Great job, WillLem! I look forward to trying out the skill myself!

EDIT: Moved from Projectiles should kill Zombies & Pop Balloons

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I once jokingly suggested a Gunner skill in the joke-skill-ideas thread. That skill could only kill Zombies and nothing else. The point of that being a joke suggestion was to illustrate that skills this narrow usually aren’t worthwhile. Just consider the fact that we’ve already dropped the Runner again, which still would have had more puzzle utility than a dedicated Zombie-killer skill.

This is also why I’ve joked about SuperLemmix turning into Worms. Because if the focus of levels or even entire packs becomes just to kill the Zombies to get a talisman, with the challenge of getting the crowd to an exit merely being an afterthought, we’ll fundamentally change what the game is about at its heart. And a skill like the Gunner would pretty much require such a massive shift in order to be worthy of inclusion.

Regarding the Bazooker, I’m a little more open — though it’s ironically perhaps THE most Worms-like skill, alongside the Grenader (even more so than the Batter, actually). I can see some utility in having the knockback effect at a distance. Hence, in contrast to the Gunner, the skill could also be useful on non-Zombie levels. However, I don’t think we can assess that before we’ve tried out the Batter.

The crucial point is how easy it is to control the knockback effect — which becomes even harder in Classic Mode. A Bazooker would require projection shadows after impact, so that the player can anticipate where the explosion would knock the lemmings getting hit by it. Therefore, the skill shadow for the Bazooker would have to consist of both the arc for the projectile itself AND of what happens after impact.

Meanwhile, for the Batter, that skill shadow would just be the arc of the skill itself, since it directly flings the lemmings around, as if the lemming itself were the projectile (thinking in Spearer / Grenader logic here).

Finally, the fact that it’s hard to control a knockback effect is probably also a reason why, even though we have two kinds of Bombers in SuperLemmix (timed and untimed), WillLem hasn’t introduced the L2 difference between Bomber and Exploder / the Lix difference between Knockback Bomber and Exploder yet. A Knockback Bomber would require the same projection shadows as the Bazooker on impact, but at least it wouldn’t additionally require a skill shadow for the projectile arc — because there is no projectile with the Knockback Bomber.

Only one more level to go! But it's a Cavelem level, so I can't be bothered with it tonight.
I'm glad I came up with the one I'm showing off here, since I expect it to be the hardest one of the Cavelem ones.


CAVELEM

The Unforgiven

BEACH

Coco Jambo

MEDIEVAL

Omnos


Dawn of victory

Regarding the music tracks, 10 out of 12 are finished (again, at least in a rough form - I'll probably edit them for details later on).
I only have Space and Circus left to do - which, as mentioned before, are the hardest ones to record.

Also, my recording software sometimes refuses to properly convert the files to MP3 while exporting, as of yesterday (the files end up being too short in duration, even though I've set the markers for beginning and ending correctly). I've had a similar experience with my video editing software on the same Mac recently. So far, a simple restart of the computer has always solved those problems, for the time being, at least. But I still don't know what causes them.

My only guess is that it might be after having recorded a bunch of stuff, so that the hard drive might be packed with temporary files that take up space, but which might get deleted when shutting down the computer.

Great job once again, WillLem!

The nice irony is that, due to the low resolution of Lemmings games in general, the diagonal line still looks a little like a staircase, indeed, because one can still recognise "steps" in it. I don't think that's a problem - it just goes to show that there is little difference between a ladder and a diagonal rope in practice. Only the Platformer doesn't have this feature, since he creates a straight line.

Now we have an analogous symptom to the "longer step / brick" (the "a little bit further forward" part you mentioned) that we had with the angular ladder, where two consecutive ladders won't form one straight diagonal line, but there will be a slight horizontal shift instead. I don't think this is a problem either, since the resulting "ceiling" is flat, so several ladders in a row are still Shimmier-friendly in one piece. This probably just has to do with the starting position of the ladder.

The other point you raised is related to that, I assume:

2) Lems can currently ladder through existing ladders, Builder bridges and other thin diagonal platforms. Do we want this? Personally, I think it's desirable, but I can see a case for it not being so:

I've noticed something similar with the Laserer, who will not cut through a Builder staircase if assigned on the last pixel before stepping through the staircase. The reason for that is that he actually holds the cannon above the staircase, so it makes sense he can't shoot through it. A similar behaviour can be exploited in NeoLemmix by having a Shimmier jump through a low-hanging Platformer bridge (the Reacher state takes him above the bridge, so that he then lands on top of it).

So I don't think this is a problem either. In fact, it can be useful to connect Builder staircases and ladders in a zig-zag pattern.

1) The Ladderer currently stops when the end of the ladder hits terrain; they should also stop when hitting one-way-fields/Blockers. Turning wouldn't work unfortunately (for many reasons), but stopping seems appropriate.

Ah, you mean that the terrain created by the Ladder can't be affected by Blockers and one-way fields? Makes sense, just like a Spearer's or Grenader's projectile can't be affected by them. One-way fields (which Blockers have on their hands) only affect lemmings themselves, at the end of the day.

However, what happens when you assign a Blocker in front of a Ladderer to turn the lemming himself around mid-performance? Here I'd expect the same behaviour as when turning a Laserer with a Blocker mid-shooting (I just saw a NeoLemmix level on which this is required ). Meaning, the Ladderer would create the lower part of the ladder in the opposite direction - similar to what happens when you clone a Ladderer.



Also, I just want to say I like the skill panel icon! It's just a little strange to me that the downward staircase in the icon looks like a Builder staircase, i.e., more "step-like", and at a flatter angle. I assume this might just be a preliminary version of the icon, and the final version will have the actual angle the skill uses? If not, I don't have a problem with it either - it might just be a little more confusing for new players.

Great! I'm looking forward to it!

As reigning King of Shimmiers, my vote is clear.

I’m sorry for potentially having created additional workload for you, WillLem. However, if there is popular demand for the Ladderer being a 45° slope, then it would be more efficient to change the behaviour now than at some undefined later point in time. The programming effort would be the same, but if a majority of players end up being in favour of this, and we change it later, chances are higher that it will additionally affect existing levels.

Of course, that depends on whether SuperLemmix will be considered “stable” at that point or not. Then again, Mike is already maintaining a SuperLemmix version of his pack, as it seems. So I guess the transition from SuperLemmix being “in development” to being treated as “stable” by at least some players / level designers is going to be gradual.

Also, thanks to jkapp76 for discovering that most Jacob’s Ladders are indeed straight lines at the end of “unfolding”! That way, we can indeed keep the name “Ladderer”. Now the question is just about game-mechanical use.



Another argument in favour of the slope, which has nothing to do with Shimmiers, is the ease with which lemmings can walk through the staircase from the opposite side. With Builders, this is something we treat as a given — and we actively have to use three-Builder walls to stop it.

With the Ladderer, if the staircase is angular, it should basically never be possible for a lemming to pass through the staircase from the other side, because the lemming will always run against a vertical brick and turn around. If you then have to bash through the ladder to let the crowd on the other side, you need to reseal that gap again with a Builder. Which kind of defeats the purpose of the Ladderer. It should be possible to e.g. only provide Ladderers on a given level, without always having to provide additional Builders and Bashers, just in case some lemming gets stuck on the other side.

The Cloner example in the video doesn’t test this, because for the one staircase where a lemming does pass through from underneath, there is actually another vertical step right before slipping through the terrain. Meaning, the vertical height he then has to overcome in order to slip through the staircase is just one pixel — not the standard brick height of a vertical Ladderer brick. Normally, the vertical height of the bricks seems to be at least two pixels? I don’t know how lemmings behave, then, if there is also a “ceiling” (=a horizontal brick) above that vertical brick.

Perhaps it is indeed possible for lemmings to slip through the angular ladder — of course, I haven’t been able to test this myself yet. Even then, though, I’d argue this would be confusing for the player. Because there are lots of cases where horizontal terrain on top of vertical terrain means lemmings won’t be able to pass through that (such terrain configurations normally also stop Climbers). And then, there’s these weird fringe situations, in which the lemming only has to overcome one pixel or so, or in which Climbers can climb up a wall despite that wall having 1 pixel of protruding terrain. (For example, Climbers climbing through the wooden staircases in the Pillar tileset if you put a slight vertical dent into them from above.)

In short: The ladder at least looks like it should never be possible to pass through it from the other side (especially on flat ground, rather than from below, as in the Cloner example in the video). Even if it is possible to pass through the angular staircase from the other side, I’d argue it’s not what the player would expect. Hence, such player confusion should be avoided, if possible.



In contrast, if the ladder is a slope / ramp, lemmings will clearly be able to pass through it from below, just like with a Builder staircase, and then continue to walk on top of it. This would eliminate the nuisance of lemmings constantly getting stuck on the other side of the ladder (which is something that can already happen easily with Stackers).

There are also plenty of levels where such slopes are part of the terrain, of course (think of the blue lines in the Crystal tileset). The ladder would then behave the same way. Hence, it would be consistent with player experience from regular terrain, and therefore also consistent with player expectations.

Well, if you really "can't wait", you're of course invited to participate in pre-release testing - if you don't mind finding backroutes .
If you'd rather enjoy a more patched version of the pack, you'll have to wait until pre-release testing is over.

Meanwhile, let's cut that number of remaining levels down to five:

EGYPTIAN

Valley of the Kings

SPACE

At the back of beyond

Junajo's Galaxy tileset (where the planets and nebulae are from) is really useful for adding some decoration. I've just discovered it also features further space-like traps (an alien, a ufo that can abduct lemmings etc.), and the terrain would also go along well with L2 Space. I didn't want to go overboard with that in a Tribes-themed pack, but I might get back to using this tileset more in Lemmings, Drugs, & Rock 'n Roll!

The limiting factor there is of course that the "Space" tileset in Lemmings 3D, the Alien tileset, is a lot darker, with more black, orange, and green - which is why so far, I've been using completely different tilesets than any of the space-themed ones to emulate the Alien tileset.