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Messages - Liebatron

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16
Forum Games / Re: Replace a word in a Lemmings level name with "Balls".
« on: December 14, 2020, 12:59:50 PM »
from FUN:
only specially trained airline pilots can survive this

I'm actually really liking this first idea you had here; "specially trained airline pilots"...

Specially trained airline pilots all fall down
As long as specially trained airline pilots try their best
If only specially trained airline pilots could fly
Specially trained airline pilots can wait (we hope!)

Or some other incredibly specific and possibly nonsensical phase, like "horse detectives":

Smile if you love horse detectives!
Lock up your horse detectives
This should be a horse detective
Don't let your horse detectives deceive you
Detective McHorse will help you here

17
Lix Levels / Re: Chicago-Themed Terrain
« on: December 09, 2020, 12:41:05 PM »
I do promise I'm done adding trains! :P (Unless anyone has any requests!) I was a little worried about the size of the tile set in general, also. I'm thinking if I make any major changes at this point it'll probably be to take out two of the red boxcar recolors. I was originally thinking it'd be nice to have some variation in one of the colors so you can have a complete train without every single car looking identical, but realistically the 3 red ones are so close in saturation and hue that I probably only need one of them.

Also, for the names, I'm curious as to the reasoning behind wanting concise, descriptive tile names. Does it have to do with how they appear in the Lix editor, or is there another reason? Specifically I want to check whether it's important that the name itself be concise, or the full path. I made subdirectories for purposes of organizing the pieces in the set, which makes for longer paths than usual, so I also want to make sure that won't cause any issues. I did that in part to control the order in which pieces appear in the editor menu, and also to make it easier to work with different pieces in the set during set creation. I'm thinking I'm pretty happy with most of the tile names themselves at this point, but if you've got any changes to suggest, let me know and I'll make those!

If it's just a couple, I can just go through the levels and change them manually, but if you anticipate the subdirectories causing problems in the future, that really will require every tile to change. In that case, I'll come up with tile names that ensure that they appear in that order anyway, but at this point I think you're right, some variety of automated solution will be needed...

I've already gone through and changed most of the tile names in the first 8'ish levels about 4 times for various reasons, so it's interesting you mention that; I was considering some java-based solutions to the problem. I feel like I can't be the first person to run into that issue while making a new terrain set and accompanying level pack "Oh, I want to change this tile name, but I also have to change it in these 50 places now." It'd be cool to have a reusable utility for that kind of situation. Something where you could say "Hey, here's 40 levels. I want to change this tile name to this in all of them. Make it so.", or have it read in a list of arbitrary tile name changes as JSON or XML and do the same. Or... Potentially a thing where you could do the same thing, and give it the path to the tile set and the levels, and it would list the tiles for you, and you could rename them in the interface and it would do it in both places simultaneously and resave everything with the changes in a separate output directory. It might take me a minute to put that together, but it'd be a cool utility to have available.

Also no dice on the blank entry for 1830. I'm thinking at some point I might try downloading it from somewhere and running it for reals on DosBOX instead of using that online emulator thing. I never fully trust the online emulator to faithfully reproduce games. I don't really have a reason to doubt it, it just seems like a weird thing to exist.

Forestidia - Thanks for playing the levels and providing feedback! I'm checking out your solutions now, and they are fascinating. You came up with cool ways to solve these. It looks like I've got a lot of minor/partial backroutes and a couple major backroutes to fix still.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

18
Lix Levels / Re: Chicago-Themed Terrain
« on: December 06, 2020, 08:44:54 PM »
Whooooooaaaaa....
So I just checked out 1830, and it's almost identical to this board game:
https://www.amazon.com/Eagle-Gryphon-Games-Railways-World-Strategy/dp/B002I61OOU

Now I know where they got the idea for the board game... Like.. Down to the hexagonal piece distribution. I think I'm through stock trading for the first round, but now it wants me to "Enter word at page 54, line 8, position 5", which... I'm pretty confused about that. I don't think it's going to let me build track or buy trains unless I can either guess the secret word or google it successfully. But I'll get back to that later.

More on topic; I'm back in a place with internet and I'm uploading a revised terrain set! I added 2 more versions of the RS3 and the Forney type loco. I changed the two signs also, I took the Lemmings graphics out and put in Lix graphics, and I also changed the name of one of the signs. None of the name-changed pieces are solution-breaking when absent, but if you want versions that aren't missing pieces in weird places, I'm reuploading the levels too.

19
Lix Levels / Re: Chicago-Themed Terrain
« on: November 30, 2020, 01:03:59 AM »
Thanks for looking at the tiles!

I haven't heard of 1830, but now I kind of want to check that out. I hadn't heard of the William Mason specifically, but it looks like it's a standard American 4-4-0, and I drew these by looking at pictures of The General and The Jupiter, also standard American 4-4-0 configurations, so I think it's cool that the design was so immediately recognizable! I based the recolors and slight shape variants primarily on those, the Judy K from Cedar Point, some random loco from a local scenic rail line in Pennsylvania, and a well-known Detroit & Lima loco (that I have in N-Scale!)

I drew the Forney types while looking at pictures of Forney type locos operating on the Chicago El and New York El from the 1800s prior to electrification.

I can redesign those two signs to take out the Lemmings graphics, also! I might just see about replacing them with Lix.

20
Lix Levels / Re: Chicago-Themed Terrain
« on: November 28, 2020, 11:10:33 AM »
Thanks for playing them, Forestidia!:D I liked your solutions; particularly your solution for Going Down Town with the single massive bridge.

So I think I'm happy with where the pieces are now :lix-grin:! If there's anything that should be included but isn't, let me know! Like; "A complete set should ideally have this shape", or "I need a piece that fits in with these and turns Lix around", or "You forgot to include the rolling stock from my favorite Chicago Transit Authority Elevated Railcar Production Line."

Also, Simon and anyone else who's involved in Lix development, I wanted to get your thoughts on the traps! Specifically the 'water' traps which are actually moving trains... I would prefer to make them normal (non-water) traps where the animation is more flexibly placed, but in order to do that as it is now, I'd need to make a bunch of 8-pixel traps, each representing a single frame of the train's animation, which would add a lot of clutter to the trap directory. I'm thinking for now the 'water' variant is the best alternative, but I'm not sure if that breaks any style conventions you want to maintain for Lix terrain sets. If it does, let me know and I can either take the 'water' traps out, or figure something else out for that.

Also just generally speaking, let me know what you guys think of the set!:)

The terrain set is attached as Chicago.zip; it goes under \images\Liebatron

I'm also uploading a short level pack to go with it as "Liebatron.zip"! It's got 16 levels in 4 difficulty levels ranging from "Just Ducky!" to "Riveting". If you guys play any of those levels, let me know what you think of those too!

21
Lix Levels / Re: ClamLix
« on: November 23, 2020, 12:24:05 AM »
Got it! This is a good level.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

22
Lix Levels / Re: ClamLix
« on: November 22, 2020, 10:41:35 AM »
I'm still stuck on this one... I feel like I have the general idea, but I'm not sure, and I don't want to ruin the challenge by watching a replay...

I feel like the general idea is thaaaat:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

23
Forum Games / Re: Corrupt-a-Wish
« on: November 20, 2020, 08:41:55 PM »
Granted! You discover that the chair isn't real *none of this is real*. You're living in a simulation. Once you know that, you're able to convince yourself that the nerve pain isn't real either, and you stop feeling it. It turns out you can 'turn off' pain signals, but there isn't really anything else you can control. You're fine with living in a simulation though, as long as the simulation is consistent... Then one day you find yourself carrying a bag of bricks, and you think "where did these come from?" And you feel an irresistible urge to stack them diagonally into a staircase...

I wish I had blueberry waffles with syrup.

24
Lix Levels / Re: Chicago-Themed Terrain
« on: November 17, 2020, 02:54:24 PM »
That's good to know, I think my largest animation image is 1681x59, so it sounds like that'll be comfortably inside the limit.

Also Forestidia, thanks! I'm glad you liked it! I've changed a lot of the object names, so I had to fix some stuff, but I did check out the replay. I liked what you did to get on the platform; you wield bridges like a surgeon wields a scalpel. That was pretty neat to watch.

I'm not sure what to do about the graphical similarity you mentioned though.. I really really like the idea of the Lix boarding the train, getting off the train, etc... Just... Interactive trains. But at the same time they are really similar to the non-backgrounded trains. I'm trying to make it so everything that can be walked in front of has at least some sort of animation, even if it's just a flashing light. The pattern I'm trying to use to denote lethality is "If it has a red light on it, it kills you", but I'm not sure that'll be obvious enough to avoid confusion. We'll find out soon though!

I'm not sure I want to call it done yet, but I've got an updated tile set and a couple more levels with them. Again, not super serious puzzles, the new ones especially are mostly just here to show the new terrain set! This is what's new:

Terrain:

-CTA 4000-Series Railcar
-4 buildings (some design/layout differences, but they're mostly just recolors of the second building I made), and corresponding modular building pieces
-Fire escapes
-Phone booth
-Some floating building foundations
-Modular rail station pieces

-Sewer pipes (I like these in theory, but I'm not sure happy with how they came out... I don't really know what to do though. I feel like generally speaking they just have too much red. I feel like I'll just have to recolor them from scratch at some point.)

-Decorative details; specifically a basketball hoop, cars, meters, a fruit cart, shrubs, trees, street lights.
-Basic rectangular stone shapes and a wedge piece
-Basic vertical, horizontal, and diagonal steel beams

Hatches and Exits:

There's hatches for both types of train cars now! When the level starts, the train doors open, and Lix start getting off the train.
There's also exits for both types of train cars!

Sidenote, I have a white-window and a black-window version of the CTA 4000 car; for most of the gadgets I only made a black-window version... I like how the white-window variant looks, but I'm debating whether it should be included in the final tile set.. And whether it should have a complete set of animations and whatnot. I really like the train animations, but I also don't want to clutter up the gadget selection screens.

Traps:

The traps are a bit unusual... I wanted to make a trap where a Lix would get crushed by a moving train, but I had to do some interesting stuff to account for how wide the trap would need to be. Since the animation moves the Lix to the animated location as soon as they enter the trigger area, I realized if I made it like a normal trap, I would end up with this weird thing where a Lix would get teleported to the middle of a train before being crushed. Theoretically I could just make a bunch of small traps representing different starting frames for the same animation, but that would massively clutter the trap selection window. Sooo I tried two things as :lix-frown::lix-frown:ke how that works, but I'm not sure if I should keep it as water or try to achieve the same result another way... Maybe I'll try making a fire variant?

Second, I made a version of the animation that has crossing gate, and the trap is only triggered when the Lix gets to the middle of the crossing gate. But then it was awkward to use because the only time you could use it was when it was wedged between two objects in a gap. I figured a tile-able trap animation would allow for longer trains, which would allow it to be used more flexibly... In order to make that happen without having crossing gates every car length though, I separated the railcar animation from the crossing gate animation entirely and set the trigger area for the traincar trap to zero. Since the railcar trap was technically no longer lethal, I went ahead and changed the indicator light on it from red to green.

So now, the set has two railcar 'traps' which are technically just scenery, but they're meant to be used in conjunction with the 'crossing gate' trap (Which is full of flashing red lights). And technically you can use the crossing gate trap by itself, but then you'll just see a Lix appear to be crushed under the wheels of an invisible train.

And finally there's one new trap involving an expired parking meter...

25
Lix Levels / Re: Chicago-Themed Terrain
« on: November 16, 2020, 12:18:12 AM »
Thank you! I'm glad you like it!

Also, I'm home again! I have some stone ground tiles with grass on them, but it's still pretty bare bones right now. I have a couple ideas for floating blocks and the like, but I'm not sure exactly how I want to implement those yet... I'm thinking making 'floating buildings' would be cool, but I might add some clouds too.

I also want to add some gadgets, but I'm not entirely sure what the rules are for those. I've got a working exit, hatch, I think I've got water figured out, and I found the gadget parameter help file, but for some reason one of the traps I'm trying to make won't render in the game. The file for it is larger than most traps, and I wonder if it's because I've overrun a size limitation of some sort? Is there a limit to how many frames you can add, how large they can be, or how large the animation png can be?

EDIT: Nevermind! The trap is working! I took out some non-moving frames at the end of the animation, so I'm guessing I just hit a frame limit.

26
Lix Levels / Re: Chicago-Themed Terrain
« on: November 13, 2020, 10:45:00 AM »
Thanks! I was going to go to bed because I have to drive tomorrow, but instead of doing that, I did the logical thing and made revisions to a level right after posting it...

There's stars and a moon now! No other changes. I know you probably can't really see stars at night in Chicago, but we can pretend.

27
Lix Levels / Chicago-Themed Terrain
« on: November 13, 2020, 08:38:21 AM »
Today I started making a Chicago Elevated Rail terrain set, and I wanted to put a level I made with it out here! It's not super complicated, but I had fun making it!

I'll be busy with other stuff for a couple days, but I'm pretty happy with how the train cars themselves came out in this pack. The ones here are the 2400/2600 series Chicago El rolling stock; I think next I want to make some sprites for the 4000-series cars; they ran from 1914 through the 50s mostly, but weren't completely retired until 1973. The 4000-series cars are my favorite Chicago El rolling stock. Everyone should have a favorite Chicago Elevated Rail rolling stock production line. But anyway, Lemmings! Or in this case Lix! Let me know if anyone wants to see more Chicago terrain stuff!

28
General Discussion / Re: General Comings and Goings
« on: November 13, 2020, 03:42:06 AM »
I'M ALIVE. I was on here as DumbLem back in the early 2000s, then I disappeared for a couple years, and I think the last time I was on here was in 2010. In 2010 I renamed myself to Xan Kriegor, made a couple comments here and there, and a long comment in random story, then promptly vanished off the face of the Earth again. I'm hoping to stick around a little bit longer this time, maybe try to get Lemmini running and see what that's all about, and maybe make/finish a couple Lix levels that I started back in 2016!

29
General Discussion / Re: Forum History
« on: July 16, 2013, 12:37:53 AM »
I was introduced to the Forums by Timballisto; at the time is was Lemmings Universe, a thriving Mecca of Lemmings Lore and Level-building innovation. I was pretty young at the time, so I actually don't remember the times between events perfectly, but I remember after awhile the server got bogged down, the site slowed down, and we all realized with an impending sense of doom that something wasn't quite right with the webhosting, and when Lemmings Universe went down there ensued a long "time of troubles" in which forums modelled after the original Lemmings Universe popped up, hosted by various members of the old forum, and for some reason or other most of them either went down or became inoperable after awhile. It was a bad time for that to happen too, because while this was happening a lot of the members were about the right age to be going off to college; lemmings took a back seat for awhile.

Andi's forum at welt.de was pretty stable for awhile, but eventually something happened to it too. I recall Mr. KSoft putting up a forum once as well; and I don't remember if it was that one or another one that died without warning, leaving the forum community in chaos for awhile. One of them though, died without warning because if I remember correctly the webhost basically pulled the plug on it without any warning or explanation.

Then we regathered here, and this has been a pretty good, stable forum. At that point though, I mostly moved on to other facets of life, and although I still check back here sometimes, I'm sadly not very active on the forum anymore. Since the rise of a new, stable forum though, I've seen it do some cool stuff; there's new faces showing up, and to be honest the last time I took a good look at it, what it reminded me of most was the original Lemmings Universe forum when I first joined it, when the first generation of Lemmings players was getting old enough to look at this cool new internet thing and make accounts on weird retro game forums. LET THE CYCLE BEGIN ANEW.

30
General Discussion / Re: General Comings and Goings
« on: April 18, 2012, 04:47:48 PM »
This is awesome! Thanks; I'll put it back together in all its craziness and this time I'll actually hold on to it in all its bizarre unpredictability.   :D

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