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Topics - Strato Incendus

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121
Lix Main / Music in Lix?
« on: October 19, 2017, 09:12:13 PM »
I have started toying around with the editor because I had some level ideas involving jumpers (and it seems like that skill will take a while to implement into the new formats editor). With walkers, cubers (=stoners) and platformers, Lix still has a lot of the NeoLemmix skills available, in addition to the standard stuff. However, the absence of any music at all really makes it kinda monotonous.

Is activating any sort of music entirely not possible at the moment, or is it just that there haven't been any specific tracks created yet? I read something about Lix being in need of a composer, and I could certainly help on that front and try to throw some licks together (pun intended ;D ) with Guitar Pro or similar - but that would be quite pointless if there is no option implemented in the software to actually play those tracks. :)

122
Levels for v10 or older / [NeoLemmix] Pit Lems
« on: October 09, 2017, 01:35:11 AM »
And here it is, slightly smaller, and quite a bit more puzzly than PARALEMS:



:compat-new:

:compat-ver-10-13::compat-yes:

PIT LEMS has 100 levels, 20 for each rank: LOL, ROFL, WTF, OMFG, and FML. The name is inspired by the Star Wars spinoff-puzzle game "Pit Droids", because it is my first attempt at a more puzzly pack.

Differences to PARALEMS:
- adhering more to a puzzle philosophy: no hidden traps, exits, or other objects, unless it's unavoidable - some tilesets have naturally less salient traps than others, e.g. the Purple and Snow tileset
- no time limits
- more mechanically-, less flavour-driven
- timing, i.e. relative distance of lemmings to each other, is a thing, though - following Pit Droids philosophy here, but also similar levels from Nepster Lems etc.
- the majority of puzzles is more Sudoku-like, less maze-like: I prefer to create challenges through tight limitation of skills rather than through level size. The bigger levels that are in here therefore usually have a comparatively lenient skill count; as long as you follow some basic principles of efficient and economical skill use, you should be fine.
- there is no hatch-labeling for lemmings with pre-assigned skills, because some hatches give out lemmings with several different skills - like in Pit Droids, where one hatch can spawn Droids of different colours
- radiation and slowfreeze occasionally appear, as do zombies. They aren't the main focus of the pack, though.
- There is still one light "trolling" level in here, because I deliberately wanted to make a fair one :) , meaning it will go against some player expectations, but everything relevant should still be visible.

Some specials about this one:
- where PARALEMS had re-runs of original Lemmings levels, PIT LEMS features some remakes of Lemmings 3D levels. They might not work exactly the same, though, because there obviously are no turners, and Lemmings can't be stunned like in Lemmings 2.
- I made another "no skills" level, slightly more advanced than the one from PARALEMS. :D It comes comparatively early in the pack, since this one also has an "educational function".
- Since a lot of levels still seem to restrict themselves to the classic 8 skills, I added a level only featuring NeoLemmix skills.
- "Storywise", you actually have an antagonist, someone who wants to kill all lemmings - and I hope it will become obvious with the last level who this person is... :D

On to the ranks!

LOL
These are mainly introduction levels, yet not of the usual sort. Most of the skills are taught in "chunks", i.e. all destructive skills, all creative skills, and so on. Most objects are introduced, and yes, as you can see, that includes radiation and slowfreeze. Also, some easier tricks that can be done with the skills are taught (meaning "enforced") here. Some of these levels might catch the unsuspecting player off-guard, though!

Base jumping - here the difference between updraft and anti-splat pad is actually relevant!

Annihilation station

Petrification station

ROFL

The name might make you believe these levels were easier, but in fact they're just more weird. Some slightly more advanced tricks. Larger levels start to appear (see example one), yet there are also a lot of more compressed levels that require some thinking out-of-the-box instead.

Skies and Sand

Na zdorovje Lem

Beware of collectivism - different kinds of lemmings coming out of the same hatch!

WTF
This rank isn't necessarily supposed to annoy you yet, but rather to surprise and confuse, at least making you pause for a second.

Under construction

Check mate

OMFG
Now it's time to purposefully confuse the player visually. Apparently, there is a target audience for these types of levels here in the community; hence, these levels can usually be identified by their names, as in the first example below ;) .

You had it coming

Cherry picking

FML
Any frustration you might experience on this rank is absolutely intended. :) It shouldn't be too much execution-based frustration, but especially when radiation and slowfreeze are involved, I won't guarantee for anything - and on this rating, I don't feel obliged to either ^^. This rank will also test you with regard to the skill tricks taught to you before - but of course, it won't be quite as obvious anymore where you'll have to use them!

You asked for this!

Merry X-Maze!

Last cry for salvation - differently coloured hatches used for lemmings with and without pre-assigned skills

Go ahead and give it a shot whenever you feel like it! Perhaps this will also meet the tastes of users who might have found PARALEMS a bit too whacky and "out there". :D

Let the search for backroutes begin anew!

Download link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kywespbmncb6ccr/Pit%20Lems.nxp?dl=1

123
Level Design / A systematic approach to gimmicks
« on: September 18, 2017, 08:58:42 AM »
While waiting for my brother to finally get the last two PARALEMS levels done before uploading the overauled version, I've been working on two separate pack ideas simulatenously, and one of them tries to take the chaos that gimmicks had become when they were abolished after NeoLemmix 1.43 and put it into a more systematic framework: One specific set of gimmicks always remains constant for a rank, i.e. 10 levels or so, then that rule set is discarded and a new one is introduced for the next rank. Only the final one, "Chaos", will combine all different kinds of gimmicks that were introduced to the player before in a... well, "chaotic" manner ;) .

However, as you might know, there was an awful number of gimmicks :D . So many that I already moved from a strict "one gimmick per rank"-policy to a "use gimmicks in combination that make sense together" approach (like vertical and horizontal wrap always go together; hardworkers always goes together with permanent blockers and non-lethal bombers, so every skill is "eternal", and so on).

Since afaik one cannot create more than 9 ranks in a pack, I just wanted to ask which gimmicks were considered the community's favourite ones back in the day. Since level wrap was suggested to be reimplemented in the new formats version, I guess that one was among them, as were zombies (which I don't actually consider a gimmick anymore, hence they can appear on all the ranks). But for all the other options, I have no idea how much they were liked by the players or not :D .

124
Level Design / Tilesets that go together well
« on: September 16, 2017, 09:40:32 PM »
One of the major advantages that the current NeoLemmix editor 10.13 has over the old 1.43 version (or also other engines, like WinLems) is the option to combine tiles from different graphic sets. However, when done poorly, elements from different tilesets combined can look pretty out of place. Some however, if combined correctly, can create the illusion of having always belonged to one and the same graphic set.

So I'd like to collect your preferences on which tilesets you tend to combine the most often when designing levels :) .

Here's my list so far:

Mineshaft + Clockwork. Very similar colour-scheme, plus both contain "technological" elements like railways, cogwheels etc.
Fire + Menacing. I must admit I'm kinda proud of my level "Welcome to Hell!" from PARALEMS, which has the skulls and the blood from the Menacing tileset dripping from the stalactites from the fire graphic set. Looks like a match made in heaven... or hell, in this instance ;) .
Beach + Egyptian (L2). Again, a very similar colour-scheme. The desert tileset from LPIII in contrast is a lot less fitting, because its sand colour is so much brighter. Between the Beach and the Egyptian (L2) tileset however, only the palm trees are slightly different shades of green.
Rock + Highland (L2). Both of them have this light-green colour scheme that seem to suit each other quite well. The Outdoor (L2) set, in contrast, is a little too dark green / brown to fit.
Abstract + Psychedelic. Both are very colourful and use very similar colours to boot.

And here are some graphic sets that surprisingly do not work well with each other, in my opinion:

Polar (L2) + Snow / Christmas. The Polar tiles have a slight shade of blue, those from Snow / Christmas a shade of green / teal.
Space (L2) + Space (LPIV). One is more grey, the other one more blue.
Egyptian (L2) + Desert (LPII). As mentioned above, the sand from the Desert set is much brighter.
Cavelem (L2) + Menacing. I was hoping to be able to create some cool cannibal level with this combination, but the Cavelem tiles are just too purple at the edges to match with the blood from the Menacing graphic set.
Medieval (L2) + Rock + Tree (LPII). All of these tilesets have trees, but they all have different shades of green, different sizes, different levels of detail... Hard to create something visually convincing with this.

125
NeoLemmix Main / Anyone who still has the 1.43 introduction pack?
« on: September 10, 2017, 01:18:47 PM »
I asked Flopsy on YouTube whether the original version of the introduction pack, i.e. the one featuring the "Gimmicks" rank, was still available anywhere. I know the official one has been updated (or should I say: The last rank just has been completely removed :/ ) in order for it to go along with the current version of NeoLemmix. But now that I've finally gotten the old version to work, I'd like to try some of the gimmick levels myself. So does anyone of you still have it on his PC?

1.43 has some interesting benefits and restrictions compared to the current version - no fencer and no option to combine terrain and objects from different tilesets obviously are a downside, but gimmicks certainly make up for that! ^^ I was originally hoping I could transfer PARALEMS to the older version, even if I had to rebuild all the levels manually. While I see now this won't work, I'm tempted to build something entirely new exclusively around gimmicks. To make it a little more predictable, perhaps a specific gimmick will apply for an entire rank before changing to the next one (a rank of all wraparound levels, a rank of all anti-gravity levels, and so on).

126
Level Design / Fencer problem solved - but now I have a backroute
« on: August 25, 2017, 09:12:25 PM »
Hi everyone,

a thing that continued to annoy me about the Fencer is the fact that by design they get cancelled so easily - either by bumping their heads on ceilings, or because two Fencers facing towards each other cut off each other's paths.

So I made this level (attached) where it is necessary to make both Fencers go through. The main difficulty here is obviously: How do I make the second Fencer continue once he reaches the tunnel the first one has created?

After fiddeling around with platformers, builders, and stackers for a while, always cloning them to increase their number and add to the amount of terrain they produce, there was still a tiny gap between the stacks remaining in which the Fencer would fall and thereby stop his action. The solution then was to make one of these stackers a stoner and thereby fill that remaining gap with the lemming's body (see the first attached replay).

The problem is: The stoner breaks the level because it allows a backroute (see the second attached replay): There the stoner gets used to break the fall of the lemmings on one side, while the fencer creates the path for those on the other side.

Any ideas on how to solve this? I was really glad I discovered this way to make fencers go through, but how do I force the player towards this solution?

I already thought about exchanging the floater for a glider and putting fire or water right beneath where the lemmings would drop off the cliff - but then the lemmings would still run into that trap once the way down has been paved for them.

127
Levels for v10 or older / [NeoLemmix] Paralems
« on: August 23, 2017, 03:55:57 PM »
I was unsure whether a pack where not everything about the levels is set in stone should still be considered "in development". But as I've seen in a neighbouring thread, Nessy has also released a pack yesterday and might still do some changes to fix backroutes. Therefore, since all five ranks in my pack are completed, I consider it "finished" for a first version.

So let me hereby introduce you to PARALEMS.


:compat-new:

:compat-ver-10-13::compat-yes:

I decided to go with this name because the pack strays from the mainstream NeoLemmix philosophy of being a puzzle game. It should therefore be noted right from the start that mechanically, this may be a NeoLemmix pack, featuring lots of the new objects, skills, and zombies; philosophically however, it is more of a Lemmix pack. Don't expect puzzles only when you download this, because that is not what PARALEMS is going for!



A quick overview of what you're getting yourself into here:

General
- Paralems has 150 levels distributed equally among five ranks: Harmless, Disturbing, Disgusting, Abhorrent, and Demented
- some levels are re-runs of original Lemmings levels, but this time they have to be solved with different (NeoLemmix-) skills
- quite a few levels contain zombies, however they don't appear prior to the Abhorrent rank
- Paralems tries to go along with the original Lemmings philosophy of "different cognitive demands from different levels". While some levels may be "puzzly", others will "measure" different cognitive skills, such as multitasking, creative (ab-)use of gameplay mechanics, or just pure reaction speed.
- There are time limits on most of the levels, again going along with original Lemmings.
- Occasionally, there will be hidden traps or exits, like in the original Lemmings. This is mostly done for aesthetic reasons, or to create the impression of the Lemmings actually entering into a building, a spaceship, or similar. Therefore, for exits it is usually fairly logical where they are going to be. As it is also said in the pack itself, looking behind doors, windows or inside buildings / vessels might be a good idea in general. You obviously can always use true physics mode, but I doubt it will even be necessary: On a macro scale, the position of the exit should be quite obvious, and on a micro scale, the skill blueprint of a digger or basher stopping at the trigger is a clear hint something is going to happen there ;) .
- Beware of animals ;) . Most of them are not friendly, even if they may be in other packs...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

For the "reaction time" levels, you obviously could run them with the pause button switched on. I can't stop you from doing that, but you will probably notice pretty quickly that you're fooling yourself ;) , because these levels are specifically designed to measure speed.
For the multi-tasking levels, I recommend zooming out by using the scrolling button of your mouse. It's really helpful for keeping track of all that's going on simultaneously at opposite ends of the screen.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)


The extremes
While most of these levels are pretty "normal", I've also made some to deliberately take things to their extremes. There is:
- a level without any terrain
- a level without any skills (that doesn't mean you can't do anything, though... ;) )
- a level situated entirely under water
- a level that will fail before the "Let's Go!" sound if you aren't fast enough :D
- an ultimate trolling level where all the normal rules of Lemmings are turned on their head... ;)

I can however assure that all of these levels are solvable, and I will gladly upload replays of any particular level as a proof :D .

Flavour and music
Many levels in this pack are definitely more driven by flavour than by mechanics. Their titles will refer to movies, books, music, politics... or just the current state of the world.
There might be some stuff in here that could theoretically "offend" some people; to me, no concept or idea is above scrutiny or mockery - like original Lemmings sparked some controversy with "All the 6's".

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The allusions to the mentioned topics are usually more than obvious, so especially for "movie levels", it would make sense to run them with the original scores as soundtrack. Obviously, these are copyrighted, so I can't upload them. But in case you own any of the tracks yourself, since they are quite popular, I encourage you to put them into your NeoLemmix music folder under the following names, so that the levels where they belong to automatically recognise them. As long as you only do this for private use, it will certainly improve the atmosphere of playing this pack :D .

I obviously wouldn't suggest doing this though if you're a Let's Player, like Flopsy, namida, IchoTolot etc. ;)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is my first attempt at creating a level pack, so bear with me :D . Thanks to the NeoLemmix engine, you can play these levels in whatever order you like, so I hope there's something in here for everyone.

Some levels may be too easy or have backroutes; some may be too mean; some just redundant or not in the right rank for their difficulty. Hopefully we will be able to identify those together.

If I've sparked your interest and you're ready to take a look, I always appreciate your feedback ;) .

Download link, Paralems Version 2, since this file seems to be too large to attach:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r005kodylk2o33z/Paralems.nxp?dl=1

128
Non-Lemmings Gaming / Star Wars: Pit Droids
« on: August 19, 2017, 09:25:34 PM »
Okay guys, hands up: Who used to play this puzzle game back in the day? It's available now again for iPads, unfortunately without the level editor that was a feature of the CD version (which, of course, like so many old games, doesn't run on my computer anymore).

If you haven't had a chance to play it, fair enough, because this was kinda a spin-off of a spin-off: Pit Droids are the little robots that repair podracers, as they could be seen in Episode I: The Phantom Menace. So while the podracer PC game was already a side-event, having Pit Droids run through puzzle levels is probably as far away from mainstream Star Wars games as it gets.

For puzzle fanatics like Neo Lemmix players however, I can't imagine anything more suitable - perhaps even including Lemmings itself ^^. The game is two-dimensional as well, but this time lacking the dimension of height rather than depth:

Some explanations if you have never played this game:

1. Pit Droids can't jump, climb, or fall, like lemmings do, but they can walk in all four directions instead and have to be directed towards their exits using arrows. Those arrows are placed in the level before the droids are let loose.

2. Naturally, the number of arrows per level is limited. Both pit droids and arrows can have different colours, so that either all or just certain types of droids react to them by changing their direction.

3. Also, the colour of the droids can be changed in the course of the level, if they walk through an object that sprays them with a new colour - or just changes the colour of their heads while the bodies remain the same.

4. Additionally, they can be given different tools, like screwdrivers, drills, etc. These don't have any specific effect though, like miners or floaters, they are just more ways to differentiate between different kinds of droids.

5. There are barriers placed in the levels that will only let droids of a certain colour, head-colour, or equipped with a certain tool pass. Likewise, there are also barriers that let all pit droids through except for a specific colour or tool. The same is true for exits.

6. Some exits only allow a certain number of droids in before they close. Other droids will then just walk over them without being affected (like limited-number exits in NeoLemmix).

7. Locks can be placed throughout the level that do not open until all of the key buttons have been pressed (like locked exits in NeoLemmix).

8. Some levels feature pre-placed arrows that cannot be moved around. Droids will react to these the same way they react to your arrows, so you have to be careful to which pre-placed arrows you lead them.

9. There is a trap looking like a fan that opens and closes in regular, predictable intervals. If a droid steps onto it while it's open, it will quite literally get blown up - as long as it's closed, droids can walk across it safely. Consequently, sometimes you can get past this trap by sending your droids on a little detour to delay them; sometimes, there will be so many fans in a row that you simply have to take a different path.

10. Droids can have different release rates, like lemmings. Pit Droids is a field-based game (fields are either squares or hexagons), so the release rate decides how many fields of space are left between two individual droids. Sometimes, there's no space in between, they're walking right back-to-back; sometimes, the intervalls are longer. This is especially important when several groups of droids cross each other.

11. If two pit droids cross each other's paths, only one of two things can happen: Either, one will stand still and wait for the other one to pass. Or both will keep walking, crash into each other and both be destroyed. This differs on a per-level basis and can be identified by the droid head symbol at the top: A star next to the droid head means they will crash; if the star isn't there, they will wait, so crossing lines are possible. In later levels however, the mode is usually "crash". This is probably the most interesting and at the same time most nerve-wracking feature of the game. Sometimes, you also have to exploit the gaps between pit droids to make different groups of droids cross each other's paths safely, i.e. in such a way that no two droids occupy the same field at the same time.

In this example level shown below, the mode is "don't crash", as can be seen by the fact that there's no star next to the little transparent-blue droid's head in the information bar at the top.

This is perhaps the greatest difference to Lemmings, since lemmings just walk through each other's bodies - or next to each other in Lemmings Revolution - without any issues. Pit Droids are solid all the time. This also means there are no blockers: If one Pit Droid has to stand still because it can't pass a barrier, all the droids behind that one will also be forced to stand still. Or even worse, in crash mode, they will all just run against that barrier and die.

It should therefore be noted that Pit Droids are just as dumb as Lemmings and will follow each other mindlessly. ;)

(Picture below taken from AppSpy.com)

129
NeoLemmix Main / Where are the Original Lemmings 2 Player levels?
« on: August 18, 2017, 11:45:46 PM »
Hi guys,

so, in one of Flopsy's tutorial videos where he showed how to dump levels from a pack currently opened in Neo Lemmix, he mentioned that this function would also dump the 2 player levels if used on Original Lemmings.

In my case however, they don't appear in the dump folder; it stops after 0430. Have they been removed? I'd just like to take a look at them, since I barely remember them from back in the day when I would play Lemmings on the Atari :D . I still have a remake of the Amiga version where I can access the levels by playing them through, but that's kinda silly considering the green player can't do anything. If I had them as dump files however, I could perhaps create some more interesting solutions by treating them as single player levels.

130
Closed / [Suggestion] Zombies interacting with buttons or pickup skills
« on: August 13, 2017, 08:36:00 PM »
I recently created this level called "Make yourself useful", where the player has to first bomb away the ground under some Zombie Blockers right beneath the trap doors to set them in motion. Each of these Zombies had a different pre-assigned skill (Glider, Swimmer, Disarmer, and Climber), so they were to be released in the right sequence, lest the Climber Zombie would walk into the trap that the Disarmer Zombie should have taken care of first etc. Originally, I also wanted to use these Zombies to press the exit unlock buttons, and spent a lot of time on arranging the position of the Glider and the Swimmer Zombie for the sake of that, only to find out then that the triggers of the buttons don't respond to Zombies walking over them, but only to normal Lemmings.

Is there a way to change this? And perhaps, while we're considering that, also to make Zombies interact with pickup skills (i.e. when a Zombie walks over a pickup skill, the player gets that skill for their disposal)?

I have no idea how much effort would be necessary to do this, I just wanted to throw it out there because I believe it could give Zombies a lot more depth, or "design space", so to say, than having them only be strictly enemies 95% of the time. Currently, they can disarm or trigger traps for you, or become forced Bombers or Stoners by walking into radiation / slowfreeze - that's about it.

The ultimate thing would be to allow Zombies to enter exits as well, but instead of adding to your saved Lemming count they'd reduce it :D , meaning you'd have to defend the exit from the Zombies at all costs.

131
Hi everyone,

I was just playtesting a level where one is supposed to use stoners to create terrain that gliders would bump against, thereby making them turn in mid-air.

Despite using several stoners as close to each other as possible, the gliders would simply sail right through them as if there was no terrain. I thought the issue was the updraft the gliders were moving in, but I just tested it and this also seems to occur if the glider meets the stoner outside an updraft.

Is this supposed to be this way? I thought terrain created by stoners should behave just like any other normal terrain.

The version of NeoLemmix Editor is V10.13.13.

132
Other Projects / Converting Leves from WinLems to NeoLemmix
« on: August 12, 2017, 06:27:54 PM »
Hi everyone,

as I've mentioned in a different thread, for the first levels I made several years ago, I used a Lemmings clone called WinLems. While it did have a level editor that worked similarly to the NeoLemmix one, one could only choose from among the original tilesets, and it was not possible to combine tiles from different graphic sets (whenever one would change the graphic set, the terrain pieces and objects would change into their respective counterparts, if available, of that different graphic set).

I have now begun to manually recreate these levels in NeoLemmix to fill up my pack with my former ideas, because I still like many of them today. For the smaller, "block-based" and more mechanically-driven levels, this was easy, but recreating huge levels where the terrain in the original version was placed quite randomly obviously is quite a hassle.

Has anyone else here ever worked with WinLems or knows a way to convert these levels into NeoLemmix format? Because as I said, the way the two editors work is really quite similar. WinLems however saves each individual level as a .dat-file.

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