Here's an amusing - though probably not all that useful (I assume it can likely be extracted from a file anyway) - find.

There are also similar "graphics" (maybe actual graphics, that just so happen to be 16px wide) starting at 0x13C000. These are in fact the editor-type graphics we discovered in the data files a while back, confirming that for some reason L3D does load these.

This will be fixed in 0.9.29. Observers will start zoomed out to see the entire map.

-- Simon

I would say those two situations fall outside the spectrum, or could be considered a Level 0 (no control required, not even blockers). This would also cover levels where lemmings are unable or unlikely to die so crowd control isn't needed, too, such as (to pick the easiest example imaginable) Just Dig.

Further to this, I'd say levels like Bitter Lemming also fall into level 1, where the terrain contains the lemmings and separating a worker is trivial (in this case simply by using a climber).

Of course, this doesn't account for difficulty points unrelated to crowd control.

I had fun choosing these ones!  Good luck, have fun everyone!

If anyone needs clarity on what counds as valid for Rule 1 in terms of water, I consider "Origins and Lemmings" from the original game to be a valid level, since the level only has water at the very bottom of the level and it doesn't interfere with any meaningful solution - it's there for decoration.  And other than the water, the only other interactive objects are the single trapdoor and exit, with no steel anywhere.

Since a lot of my earlier packs tend to have been on the easier side, I might chime in regarding my conversion plans .

The first thing on my list is definitely converting Lemmings World Tour. As I said though, that is on a halt until the 10-skills-panel is a thing.

I don't want to start converting something else in the meantime, because I think I'd get confused easily when jumping around between packs, trying to update them all at the same time.

That said, though, I don't believe I've used any Graphic Sets in Paralems or Pit Lems that weren't part of Lemmings World Tour, as well. So all the graphic-set conversions I did for World Tour should, as a side effect, allow me to also convert Paralems and Pit Lems in principle. Those two would probably fill this "gap" of easy packs quite nicely, at least to some extent.

Paralems is really easy and might be a great intro pack, since it includes remakes of Original Lemmings levels, but for the NeoLemmix skills ("Just fence", "Only gliders can survive this", etc.). However, I'm not sure how fare playing this pack can actually take a new player, because it diverges from the core "puzzle philosophy" so much. It doesn't really do much with regard to making people aware of obscure solutions.

Pit Lems therefore would most likely be converted first after LWT, then - precisely because it's more challenging than Paralems. The reason it's called Pit Lems in the first place was a reference to Star Wars: Pit Droids (hence also the Star Wars font in the pack title), the very first game I played that described itself completely as a "puzzle" game (compared to Lemmings being an "action puzzle").

Lemmicks definitely won't be converted to New Formats, except for the select levels that re-appear in Lemmings World Tour. That's because for those levels, I've already figured out a non-gimmick solution. A lot of the other levels don't actually work without the gimmick in the first place.


All of my packs, as you probably know, include some amount of radiation and slowfreeze levels.

Lemmicks, as I just said, is out of the question.

Paralems has comparatively many levels involving zombies, including at least one where zombies need to walk into radiation and slowfreeze areas, as well as another level where you need to clone radiating lemmings. Cloning radiating lemmings can sometimes be replicated with enough bomber pickup skills - that is the way I converted a World-Tour level, "Ayo Technology" - but bombing and stoning zombies is something that was effectively removed together with radiation and slowfreeze.

Pit Lems barely has any zombie levels, and those that are there don't require them to interact with radiation or slowfreeze, as far as I remember. The issue with Pit Lems is that some of the best levels (including 2 of the 3 LOTY nominees) included radiation and/or slowfreeze. More precisely, at least one of them I can't even modify into a pickup-skills level, because that level itself already is part of the pack (the version with radiation and slowfreeze is the rerun of said level, "Controlled overload" vs. "The long way down").

The only other option would be to create a massive redux pack of my own levels, either combining all the non-radiation/slowfreeze levels from Paralems and Pit Lems, or simply creating a "Best of" collection of all the levels I still consider worthwhile. A "Best of" of all my levels in general however should probably also contain levels from Lemmings World Tour and Lemmicks... partly because I'm not sure whether just Pit Lems and Paralems together would provide enough material to work with.

It does sound like fun though to go over my old levels again and simply cherry-pick the best ones into a single combined pack .


When it comes to other people's packs, I think New Formats would greatly profit from having Arty's SubLems and nin10doadict's CasuaLemmings available.

CasuaLemmings was one of the first packs I attempted, because it was one of the few packs I even had a chance at solving. As a consequence, it was largely fun, also because it featured some slightly trolling, Paralems-like levels to loosen things up (with one of them even being explicitly inspired by Paralems ). But it also had some surprisingly difficult puzzles that stumped me out of nowhere. And those are precisely the ones that offer a new player the opportunity to grow and get better.

SubLems simply has what I would describe as a perfect difficulty curve. The beautiful architecture of most of the levels also does its part in preventing the pack from annoying the hell out of a new player.



Hence, that is definitely my main advice for IchoTolot and anyone else trying to deliberately design an easier pack: Start by simply trying not to annoy the player!

I think a good starting point for that would be our discussions about immediate turn-offs when seeing a new level for the first time.

When I see whacky terrain that just instantly looks like it's a mess to navigate through (best example: the dreaded "thin-terrain-pieces chaos maze"), or massive amounts of flow control without any possibility to contain the crowd (a popular device on "Hard-for-Flopsy" levels), I'm just willing to throw in the towel much more quickly than in a nice 1-of-everything level or so, with lots of connected terrain pieces (=not a builder fest). The latter type of level can then happily be challenging and obscure, having me wonder "okay, where does that miner go; how the heck do I get to turn this lemming around just one more time", etc.

If there's one thing to take away from this in short, I'd say "no flow control in easy packs". Keep in mind that original Lemmings actually never even teaches you how to properly contain the crowd in different ways than with blockers. Digger pits, cutting off the pioneer's builder-staircase behind him, sealing off the pioneer's basher tunnel, freeing a blocker by mining etc., all that is just stuff that some players figure out by themselves, and those who don't get stuck as early as the Tricky rank.

Crowd control as an overarching term is a necessary part of pretty much every level, and I think there are clearly three tiers to it:

Level 1: crowd containment with blockers (--> "Noob strategy" )
Level 2: crowd containment with digger pits & Co., usually enforced by requiring to save everyone, or simply not providing any blockers (--> Intermediate)
Level 3: flow control, i.e. no ways to contain the crowd at all, it's all about keeping them busy and timing things just right (--> Professional)