Let's start by defining a backroute, for those who may not fully understand what it is.

A backroute is commonly understood as "any solution which bypasses the designer's intended solution." There is a grey area, because sometimes such solutions may be just as ingenious as the intended one, and can therefore be accepted as an "alternative solution" rather than a backroute.

A backroute, more distinctly, is a solution which is generally undesirable from the point of view of the designer (and, sometimes, even the player). It completely unhinges the level, either by taking a ridiculously simple route that the designer missed, or by not "getting the trick" of the level and instead using the skills to craft a more conventional solution. In the worst cases, they rely on glitches, are ridiculously fiddly and are usually only possible on game engines which allow fine control and/or exploitation of broken game mechanics.

As far as the latter goes, the game engine should indeed be as glitch-free as possible - but not for the purposes of backroute prevention. The goal here should simply be in-world consistency; if a game has created a set of rules, its mechanics should of course adhere to those rules in all possible cases, in order to create a world that level designers and players can understand and interact with on equal terms.

Beyond this, I'd like to take issue with the ongoing notion that "the engine itself should be preventing possible backroutes" because it comes up very often in debates and is a go-to reason that can potentially derail many otherwise good ideas (such as new skills, or skill behaviours) if given too much weight.

Preventing backroutes is the job of the level designer, not the game engine.

Ideally, the game engine should provide as many options as is possible, limited only by imagination and preference, and it is then up to the level designers to construct levels within that world.

The very act of designing a level is itself a challenge to other players. You're saying "there - beat that!" If the player then solves the level with an unintended solution (or, indeed, a "backroute"), they have beaten the designer, who must then either accept the solution, or fix the level. Under no circumstances should the game engine be necessarily helping or hindering the designer or player in this process - ideally, it should be an entirely neutral entity in the equation.

Backroutes are not only entirely valid ways to solve a level and beat its designer, they are also an invaluable resource for alternative solutions, challenge solutions, interesting level statistics, and can even provide ways to find completely new tricks, which can then form the basis of other levels (which, if not carefully designed, will then likely have backroutes of their own!) In short, they are not necessarily a bad thing.

They exist as linchpins to learning and progress; however, this learning and progress should ideally all be happening after the fact of the game's creation, informing designers and players of fresh possibilities. They should not retroactively inform the design of the game itself, other than in obvious cases where it exposes an actual flaw with the game, e.g. destructable steel.

We love to hate backroutes. They frustrate us as designers but encourage us as players. And, as long as the game is fairly designed, they are inevitable. Seeking to design the game to rule them out is both futile and self-destructive as it removes an invaluable part of the player/designer equation. They ought to be celebrated rather than maligned and avoided, because they inform future design within the world in which they were created.

I anticipate that not many people will agree with this, but that's exactly why it needs to be said.

You start each rank with 100 lemmings. As you play through, any lemmings lost are deducted from your total. How far through each rank can you make it?

The main essence of this suggestion is the ability to file-associate .nxrp with the player; clicking on the file would then open the player, load the level, and play the replay.

A "load replay" button in the F2 menu might also be good.

Following on from the previous zoom-increments topic, and whilst this sort of thing is being discussed, I thought it might be worthwhile to create a catch-all topic to discuss optimum settings for NeoLemmix on various sized monitors, at various resolutions, and with various scaling settings.

I currently have my monitor set to the following:

Screen size: 15"
Display resolution: 1920 x 1080
OS Scaling: 150%
NeoLemmix Scaling: Determined by OS

The result is that NeoLemmix appears as a "medium sized" application on screen. I realise that the following screenshot will look different on different monitors/resolutions, and it is in fact resized to fit the post, but it gives an overall idea of what I'm looking at, dimensions-wise if not clarity-wise:



As you can see, the menu is quite large and almost fills the screen. Without changing the dimensions of the player, here's how it appears once in-game and at 1x zoom:



This is pretty good. The game appears medium-sized and is decent enough for a windowed application. Placing the cursor in the centre of the screen and zooming to 2x results in the following:



Part of the top of the level is cut off, but it's not too bad; everything is clear, and it's usable enough.

In fullscreen, 2x zoom fills the screen perfectly, but the panel appears relatively small by comparison. This is because the 150% OS scaling won't allow the panel to zoom to 2x:



Allowing NL to do its own scaling lets the panel zoom to 2x and also allows the level to fill the window properly at 2x zoom (these benefits also carry over to Fullscreen):



This is great, although one drawback is that the writing in the menus now appears extremely thin and very difficult to read. Here's a comparison, NL scaling is on the left and OS scaling is on the right. Unfortunately the screenshots don't really pick it up very well, and imgur adds filtering which actually makes it easier to see/read. At least, this shows that the text is slightly more bold (and appears slightly larger) with OS scaling:



Despite the obvious benefits of allowing NL to scale itself (larger panel, better zoom in windowed mode, behaves better when recording with OBS), the menus become so difficult to read that I inevitably end up switching back to OS scaling.

I wonder if there's any way to optimise the menu text when displaying at full-res/NL scaling? A thicker, larger font would definitely help.

Please share how NL appears on your setup, and between us all we might be able to find the optimum settings.

Each time I fire up NL at the moment, it seems to reset all my levelpack progress, and I have to run a mass replay check on the pack I'm playing to restore the ticks.

Not sure whether it's a bug or something I'm doing wrong...

I've decided to index all of my content in a single topic for convenient access, and because there is now quite a lot of it!

Music

Music by WillLem


SuperLemmix

SuperLemmix - a fork of NeoLemmix with new skils (including Timebombers, Grenaders and Freezers), a Classic Mode option, and a whole bunch of other tweaks and enhancements. Also includes a dedicated level editor.


NeoLemmix

NeoLemmix Level Packs
NeoLemmix Custom Graphics
NeoLemmix Wish List


SuperLemmini

SuperLemmini Level Packs
SuperLemmini Mods
SuperLemmini Wish List


YouTube

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Featured Playlists:

(Amiga) Any% RTA Speedrun (Current World Record)
(Amiga) Pause-free Playthroughs
(NeoLemmix) WillLem Plays Through Just The First Rank of A Bunch Of Custom Packs in NeoLemmix
(SuperLemmini) Lemmings, But With Lemminas!
(SuperLemmini) WillLem's SUPERLEMMINGS

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Favourite Challenges

[NeoLemmix] Maximum Saved Records
[NeoLemmix] Fastest Time Records
[NeoLemmix] Skills You Can't Live Without
[NeoLemmix] Which Levels Can Be Beaten With The New Skills?
[NeoLemmix] Which Levels Are Possible in Under 1 Minute, With Skillset Editing
[NeoLemmix] Which Levels Can Be Solved Without Using Any Player-Assist Tools?
[NeoLemmix] Builders & Bashers ONLY! With Skillset Editing
[NeoLemmix] Save-Em-Up Contest
[NeoLemmix] How Far Can You Get 100 Lemmings?
[NeoLemmix] Karoshi Challenge
[Various Platforms]L1 Speedrunning


Other Active Topics

[NeoLemmix] Independent tiles in hi-res mode for official styles
[DISC] NeoLemmix Sounds
[INDEX] Official Lemmings resources

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See also

Lemmings Forums Site Suggestions
WillLem's Blog
Level Packs I Have Completed/Am Currently Playing
[SHARING TOPIC] Custom Graphics
[NeoLemmix][TUTORIAL] Creating Custom Low & High Resolution Graphics
[TUTORIAL] How To Create And Format A Forum Post


Lemillionism - 1,000,000 Lemmings saved!

The ability to vertically & horizontally scroll using touchpad gestures/mouse wheel (as well as by clicking the scroll bars) would greatly improve workflow.

A two-finger swipe (both directions) on the touchpad, or any of Shift/Alt/Ctrl + wheel for mouse control seems a good suggestion.

Since the wheel is mapped to zoom, maybe Shift + wheel could be set to vertical-scrolling, and Ctrl + wheel could be set to side-scrolling.