- The OWW in Redirect Loop can't be bashed from the expected direction, instead acting like steel. This renders the level unsolvable by its intended solution.

- The 2nd spring in Steps to Success causes the lemmings to splat against the cross-beam in the middle of the level. This renders the level unsolvable.

- Changes to the trampoline physics render Breaking the Routine unsolvable. See discord message here for details. Tl;dr Lemmings bounce slightly too high.

- The 3rd bomber in Entanglement is pixel-perfect in Loap, where as there's slightly more of a window in L3D, due to physics differences.

- In L3D you can place blockers directly in front of the exit. In Loap, they exit the level if you try this.

- Several levels have cameras that are stuck in ceilings at the start of the level. Most common on indoor levels like Alilemms and Infinite Lemming Drive, but it can also be seen in That's Right for instance. The camera is also practically unusable in Catacombs.

- On rare occasions, attempting to assign a skill to a lemming will instead assign it to one behind the camera or way off in a different part of the level. It's unclear what causes it (possibly rewinds? Might be a coincidence). When this happens, strange behavior can be observed from the indicator in the bottom left that says what skills the lemming you're hovering over has (such as saying WALKER despite the mouse not being on any lemmings), which suggests that the bug exists in detecting what lemming the mouse is pointing at, rather than the skill assignment itself.

- Loading a replay on the preview screen with L causes the camera to rotate when you start playing the level, as if L was held down, until L is pressed again.

- Rope slides look visually bugged down their length, but otherwise function correctly.

- The pharaoh lemming heads are visible on the flame traps in Firewall, where as they're invisible in L3D.

- Missing sound effect: In L3D, when you reach the save requirement in a level during gameplay, it plays FANFARE from the sound rips. The rip is noticeably faster and high pitched than it is in-game, so I suspect it's played back at half speed.

- Extraneous sound effect: frame stepping forward should be silent instead of playing a sound.

- Not a bug, but playtesting indicates that making it so you can't assign blockers/turners inside of splitter blocks (as in L3D) is probably a good idea, as the currently behavior lets you trivialize certain levels like Spaghetti Junction and 3D A Lemming Odyssey

- Also not a bug, but many in-game cosmetic animations seem to play too fast, such as the wall monitors in Lemlab themed levels and the mud. L3D on DOSBox already seems to play these too fast so it can be misleading, but I'm pretty sure they're meant to be slower.

- Unlike L3D, the engine doesn't seem to tint top and bottom faces, which gives some levels confusing visuals, where walls, deflectors and platforms blend into each other. Firewall is an example. See discord messages starting here for details.

At the request of namida, currently missing SFX as of 0.0.11:

- "Ow" when lemmings splat
- Teleporter sound effect
- Spring sound effect
- Builder placing a brick
- Skill and camera selection sound effects
- HUD sound effects (e.g. turning FF on/off, pause/unpause, changing RR, etc)
- Electrocution sound effect
- Climbers climbing sound
- Thud when a lemming becomes a stunner
- ARMAGEDDON

Will post more as I discover or think of them

It was requested that feedback be split up a little, so here's a new thread for the new update, focused on builders.

I want to commend what I've seen of them so far. I expected builders to be tough to implement, but you've knocked it out of the park already. I did find some quirks, but some of them turned out to be L3D accurate ones. Talked about those on the discord.


- If you quickly assign a builder to a shrugger, they'll place the next tile directly above the last tile from their previous build, resulting in the double step shown here. They should instead walk forward and place the next tile, extending the bridge along the same trajectory.


- As seen in the first pic, building into a ceiling in Loap causes the builder and all subsequent lemmings to get stuck in the ceiling until the top tile is destroyed. In L3D, as shown in the second pic, once a builder is one block away from a ceiling, they will attempt to place the next tile but fail and turn around. A 1 block wide gap is left there and lemmings can freely walk through.


- In the first screenshot, you can assign a lemming to be a blocker after they've placed the next tile but before they step up onto it, creating the situation shown. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I'll note you can't do this in L3D, as trying to assign a blocker at that moment will be met with an "uh uh!". Intended?

- The second screenshot shows that if the edge of a tile is in the middle of a block rather than the edge, assigning the builder as a blocker/turner will cause them to cancel their build and walk off. You can't do this in L3D, as trying to assign a builder that is in the "first half" of a block as a blocker/turner is met with an "uh uh!". I actually like the L3D behavior, because it acts as a failsafe to prevent you from wasting blockers/turners, because eyeballing the exact alignment of a builder can be quite difficult at times. Also, this new behavior may create backroutes, since it's a new and relatively cheap way to cancel a builder early.

Since the source is up, I've been playing around with a bit ahead of the official demo. I intend to do more tomorrow, but I couldn't help doing a little tonight. Time to nitpick!

Performance / Controls

1. Camera rotation seems to be tied to the framerate in some way? When the framerate is extremely high (over 1000 FPS), mouse rotation becomes extremely low sensitivity, where large mouse moves barely cause a rotation, but when I cap the framerate to 120 using the nvidia control panel, the sensitivity feels much more normal. Doesn't seem intended.

2. The game hitches for about an eighth of a second every 2-3 seconds, but inconsistently. I thought maybe it was doing it when it reads and prints the FPS reading to the console, but it doesn't always line up with that. If the camera is moving or rotating during the moment a hitch happens, it 'keeps its momentum' during that moment, causing the camera to suddenly jump. The effect is greatly exaggerated (multiplied?) at high FPSes, causing such hitches and jumps to be extremely noticeable. Hitches can be observed just by waiting on the level selection screen or level preview too, but seem to be much more infrequent compared to active gameplay.

3. Although the game physics are capped at 30 FPS, the rendering isn't, so currently the game maxes out the CPU core or GPU (whichever ends up being the bottleneck on the given system). This is fine currently, particularly since the FPS is useful for assessing performance at this stage, but consider adding an actual Frame cap or Vsync in future for people who don't want the game using unnecessary resources.


Blockers / Turners

4. In L3D, assigning a blocker or turner would cause that lemming to become a blocker/turner at the edge of that block no matter what. Currently in Loap, if you assign the skill in the last quarter or so of the block, they'll keep walking into the next grid square before becoming a blocker/turner. Visually, it looks like you moved the turners away from the block edge, so I suspect this is actually an intended change, but I wanted to make sure? If this change is kept, it might be worth considering if any puzzles are impacted by this (e.g. assigning blocker/turners directly out of a fall from a ledge / builder bridge for instance).

5. Following on from #4, if you assign a Turner to a lemming that is about to fall off a ledge, the lemming will not become a turner (either on the ledge, or after they land) but the Turner skill will still be consumed. This is probably true for Blockers too, but I didn't confirm for sure.

6. Related to #5, if a lemming is between two blockers on the same square (e.g. by assigning a blocker either side of the starting hatch), then Loap lets you attempt to assign the trapped lemming as a blocker and consumes the skill, but they'll never actually become one.

7. In L3D, if two lemmings were bunched up, assigning one of them as a turner while they were in the first half of a grid square (in the direction of travel) would cause the turner to turn the other lemming. This trick is used in LP3D Wafer Walkway, for instance. Currently in Loap this doesn't work - the trailing lemming always ignores the turner and goes through, even if you assign the turner as early as possible, as described in #4.

8. In L3D, two turners on the same grid square pointing the same direction could be used to simulate a blocker, and two pointing into each other would catch and compress the crowd. Neither trick currently works on Loap. Lemmings will turn at the first turner they encounter, and ignore all subsequent turners on the same block, walking through. Turners inside of splitter blocks or immediately adjacent to deflector blocks are ignored in the same way.

9. In L3D I don't think you could 'overlap' a blocker and turner by assigning both to the same edge. Currently you can in Loap, as seen in Attachment 1. I might be misremembering, though.

In making levels, there's many, many times when I've had to stop building, place a few lemmings down and then load the level and try things to see if miner tunnels line up correctly with where I'm expecting them to come up, if builder bridges can reach over gaps I want them to reach over, whether or not lemmings will bonk their head or not while they're building, and so on. It'd really great if there was a way to gauge these sorts of things in the editor without having to load them game up and try them out manually.

So I propose the addition of some rulers to the editor. A splat ruler, a builder ruler, a miner builder, and so on. For the builder bridge, I'm imagining a semi-transparent representation of a completed bridge which you can just move around and line up however you want (either as a fake terrain piece, or bound to the cursor), with some indication of the height at which the builder would bonk their head on the ceiling too, if possible. For a miner, it'd not only show the 2:1 descent, but also the 'width' of the tunnel, so you can gauge how much terrain will be removed. Things like that.

Would there be interest?

While I was reading the topic on the viability of L3D blocks (https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=4513), one that was brought up which showed some potential was ice / slippery blocks. For those unfamiliar, how they work in L3D is when a lemming steps on a slippery block, they slide along the surface in a forward direction until they reach the end of the slippery surface. During this time, they cannot be assigned any skills that would require them to stand still. So while there is outwardly a "wheeeee, sliding on ice~" factor, mechanically what they're mostly used for is to block skill usage when lemmings are standing in certain positions.

What I want to propose is a more general case. Rather than having it be ice or slippery surfaces in particular, I think there is potential in NL including some kind of terrain type, surface, object or field which prevents lemmings from being assigned new skills while they're standing on it, inside it, etc. The main applications include:

* As a puzzle element. A puzzle with an obstacle that would normally be trivial to overcome can be made more difficult or interesting by forcing the player to take a different route. A simple example: a small ledge can be built or fenced up, but if there's an anti-skill surface/field at the base of the ledge, the player will have to find another way (e.g. getting a lemming atop the ledge and mining down).

* As a way to prevent shortcuts, or to cover backroutes. This also provides an alternative that would allow the designer to keep these skills in play while preventing their use at this particular obstacle. Continuing from the above, perhaps the designer really wants to use a fencer in another part of the puzzle, but its presence allows them to shortcut to the exit through a ledge. They could place a surface/field at the base of the ledge that blocks this course of action.

In L3D, ice doesn't prevent the usage of bombers. In fact, some puzzles make use this fact in their intended solutions by having the player bomb to destroy a piece of ice, creating a surface they can use other skills from later. To that end, I'm most strongly in favor of something like how NL's one way walls work, where it's an object field that is visibly applied to terrain. If a lemming is standing on it, their skills are blocked. However, this terrain can still be destroyed (unless it's steel), which means an additional avenue in puzzle designs is having the player find a way to destroy the terrain to restore the usage of their skills in certain places.

Another possibility that the affected surfaces could become unclimeable/unshimmiable. That could be a whole discussion in itself.

What are people's thoughts?

The Krow Files

Greetings everyone~ I've decided I wanted to try my hand at making some levels in NeoLemmix. While I may eventually make a significant level pack of some sort, for now I wanted somewhere I could release the odd level or two, without committing to such a big project. This thread is where those releases will be. Introducing: The Krow Files! Over time, I'll release levels in small groups, usually with the levels in a group following a similar sort of style or being inspired by the same thing. Each group (or "file") will be a category, labelled File A, B, C and so on, expanding casually over time.

I consider the creation and maintenance of these levels to be a learning experience. If you do happen to play the levels, let me know what you think! I'm definitely open to feedback or suggestions, with the goal of improving future levels that I make. I encourage you to provide replays too, since not only will that help me identify and fix any backroutes, but seeing the paths of more experienced players is often a good source of ideas.

The download at the bottom of this post will be for all of the levels and metadata I've released thus far in one big pack. Beneath each heading is the downloads for the levels and solution replays of the individual files.

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File A — First Levels (v1.2)


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The Krow Files Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fitq5psjlt0x2i4/KrowFiles_12.8.zip?dl=1 (includes all of the levels and metadata; extract into NeoLemmix's home directory; tested using v12.8, compatibility with earlier versions is not guaranteed)

Enjoy~