Thanks for hosting the feud!

Hunt the Nessy (for question 9, mythical creature) seemed a compelling an answer on Lemmings Forums, surprising that Nessie got only 2 namings. Top answer nonetheless.

-- Simon

Tanks a lot

Install the patch.

It's probably posted somewhere on the forum. I don't know if there are several patches, I merely know about one patch by the Lemmings Revolution developers.

Tanks a Lot and My Finest Moment are allegedly unsolvable in the first release of Lemmings Revolution. I remember that the patch notes say: Tanks a Lot and My Finest Moment are now completeable.

-- Simon

There may be a number of reasons why a player would need this information at a glance

Then please tell me a use case that (hatch, out) serves better than (hatch, available).

The reasoning for (available) over (out) is in the NL threads that Proxima linked: #1 and #2; the gist is:

• You never need to know (out) directly for anything.
  
• To compute the number that really interests you, which is how many more lemmings you can lose, (hatch, available, saved, required) is a better source than (hatch, out, saved, required).
  
• You can consider to print (number of lemmings that you can still lose) directly, but sensibly only at the cost of removing any single one of (hatch, available, saved, required) and that cost is too high. Bonus reason that I thought of today: And there is no good icon for (number that you can still lose).

Please hack those arguments to pieces first before you decide against (available a.k.a. out+hatch). Read the threads for other people's arguments. Especially Nepster disagreeing with me. I didn't give enough weight to (hatch) at first in 2015.

With 4 stats besides the timer, I would print (hatch, available, saved, required).

It's sensible to re-chew this design now, 6 years after we put it in NL and Lix.

Ultimately, though, since the text is IN and OUT, it seems more useful to show which lems are in the hatch and which lems are out in the level.

IN and OUT are terrible names. Ditch immediately, or at least give it less weight in the argument about what numbers are important. IN and OUT are so bad that different ports interpret them completely backwards to what DOS L1 does, and it takes such a thread to uncover the true damage.

"out in the level", what? Better write OUTIN then?

I have no good idea for better short text. Should somehow be about lemmings. ("have" or "available" are not specific, what kind of resource does it mean that is available.) To conserve space, I'd use the icon.

I like showing it as a fixed "required" number because that's how it's shown everywhere else... metadata in the title bar, line on the intro screen.

Consistency is a strong argument, yes, to print (saved, required) as two figures.

NL had massive space problems in the typesetting with the gigantic DOS letters. (saved − required) came from the need to save space and declutter the UI.

There is some saving grace in that (saved − required) is exactly the negative of what's printed elsewhere, (required). Or you can print (required − saved) and do something completely different once that would become negative.

If you have "Never show percentages" turned off then that number shows as a percentage.

Consider to invert the option to "Show save requirement as percentage". Reason: UI guideline to always word boolean options as a positive. User shouldn't check the box for something not to happen. Source: E.g., Nielsen, item 7.

-- Simon

player to remember where the trap

For this, the engine (which we assume fosters execution difficulty) should reveal all hidden traps at start of play, with big flashing marks, and then hide them during play.

-- Simon

What exactly is meant by "full rights"? When I go to Properties>Security, there are green ticks for all Permissions. Is this correct?

What I mean is: I remember that Windows grants you, as non-admin, read/write access only to some directories. You want to have SLT and root.lzp where you have such read/write access. Maybe write access is already enough.

I don't use Windows. >_>;; Thus I don't know what those checkmarks would be for.

I've patched the error message, but if your path is being interpreted as having %'s in it, then there's probably going to be a whole host of other related places I'll need to patch.

Yeah, I've seen a couple similar such constructions in your Core.java, but didn't check every single one for whether the runtime string might end up containing '%'.

At least you know about this kind of bug now, and can catch it by eye. But if you already have doubts, then I think it's worth sanitizing the codebase for such unchecked formatstrings in the medium term.

Ideally, all your formatstrings are known by compile time -- some other languages can even typecheck the remaining arguments at compile time based on such a formatstring, and give you compiler errors on format specifier mismatch. Even in Java, which doesn't do that, you can strive to have only string literals, no + or other runtime arguments, in the formatstring.

(I'm no expert about best practices when you can't have that so easily, e.g., when you want to translate formatted error messages into different human languages. It's probably okay to let format throw a runtime exception in those cases, and catch it.)

-- Simon

Right, I meant two separate use cases. I didn't write clearly, good catch. I've edited for clarity.

In addition, for the sandboxes, i.e., exitless maps that have save requirement 0 set by the author, you can employ (d) on top of (c). Here, (d) is really good. This also clears the confusion, (d) is so natural for sandboxes that it explains why namida began thinking of (d) in the first place.

But for normal puzzles with author's requirement ≥ 1, (d) is still weird.

---

Reminder:
(a) nothing changes
(b) after capping save requirement, if it is 0, never autosave
(b') after capping save requirement, if it is 0, autosave on saving ≥ 1.
(c) exitless map won't cap save requirement to exit capacity
(d) empty replays never autosave

-- Simon

Lix 0.9.39 released.

Download for Windows 64-bit -- recommended
Download for Windows 32-bit -- fallback for ancient machines
Download for Linux 64-bit
Source code
Changelog
Issue tracker

• Added the dedicated end-of-singleplayer screen to show stats of the finished attempt, to offer the immediate next level, and to offer the next unsolved level in case the player has already solved the immediate next level.
  
• Darkened the labels "by" and "Goal:" in front of level nameplates in the browser and in the end-of-level screen. They're now darker than the normal text color. Title, author and goal stand out better in their normal text color now.
  
• Re-added 3 levels -- Fill the Floor, Interval Training, Chaos Theory -- to single/clam/Outtakes. Fill the Floor and Interval Training originally needed variable spawn intervals during play; now, they employ floaters and runners at fixed spawn intervals. Chaos Theory originally needed the nuke to solve; now, it employs manually assigned exploders to fling.
  
• Updated the Lix source code to comply with the future meaning of the "in" keyword. Updated Lix for package optional 1.3.0 instead of 0.6.3.
  

It's been months, but it's done and released! Go forth and test, and blaze through the packs with the appropriate feeling of progression.



-- Simon