I agree with mobius: Most skills get cancelled when they hit terrain they can't affect; This is the logic the first level of Lemmings World Tour tries to teach:
- a destructive skill stops and turns around when it hits steel
- a constructive skill stops and turns aroudn when it builds into terrain

If a Propeller / Twister hits his head on steel, the skill should get cancelled. Thus, even if "propelling down safely" were a feature of the skill, it would no longer work here, because the skill would already have been cancelled by hitting steel, and thus, the lemming would turn into a regular Faller anyway.

Interesting... this then can double as a sort of psuedo-ballooner; and used simply to gain height.

I thought the same at first, but keep in mind the SLX Ballooner moves at a steep diagonal angle. What the Propeller / Twister would be doing without terrain is more reminiscent of the Ballooner as it acts in Lemmings 2: The Tribes (as long as you don't use the fanning tool).

I realise that, can we think of a better name for the state?

Flipper? Swinger? Inverter? Rotater? Spinner?

With regards to assignability, the closest relations to the Turner are the Hoister and Dangler; perhaps anything that's assignable to these 2 states should also be assignable to a Turner. This means that assigning a Walker to a Turner during the first 2 frames will have the lem drop facing in the original direction, whilst assigning during the last 4 will have them drop facing the opposite direction.

That sounds like a good starting point to me.
I guess critical questions revolve around whether the Jumper and the Walker should be assignable to the Turner state?

Also, Turner sounds confusing, because it’s the name of a skill in Lemmings 3D. Much like the “Ascender” or whatever the six-pixel-jump state is currently called used to be called Jumper in Old-Formats NeoLemmix.

Ghosts could be assigned skills in 1.43, otherwise they would have been pretty useless.

I agree that pre-placed invincible lemmings should be possible. The closest thing we have to an invincible lemming thus far is the Disarmer - specifically, a multi-athlete that can survive falls (Floater / Glider / Slider) and can survive traps by being a Disarmer. This is a commonly required setup for any level where you want to force the player to get a specific lemming from A to B:

If the required skills are available on the panel or as pickup skills, it's easy to circumvent the intended solution by just having a different lemming do the job.
However, if the required skills (in this case, invincibility) exist only one one specific lemming from the beginning of the level, this can be vital for enforcing solutions which would otherwise be impossible to enforce (=always result in backroutes).

Yes, I've just stopped after 5 levels so far, due to the anticipation of changing physics. For example, I just noticed one of my replays broke due to the introduction of the "Looker / Dangler" state for the Slider. (No problem, I just had to redo the last two assignments - a Basher was now being assigned slightly too late, only after a lemming had turned around.)

As long as only few levels are affected, these things are easy fixes; they become much more annoying however if they need to applied to an entire pack retro-actively.

Hence, I'll continue to focus on NeoLemmix for the time being - specifically, Lemmings: Hall of Fame. The successor to that (working title "Lemmings Band Camp") will then be started officially once you announce a somewhat stable state for SuperLemmix.

In the meantime, feel free to try out different physics for whatever you like. For blocking Swimmers, for example, I can imagine lots of potential uses - also lots of potential backroutes for existing levels.

This is where I agree that, especially when it comes to the development of a new engine, existing levels should receive a lower priority. Since what's possible in the future shouldn't be hindered by what has been done in the past, especially if the primary argument for the past behaviour is just "this is the way we've always done things, now it's too late to change it". Such as the Stoner being a suboptimal skill when compared to the Freezer. (Added side benefit, "Slowfreeze" in SuperLemmix makes much more sense when it actually turns the lemming into a Freezer, rather than a Stoner ).
So I guess Nepster's statement that existing levels were flat-out "unimportant" came off as just a little too radical, since it implies the relevance of existing content is 0, rather than, say, 50% to 70% of the relevance of potential new packs, which would then be created specifically for SuperLemmix.

I feel object removal is gonna require telling that you can't convert levels from NLX to SLX, Since a few of those objects were in Neolemmix for years already, and I feel if you wanted to keep NLX to SLX conversion, you're gonna have to keep those objects. If you want to remove any of those, just say that NLX conversion will no longer be supported due to many factors breaking levels.

This. I can understand the thought process on a theoretical level — but in practice, it reminds me of the discussion we had about culling the Fencer, due to the Laserer supposedly being able to replace it.

But I’m glad to hear you, WillLem, immediately accepted GigaLem’s comment and Splitters and Teleporters appear to be safe now.

If player criticism had always been heard this readily, perhaps Radiation and Slowfreeze would never have been culled from NeoLemmix in the first place — which would have saved everyone the effort of re-implementing them (you on the programming side, and level designers from adjusting their levels again during conversion from NL to SLX). Especially now that WillLem has also taken over some responsibility for NeoLemmix, as far as I’ve understood it?



WillLem wasn’t here during the Culling Frenzy, but that memory is a reason why I continue to be this allergic against any proposition of culls. To relate this to GigaLem’s comment, back during the Culling Frenzy, the developer literally said: “Existing levels are unimportant”.

One of the statements which got the strongest backlash. Because at least when it comes to changes from NeoLemmix to SuperLemmix, they would only hinder conversion, but the NeoLemmix levels would remain intact.
 
Within NeoLemmix itself, however, culls would render existing levels unplayable — unless the pack creator stuck to Old Formats. Which is precisely what I did for a long time, and presumably also why quite a few other NeoLemmix packs, including highlights like Lemmings Stampede, remain unconverted to this day. (Unless somebody has taken it upon them to convert these packs recently, without me being aware of it… )

Not necessarily because of Radiation and Slowfreeze themselves — rather, I assume it was because of the uncertainty about what would happen to NeoLemmix. And now, with several versions of New Formats in between, and conversion of Old Formats levels being difficult to impossible without going through multiple interim versions of New Formats, the likelihood of seeing some of these Old-Formats packs converted seems to decrease by the day.

In short: I’m glad I converted Lemmings World Tour to New Formats when I did — and saved all the levels required for Pit Lems Remastered when I did. Even though I still haven’t had the time to adapt the latter into a releasable state.


As for backgrounds, I hope these remain available as they are - I haven't experimented with "paint" or any other such features yet. The thing about backgrounds is that not only do some packs rely on them for aesthetics; some tilesets actually rely on backgrounds to be functional. For example, L2 Shadow (which is a nightmare to use in Very-Old Formats 1.43, where the background was the standard black, rather than the dark blue from L2) or Arty's Silhouette tileset.

The latter I intentionally put against a black background for a somewhat troll-y tutorial level in Lemmings, Drugs, and Rock 'n Roll, which is supposed to teach you about clear-physics mode and thus, much like the levels for Highlight Lemming or Virtual Lemming in Lemmings 3D, forces you to use clear-physics mode by making the terrain invisible against the background.

Reminds me of the joke skill I once suggested called “The Tank”. Basically a combination of things that were last seen in NeoLemmix 1.43: Ghosts (ignoring objects) and non-lethal Bombers; I think I also recall an “Invincibility” gimmick that had many of these effects (for example, as far as I recall, it also made Stoners non-lethal, i.e. would now apply to Freezers). I’m not sure, though, since I didn’t dedicate an entire rank in “Lemmicks” to the Invincibility gimmick, but only a few levels on the Bedlam rank.