To reproduce: Play the level "Private room available" (Present 29, in Extra Levels). Select digger, and hover over a lemming as he walks along the top platform.

Expected: The skill shadow will vary in height, indicating how far the digger will go before he stops.

Observed: The skill shadow is always the same height.

This is a totally original skill idea that was absolutely not inspired by a different video game! Nonetheless, it's not just a joke suggestion -- I think this could actually work as a Lemmings skill.

The Hookshotter would stop moving and fire a hookshot straight forwards at high speed for a maximum of 64 pixels. The hookshot passes through (or in front of) friendly and neutral lemmings. If the hookshot hits a zombie, it kills it and disappears. If it strikes terrain, it latches on and the lemming becomes a "propeller", being propelled forward at the same high speed. During this phase:

* If the propeller reaches the place where the hookshot landed, the skill is completed and the lemming reverts to a faller or walker, depending on whether there is terrain under its foot.
* If the propeller strikes water or fire, it dies.
* If the propeller strikes terrain (either newly placed, or terrain at foot height that the hookshot travelled over) then it becomes a faller or walker instantly, cancelling the hookshot.
* If the propeller passes through a pick-up skill, it collects it and continues moving.
* Optionally (in the sense that we have an option as designers, not an in-game option!) if the propeller travels through a trap trigger, it sets it off without being killed. This would require all traps to have a new animation for this special case, so I imagine this won't be a popular suggestion, even though it has interesting puzzle potential.

Some optional skill synergies:

* Climber: If the hookshot strikes vertical terrain and the lemming successfully catches it, it can immediately climb the wall.
* Shimmier: If hookshotter is assigned during the reaching phase, it fires the hookshot upwards and can latch onto a ceiling up to 72 pixels from the ground and begin shimmying along it.
* Jumper: If hookshooter is assigned during a jump and before the apex of the jump, it fires the hookshot diagonally forwards and upwards.

Thinking about the recent discussion of nuking and neutrals, I realised there is a problem to be solved concerning the user interface.

At the moment, three values are displayed: (1) lemmings still in hatch; (2) total lemmings alive, including hatch; (3) lemmings saved minus the save requirement.

(3) is unproblematic; and if neutral hatches exist, the purpose of displaying (1) is so the player knows when the last lemming comes out, so clearly the right call is to make this value include neutrals.

The difficulty comes with (2). If it doesn't include neutrals, then you can't compare (2) and (3) to know whether you are in an unwinnable state. If it does include neutrals, then there's nothing in the UI specifying the number of active lemmings available, and in particular, nothing that points out when you have no more active lemmings.

Maybe (2) should be replaced by two separate indicators, for the number of active lemmings remaining and the number of neutrals remaining (including hatch in both)?

I know a few of us would be interesting in racing A Link to the Past, so this is a thread for coordinating races, whether it's vanilla, randomised, or customised.

At the moment, I'm not able to participate myself, so I've proposed a race where I make a customised seed for everyone to play, and if it's at a good time for me then I'd be in chat to ask for hints if you get stuck Actually, I've asked in discord and there has been some interest, so I've already made the seed.

Would Sunday 29 September be a good day for the race?

I installed the experimental from this post, which contains only the exe, no settings files, so I assumed that would be harmless. When I next opened NeoLemmix, my hotkeys were overwritten with the defaults, and the game window is shrunk to a tiny size. I checked the settings file (which I have attached, just in case) and it says "WindowWidth=960; WindowHeight=600". My screen is 1366 x 768, and the NL window is less than half that size in each dimension. Other than ditching the experimental, how should I get my preferred window size back?

EDIT: I reinstalled the main 12.6 exe, and it still has the window size issue

EDIT 2: I installed vanilla 12.6 into a new folder, and it works fine. However, even after copying the settings file from this new installation to the folder with the experimental, the latter still has the window issue. I've also tried changing the "960 x 600" in settings to "1280 x 800"; no effect.

The current psychedelic CPM is pretty hard on the eyes. Even having a single constant colour for objects, clearly distinct from the grey of terrain, would be an improvement on this.

But how about going one step further? We could give all the major types of object their own colour -- e.g. red for fire, blue for water, purple for traps, green for exit (maybe green for both hatch and exit since they are usually easy to distinguish from each other) and yellow for miscellaneous stuff like splitters, teleporters....

When I fail a level and retry, it's understandable that the pre-level text doesn't repeat; usually you wouldn't want it to.

But if the player wants to see the text again -- perhaps they're a new player learning the ropes and they want to look again at a trick described in the text; perhaps they're a tester giving suggestions for improving the text -- if they exit to menu and choose the same level, the text should repeat.

Welcome to new-formats Lemmings Redux!

If you're new to the Lemmings series and want to get to know the levels that started it all, or if you played the games a long time ago and want to revisit your childhood memories, this might be the pack for you.

Lemmings Redux is a compilation of 160 levels, selected and edited by the community, that are representative of the best of the original Lemmings games. We've cut out most of the levels that had you hold back the crowd and do a lot of building, and the ones that were all about difficulty of execution and timing those pernicious walking bombers. With more regret, a few levels that were fine puzzles but don't work as intended under NeoLemmix mechanics also had to go. The remaining levels have been arranged into a pack that can be played just like one of the original games, starting with simple but fun levels to ease you into the game, and ramping up to fiendish puzzles near the end.

The levels have also been improved and edited. We know these changes won't please everyone, but we've tried to find the best balance between faithfulness to the originals and streamlining the playing experience. Time limits have been removed (except when the time limit is an essential part of the level), lemming counts reduced, hidden traps revealed, and so on. We've also fixed backroutes on some levels, so that the player has to engage with the puzzle, hopefully leading to a greater appreciation of some of the beautiful solutions

All aspects of the pack, from level selection and ordering to the smallest changes, have been decided on by group discussion -- no wonder that it took us 18 months to finish putting the pack together! Early on, bsmith and namida were responsible for coordinating the discussion and compiling the pack according to group consensus; after namida's departure, I took over this role.

Lemmings Redux contains 160 levels, in five ranks of 32 levels each:

Gentle


Let's go to the moon!

Quirky


Haunted botanical garden

Zany


Mutiny on the Bounty

Manic


ROCKY VI

Lunatic


The Great Lemming Caper

Enjoy!

I've now done most of the work necessary to port Lemmings Redux to new-formats and fix all issues that have been noticed since the last update. However, there are still a couple of backroute fixes to make, and I would like some input from the community on the best way to do these. I've attached new-formats copies of both the levels in question.

(1) Let's go camping. The backroute: second lemming blocks at the edge of the large wall; first lemming builds a > bridge to get back up, then releases the blocker.

It's been suggested that we should move the wall with the trap further away to prevent this, but that would mean enlarging the level, which I'm a bit reluctant to do as Genesis levels have a maximum size of 511. Any thoughts or suggestions would be welcome.

(2) Oh No! Squish. The backroute: dig just before each trap trigger, then bash away the ground under the trigger; the basher is shallow enough to stop automatically.

This one is a big problem, because it's always going to be possible unless we make severe changes to the level. One possibility is to reduce the number of bashers and diggers. We don't know the intended solution and there may not be any specific intended solution, but I've played around and found a solution I'm happy with (as in, it doesn't feel like a backroute) that uses only 3 bashers, 3 diggers (as well as other skills). But reducing the bashers and diggers to 3 each would still allow the above backroute (you could use a miner and builder for the fourth trap).

We could increase the number of traps, but that would look strange. Another possibility is to place steel under the first trap trigger -- but that also doesn't look great, and it's still relatively easy to do a variant of the same solution.

Honestly, because this level is so hard to fix, I am considering removing it. If we do that, there are two levels I'd like to suggest as possibilities to add in its place, but I'm open to other suggestions:

* It's the price you have to pay (Havoc 3). This level got a lot of discussion in the long Redux topic, and we eventually concluded that it was impossible to fix it, but I thought it may be possible to fix once we got Shimmiers (using them purely as skill-cancellers). Well, we have them now. But it would be strange to introduce Shimmiers for a single level in a pack that otherwise sticks to the original skills, so I'm not wild about this idea.

* Where Lemmings Dare (Havoc 17). This level was on the original long list (page 3 of the long topic), but wasn't included in bsmith's first compilation pack, possibly inadvertently. It hadn't appeared on anyone's lists of suggested removals, and Minim was in favour of re-adding it. Honestly, I think this level got overlooked because I (and possibly also bsmith) thought of it as a "hidden traps" level, since I remember not noticing the traps until I ran into them, the first time I played the level. But looking at it again -- once you know what the vine traps looks like, all six traps around the exit are clearly visible. So this level may have been unfairly passed over.

I'll wait a short while to see what people have to say, and if necessary put up a poll, but I would definitely like to have this settled quickly so we can release new-formats Redux within the next week.

Having just installed NL 12.6, one of the first things I wanted to do was make my own set of hotkeys, which I never really did with past NL versions -- I always used the defaults with a few changes. I'm not at all happy with the current interface, so I wanted to open a discussion about how it could be improved. (I grant this is probably not high priority, since setting hotkeys is something most users will only do once and then never look at again.) My complaints are:

* On opening NL for the first time, I am prompted to choose between two hotkey layouts by name -- I forget exactly what the names were, but they didn't tell me anything about what the layouts actually were.

* A new player might not want either of the default layouts, but a blank layout (perhaps with just the mouse functions and Esc?) so it's quicker and easier to input their own preferred hotkeys.

* Moving on to the hotkey selection screen itself. It wasn't at all obvious that after pressing, for example, "S" and then choosing what function it has, I had to deselect it by clicking in the list of hotkeys, then pressing something else. To my mind, it would be better for pressing any key to always select that key.

* Assigning a function to a key that currently doesn't have one is awkward -- I have to select "Show Unassigned Keys" or use "Find Key", and in the latter case it turns "Show Unassigned Keys" on for me. Having this off is useful so I can get an overview of the keys I've assigned and whether there are any important functions I haven't assigned a key to yet. It would be better if the unassigned key just appears at the bottom of the list. (Also, "Find Key" would be redundant with my suggestion that pressing a key always finds it.)

* Pressing Tab cycles between the buttons, which at first gave me the impression I would be unable to select Tab to change its function. (It turns out you can select Tab by pressing T, which cycles between all the keys whose names start with T.) I can easily see new players making this mistake and either getting frustrated or settling for a layout that's not actually what they would prefer.

I'm hoping to do a stream of A Link to the Past some time tomorrow (Thursday). Don't have an exact time for it yet, but maybe around 6pm (UK time). Hope to see some of you there

Links to past streams:

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Part 1: in which I play a Zelda game for the first time!
Part 2: in which we learn how to use explosives!
Part 3: in which we play DROD RPG and Rabi-Ribi!
Part 4: in which we unleash the power of laser sword!
Part 5: in which we play Lavender Levels!
Part 6: in which magic runs out of control!
Part 7: in which Link solves everything with fire!
Part 8: in which the blind lead the blind!
Part 9: in which we grapple with ice physics!
Part 10: in which we play the Ocarina of Space!
Part 11: in which Link gazes into the abyss!
Part 12: in which we learn advanced speedrunning techniques!
Part 13: in which we make a little wish!

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
Part 1: Concerning the unbearable heaviness of being.

Super Mario Bros.
Part 1: in which Mario fights his way past Goombas, Piranha Plants and Bullet Bills, only to find that his worst enemy lies up ahead... a springboard.
Part 2: in which I practise Worlds 1-5 and make some interesting discoveries.

Currently, when I start a new NL session, it puts me in the first pack in alphabetical order, which is very unlikely to be the pack I want to play. Remembering which pack I was in last, while it might not be the pack I want to play this session, has a much better chance. I can't see any reason not to make this change and I'm honestly surprised it hasn't been suggested before.

Edit Simon: This issue (others' replays should not overwrite own records) was a sidetrack by Simon in Record "Fewest Skills Used" and "Largest Excess Saved", but it's really a standalone issue. Thus here is its own topic.

Related issue: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=3898.0

---

Quote from: SimonTrophy management ideally should detect when we run other people's replays and not update trophies for those results.

Quote from: namida on February 06, 2019, 11:19:15 AMUnless Nepster has added something, NeoLemmix has no way to differentiate between "replay created by this user" and "replay created by another user". It could fairly easily detect "was any replay used?", and wouldn't be much harder to add "...excluding replaying an attempt the user has just made", but beyond that it wouldn't be able to tell, other than by relying on an honesty system which would be both unreliable and annoying to the user.

The problem isn't honesty (or worrying about possible lack thereof); it's that the user has to take extra steps to avoid overwriting their own records; after forgetting this just once, or not knowing about it, one's own records are gone with no warning and can't be retrieved. This is already a problem with NL's tracking of lemmings saved records, and would just get worse if we add skills and time records to the mix.

So, it's time we had another of these

To give the contests a bit of variety, I've made a Lix level this time; it's a bit smaller, and the skillset is a more restrictive 5 of everything.

The rules are pretty much the same as last time, except that because this is Lix, there's no "time taken" tiebreaker.

In short: try to save as many lix as you can (but at least 12), with a secondary goal of maximising the skills left over. Send replays to me by 12 noon GMT, 19 January. The winner has the right (but no obligation) to create the level for round #3.

Good luck!

* * *

Entries received so far:

geoo
Simon / Forestidia
Nessy
Minim
Nepster
SQron

19 December 2018: Updated to version 0.1.5!

So a long time ago, inspired by the fun I was having playing namida's RPGMaker game, I decided to have a go at a project of my own, and ccexplore asked me, when I'd got far enough, to post a demo of my project. Well, I've now finished the first dungeon. I'd hoped to get further than this before posting a "demo", but given how long it's taken even to get this far, I feel I may as well post what I have so that you can see what I'm working on. It should take around half an hour to reach the end of currently playable content.

Adventure School is a not-very-serious game set in a school where young people train to be adventurers. In the playable content so far, you go through a couple of training dungeons, and there's some interaction between the characters, but not much in the way of plot. It won't stay like that for the whole game -- the plot is planned to get much more intense and intricate -- but only faint glimpses of it are visible as yet.

As with namida's game, you will need to get the VX Ace RTP from here.

And finally, the download link for the game itself: right here.

We've had so many contests now, it's about time someone compiled a list of all the rules that have been thought up. This may be inspiration for anyone thinking of rules for future contests. Of course, it's okay to repeat a rule from an old contest -- that will give people who missed out on the old contest another chance to come up with something.

There were three unofficial contests, before the numbered official contests started. Lemmix was used for these, so the first contest refers to the original 8 skills.

1 - Make a level with one of each skill
2 - Make a level in the crystal style with no builders
3 - Make a level with 5 or fewer lemmings

The first eight official contests only had a single rule each:

1 - Make a level using an unofficial tileset
2 - Make a Fun/Tame level
3 - Tag Team (one person designs the terrain, the other places objects and assigns stats)
4 - Make a level with exactly 5 total skills
5 - Make a level with a save requirement at most 10%
6 - Make a level with no constructive skills
7 - Make a level with at least 4 exits
8 - Make a level with a L2 or L3 style

Contest #9 was the abortive "here are three rules, try to loophole one of them", which attracted no entries, but led to the three-rule format followed by all subsequent contests. (Note that this contest was ignored in the numbering, so the next contest is also numberered 9.) An asterisk before a rule indicates a repeat or near-repeat of a rule from an earlier contest.

Rules from the "loophole" contest:
R1 - Make a level with at most 12 (terrain pieces + objects), with at most 4 being objects
R2 - Make a level where all terrain is steel that requires at least two destructive skills to solve
R3 - Make a level using exactly the terrain + objects of an original Lemmings level

9R1 - Make a level with only new skills
9R2 - Make a level with only one lemming
9R3 - Make a level with exactly two types of skill
10R1 - Make a level with no permanent skills
*10R2 - Make a Fun/Tame level
10R3 - Make a level with at least two new object types
11R1 - Make a level with save 2/2, at most 1 of each permanent skill
11R2 - Make a level with 1 of each provided skill
*11R3 - Make a level with no constructive skills
12R1 - Make a level with a time limit of 1min or less
12R2 - Make a level with no destructive skills
12R3 - Make a VGASPEC level
13R1 - Make a level with tileset mixing
13R2 - Make a level with at least two intended solutions
*13R3 - Make a level without using any official tilesets
14R1 - Make a level with 3 hatches and 3 lemmings
14R2 - Make a level with no steel and 2 hatches
14R3 - Make a level with exactly 2 of any 8 skills
15R1 - Make two levels with the same terrain, but one is flipped
15R2 - Make a minimal-size level with at most 10 lemmings
*15R3 - Make a level with only new skills
16R1 - Make a level with height at least 3 times its width
16R2 - Make a level with at most 2 minutes and hatch-exit distance at least 2 screens
16R3 - Make a level with at least 3 hatches, save requirement (h-1)/h * 100%
17R1 - Make a level using only tilesets you haven't used before
17R2 - Make a level with exactly 1 type of skill from each category
17R3 - Make a level with only one type of terrain piece
18R1 - Make a level with one hatch, one exit and no other objects
18R2 - Make a subset of an official level
*18R3 - Make a level with at most two types of skill
19R1 - Make a level with at most 3 non-permanent skills
19R2 - Make a level whose terrain spells your username
19R3 - Make a level with exactly 1 lemming and save requirement at least 2
20R1 - Make a level with horizontally and vertically symmetrical terrain
20R2 - Make a level with at least 10 skill types, at most 5 of each
20R3 - Make a fake "disjoint union"
21R1 - Make a level using at least 3 jumpers
21R2 - Make a level with one hatch, at least two exits, and each exit must be limited to an equal share of the save requirement
21R3 - Make a level depicting a recognisable character, object or landmark
22R1 - Make a level using only original skills and objects
22R2 - Make a level using only new skills and objects
22R3 - Make a level with at least one neutral and at least one zombie
23R1 - Make an X-of-everything level for X at most 10
*23R2 - Make a minimal-size level with at most 10 lemmings
23R3 - Make a level divided into two sections, one tileset in each
24R1 - Make a level with exactly one new skill type
24R2 - Make a level at least 200,000 pixels large
24R3 - Make a level with a rule from a previous contest
25R1 - Make a level with only preplaced lemmings, and no two having the same permanent skills
25R2 - Make a level with at most 10 terrain pieces and at most 10 objects
25R3 - Make a level that depicts a physical object
26R1 - Make a level with no destructible terrain
26R2 - Make a level with infinitely many jumpers
26R3 - Make a level with only L2 tilesets and L2 skills
27R1 - Make a level with only constructive skills and bombers
27R2 - Make a level in which all lemmings are pre-assigned swimmers (in NL) or runners (in Lix)
27R3 - Make a level with RR 99 and at most 10 lemmings
28R1 - Make a level with an entrance near each corner and the exit in the centre
28R2 - Make a level depicting an animal
*28R3 - Make a minimal-size level with at most 9 lemmings and at most 9 skills
29R1 - Make a level with three hatches on one side and the exit on the other
29R2 - Make a level depicting a vehicle
29R3 - Make a level with at least three linked teleporters (in NL) or flingers (in Lix)
*30R1 - Make a level using a single tileset you haven't used before
30R2 - Make a level with only destructive skills
30R3 - Make a level in the l2_classic style using only the classic 8 skills and classic objects

At the moment, the main NL installer contains a folder "orig_brick" containing the PNG for the brick exit. This should not exist (Brick is an OhNo style, not Orig), so everyone should check whether they have this folder, and if so, delete it.

The current situation, as I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong): the file "music/menulix" gets played for both menu and editor music, and although you can get different music by saving a different track with this filename, there's no way to have different music in the menu and editor. This is really annoying, because designing a level can take a long time and needs more variety of music; also the default track isn't well-suited to it

Suggestions:

- In Options, have separate on/off buttons for game (including menu) music and editor music
- Have a subfolder "music/editor" and have editor music randomly select from all tracks in this subfolder

I'm sick of having to design around what is an obvious misdesign in the original graphics sets. Lemmings' "pin" (the pixel that determines where the lemming "really" is) is one pixel below the floor, okay. So traps' trigger areas should extend one pixel below the floor as well. Especially traps that have a visible part to show where the trigger area is. This should sit on the floor; it shouldn't have to be buried. This is 2018 and we do not mislead the player! It is the golden rule of modern level design!

Here's a run-through of all traps in the original and ONML tilesets:

Dirt: Bear trap and rock trap have extended trigger areas. 10-ton weight has a trigger area that stops above ground so it has to be buried 2 pixels
Fire: Firepit's trigger area stops above ground.
Pillar: Rope trap has a "blob" of terrain that's meant to be buried, but even the metal support has to be buried to get the trigger area to work.
Crystal: Trap 1 is meant to be buried, enough remains visible. Trap 2 is okay. Trap 3 has to be buried.
Marble: Squisher has to be buried.
Brick: Wheel has an extended trigger area. Squisher has no indicator.
Rock: Weed trap has an extended trigger area.
Snow: Icicle has no indicator. (But note the the trigger area extends below the rectangle of the trap. It's almost as if the designers realised this was a problem and fixed it in the ONML sets! All the more reason we should fix the Orig sets to match.)
Bubble: Suction pipe has no indicator; again trigger area extends below the trap rectangle.

Even more seriously, if the replay saves more than my own record, NL overwrites my record with the number achieved in the replay.