This is a random thought that I had and I was curious to see what other people had to say.

What habits or OCD do you have when designing levels?

My OCD when designing levels is that I must have all entrance hatches fully visible at all times. Absolutely no part of it may be covered by another object or piece of terrain. Even if one pixel is covering it… it's unacceptable. The funny thing is I don’t really mind at all if it's partly covered in other people's levels. It’s just that I can't do it myself.

Another thing is that I need to add some type of decoration onto the level. I don't mind playing levels that don't have any, but I like to add something to make the level unique in some way. My level design is kind of in-between a "Mike Dailly" and "Gary Timmons" style of creating levels: I like to create levels that are small and minimalistic (one-screen or 341px wide levels in NeoLemmix), but there's a lot going on in them to give the environment a more lively feel as if the lemmings have fallen into an area that is real and is still active.

What about everyone else?

"Old Format" versions below NeoLemmix V12 are no longer supported!



Hello everyone!

I'm happy to introduce my first level pack: Lemmings Migration

It's a small pack of 40 levels across four difficulties: Painless, Irritation, Headache, and Migraine.

Any feedback is welcome and appreciated. Don't hold back... be brutally honest if you have to!



Story:

Long ago there was a large community filled with green-haired creatures named Lemmings. They were a technologically advanced society that lived peacefully for many years, but one day an ancient cataclysm emerged. It blocked out the sunlight, destroyed crops, emptied rivers, and destroyed all lemming technology. The lemmings had no choice; they had to leave their community. They had to migrate back to their ancestor's land. The one they left long ago. With their technology gone they had to once again rely on the eight classic skills their ancestors used, and with these tools the lemmings set out for their new home.



Difficulties:

Painless (10 levels)



LEMCO Employees

They're a shy group of levels that contain simple puzzles. After losing almost everything to the ancient cataclysm, the lemmings can no longer afford to have 20 of everything here, and therefore these levels here won't go as slow as the ones the ancestors crossed long ago.


Irritation (10 levels)



Never Getting Back Together

These levels enjoy puzzles that require more planning without going over the top in difficulty. Some of the elders said something about these levels being like "late Tricky to Taxing"... whatever that means.


Headache (10 levels)



Kings Of The Castle

These levels are considered to be the odd ones. They're not easy enough to be an irritation but not hard enough to cause migraines, but they seem to take pride in this. More tricks are required in addition to planning out more complex solutions.


Migraine (10 levels)



Momentum Deferred

These levels are the worst of the worst. They don't hold anything back, they bully other levels for not being as difficult, and they have no guilt in causing players to lose sleep, sanity, and hair.



Custom Music:

Download

1) Extract the files from the link above.
2) Place in a folder titled "music" (all lowercase) in the same directory as your NeoLemmix Player.
3) Enjoy!




Recommended For:

Not recommended for beginners, but a good pack for intermediate players. Some Headache and Migraine levels may give even experts a good challenge.



Special Thanks:

- DMA for creating Lemmings
- altiereslima for the skill panel
- nin10doadict for teaching me how to fix the custom music
- EricLang & ccexplore for Lemmix
- namida for NeoLemmix & Flexi Toolkit
- namida and Flopsy for their Flexi Toolkit tutorials
- Alex A. Denisov for Graphics32
- Erik Turner for ZLibEx
- Un4seen Development for Bass.dll
- The Lemmings Forums community for sharing replies and backroutes
- Volker 0th and Mindless for sharing sourcecode and information
- And YOU for playing this pack

So I have decided to try my hand at making my very first topic .

What makes a level challenging?

A quick note: I am a firm believer that you don’t have to create a hard level in order for that level to be a good level. Still, I was curious to see the science behind making a level a worthy "speedbump".

One thing I noticed in some levels considered to be challenging is that a terrain is presented to you and you have very limited skills to use in it. I really like these levels because it forces you to really think about the skills you have, how to use them, where to use them, and sometimes how to combine them. In some areas it may look like you have to use a miner to clear a path, but what if another skill would work better so the miner can be used somewhere else? What if instead of bashing you can maybe dig up the path with a digger and use the basher for other parts of the terrain?

For example, in Postcard From Lemmingland you only get one builder, which means that you can’t easily build over the small wall and pit in the level. You have to focus on what you have instead of what you don’t have, so examining how the terrain looks and using what you have to craft a solution through it is where the challenge comes in. You can bash to the pit from the entrance, so how does that help? (In fact, you can beat this level without using the basher). A miner digs down diagonally, so how does that help? Lemmings turn around when they hit a wall even while building, so how does that help? To successfully beat the level all of these things have to be considered. Another example is The Great Lemming Caper. You only had two builders and builders are the only way to reach the exit, but they were not enough for both lemmings in the level. But what else did you have? You did have a lot of diggers, bashers, and miners. How can the digger, miner, basher, and even blocker skills help out so I can use those two builders wisely? Of course, that’s why No Added Colours Or Lemmings is considered by many people to be one of the best levels in the game. The game never told you that a lemming was automatically doomed if they were turned into a blocker, so using all of your skills wisely to reach the exit and save every lemming was the challenge.

Finally, I also think this is why Save Me is more challenging than Rendezvous At The Mountain. For Rendezvous At The Mountain you had a good amount of each skill to craft a solution. Save Me did not have a lot of different skills, and even the builders run out quickly. You also had the challenge of being forced to send more than one lemming to do work on different parts of the level, so that already puts a challenge in making sure you use every skill in a way as to effectively control the crowd enough to prevent too many of them from getting killed along the way.

Anyway, that’s my two cents on the subject manner. I might even be wrong.