting via F3 on the main menu.
• Press ENTER to remember current time, and later press Backspace to seek the playback to that instant of time

7) You can press ESC key at any time to leave the level.  This will bring you to the postview screen for the level, at which point you can press ESC key again to go back to main menu.  You can then go back to same level, or pick a different level via the password entry screen.

8) When you leave the level (even with ESC key), if enough lemmings have reached the exit, the game will automatically move on to the next level.  If you don't want that, you will have to go back to the password screen and type in the level again (ie. see Part 1's step 3 above) to get back to it.

To completely exit the game, press ESC key while on the main menu.

Simplest repro is to play a level that has a saved replay where the first skill assignment is to a right-facing lemming.  Click button on toolbar to turn on left directional-select.  Now load the replay.  Observe that the first skill assignment getting played back fails to actually take hold, because the game seems to be applying the current left-directional-select mode even on replayed skill assignments, and therefore apparently refuses to make that replayed assignment to the lemming facing right.

In addition to save replays, this bug also affects replayed assignments from rewinds as well.

Does priority-inverted selection of lemmings still exist in NeoLemmix?  DOS Lemmings and Lemmix support the "hold right mouse button while click with left button" mode of selection that would basically assign to walkers even when there are high-priority lemmings (eg. those performing skills like building, bashing, etc.) under the mouse cursor.  This does not appear to work in NeoLemmix, and I do not find any mention of such in the hot keys settings UI.

While most of the time lemmings are not positioned at exact same position, so it's often possible to only select the lemming you want via careful positioning of mouse cursor, it's more convenient if the option is available, plus sometimes two lemmings are literally at exact same position, and then the option could become required to assign to the lemming you want.  So does the feature (or at least a different way of achieving the same outcome) still exist?

I haven't really played NeoLemmix until the recent level solving contest, and multiple times I thought I hit some weird bug where the mouse stops detecting lemmings.  Eventually (as in sometime today), it finally dawned on me that I might have had directional select on, and forgot about it after multiple rewinds and trying different things etc.  The mouse cursor looked like it's not detecting the lemming and it seemed like assignments to the lemming didn't work, when in fact it was just that the lemming was in the wrong direction from the forgotten directional mode.

Now that I know what to look for I won't be confused again, but before that when I didn't know what was happening, I wound up restarting the game, which is a little annoying.  If the mouse cursor looks a little different during directional mode (eg. have an arrow at the left/right over the usual crosshair), this confusion would not have occurred.

The surreal heights to which advertisers will go in the name of ad targeting.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/your-phone-is-literally-listening-to-your-tv/416712/

TL;DR:  companies have figured out how to use inaudible (ie. ultrasonic) sounds to establish links between your devices

While looking into Google Translate features I found this (courtesy of Google search of course ).  Funny machine (mis)translations are of course rather old-hat by now, but I have to admit I haven't seen some of the ones listed there:

http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/10-google-translate-fails.html