Quote from: ∫tan x dx on August 30, 2026, 09:20:10 AMI'd love another meetup!

Bristol sounds good for me, and November should be fine!

are you still up for this?

But tanxdx and WillLem has posted on this topic further up, seems like they've just forgotten all about it?

Ok last time to try and drum up more interest than just myself, Kingshadow and hrb264.

Quote from: hrb264 on October 27, 2026, 07:15:44 AMhey @flopsy - I'll probably now be coming down on the 13th, but perhaps you can give me a lift back as it looks like I'll be going back on the Sunday? No worries if that's not convenient

If it's just going to be me, you and Kingshadow going then we'll most likely be calling the whole thing off sadly.
See what happens in the next few weeks before we decide

Three more Proficio levels done.  This Blood & Fire was mega cunning.   Over 3 hours attempts with this level. Finally got it right. That was reverse version fire & blood which also was really tough level.

Proficio 10

anicent astronaut

This level was quite easy i figured out it some 15 minutes, one fastest solution i got done in this pack, i think its intention or close it, very limited skills here

Porficio 12

Paved with good intentions

This level was fun & interesting to play, its take me while to solved some 60-90 minutes range. Guess its intention solution, that was cunning level though, many things have to look here

Proficio 15

Blood & Fire

Over 3 hours attempts here and i overlooked it a lot. I overlook this begin here so much, that keyword here is compress lemmings and they all can fall down with one single digger, that why this take me so long, i always waste too much skills here and cannot pass that end. Its have to be intention and only possible solution. I´ll really look everything else here, its cannot be done any otherways. Though its not really was too hard level to executed if you figured out this compression method with begin

EDIT
Proficio 17

Bad Reflection

This level was super easy got it less than 5 minutes, though its might backroute, quite much skills remain, here is alls saved solution too

EDIT 2
Proficio 6

Low Tide

This might are backroute (bomber, climber & floater remain) Blocker trick compress all, next turn all climbers keep first lemmings little bit ahead then he can turn all other used digger rightspot, bash back turn others, then just keep digging to finnish (2 lemmings die to trap and this blocker cannot saved. This solution requires some tigh spots, not really that hard level, but its might be backroute though

This is a recolor of the water from ohno_rock using the colours of gronkling_beast. I'd like to recommend it be added to the beast tileset, if gronkling is okay with that.

EDIT: Added a second version. The first one only replaces the colours of the green vines (since the original bright green really clashes with the terrain); the second one replaces the white vines as well, making the tile much darker. Up to you which one you prefer! (Although if you don't have a preference, I prefer the second version -- just rename it to "vines" so it matches the nxmo.)

Quote from: Simon on September 24, 2026, 01:55:52 AMCryptic Puzzles

On September 5th, geoo and I participated in PaderPuzzle 2026. This was an outdoor puzzle hunt: You got 9 hours to travel the city of Paderborn in teams of 1-5 players, find pre-placed puzzle sheets with cryptic information, and enter solution phrases for each in an online system.

After solving a puzzle, you scored 4 points and learned the whereabouts of the next sheet in the city. You had the option to phone for hints (at cost of 1 point each) or skip (scoring 0 but learning the location of the next puzzle).

Example puzzle and solution

One puzzle was a poem of Japanese-sounding nonsense words, spelled in latin letters.

The solution: Transliterate each line into katakana; the standard katankana table a-ka-sa-ta-na-ha-..., i-ki-shi-chi-ni-hi-... was provided by the organizers to all teams in a general knowledge booklet. Color the location of these katakana in the standard table. See what the colored picture (pixel art) represents. Each picture (one picture per poem line) formed a kyrillic letter; transliterate the kyrillic back to German for the solution.

Example puzzle and solution

One puzzle was a sequence of colorful men (silhouettes of butlers).

The solution: Look around where you are the city. 50 meters from you, there was a store called BUTLER'S with its name printed in differently-colored letters. Replace each man on the sheet with the correspondingly-colored letter from the store logo. Easy once you see it, right?

But made the mistake of attacking this puzzle sitting a quiet corner for 20 minutes, websearching, thinking about color hex codes, ..., and nothing worked. Other teams sat down in better spots and solved it in 3 minutes.

Example puzzle and solution

One puzzle was a cryptic crossword. Each solution was either an animal or a plant. I got many clues right on this one:

Q: An einem zugefrorenen See stehend, gefragt wo er denn hier stehe, antwortete Goethe ganz poetisch: ...
A: Ameise ("am Eise")

Q: Reptil, das vor Gericht niemals lügen würde: ...
A: Eidechse

Q: Wenn ich mich nicht entscheiden kann, in welchem Topf ich mein Erdnusscurry erhitze, dann stehe ich vor einer ...
A: Pottwal

geoo asked me how this was even possible for me, given that I like to rant against ambiguous instructions and ill-defined gameplay!

geoo and I named the team Suicidal Rodents, in honor of the team name from 12 years ago that the Lemmings Forums team used for online puzzle competitions. We accepted one external student who didn't have a team yet, and ran as a team of 3.

PaderPuzzle 2026 statistics, we (Suicidal Rodents) placed 12th out of 32 teams. We scored 38 points. We bought a hint for puzzle 9; you can tell because we scored 3 points there instead of the usual 4 points. We solved bonus puzzle Z1 but failed Z2.

Several teams got the full score of 42 points. Some contestants were regular solvers and finished way earlier than the bunch. geoo and I were happy to do well as nonregulars, still, and I got to spend a day outside, away from the computer.

-- Simon

I wish I could add more to this but I don't speak (well technically "read" not "speak") German, can't easily translate PDFs and I don't seem to be good at any of these types of puzzles from what I can understand of them. But I still think it's worth me saying I think this is cool.

Quote from: Simon on September 24, 2026, 01:55:52 AMPaderPuzzle 2026 statistics, we (Suicidal Rodents) placed 12th out of 32 teams. We scored 38 points. We bought a hint for puzzle 9; you can tell because we scored 3 points there instead of the usual 4 points. We solved bonus puzzle Z1 but failed Z2.

Not too shabby.

hey @flopsy - I'll probably now be coming down on the 13th, but perhaps you can give me a lift back as it looks like I'll be going back on the Sunday? No worries if that's not convenient

Since the above screenshots were taken, the icons and info are now dynamically placed depending on:

a) Whether the level has a talisman (and therefore needs the button to be shown)

and

b) Whether the talisman requires additional icons to be shown - e.g. if it's a Max Skill Types talisman, we show the number beside the button:

The Skill Panel will soon have a Talisman button added to it. I have already implemented this in SuperLemmix so people will have a chance to see how it looks and behaves before it gets added to NeoLemmix CE.

Since the button displaces some of the text, and since space is always an issue on the skill panel, we need to do the following:

1) Display the existing panel font smaller and with antialiasing. This includes all custom bitmap-based panel fonts. Here's an example of how it looks in SuperLemmix's Amiga Theme:


Amiga Theme

2) Use a true-type font for the panel text. We can spend some time selecting a few fonts that we think are suitable and then offer them all as options. Here's an example of how it looks in SuperLemmix's regular theme:


SuperLemmix Theme.

Again, we can choose other fonts, this is literally the first one I picked.

3) Make the talisman button optional. With it toggled off, we can continue to display the panel exactly as it is now. With it toggled on, we'll then offer the choice of 'original font' and 'new font' for displaying the text.

This should keep everybody happy, but I would still appreciate people's input on this. I don't want people to just think "oh, it's going to be optional so I don't need to worry about it" - the whole point of Community Edition is that it's developed with as many people's involvement as possible.

This is the time and place to join in the discussion and have your say.

exp(−(x − μ)² / 2σ²)

There is a curious pattern with getting good at a skill.

The skill can be anything: Playing strength in a certain game, playing an instrument, typing fast, getting good at drawing, playing a sport, finding good designs to engineering problems, ...

When you start learning, you know that you suck, and your output varies between absolutely terrible and pretty lousy. Maybe it's good for small examples that you've practiced in detail, but for a real-world application of the skill to a new random real-world case, your output will be be terrible to lousy.

You get better, and you increase both your mean and your standard deviation. Now, your output is mediocre, sometimes bad, sometimes all right.

Eventually, you'll get even better, and you nail an outstanding piece of workmanship. Congratulations! You're in the spotlight! Maybe you'll appear on the front page of some website, maybe you'll get a strong rank for your game account.

The problem is: The very first time you're in the spotlight, you've probably increased your mean during your recent practice, but you haven't shrunken your standard deviation yet. That means that your outstanding piece of workmanship is exactly that: An outlier in the positive direction. You'll have a hard time reproducing this quality. It takes months of hard work to prune old bad habits and stabilize the skill (= shrink the standard deviation) all while maintaining the same or an even higher mean.

Do not fear the subsequent garbage output. It's sad, but it's natural. It may feel like getting bad again, but it's regression to the mean after the lucky shot.

The spotlight can only show single pieces of craftsmanship output because it can't show the craftsmanship itself.

-- Simon