Quote from: namida on December 30, 2018, 11:40:26 PM
Page 10, the select level key (F2) also works from the preview screen.

The options hotkey (F3) also works on the preview screen. Actually Both F2 and F3 work on basically any screen. Probably the only exception is while playing a level, assuming you have explicitely overwritten them by assigning another function to them in the hotkey config menu. I have tested it on the postview-screen, but not yet on the talisman or mass replay check screen.

I have not yet read the manual, just wanted to add this to namida's remark.

An updated experimental version is attached here and to the first post. Changes:
- No OhNo-animation for exploding shimmiers (and reachers)
- Raymanni's improved shimmier sprites
- Pickup-sprites for all graphic sets.
Graphic set creators are encouraged to look at my suggestions and modify them, so that they are happy with it. At the very least, please check, that I haven't forgotten to update your style.

List of changed pickup-sprites

arty_silhouette
gigalem_desertmd
gigalem_metalmd
gigalem_purplemd
gigalem_treemd
plom_bastemp
plom_garden
plom_metro
plom_psychmd
plom_studio
ray_circus
ray_cyberspace
ray_eldorado
ray_snow

Quote from: Strato Incendus on December 30, 2018, 10:44:16 PM
Do we have sprites for Christmas lemmings yet?

No. Good point. This is another item on my ToDo-list. If anyone wants to step up an adapt the christmas sprites, they are very welcome to it.

Quote from: Strato Incendus on December 30, 2018, 10:44:16 PM
But so far, I can't use them yet because I still get an error that the lemming animation metadata for the Reacher can't be found (and I guess for the Shimmier as well; Reacher just comes first in the alphabet, hence it's probably just the first error message).

Assuming you have just recolored them, not changed their size, moved some sprites, ..., the fix is pretty simple: Copy the file "scheme.nxmi" from "styles/default/lemmings" to your folder with the curstom lemmings sprites. This file contains some meta information about all the lemming animations, e.g. where the image should be placed relative to the in-game physics position of the lemming. At the moment the game wants to read these information for the reacher and shimmier from the file, but doesn't find it, returning the error message you see on your screen.

The experimental version already has the fix for the amplified yippie sound bug. Seems that this fix had some side-effects. Will look into it.

Quote from: Strato Incendus on December 30, 2018, 11:06:29 AM
Seriously, what a great Christmas present to the community! I was kind of secretly hoping for this to happen, but didn't really dare to... I hope you didn't work over the holidays to get this ready, but had it finished a couple days early and just waited for the appropriate time to release it?

If I had it ready before Christmas, I would have released it then. But during the past week, I had more free time than in the whole past month, and I put it to good use.

Quote from: Strato Incendus on December 30, 2018, 04:37:09 PM
Okay, just a question: In my thread about anticipated Shimmier behaviour, Nepster said the plan was for Shimmiers turned into a bomber or stoner to explode instantly (=at the ceiling). Currently, they turn into ohnoers and fall down.

Thanks for mentioning this. The OhNoing is not intended and I still feel that instant explosions would be more consistent.

Thanks. The internet describes a lot of ways to produce these .res files via .rc files (which are just text files with a fancy name), but you have to give each image an internal name. I have not yet decided whether I will try to reconstruct these internal names from the code, or rewrite the whole cursor code to use external graphics.

I intentionally omitted a description of the exact mechanics, because I wanted people to focus on how the shimmier feels, rather than whether it is consistent. Still, thanks for compiling the list.

Quote from: IchoTolot on December 29, 2018, 01:59:19 PM
6.) Shimmiers will stop if the ground gets too close to their feet. I don't have the exact threshold here as in clear physics mode I think you can't currently see the exact position pixel of the shimmier. Can you give the exact ammount here, Nepster?   (Bottom left chamber)

Depending on the shimmier frame, the lemming sprite is 8 or 9 pixels high. The phyisics position of the lemming is 9 pixels below the ceiling, i.e. is one below the feet if the sprite is 8 pixels high, and at feet level if the sprite is 9 pixels high. A shimmier will transition to a walker, if the space between ceiling and ground is at most 9 pixels, i.e. if between (and including) the physics lemming position and the ceiling there is at least one solid pixel. In particular this meanse, that the basher tunnel with its 10 pixels height is the smallest tunnel a shimmier can traverse.
Regarding not being able to see the shimmier position: This seems to be a general bug, that I noticed as well: If the first level you start is one without a hatch (without having started any other level before!), then the lemming position will never be diplayed (not for shimmiers, not for walkers and nor for any other lemming). No idea, what causes this and what the exact conditions are to reproduce this bug.

Steps to reproduce this bug:
1) Start a level with a hatch, that has preassigned skills.
2) Observe that the lemmings have the correct permanant skills assigned to them, when they drop out of the hatch.
3) Optional: Do some terrain modification, like digging or bashing somwhere
4) Open the in-game level selection menu (usually F2) and press "Cancel" to continue the current game
5) Optional: First notice that your terrain modifications are gone.
6) Then notice that the lemmings spawning now do no longer have the preassigned skills. Alternatively it may rarely happen that all objects turn invisible and that the lemmings now spawn as swimming-floating-gliding zombies.
7) If you use some backwards frame-steps, your terrain modifications will reappear (as the save-states do have the correct information)
8) But even if you framestep back to the beginning of the level, the preassignments never reappear.

Exiting the level and starting it new fixes all the problems.

WARNING: This is still an experimental version and any of the shimmier physics may still change! Do not complain if they break the levels, you create with this version.

After the usual warning, here is the good news: This experimental version allows you to test the shimmiers. It should not crash every ten seconds and shimmiers might even somewhat behave like you would expect them to.

Installation:
Although the stable version should have no problems with the modified graphics for the shimmiers, I still recommend starting with a new installation of the stable NeoLemmix version (or a copy of your current one). Then extract the attached zip file in the folder, replacing the older files with the ones in the zip file.

How can I create levels with shimmiers?
The zip file also contains a new version of the editor, that supports shimmiers. Alternatively open the nxlv file and add among the other skills a line like "SHIMMIER 20".

What should I look for in this experimental version?
1) Crashes: I might have overlooked some places, that have to be adapted to the existance of a new skill.
2) And equally important: Anything that didn't feel right or suprised you. I would like the shimmiers to be as intuitive as possible, and we are now in the unique situation, that there are a lot of players with a fresh mind and without preconditioning by previous shimmier versions. So please report anything that caused a raised eyebrow.
3) Whether the animation looks good. For the shimmier itself I used Raymanni's sprites, so I am less worried there. But the reacher animation might very well be something that can (and should?) be improved upon. As I mentioned frequently, I am not really good at creating sprites, so if you can improve the sprites yourself and post the new ones here, it would be much appreciated. (But even comments like "Frame 5 of the reacher animation looks out of place" do help).

What is left on the ToDo-list?
- Hunting for glitches (though this will have to wait until the main physics rules have stabilized)
- Adapt the pickup-skill sprites for non-default graphic sets. Currently you can only use shimmier pickups, if the graphic set uses the default pickup sprites.
- Add support for shimmier talismans. The player should already be able to handle them correctly (though I haven't tested it yet), but the pack toolkit doesn't allow creating such talismans. 
- Fix all the issues you will find.

Thanks a lot for the great level, Minim!

I, too, would like to pass the honor of choosing the next level along to whoever has a nice level (either for NeoLemmix or for Lix), that they would like to submit. I am currently far too busy to get shimmiers to stick to their ceilings and not drop for no reason at all

PS Minim: I didn't get your PM.

Thanks for the bug report, but this feels like a low-priority and high-effort bug to me. So for the moment, this goes on the stack of stuff to do, whenever I have nothing more productive to do and need a challange.

Before I am able to fix this, I need some help from namida: How can I compile the various Cursor-Bitmaps into the LemmixResources.res file?

Done

Yeah, welcome to the forum!

Quote from: Voxy on December 24, 2018, 03:39:13 PM
I'm actually considering it, the thing is, I haven't really looked too deep into it and I'm unsure if the engine would support the features needed for my ideal Lemmings graphics set. (Alpha blending for smoother edges, high framerate for animations, high definition graphics, etc.)

Sorry, but I have to disappoint you there:
Alpha blending is somewhat supported by the engine, but we currently discourage designers from using it. There are still a few problems we have to solve, like: From what alpha value on do we consider pixels to be solid? Should these be drawn with full alpha, and should the remaining pixels be removed completely?
Higher framerate: Apart from technical issues with the current implementation, I doubt that it would look good if the animations for lemmings and traps have different fps. If we go along in that direction, the first step should be to create lemming animations with higher framerate, not specific graphic sets.
High definition graphics: As Simon has found out with Lix, there are some questions regarding the game physics: How many of the sprite pixels have to be solid, in order for the (low-res) physics pixel to be considered solid? In Lix, Simon implemented the rule: A physics pixel consists of two horizontal image pixels, and if one of the image pixels is terrain, then the physics pixel is considered terrain. This has lots of "interesting" consequences, and at least twice I thought I had found a bug in Lix, but in fact it was just a consequence of this rule. I am currently aware of no good rule to translate a high-res image to a low-res physics map. So unless one magically appears, there will be no support for high-res graphic sets. I just favor ease and clarity of game-play over nice graphics.

Sorry, but this is not nearly enough information you are giving us here. My current guess is that either the level pack of this level overrides the default messages, or the file with your default messages got changed, so that the top message got replaced with the one you are seeing. The messages are stored in the file "data\postview.nxmi" and this file should look like the attached one.

I already experimented with shaded arrows, cf https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=3265.0

Unfortunately, I can't remember where I put these experimental arrows and will have to either recreate them or search a while through my backups.