No, that makes sense. Shimmiers can already be used as surrogate Walkers in this regard, to e.g. cancel constructive and destructive skills. The important part is that neither Shimmiers nor Jumpers should be able to free Blockers - that should remain specifically the Walker's responsibility.



Regarding double-jumping: While obviously this is very common in jump-and-run video games (and then also limited to one double-jump), didn't we rule out Swimmers jumping out of water for this exact same reason? That you can't jump without solid ground under your feet?

If it's possible to jump in mid-air, then it should definitely be possible to jump out of water, because at least there's a surface and some kind of substance there, rather than just... you know... nothing.

I guess the purely game-mechanical explanation would be that you can't assign any other skill to Swimmers either, aside from subtractive (=lethal) and additive ones (=Cloner).

But then again, if you go with a purely game-mechanical explanation, there's no reason why double-jumping should be limited to one repetition. The lemming would jump from mid-air the second time just like he's jumping from mid-air the first time. So this would be inconsistent.

Keep in mind that in most jump-and-run games that allow double-jumping, the second jump is accompanied by a different animation than the first one (usually a flip forwards). The animation for the lemming Jumper, in contrast, would be the same both times. Hence, it would be impossible to tell from the trajectory of the animation alone whether a given lemming is currently performing his first or second jump. And if there's no difference between the first and second jump, then I don't see a way (rules-wise nor coding wise), to make double-jumping possible but e.g. triple-jumping not.

Also, this rabbit hole goes much deeper. If you can jump in mir-air, can you also assign Jumpers to Shimmiers in their Reacher state, then? If our 20th skill becomes the upward Digger, that one would probably also have to include a Reaching animation. Then we'd have Jumper-Jumper, Shimmier-Jumper, and upward Digger-Jumper interactions.

Does this put the Tank on the table, though? Since two members now suggested something along those lines, and namida actively called it a proposal that could serve as a legitimate basis for a skill.

I'm not asking this because the Tank happens to be my invention - as I said before, I would be perfectly fine with "just" another L2 skill - I simply want to know whether it should be added to the list of options we're considering right now.

...and here's Soviet, Indian, and Trump!

While designing the Soviet lemmings, I noticed that default lemmings actually aren't completely white, they have a slight skin-tone shade to them. These Russian lemmings, in contrast, really have #ffffff, i.e. complete white, as their colour!

For the Indian lemmings, somehow the reflection on the Builder's sack is red. I don't see anywhere in the recolouring options in the "theme" file where you can change this?

And for the Trump lemmings, don't worry, I didn't actually create that level just to show them off... this is an old level from Paralems called "The Wall (Part II)", converted to New Formats, and it might actually make its way into Pit Lems remastered, just to have all three "The Wall" levels in one place...

Tagging your pack: You can already do this! See for example Strato's "Lemmicks", which used an older version of the engine to make new gimmick levels after they had officially been culled. Because the pack is what it is, it has a much smaller audience than packs for up-to-date NL, but we don't complain that it exists.

Thanks for the shoutout, Proxima! Indeed, WillLem has already played quite a bit of Lemmicks.

I would slightly object to WillLem grouping the pack together with GigaLems, though, because pretty much the only thing the two have in common is the fact that they are for NeoLemmix 1.43 .

Lemmicks was designed after Pit Lems, i.e. was already trying to adhere to the strictly-fair puzzle philosophy much more strongly than even Pit Lems. That's why, for example, there are no time limits on any of the levels. And in fact, the goal was to see whether the gimmicks could be used to create fair puzzles in the first place - which is why, instead of the "surprising" ways they had randomly been popping up in people's packs before, I went for this organisation of each gimmick into separate ranks (and only selected the gimmicks I considered puzzle-friendly in the first place).

Lemmicks can be slightly misleading due to the general physics changes that were made in the meantime, like solid level sides and a solid ceiling (Old-Formats NeoLemmix had deadly sides but solid ceilings; only since New Formats are all level edges deadly). I could have made all the sides deadly in Lemmicks, because there actually was a gimmick for that as well, but this looked like the lemmings running into fire traps at the edges, i.e. slightly different than the behaviour we're used to. Therefore, I kept the rules that a player playing a pack in 1.43 would expect, because I considered that "most fair" at the time. It obviously still led to some confusion , but the very first rank, Basic, does the best it can do to really hammer home repeatedly that the level sides are solid.

And of course, NeoLemmix 1.43 had no skill shadows or Clear-Physics Mode, but I've deliberately tried not to exploit that (in contrast to the pack GigaLems ). I think the most difficult assignment, position-wise, is on the Bedlam level "These stairs of mine". But well, that's on the final rank, and it probably would be much easier to get the position right with skill shadows either. But it's just so nice when you finally see it working out!

Apart from that though, the only rank that actively tries to be execution-difficult is the Hasty rank - and even that only applies to one half of that rank, featuring the SuperLemming and Frenzy gimmick at once (=increased game speed and no option to pause the game). The other half just has the instant-pickup-skills gimmick active by now, so those are probably some of the fairest puzzles you will encounter.



Therefore, I indeed mainly attribute the smaller audience for Lemmicks to the fact that it's in what can by now be called "Very-Old Formats" . And to all the inconveniences that come with that (no skill shadows, no CPM, no direct level selection from a list, but having to jump through the levels with arrow keys, no Fencer or Shimmier, etc.). In fact, the main reason Flopsy quit this pack was that he simply couldn't record NeoLemmix 1.43 in full-screen mode on his PC.

The pack has certainly been called difficult by many forum members - surprisingly, even the Basic rank, which doesn't actually have any gimmicks at all. Yet, this difficulty does indeed seem to refer to the puzzles themselves, or the different rules they are based on - but the important part is that these rules are consistent.

Hence, people call it difficult, but I have yet to hear anyone call the pack unfair. Unless you want to count "Do not fear" (Basic 06), but that was an honest mistake of mine and not at all intended to be that difficult to pull off...



So perhaps, "Lemmicks, but in New Formats" might be a standard you could try to shoot for with your future packs? Gimmicky where appropriate, difficult, happy to - but consistent in its rules, no nasty surprises.

Wow, really? I think we'll just have to agree to disagree here: I see way more in NeoLemmix than it just being a puzzle game.

I get it - but somehow there usually only seems to be one person at a time who sees it that way . It used to be me a couple of years ago. Now it's you.

NeoLemmix has developed far beyond the original Lemmings in many ways, no doubt about it. However, the game from which it evolved has that explore & discover mentality as well as being a picture-puzzle game.

It would be very sad for it to completely lose that element of gameplay.

I think it already has lost it. Not because it wouldn't be possible to create such levels - as you've demonstrated, you clearly can - but simply because there is no market for such levels.

I get why you're upset about one specific level-design philosophy prevailing. I was as well, and sometimes still am. But the problem is not so much the philosophy itself, and it's prevalence is also just a symptom.

The actual problem is the small size of our community. In games with larger fanbases, there is usually "enough space for everyone to enjoy the game their own way". Say, for example, there are a bunch of different ways and formats to play Magic: The Gathering, and everyone can enjoy a different one. That's because the game has an active player base of several million people - this forum, in contrast, has not even yet cracked 1,000 visitors ever.

Now, this is not meant as "we're this small, sworn-in community who have agreed on these rules, so you must abide by our 'laws'!" , quite the opposite. It simply means that the target audience for any custom lemmings pack is very small already from the getgo. Given how much time and effort it takes to create any level pack, you probably don't want to chase away the few "custom-level customers" that are available. And as you acknowledged yourself, this has already started affecting your level design:

I'm having to edit my levels and curb my creative tendencies to suit others' preferences; I'm fine with this because ultimately I do want people to enjoy my packs and I don't want to be seen as an unnecessary troublemaker

While you're of course still free to design your levels in whatever way you please, if you include a lot of unpopular elements, it will simply lead to fewer people playing those levels, and eventually maybe even your packs as a whole - and there aren't even that many people around here to begin with. Look at the view counts the Let's Play videos get, those usually remain under 200 for their entire lifetime.

but it would be good to understand the reasons I'm making such sacrifices.

Sure, I'll happily try outline what I can identify as "reasons" in terms of "rational arguments" that go beyond mere personal taste - because if a majority of forum members just say that they have a personal preference for "strict puzzles", that personal taste is hard to argue with.

First of all...

Features are added based mainly on the whims of whoever's programming the game.

Yep, and features were also removed mainly on the whims of whoever was programming the game .

Currently, we see namida putting in a lot of effort to add more features to the game in very short time spans, which I greatly applaud! However, there was also a time when namida wasn't active in the further development of NeoLemmix, and a different user and moderator named Nepster was the "lead developer" of NeoLemmix.

Especially during the time of transitioning from Old Formats to New Formats (text-based), Nepster went on what is now sometimes infamously referred to as the "Culling Frenzy", where he tried to use the opportunity of format transition to get rid of a lot of stuff that the community had barely used or that the majority didn't like. And then, there were also some features he proposed to "cull" even though there wasn't really a reason to.




Therefore, I think it's fair to say that Nepster's personal level design philosophy certainly had at least quite some influence on the early development of New-Formats Neo Lemmix. Meaning, the "strictly-fair puzzles only" mentality, at least in my view, became even stronger after the transition from Old Formats to New Formats. In Old Formats, you still had all kinds of troll features, like manual steel, invisible and fake objects etc. that could potentially be exploited to create unfair levels, even though few people actually did so. New Formats, in contrast, was trying to be "clean and serious", and at that time, to me this equated "no fun allowed!"

This was one of the reasons why I "rebelled" and stuck to Old Formats for a while (meaning "I literally created the largest level pack in existence for the 'outdated' version 10.13" ), because I simply did not see myself represented in any way by the early New-Formats version, nor by the philosophy it had been created upon.

This was before the introduction of the Shimmier, you need to know - so basically, early New Formats did nothing that late Old Formats couldn't do; in fact, it did less (no Radiation, Slowfreeze, or Anti-Splat Pads). In exchange for a couple more new exclusive tilesets. I always knew I would transition to New Formats at the latest once the Shimmier was introduced. We also got Neutral lemmings, limited-number hatches and exits and many more nice things in the meantime.

But of course, eventually, peer pressure was also a factor, as you are experiencing it now, that made me switch to New Formats for good. And by peer pressure, I don't mean "threats of being ostracized" or similar , but simply "fewer people playing my packs". At some point, I was convinced nobody was playing Old-Formats Lemmings World Tour (except for the Groupie rank, which sparked quite some interest, as I had hoped for ). People were happily watching Arty play it, because, well's, he's just so entertaining to watch doing that . But I didn't really receive a lot of replays from anyone else until I converted the pack to New Formats, thus incentivising IchoTolot to give it a try.



Eventually, namida took over NeoLemmix development again, and for example brought back the anti-splat pads that Nepster had removed. This was a very welcome and positive move for me, because until then, people had always assured me that anything that had been removed once was unlikely to be brought back ever again.

This anticipation of losing everything that got removed for good was also one of the reasons why many of us fought against the Culling Frenzy as hard as we did. At first, many people were apathetic and indifferent to culls as long as they affected features they had never used themselves (like Slowfreeze, for example). But of course, the more features were supposed to go on the chopping block, the more this piled up, like a snowball effect.

I hope Nepster's inactivity in the forum has nothing to do with the resistance some of us (including myself) presented to him back then, because again, as has been established by other users in this thread as well, this was never about personal attacks - just about not wanting to lose so many of our "toys" at once. And it's a difference whether somebody says "let's put this toy in the closet for a while because nobody is playing with it, and it does more harm than good" (=cull with the option of re-adding it later), vs. "let's throw this toy in the trash compactor forever, and even if some people are currently still playing with it, I don't care."



But enough of that history - I also want to address your current level-design philosophy. And it's probably easiest to do so in comparison to mine in my early days, because, as Proxima has pointed out, some of the arguments you are putting forth now are the same I used back then.

And no, even though I certainly evolved as a player and level designer, I haven't completely discarded the "What was fine in original lemmings should be fine in NeoLemmix" mentality that WillLem holds . So I'm by no means his "enemy" here.

And OK, I can live with that viewpoint - but I don't agree. Sometimes hidden objects can be a fun, exciting and novel way to spice up a game; as long they aren't used excessively and they're carefully referred to by the title, or by the level's design.

One general principle that I see coming up again and again when it comes to any type of content creator - be it Lemmings levels, music, videos on YouTube etc. - is the statement: "Make content that you yourself would enjoy to consume."

Now, you might say "Well, duh, the levels I make are precisely the type of content I enjoy, that's why I'm desiging them this way!" But with Lemmings levels, it's a special case because there is a solution to be discovered - a solution that is known to you, the level designer, but unknown to the player.

Hence, enjoying something as a level designer, even when playtesting your own level, is not actually the same thing as enjoying it as a player.

I know you have good old NeoLemmix 1.43 installed, since you've played a bit of my pack "Lemmicks". I suggest you go to the "Levels for v10 or older" subforum and scroll back quite a few pages until you find GigaLems. This is also just for 1.43 (doesn't actually run even in 10.13, the latest Old-Formats version). Meaning, you won't have Clear Physics Mode. But you will have a bunch of hidden traps and other troll design choices, such as the Marble exit being covered by bricks, which you also used yourself on some of your levels.

Just give it a try and see for yourself how you enjoy it when somebody else is doing this to you in a level for which you don't know the solution. And if you do enjoy it in the context of this specific pack, go on to ask yourself what it would look like if more packs were actually designed like this.

Again, not meant to throw shade at GigaLem - this particular pack just happens to be the one that you made famous in that one SEB Lems episode with Arty, in which you mentioned that you managed to make IchoTolot ragequit.


Now, obviously, I have created my fair share of "misleading" levels as well. Mostly in my first pack, Paralems.

I think I have outlined in the appropriate thread how your first pack was both better and worse than my first one:

On the one hand, you managed to create much more challenging puzzles than I did back in the day - many of the levels in Paralems that I consider "bad" now aren't bad because they're unfair; they're simply way too easy for anyone who has been playing NeoLemmix for a while. Because they were designed to be more like original Lemmings, and as Proxima has pointed out, those levels usually gave you far too many skills to be conceptually challenging - the challenge arose from the execution, if at all.

On the other hand, you took the misleading elements, as well as the execution difficulty, to way greater extremes in your first pack than I did.

Basically, Paralems was "misleading" in the sense that it broke with some conventions regarding hidden objects. But it established its own rules to go by instead; it didn't just pull a random surprise to trick the player. Basically, those rules could be summarised as:

- Any animal you see in Paralems is hungry for Lemmings. This is epitomised in the penultimate level, "IT'S FEEDING TIME!" Whether it's a trap to begin with, like the Rock Chameleon, or whether it's actually terrain, like the L2 Highland Nessy, you can be damn sure it's going to eat your lemmings in the context of this pack. Once you know this - and I clearly stated it in the thread where I uploaded the pack - none of these animal traps should be considered "hidden traps" any longer. (I do remember one genuinely hidden trap in the third-to-last level "Dark fate of Atlantis", but I think that was already the worst offender.)
- Most hidden exits had their position implied by flavour and context. For example, there was a Medieval level where the exit was hidden behind the castle gate terrain, then there was a Space level where it was hidden inside the UFO at the opposite end of the level.
- Admittedly, when I used tilesets that featured traps that had been deliberately designed to be difficult to identify as traps - like the Retractable Boulder trap from the Dirt tileset, or the falling leaves from namida's Tree tileset - I didn't go out of my way to make those traps more visible. Because that was usually only possible by making them stick out like a sore thumb (e.g. not connected to any body of terrain at all). I have always put aesthetics over strict game fairness in that regard, and thus, I basically put the blame for these "invisible" traps on the designer of the graphic set, who had created these deliberately hard-to-see traps in the first place.
- There was one troll level towards the end of the pack that was clearly labelled as such. It's called "Trust No 1" and it even has a pre-level-text disclaimer that tells the player that nothing on this level is as it seems. Thus, even this doesn't come out of nowhere.
- Then there's the level "Break My Fall" from the Demented rank in Paralems.


In short, I rarely went out of my way to actively trick the player with a "ha, gotcha!" move. Most of the objects hidden in Paralems, and even still in Lemmings World Tour to some extent (hello octopus! ) were hidden for aesthetic reasons, not to "subvert player expectations". (I'm deliberately using that term to showcase how you're basically pulling a Last Jedi on the player if you go for too many of those nasty surprises ). I established that the player would have to resort to flavour-based common sense ("Animals can eat lemmings.") over just strictly mechanics-based knowledge ("L2 Highland Nessy is always terrain, not a trap.") to beat Paralems.

In contrast, I never employed things like e.g. the brick-covered Marble exit. That caught me completely off-guard the first time I saw it in GigaLems.



In closing, to the newest post you just wrote:

There are ways to keep these elements in there for those that enjoy them. That's all I'm saying.

Going back to the "supply-and-demand" thing I pointed out in the beginning: Eventually, you will find that the problem is not people trying to persuade you to change your level design - they can't force you, and it's not like the moderators delete packs either that don't conform to the established NeoLemmix design philosophy (that was my initial fear when I was new here! ).

Instead, once you discover that "those that enjoy those elements" are simply very few in number, within a group that's already small in numbers, you might just decide for yourself that actively putting such elements into your packs might simply not be worth your time and effort.

I remember for example how you told us how much time you spent on placing all the hatches on your level "You have to be kidding me!" exactly right for your intended pixel-precision solution. Isn't it a shame that you put in all of this effort, just for most people who see the level to go "nah, I'll skip that one" at first sight?

Sure, for that you could accuse them of being "lazy" and giving up to easily. But that would be like Disney complaining that Star Wars fans are no longer willing to show up in the same numbers as they used to in order to pay for a product that is only Star Wars in the name by now, but doesn't offer the content they expect under that name. It's like that old "New Coke replacing Coca Cola" story: When you target the NeoLemmix audience, they will expect and go for NeoLemmix-philosophy content, and leave the rest on the table.

Just like they can't force you to change your design philosophy, you ultimately can't force them to play your levels, even though it's obvious to everyone how much effort you put into every single one of them.



TL;DR: I have repeatedly called myself the "libertarian voice" here on the forums, meaning I objected to those few measures I considered "authoritarian" (like features getting culled, or people e.g. locking the thread for level packs in Old Formats so that no new content for Old Formats could be posted - this was quickly reversed after my complaint, though ). Instead I always argued that the "free market of ideas" would solve these issues. And as I predicted, this basically boils down to: You should always be allowed to make unpopular design choices, but it will simply result in fewer people playing your packs.

Fair point, but I think that NeiSch's idea of a Turbo lemming would be more like SuperLemming from ONML, in that it would no doubt become a permanent skill (or maybe even cancellable by a Walker) and all skills performed by the Lemming from that point on would be done at double-speed.

The thing with SuperLemming from ONML is that it only features a single lemming - and actually, the entire game speed is increased. So it's just like pressing down the fast-forward key. And the SuperLemming gimmick in NeoLemmix 1.43 (e.g. on the Hasty rank of Lemmicks) does precisely that.

As a proponent of action/execution-based gameplay, I'm highly in favour of this.

I think now you've just made the majority of other forum users more likely to reject that proposal...

This is also a good idea, if somewhat complicated - I like it in principle though. From your description, I understand that it acts as a Lemming-raiser whilst also separating them from the crowd and providing extra speed and longer jumps: definitely a lot of benefits if this could be made to work.

Indeed, the vertical separation from the crowd through higher altitude as well as the ability to ignore traps, without straight-up disabling them for everyone (which is what often makes the Disarmer overpowered in my book), would be the Skaterboarder's main standout features. While these two things are partly shared with the Shimmier, the Skateboarder would be completely independent of whether there's a ceiling or not...

...while still having that interaction with the Jumper (=larger jumps), as well as all the speed-based execution stuff that you said you care about. And yes, obviously you could also clone a Skateboarder.

In short: It would do everything the Runner does, and then some!

Only the faster execution of all skills (like the SuperLemming does) would not be included in the Skateboarder, but this isn't part of traditional Runner behaviour either. It doesn't really make sense to assume that a lemming should become faster at e.g. bashing just because he happens to stand on a skateboard, or wear running shoes...

Lightsaberer - I still think this would be great as a non-fatal bomber skill (and could also be used to kill zombies)! Due to its limited range of application beyond this though, I can see why it wouldn't be top of people's lists. Worth a mention though so thanks for the link, Namida.

Bazooker and Mortar would also be non-lethal Bombers (because the crater they create has the same shape), while adding the additional novelty of working at a distance. This gives them more "incremental validity" compared to your suggestion, I'd say.

This is one of my favourite ideas, and I still think it's how a Jumper should interact with a wall, but I think we've moved on from that now. So... I'd suggest having the Slider as a non-permanent skill but one that can be used in combination with a Jumper: i.e., if assigned mid-jump, the Jumper lem would transition to a slider upon contact with the wall, thus opening up all of the various possibilities such as non-permanent no-Splat, ability to climb form this state, ability to perform wall jump from this state, etc. Loads of great potential for both puzzles and action-based gameplay.

This is definitely the best argument in favour of the Slider as a sovereign skill that I've heard so far! I've always thought of the Slider as "just another Floater surrogate".
But maybe we should start to think of it more as a downward Climber. The Glider can technically be an upward Floater, after all, when combined with updrafts.

Corner cases for this logic:

a) A Jumper jumps over a gap and reaches the top of a wall on his downward move. Because he's on the downward path of his curved trajectory, he can get below the ceiling at the top of that wall without bumping his head. Now you make him a Slider as he holds on to the wall.

Now that he's right below the ceiling, would it be possible to assign a Shimmier, i.e. transition from Slider to Shimmier, before the lemming starts sliding further down?

The ceiling would probably have to be a very short platform for this, otherwise the Jumper would bump his head, or simply land on top of it. With such a short ceiling, I don't necessarily know why you would want him to shimmy here, but anyways: Would it be possible?

b) A Slider is sliding down a wall. Now a second lemming, either a Platformer or a Builder, closes the gap above the Slider's head right after he's passed by. Like "The Great Lemming Caper" in reverse.

Again: Can you assign a Shimmier to a Slider?

I think on a purely technical level, both should be possible - even if scenario in a level where it is actually applicable would be pretty hard to design and pixel-precise to execute.

Strato mentioned that the Laser Blaster can make a dent in a ceiling, allowing the player to choose where a Shimmier will terminate; this would apply to a projectile skill as well (so long as the projectile is not fired horizontally -- and even then, it could affect where a Shimmier stops on sloped terrain).

That would be the Mortar then. The Bazooker, at least to my knowledge, always shoots horizontally. The Mortar is one of my most hated skills in L2, though, because its trajectory is parabolic, i.e. hard to aim. There is one level in particular in the Beach tribe where you have to use several Bazookers first to get through a sand castle, then use several Mortars to shoot over a water pond and make a hole in the ground. It's one of the most obnoxious ones from L2. I would advise you to try that level first, since you said you aren't familiar with L2, before advocating for the Mortar or Bazooker. Even though NeoLemmix would make these skills a little more tolerable thanks to rewinding and framestepping, we probably don't want to introduce a skill that more often than not has to actively rely on those features.

Runner - I disagree with Strato in that I don't feel the community has ever decisively rejected this.

By "rejected" I mean that it was originally supposed to be introduced together with or around the same time as the Jumper - and as you can see, all that talk has disappeared for "just introducing the Jumper" instead. Another case of something that was never stated explicitly, but "acted out".

You are right that there has never been a poll on this. But it seems to me that the idea of the Runner being worthwhile in NeoLemmix was discarded so early, through the arguments championed in the posts of that thread, that the Runner never even made his way into a poll in the first place.

Laser Blaster - I have misgivings about this skill because of the way L2 used it for releasing the crowd at the end, and nothing else. However, we shouldn't jump too quickly to the conclusion that it has no other utility. Strato has pointed out an interesting interaction with Shimmiers. Placing a laser correctly to alter the path of neutrals/zombies could also be an interesting puzzle space.

Interesting point, I hadn't thought of that! Since Neutral lemmings don't exist in L2, this has never come up so far. But a "boring pioneer / worker lemming" might indeed become somewhat less obvious when he has to free a crowd that, in contrast to a crowd of regular lemmings, couldn't simply help themselves towards the exit.