Porcupine reads glider code, porcupine quills go up, porcupine carves out test map to prove hunch.

You have plastered the entire map with updrafts.
You have a n-pixel-wide vertical shaft of air, with vertical walls at each sides, for n > 0.
You have a glider in this shaft.

Observed: The glider ascendes in each shaft of thickness 2, 3, 4, ..., and descends in the 1-pixel-wide shaft.
Expected: The glider ascends in each such shaft.

-- Simon

Hi level designers,

Edit 2016-08: The lemforum pack is in good shape for D Lix. I don't ship Clam's and Rubix's levels until they too have good replay coverage. Clam and Rubix, ask me if you need help. I'll walk you through replay verification!

let's migrate singleplayer levels to D Lix.

Ideally, we should work to make all levels solvable in D Lix, possibly with slight changes from the C++ levels. Then, to guarantee solvability, we should prepare solving replays of all levels in D Lix.

Maybe a few odd levels can't be made solvable. Let's work out any problems together.

Get D Lix

Download for Windows <-- download
Download for Linux 64-bit (needs Allegro 5 runtime)
Source code
Changelog
Bug tracker.

Keep D Lix separate from C++ Lix.

What to do

Lemforum pack: D Lix comes with the levels as they are in geoo's github repository by 2016-04-14. Only difference to geoo's repository: Proxima is called Michael S. Repton, not Michael. geoo knows best how to proceeed from here. Wait for geoo's instructions.

Clam's and Rubix's levels: D Lix comes with the version of your levels that C++ Lix has. You can check manually which levels are still solvable. Or run D Lix's automatic replay checker over your C++ replays: If you've kept solving replays in C++ Lix, copy your C++ replay collection into D Lix's replay directory. Then run lix.exe --verify=replays/path/to/your/dir > output.txt. Ask me in IRC for help!

Differences of D physics compared to C++

• Spawn interval is fixed during play.
  
• Time is unlimited in singleplayer.
  
• Trampolines don't exist. Please remove all trampolines from levels. To help migration, the standard trampoline is still in the image tree, but it acts as a triggered trap that kills. I'd like to remove that tile within the next months.
  
• Basher mask is longer by 2 hi-res pixels.
  
• The builder gets closer to walls by 2 hi-res pixels before she stops and turns. You can now always build up to a vertical wall, then mine into the wall, no matter where you have started the builder.
  
• The imploder mask is wider by 2 hi-res pixels, therefore symmetric now.
  

Coming later

Screen start is automatic for now. Nonetheless, the D Lix editor reads and saves back to file existing manual screen starts. The value is merely ignored during play. I should probably implement custom screen starts, where you can choose a midpoint.

Hints and tutorial texts are preserved, but never shown. I have yet to implement hints. I'd like to improve their user interface from C++ Lix.

Report bugs! :-)

Roadmap

• Automatic replay checking. Done.
  
• Editor. Done.
  
• Declare the D port to be the standard version for singleplayer. Expect level designers to build against this engine, and expect all singleplayer replays to use a recent D port version. This also means that physics should not change erratically from here, at least in the master branch. Done: Since 2016-08-03, we have 100 % coverage for the lemforum pack.
  
• Work on stuff that level designers suddenly need/miss, to easen the switch. Tell me what bugs you most!
  
• Netplay, including the server code.
  
• Declare the D port to be standard Lix in every regard. Retire C++ codebase.
  
• Continue fixing bugs. I don't strive to make the D port as well-debugged as the C++ port before making it standard overall. Migrate early, expose bugs together, and fix them quickly.
  

-- Simon

BitBucket: https://bitbucket.org/namida42/neolemmixplayer/issues/26/crashes-on-replay-saving-in-certain



Repro:

• Put the nxp file in ~/softw/win/neolem/nepsterlems/packs/
• Put the NL exe in ~/softw/win/neolem/nepsterlems/
• Be in the exe's directory
• Start the pack with wine NeoLemmix.exe ./packs/seb-1.00.nxp
• Win the first level

Instead of showing the results screen, game shows the above error, then exits after I click OK.

The bug doesn't manifest when I do either one of these:

• Go into the pack's dir, run the game with wine ../NeoLemmix.exe seb-1.00.nxp
• Move the pack into the exe's dir, run with wine NeoLemmix.exe seb-1.00.nxp

On Windows, when you drag a file from a different dir on an executable, what is the working directory?

[05:50] <SimonN> it is the build without the fading
[05:50] <SimonN> let me check version
[05:50] <SimonN> 1.44
[05:50] <namida42> the no fading build is based off V1.43n-F

-- Simon

Hi,



I've implemented this today in D Lix. It's a hack: You can map two buttons to pause. The game has hackish two-key support for exactly this function. Nothing else allows for multiple keys.

▱▰▱ means middle mouse button. Right mouse button, wheel-up, and wheel-down are all bindable as hotkeys. I felt fancy and I have unicode support. Probably ▱▰▱ is too hard to recognize as middle mouse button, but I don't think "MMB" is better. "Middle mouse button" is too long for the UI widget.

Main problem now:

For each game function, I want to allow many keybindings.
For each key or mouse button, I want to allow many game functions.

I don't know whether "many" shall mean up to 2, or up to 3, or arbitrarily many.

My first ideas -- I would like to avoid the dialog
namida's ideas -- button divides into several buttons on mouseover

Would you like to bind 3 or more keys or mouse buttons to a function?

-- Simon

Hi,



We have a fat buzzsaw buzzing. Zzzzzssss. And a lix.
Should the lix die if she touches the saw with her foot?
Should the lix die if she touches the saw with her head?
Should the lix die if she touches the saw with her body? She would pass through small terrain gaps.
What happens when she's a climber? The climber's head has a different x-coordinate than the foot.
What happens when she's a platformer? A platformer's head is lower than a walker's.

If we check at the head at all, should mechanics depend on the spritesheet? C++ Lix examines the spritesheet for the eye, then checks there. The examination happens at program start, not at compile time. You affect physics when you alter the spritesheet. In total, C++ Lix checks for traps at (foot), (4 hi-res pixels above the foot), and (eye).

I'm considering to check at (n hi-res pixels above the foot) for n = 0, 4, 8, 12, or even for n = 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12. The check would be independent of the lix's job. Both ideas catch the thin laser beams, these beams have a thickness of 4 hi-res pixels.

12 hi-res pixels over the foot is slightly lower than a walker's eye. Walker's eyes are bopping up and down at 13 and 14 hi-res pixels above the foot. The lix in the image would still burn. 12 pixels is considerably higher than a platformer's eye at 7 to 10 pixels. In a minority of platformer frames, even the hair is below 12 pixels.

Earlier discussion with geoo, beginning right after the colorful github pushes.
<geoo> I'm not sure what's best here, really. Maybe make a thread.

-- Simon

BitBucket: https://bitbucket.org/namida42/neolemmixplayer/issues/21/pickup-skill-trigger-areas-too-small

Brain dump on pickup skills from when Nepster was here in 2016-03. From Icho, Nepster, and me.

Coloring: In the L1 crystal and ONML rock set, the pickup skills have a white bg. This clashes with the lemming skin. Maybe there are other sets with the same problem, Nepster doesn't remember them.

Trigger area (TA): The TA is too far down within the pickup skill gadget. We all agreed how this is problematic. Lemmings don't collect the pickup, even though the pickup overlaps more than 50 % of the lemming body.

Icho: Move the image, not the TA! Moving the TA breaks replays for almost no benefit.

Simon: The TA's lower border is okay, but it doesn't extend far enough upwards. Increase the TA's vertical size. When the new TA contains the old TA as a subset, you can't break replays.

Nepster: There should be less TA near the bottom, and there should be more towards the top, but add more area than you remove. (= Move the image as Icho has suggested, then make the new TA a superset of the implemented TA, as Simon has suggested.)

-- Simon

Climbers and floaters should be painted differently from non-permanents on the game board. They must immediately jump to eye in a crowd. Even with good cursor priority that prefers climbable walkers over non-permanented walkers, it's a pain to locate climbers. L2 did it well, L2 inverted hair and body color on permanent-skillers. Everybody should roar and demand this in any IRS.

No, that should not be an option. Nobody in their right mind will ever switch off good, nonintrusive marking.

There should be a word for (rodent that has at least one permanent ability). Athlete is already taken for (climber and floater), but NL has overriden the meaning already. There should be a word, like plain, for (rodent that has no permanent abilities).

L2 had horrible assignment priority. L2 prefers young stunners over old workers. WTF. If Dullstar were correct asserting the L2 assignment have an RNG, the resulting algo would blow L2's assignment out of the water.

Screens should never fade in and out. Precious time wasted at critical moments. Fading is for music: Anything that runs along without gobbling 100 % of your attention. Screens should pop in, ready to go.

Leading zeroes contain no information and should be culled from most UI. When the quantity is zero, printing 0 is a leading zero. When you have 0 of something, and that something is not 0 over 90 % of the time, fine, print the single-digit zero. Otherwise, leave the gap, but don't print in-your-face-attention-whoring digits. L2 did it horribly wrong, L2 presented 00 on empty skills. Two leading zeroes! In the glaring orange font!

People will not read manuals. Present on screen what they can do. When that would clutter the screen too much, you can hide rare options in a menu. Cut blah-blah text and put options on the screen instead.

Some level designers clamor for level titles spanning two rows. Go write a novel instead. Names must be short. Naming is hard.

The simple text file is the best way to store information. Surprisingly, all text-based formats suck. We're in a dark age where XML is crap, and it's simultaneously replaced by Json, Sdlang, Yaml, Toml, Wurstml, Longacronyml. CSV is for rectangular tables, not for writing the contents of a class to file. Ini lacks standardization, lacks nesting, and "thing001 = this, thing002 = that, thing003 = ..." is idiotic to represent collection of thing.

Lix, both C++ and D, has the I-don't-care-just-die hotkey [Shift] + [Esc] that cannot be remapped. This is nowhere documented. Everybody should learn it and pester me to document it, and make it remappable.

Hotkey-binding dialogs are hard:

• You can map keys to functions, that's bad, you must now list all keys where 70 % of them do nothing. And cohesion is horrible: When mapping a key, I don't get a feeling where related game functions are mapped. I see nearby keys only.
  
• You can map functions to keys, that's bad, you want to map pause to two keys. Pause goes to [Space] for normal two-handed play, and pause goes to MMB, or at least [Numpad-Enter] near the mouse, so you can hit it comfortably while you're scratching your butt.
  
• You can map functions to a set of keys. That's ugly, now you must have a UI to maintain the set. This UI will take awful wide loads of space. Otherwise: I want this function mapped to [A], and now I want it mapped to [E] instead. Should the UI add that, or replace [A]? Ah no, before pressing [E], I changed my mind altogether, so I hit [Esc] or RMB to cancel the assignment. The oh-so-helpful UI will now either clear [A] too, which we wanted to keep, or bind the function to [A] and [Esc].

-- Simon