Thanks for your detailed response, Nepster!

Yes, in some exceptional cases information has to be hidden, because you couldn't manage to design the level otherwise. This is totally fine!

I have attached the level I was talking about for clarification, as well as a replay. I get NeoLemmix doesn't care about the execution by now, but I really like the synergy regarding the timing of bashers and stoners on this one .

Concerning timed bombers: Would it be possible to make this optional in the editor for each individual level (instant bombers vs. timed ones)? I have some old levels from WinLems, like one where you had to bomb climbers to get through some poles. The original version was quite challenging, I'd say mid- to late Tricky, whereas now with instant bombers, it's reduced to mid- to late Fun, i'd say .

Whenever I want to work with timed bombers now, I have to use radiation, which is even more difficult to execute, imho. To use another German idiom, that's kinda "driving out the devil with Beelzebub": With radiation, the countdown always starts at the same location - the place where the "radiation station" is located . The skill with timed bombers is knowing when to assign them; with radiation, you can only use walkers etc. to steer them into the right direction.

Levels that focus on the execution or have hidden exits or traps might be very nice Lemmings or Lemmix levels, but still be bad NeoLemmix or Lix levels, simply because the genre changed a bit and players expect something different now.

Well, I built the levels using the Neo Lemmix editor - if these levels are compatible with other platforms, I will happily release my pack as a "Lemmix pack" instead . Although features like framestepping and true physics mode are certainly also useful for some of my levels, and if it's just to check whether a trap has been successfully disarmed or not.

Perhaps it's safest to say it is a "Lemmix pack running on the Neo Lemmix engine"?

Congratulations on solving that level!

Ehm, no, too early for praising me , I just watched namida's gameplay of that level and how even he couldn't figure it out. Surprisingly, although I had downloaded all the packs I could find from the NeoLemmix website, I don't have yours yet. I guess it's somewhere here in the forum? My brother and I stopped the video right at the beginning however and calculated different possible attempts. So now I will try to put them into practice .

That's another nice feature of Neo Lemmix - being able to play the levels in whatever sequence you want, so getting stuck on a particular level doesn't end the entire game .

PS: I saw IchoTolot has started covering your pack on YouTube now, so I have his solutions for checking mine ; for some reason, he uploaded the very last level first (I guess because it had come up in our discussion here? ), and now he seems to do it chronologically.

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 , meaning you'd have to defend the exit from the Zombies at all costs.

Thanks for your quick responses!

I've attached the level where this problem occurs. Somehow however, replays only seem to be saved when I complete levels successfully. In this case, the fact that the gliders can't turn at the stoners is what's preventing me from solving the level ^^. They're supposed to glide to the right and then turn to hit the terrain at the top where they can walk to the exit - yet the always fly out of the play area to the right, passing all the stoners because their feet are indeed below them. I might have to remove the updraft on the higher parts?

Clone the first glider and let the lemming comming out against the glide direction become the stoner after a few frames ---> he will be a bit lower, creating the wanted wall to turn. This is a bit precise, but that's what framestepping is for.

That sounds interesting, will definitely try that! ^^

I'm surprised you seem to be encouraging me to incorporate pixel precision into that level .

EDIT: Tried that, but I don't see how the cloned glider can be lower than the other one? Both are inside an updraft, after all, so the clone just rises in the opposite direction, unfortunately.

PS: Since this apparently isn't a bug, I guess this thread can be moved to the general Neo Lemmix subforum.

@IchoTolot: Ich hätte jetzt nicht unbedingt gedacht, dass das eine typisch deutsche Eigenschaft ist, aber ich begrüße es auf jeden Fall!

(Translation: I didn't necessarily consider directness a typically German quality, but I welcome it anyway.)

I will obviously consider removing or refining levels from my pack if they turn out to be "too mean" by several people's standards. That's something always difficult to estimate for the creator of a level who knows where all the mean things are. Apart from that, I'll see where my pack goes and probably it will just become something different for in between all the puzzling the other packs provide.

I've looked at the Black Hole level you mentioned (I guess "Mining Company" was the one you meant), and I get that this is the way to get the maximum out of especially the classic 8 skills, using those in new and creative ways.

In my pack I want to focus more on the new skills, or a healthy mixture of old and new skills, plus all the new objects, like Zombies, radiation etc., and all the whacky things you can do with them. That's what I meant by "making seasoned players think outside the box". It's less about "how do I use this familiar tool in new ways", instead "how can I learn to use this new tool effectively in the first place?"
Radiation and slowfreeze, if not handled precisely, are just another form of traps that kill your Lemmings - even worse so for Zombies. On the other hand, being a glider will save a lemming in one instance and kill it in the next one by sailing right into a trap.

I know nobody claims to be a perfect solver. Instead, the idea is that a hypothetical perfect solver should be able to tackle a level right away, i.e. a perfect solver shouldn't have to practice a level. In reality however, as we know, practice makes perfect. So of course there should be things to figure out right away just by looking at them. I don't see the problem however with having to "go" somewhere (=i.e. "send a lemming there") to find out about some of the remaining stuff. The state of looking at the level while the trap door is still closed is kinda the "ivory tower"; then you unleash the horde and oops... reality might interfer with what you first came up with at the drawing board .

To me this is a bit like playing chess vs. playing Magic: The Gathering . In chess, all the options are on the table all the time, for everyone to see, and it can only be each player's individual fault for not seeing something. In Magic, you might also have a strategy from the getgo - but your opponent still has something to contribute. In Lemmings, your opponent is the level , and all the traps, tricks and nasty surprises it has up its sleeve. And since I enjoy playing Magic more than I do playing chess, I think it's obvious why I also favour levels that occasionally have such "surprises" in them that mess up your entire preceding strategy.

A thing about "snowed in"-exits, i.e. where you can see the exit, but the trigger is buried: I just finished working on a level where the exit trigger being buried in the ground actually made the level easier than without. I had a basher digging through several pillars, while the gaps in between had to be closed by stoners simultaneously (pretty cool timing / multi-tasking thing there). This makes the basher dig all the way through (you only have a single one). Now, without the buried trigger, the basher would bash past it and thereby make the exit inaccessible. The only remaining skills were bombers, and bombing the basher somehow altered the terrain in a way that did not create "mini-steps" for lemmings to walk over, so they were stuck right beneath the exit. By flushing the trigger into the ground however, the basher who cannot be stopped anyway sort of makes the exit accessible by accident . And once he hits it, him exiting the level stops him from bashing.

Also, at the beginning of that level, the lemmings fall onto a splat pad right from the trap door. There's an anti-splat pad hidden in the ground right underneath. The player doesn't know this. But since you don't have any floaters or gliders, only bombers at the start, and the lemmings fall from the trap door right to their doom, there's not much else you can try to do before you find out the pad is there.

I'd rather tend to making Nessie a trap consistenly then. However, it still differs from a normal trap, because the head is terrain you can walk on while other traps are just objects that can be walked through.

There is however some inconsistency in the tilesets themselves. Take for example the Menacing set: There are snakes that are terrain and there are snakes that are traps (the ones looking sideways). A first time player will still need some time to figure this out, especially since you can't walk at all on the heads of the trap snakes, while the others are stable terrain.

The features like replay, rewinding and true physics mode are blessing and curse at the same time, I'd say. For me, they are mainly "anti frustration tools", saving you from annoyances. Purists of the original game would probably consider them cheats; you could make a case that in the original Lemmings, the frustration of missing an activation at a crucial point was part of the experience of the game.

Also, what the point of a level is is kinda subjective, isn't it? Take the cross promotion levels from Lemmings (Beasts, Menacing, and Awesome). None of them is particularly difficult, but they look cool, they have an unexpected change of music, they just mix things up.

I understand your point of view of NeoLemmix being all about puzzles, since I used to play Star Wars: Pit Droids back in the day (or now again on the iPad). There the levels are even called "puzzles" and you have to place all skills beforehand (=like "before Lemmings even come out of the trap door"). It's all about "solve in your head first, then execute". However, the type of challenge these puzzles pose is always very similar. There are no "quick reaction" challenges in Pit Droids, there is barely "learning by doing" or "trial and error".

In NeoLemmix, also levels like We all fall down are pointless, because it's totally obvious what you have to do and you can play the entire level with the pause button switched on, rewind every time a single lemming splats etc. But just because you can, should you? It's clear this wasn't the point of the original level. It's the old "with great power comes great responsibility" thing .

The NeoLemmix features imho are both an argument for and against "annoyances". You could say it makes them pointless, or you could say it makes them unproblematic, because whenever one is fed up searching for the exit, they can use the true physics tool, while those who like this type of level can keep on trying the "original" way, a.k.a. the hard way .

I used to create levels in WinLems, which doesn't have these features and only has manual steel rendering. This invited me to create levels wih bashable steel - or with normal terrain that can't be bashed through. So I created this level called "Hallowed Ground"; it even says in the title that there might be a reason this doesn't work as usual . Yes, my brother had to rethink for a second, but he made it through without major frustration.

PS: "X marks the spot" also has a hidden trap, that fire trap, that is even hidden behind a supposed exit on the left side. The level gives you a hint for the exit on the right, but at the same time fools you to believe there were exits behind the Xs on the left, too - instead, one has nothing behind it, and the other one, even worse, has a trap instead. Oops, the first time you try, you're screwed - but then you'll remember.

Hi everyone, since I'm currently making my first steps into level design (i.e. I'm getting close to that magical 120 levels-mark where one could turn the whole lot into a pack), I'd like to chime in, especially regarding the "hidden exits" controversy. While I agree that clueless digging in a vast landscape searching for the exit is just exhausting, I'd say as long as a level designer stays true to the "ethics" of the original Lemmings game, this problem shouldn't even occur. And that principle is: Giving enough hints for the search.

IIRC there are only two levels with hidden exits in the original game, three if you consider the Fun version of "X marks the spot". The other one is obviously "Lost something?" Both maps however give quite clear hints about where the exit might be - one even says it in its name, and the other one, "Lost something?", has the platform where the exit is hidden under the dirt as a very exposed location in the level. After all, if I were to play this level for the first time, I'd rather start searching in a small piece of terrain, thereby finding the exit right away in this case, than digging through the entire ground first.

Actually, I kinda like hiding exits now, especially when it makes sense from a "flavour" standpoint, like searching for a treasure on an island (Beach tileset). You could even use the X from the Fire tileset to literally "mark the spot" in this case . Another way I like to use them is to simulate "entering into something". Like that ufo from the Space tileset, a building from the Shadow tileset, and so on. Just give enough hints to point the player towards that special piece of terrain.

My brother who has spent a lot more time playing the original games than I did has already agreed to playtest my levels, so I'll see how long it will take him to find the exits. I hope I made it obvious enough, if not I might have to add in some more hints. But I don't see the point in cutting this feature categorically. Especially when creating levels for adept Lemmings players, I like to make them think outside the box. Like diving beneath a trap trigger using stoners to force the swimmers down. Or using Zombies with skills (e.g. Disarmer) to your own advantage . (Was really sorry to find out they can't trigger pickup-skills or exit unlock-buttons ^^. But at least they interact with traps and teleporters.)

Finally, concerning "hidden traps":
Remember that Nessie tilepiece from the Highland set? It is originally just terrain, but I used to think it was a trap since I confused it with the chameleon / lizard from the Oh No-Rock-Set. But funnily enough, you can actually turn Nessie into a trap by putting that chameleon head behind it. Since both are green, it even looks quite convincing when it opens its jaw.
Would you guys consider that a "hidden" trap already? I mean, that Nessie does look kinda like it's up to no good anyway, doesn't it?

Yeah, you might get surprised the first time you step on the trigger that Nessie has suddenly become hungry , but then you will certainly remember. In original Lemmings it would lead to not more than a single restart; in NeoLemmix, with the rewind feature, shouldn't that be even less of a problem?