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Messages - Armani

#1
Create a level.nxmi file inside your rank folder. You can set the order of your levels there like this:

LEVEL level 1.nxlv
LEVEL level 2.nxlv
...
LEVEL level 30.nxlv


I recommend using an existing pack as a blueprint.
Just download any NL level pack, copy and paste its level.nxmi into your directory and edit it to fit your pack. ;)
(You can edit level.nxmi with any basic text editor)
#2
I'm mostly happy with the way things are right now but moving Random Level Sharing Topic to the NeoLemmix Levels board sounds reasonable.
#3
General Discussion / Re: General Comings and Goings
September 20, 2026, 06:13:31 AM
@kaywhyn
Good luck! and enjoy your vacation  :santa:

@Guigui
QuoteSo I set up a little program on my machine which kills every lemmings related applications at 1 a.m. It kind of works, and I do no longer count the number of times where I was so close to solve a level only to have NL get killed in my face  :forehead:
:crylaugh:  :crylaugh:
#4
NeoLemmix Levels / Re: New Level Pack - Lemmings Faithful
September 09, 2026, 09:55:04 AM
I played through the newly added Steady and Turbulent ranks! 8-)  It's pretty obvious to me now that your levels are right up my alley. I may come back to play the rest of the pack once I finish playing the level packs I'm currently working on. Here are some comments on the individual levels:

One thing I noticed though: the main puzzles of the levels are all hidden in the talismans. Without the talisman, the levels are either too simple or just plain build-and-bash-to-the-exit type levels. Especially a level like River Styx is a complete joke without the talisman and all the carefully fine-tuned object placements and neutral lemmings become a total waste. If anyone misses the brilliance of this level just because they don't care about the talismans, that would be a real shame. :-\


Spoiler
Steady

1. Penumbra: Relatively simple first level of the rank. Even with the talisman, this one is quite easy. The new tileset is gorgeous. I can see myself using this tileset often.

2. Welcome to the World of Tomorrow!: One of my favourite tilesets from this batch. I'll definitely use this tileset for my own levels. The various water-pipe terrain pieces and water objects allow level designers to make complicated, maze-like swimmer routes, which, in my opinion, no NeoLemmix style has allowed so far. The level itself was quite tricky. You have to release the blockers in the correct sequence otherwise the skills run out pretty fast.

3. Sweet Tooth: The solution came to me quite quickly. Turning the faller mid-air was the key, and the rest of the solution came naturally.

4. Serpent Shrine: Surprisingly tricky 2-of-everything, classic-skills-only level. The low save requirement was the hint that implied you don't have to waste skills on containing the crowd.

5. Dark Mire: Time cruncher, except that the time limit was much more generous than I initially thought.

6. Hey Presto: Beautiful level design. The solution was straightforward.

7. Lost in the Desert: That was some fun use of the shimmiers.

8. Lost in the Dessert: Wow, I love the design of the new limited exits! The talisman says not to use any shimmiers and I was wondering how a shimmier could be helpful in this level anyway.

9. Frozen Hearts: Nice touch with all those frozen blocker objects! It felt a little funny to me that removing the terrain beneath the blocker doesn't free it and it just stands there like nothing happened! :P

10. Chamber of Horrors: What the heck is that new trap animation?! :devil:  It's so gruesome and since this level requires the compression method to solve, you have to sacrifice at least one lemming to that trap! Genius level design to showcase the new trap... :devil:



Turbulent

1. Can I Have a Peppermint?: The Turbulent rank is a big step up in difficulty compared to the Steady rank and the first level is already a hard nut to crack! :thumbsup:

2. Lemmings of the Caribbean: That's a very nicely designed ship! Also, I love the Kraken-like creature near the exit!

3. The Belfry: Very repetitive overall. Pretty obvious what needs to be done. That spam of cloners on the glider to gain height was fun and something new, though. So, credit where credit is due! ;P

4. Sugar Rush: Very clever solution. Making the fall temporarily fatal, then making it safe again at just the right moment. I had a lot of fun figuring this level out.

5. Lem Academy of Science blah blah: Making a long shimmier path is one of the coolest things you can do in NeoLemmix of couse!

6. An Omen of Doom: Phew, that was close! I love how the zombies are catching up and you have just enough room to avoid them in extreme urgency!

7. Bumbly Breach Bazaar: The biggest and most complicated level in this pack so far. (I'll give the "most difficult level" crown to Turbulent 9, though.) I don't see how having the glider is helpful anywhere, so I wonder if the glider assigner is just there as a trap to avoid or if there's something I missed. Very chaotic and so many things happen at the same time, but if you carefully eliminate the possibilities, there's only one route the crowd can take.

8. Ice Nine: Relatively easy one regarding the positioning. The key was figuring out that you have to laser from both sides to release only one shimmier and nobody else.

9. River Styx: My favourite level from this pack, and probably the hardest level in the pack too. I rather quickly figured out that I couldn't let the neutral collect the button, but it was still tough to control the flow of a crowd consisting of both allies and enemies. Looking back at the replay, I wasted a lot of skills near the floater assigner at the end...

10. A Tale of Two Cities: A truly epic finale to the pack! 02:00 would have been possible had I optimized a little bit more. :thumbsup:
#5
Most of what I implemented was the result of me experimenting and having fun rather than focusing on practical usefulness. I didn't expect any of it to be implemented into the official build so I just added anything that sounded cool.

That being said, I can still share how I personally use this specific feature. There are mainly two cases where I use this camera lock-on:

1) When I'm playing a level while someone is watching
I sometimes share my screen to playtest level packs for the author. When playing alone, I only need to focus on the key Lemmings myself so the camera lock isn't as necessary. But when there's a specific Lemming the author needs to focus on, locking the camera ensures they won't miss it.

2) When playing a level with multiple pairs of teleporters (+ large levels with tons of Lemmings)
I think showing a video is easier: https://youtu.be/W-eBc27MtGY?si=b11L5Sb0EOXLFqbf&t=4685
(This video showcases how some of the features work in-game. For the camera lock specifically, check out 1:26:35 or 1:26:50)
#6
Contests / Re: Level Design Contest #34
September 09, 2026, 09:38:01 AM
@Flopsy

I think R3 for Contest #13 should be changed from "Official tilesets only" to "Without using any official tilesets."
I'll leave the link to the Contest #13 topic here: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=3359
#7
In Development / Re: First Custom Levels: VexLems!
September 06, 2026, 09:44:41 AM
@Guigui
Technically I one-shot the level but I took full advantage of NL's replay editing. I roughly compressed the crowd using permanent skills first, then I adjusted the timing by advancing the lemmings' assignments a few frames if they poked out ahead or delaying them a few frames if they fell behind.

So... if I had played this on WinLems instead, it would have taken me way more time. :lix-evil:
#8
In Development / Re: First Custom Levels: VexLems!
September 04, 2026, 07:57:07 AM
I was wondering if I should wait until you update the pack... but I had already played through the first rank a couple of days ago so I decided to just go ahead and finish the rest of it. 8-)
Here are some comments on individual levels:

Spoiler
Remake rank: I assume these levels are your re-imaginations of other people's levels? I didn't recognize any of them so they all felt fresh to me anyway.

1 Lemmng Return Arround: Simple yet clever solution. I also loved that you put a lot of fake exits in many of the levels. They are mostly unreachable but sometimes they make you want to challenge yourself to see if you can reach them. ;)
2 Surfure-Friendly Lemmings: This feels like a backroute.
3 Topsy-Turvy: The layout looks intimidating at first but since the given skillset is very small, you really have to figure out the placement of a few key skills. Not too bad in the end.
4 Egg and Lemini: Quite a time cruncher. Took me a few resets.
5 Crystal Cave: Pretty level with a classic-style solution. I liked it.
6 The Rusty Ruins: Most likely a backroute.


Original rank: Overall, I liked these levels more than the Remake levels. They were more challenging too

1 Find Another Way: The title implies I have to go to the far-left exit so I went for it. But I'm pretty sure you can brute-force your way to the closer exit by stretching builders.
2 Freezing Lemmings: Another pretty level with a classic-style solution.
3 A Long Way to Go: There's a unique level design style of yours here; making hollow corridors inside big terrain with eraser pieces. The solution was pretty straightforward.
4 Hell Maze: I guess this is the only level where I used both exits?(Outside of the one disjoint-union level) I also enjoy putting red-herring exits in my own levels, but also there's something satisfying when every object is relevant to the solution. ;)
5 Just Cross The Wall: Likely a backroute.
6 Synchrolemminized: A disjoint-union level with plenty of skills. Since the skillset was generous it wasn't too hard to allocate the skills.
7 Mine Evacuation: Decent level. I think I could have saved a lot more builders had I used leftover miners to make an even longer zig-zag tunnel but this worked too.
8 If You Fall: Likely a backroute.
9 Compression Method 3: I'm pretty sure 16 is the maximum you can save in this level, so I went for it. 8-)
#9
@Guigui

You might have to wait until the pack's release for the exact details but I can give you a few hints ;) :
Spoiler
Almost everything you see in the video is not what it actually seems.

I created a special tileset(currently named armani_special - to be changed) that will be used in certain special levels of this pack, like this one. There will likely be one special level every 2 or 3 tribes depending how often my creativity sparks. By special levels, I mean they play out very differently from the usual guide enough Lemmings to the exit style of gameplay. Here's a sneak peek of an example special level that I previously shared on Discord:

Spoiler

(it's a GIF, click it if it doesn't auto play)
you have to survive long enough for the big laser gun to shoot down the boss, after which the exit will appear along with a victory message in the center of the screen

The tileset is packed with objects featuring deceptive sprites and animations; teleporter objects that use the bomber animation, as well as terrain hallucinations, walking Lemmings, gliding Lemmings and even some icons and UIs. I also made single-use trap objects with the sprites, sounds, and animations of various Lemming actions, which switch to another deceptive sprite once triggered.

The video doesn't show the ugly part of the level where the things actually happen; where it counts how many targets you've shot and triggers the hidden script. Once you see the full map, it'll be easier to grasp how it all works.

You won't have a lot of freedom in deciding what to do in the level, though. It isn't going to play like, say, Counter-Strike, but rather as you mentioned, more like Duck-Hunt X Lemmings! ;) As for the interface used to add a lemming in the middle of gameplay, that's not possible in curent NL. I added a debug mode to my custom build that lets me spawn new lemmings during gameplay, get any amount of skills, add/destroy terrain with the mouse etc, to make playtesting levels easier.
#10
Making an FPS themed level..🔫 Stay tuned!


If you can ignore the Goldberg–looking machinery on the right half of the level, the level should play smoothly and it shouldn't be too difficult for players who haven't had much experience with FPS games.

I still have to figure out how to deal with friendly fire and make the win condition easily recognizable...
#11
Suppressing further clicks until a level finishes loading likely won't do much. Afaik, there is no code path anywhere in SetInfo that calls ProcessMessages so with the current structure, there shouldn't really be any chance of the click handlers actually running on top of each other. Though, adding a re-entrancy guard as an extra safeguard against overlapping clicks at little to no cost, is not necessarily a bad idea.

Keeping the click handlers as lightweight as possible is definitely a good approach. That should prevent the UI from becoming non responding. It would be even better if we kept a "load pending" flag. If a load is already pending, don't post another message. Then when the message handler actually runs, re-read whichever node is actually selected at that moment and load based on thatrather than using a stale node captured when the click originally happened.


For some reason in NL, every single click would re-scan the entire tree to populate the level titles and info, parsing level files on the spot for any visible nodes that hadn't been labeled yet. This was very very inefficient. (Has this been fixed in CE?)
1) Populate the labels once for whatever is initially visible then incrementally populate them only for a group's direct children nodes when that group is expanded.
2) Skip the full level reload for the preview panel when the selected level's path hasn't actually changed. No full reload(no parsing, no terrain rendering) for the info panel when nothing has actually changed in practice.
This would make the game feel more like playing NL in the Lix engine.
#12
This bug, although I don't intentionally try to reproduce it, pops up regularly by accident. I went ahead and fixed it myself for my copy, but I thought I'd better report it since it happens quite often in levels featuring zombies.

Setup:
Activate the nuke while the next lemming still queued to spawn is a pre-assigned zombie.

Expected outcome:
Once all lemmings die, the level ends and transitions to the postview screen.

What actually happens:
You get soft-locked even after all lemmings have died.

Reason:
StateIsUnplayable(basically the level-end check) treats a nuked level as still playable if UserSetNuking and CheckIfZombiesRemain are true, which is fine. However, CheckIfZombiesRemain(which only ever gets evaluated when UserSetNuking is already true) also checks the next lemming still queued to spawn and whether it was a pre-assigned zombie. It then keeps checking whether that permanently frozen queue slot(due to the nuke) happens to be a zombie, and reports that "a zombie remains" for a lemming that can no longer exist, causing StateIsUnplayable to remain permanently false.

Fix:
Just remove the spawn-queue-peek block so that it only considers zombies that are actually alive in the level at that moment. Its sole consumer is StateIsUnplayable, which in turn only determines whether the level should end, so there should be no physics side effects.
#13
dang, I really picked the wrong starting location! :devil:  :devil:
Hope you have a good time.. :devil:
#14
@kaywhyn
I only caught a fraction of the whole series, but I very much enjoyed watching it!  :thumbsup: It also made me think about the Lemmings 2 the tribe differently... Looks like there's still so much potential waiting to be discovered...
#15
NeoLemmix Levels / Re: Heart66 BASIC Pack
August 15, 2026, 11:56:34 AM
@sift

Which levels specifically are you having issues with? ???

I took a quick look and my best guess is that your NL directory doesn't have the Sanctuary Tileset. So when you play the levels made with the Sanctuary Tileset (levels 21, 22, 23, and 86), NL will spit out an error message.

The Sanctuary Tileset isn't included in the style library so you'll have to manually download the style from here: Sanctuary Tileset

If this doesn't fix your issue let me know which levels are causing you trouble. ;)