It's been suggested previously, with discussion here and here, but now that SuperLemmix has become quite heavy on the rendering (what with Projectiles, Freezer, Ballooner, Superlemming mode, Rewind, Turbo FF, etc.) it might be time to go ahead and retire the minimap.

As with NeoLemmix, SuperLemmix currently offers the option to deactivate the HQ minimap, instead showing a monochrome rendering of the level (as per most L1 ports). However, SLX also provides an option to deactivate the minimap altogether, in order to shrink the screen horizontally without resizing the rest of the panel. Both options also result in a graphical performance uptick that's most noticeable on larger levels and those with a lot of animated objects.

Particularly, with the minimap deactivated, the improvement to graphical performance is remarkable. And with SLX moving further and further into "Lemmings 2" territory, perhaps culling the minimap is something of a no-brainer to offset the increasing demands on the graphics rendering.


Reasons for:

Significantly improved graphical performance

More panel space - room for extra skill/function buttons if so desired

Screen resizing becomes less problematic

Tidies up the interface

The ability to zoom in/out and fast-scroll pretty much obsoletes the minimap anyway


Reasons against:

The minimap is a traditional Lemmings feature, and goes somewhat hand in hand with "Classic Mode", which aims to present the game as close to the OG as possible

The minimap does occasionally come in handy for quickly jumping to another part of the level, and for seeing where lemmings are when they're offscreen

It's already optional - maybe this is enough, with players able to decide for themselves whether they'd rather have the traditional L1 display or a graphical performance boost


Another option would be to keep the minimap, but provide the option for it to be toggleable on and off whilst in-game; I'm pretty sure that this is possible. Furthermore, the game could periodically check to see what framerate it's running at, and if it drops below a certain threshold, a popup message could prompt the user to toggle the minimap off in order to gain a performance boost. That way, it's dynamically available depending on whether or not it actually is impacting performance.

Thoughts?

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Added a poll.

As of SuperLemmix 2.6, we have the ability to kill zombies and pop balloons using a Laserer's laser beam!

For either, the laser can either directly hit the balloon/zombie, or the balloon/zombie can drift/walk into an already-active laser beam. As with Projectiles, Zombies explode (no destruction crater) and balloons pop, causing the Ballooner lem to fall.

The feature is currently being tested in the RC, and has been implemented in Commit 11cacc831

How would people feel about SLX requiring levels to feature at least 1 exit, a save requirement of at least 1, and at least 1 non-zombie & non-neutral lemming?

Reason: at present, a level counts as "passed" if the save requirement is zero and the level ends for any reason, which doesn't seem right; same applies if the level has no exit. I realise that this will mostly only come up during testplaying, but it still seems a good idea to set a basic standard for level creation.

This has been debated previously for NeoLemmix (N.B. - my own "contribution" to this previous discussion can pretty much be disregarded at this point), albeit more from the point of view of updating the way replays are handled in this scenario.

I've pretty much got this working; so far, we count how many exits there are right at the start of gameplay. If the result is 0, a message pops up informing the player that the level can't be played due to not having at least 1 exit, and then gameplay terminates to the postview screen.

If levels are also required to have a nonzero number of normal lemmings, and a nonzero save requirement, then the level also wouldn't be automatically solved.

Also, note that it would be possible to bypass this requirement when testplaying the level via the Editor.

Thoughts?

From this topic:

It might be quite an interesting thing if a zombie could hit a button after crossing poison.

From this topic:

The possibility of some projectile killing a zombie is also a cool idea idea, I've suggested that spears or grenades kill zombies before.

From this topic:

Magno Booter: This is one we previously discussed for NeoLemmix. It would probably be hard to code, though. Especially if, for added utility, it would work like the gravity-reversal objects in Lemmings Revolutoin, where Magno Booters could build / platform / stack / mine / fence / dig / laser-blast upside down.
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probably the one with the most versatility, especially if it’s a permanent skill that can start using other skills upside down (which it can’t in L2: The Tribes). Probably the hardest to implement, though.

Magno-booter! C`mon, we all want this. We just don't expect to get it. I'm no programmer, but I think this would be best if it's temporary. Clicking the booter would begin a timer and cause the lemming to fall up. When the lemming hits the ceiling it can walk upside-down until the time runs out, then he falls. This would be the crown jewel of Super Lemmix skills.

From this topic:

The Runner: It already exists in Lix, and the only reason it doesn’t in NeoLemmix is that it tends to add execution difficulty where the NeoLemmix player wants none. For SuperLemmix, though? It seems tailor-made!
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should be comparatively easy to implement

Having one lemming run ahead to perform skills seems great. And having a runner perform a higher jump would replace
the vaulter for sure.