Sounds good WillLem, looking forward to trying this CE version straightforward compatible with a previous NL installation. Good job 

I've been playing the game with the CE for some weeks now (CE installed in its own directory) and I like the visual enhancements and such. I can not remember a moment where I thought that I was better in vanilla NL, so this means that even if the CE is not better than NL, it is certainly not worse !

And done (commit ff5616e).

Option 4 has now been implemented (commits 4165202 - 4a634f3).

Here's how the file system now works:

It's possible to place the NeoLemmixCE.exe directly into a NeoLemmix 12.14 directory and everything will just work, no need to copy any files across!

The idea of an "assets-ce" folder has been abandoned as it creates unnecessary clutter for NL users, and potential confusion for CE users who want to run CE from its own directory. Instead, all CE-specific/updated assets have been renamed with a "ce-" prefix, and are placed into the same folders as their NL counterparts.

In order to support author/user mods, CE will load assets in the following priority order:

First Priority: Level Pack

CE will first check the level pack root folder for the expected asset. Both the NL-named asset (e.g. 'background.png') and the CE-renamed asset (e.g. 'ce-background.png') will be accepted, with no preference either way. The only exception to this is the level select checkmarks, which bypass this first priority stage.

Second Priority: File System

CE will then check the root directory file system for the expected asset. If it's a ce-specific asset, it must have the "ce-" prefix to be accepted at this stage. All assets that are the same for both NL and CE will be accepted as normal.

Third Priority: Embedded Resource

Finally, if all else has failed, the embedded resource will be loaded. For this to happen, the expected CE resource must be missing from both the level pack and the file system.

Overall, this seems to be the simplest and most future-proof way to handle this. I'll mark this topic as resolved and we'll give the new system a try in the next update.

Compromise, after overthinking this less:

Bake the physics masks into the .exe, but also provide them in the usual folder for visibility's sake. They just simply won't be used from there.

Just wanted to say hi to all you great people!   I never forget about Lix    nice to see you still work on it Simon!   

Thanks, everybody!  I very much appreciate the input!  None of my questions were important; just newbie questions.  I'll keep enjoying my little Lix friends as they march around my desktop.  :-)  Thanks!  --ken

Thanks Guigui - I'll definitely give yours a try! I'd like to create some more levels of my own at some point, but in the mean time I have pro creators like yourself and Tomato to inspire me. 

QuoteIf the intention is to allow users access to the physics for modding, where do we stop? If we'd rather not allow access for the sake of simplicity, then the gfx/mask files shouldn't exist in the directory.

I agree there. Having fully customisable physics would result in confusion.

So, gfx/mask files shouldn't exist in the directory and should go in the exe.

Golems v2.0-preview7

There are now keys for leftward/rightward selection (A and F by default) and a key for abandoning the level (Delete by default; basically the same as pressing Escape in DOS).  There are also some minor bug fixes and performance improvements.

Quote from: IchoTolot on January 27, 2026, 05:55:43 PMLooked inside the folder and I can maybe see somebody wanting to swap the highliter or countdown.

Yes, this stuff should remain visible and editable. We'd only bake in the physics masks.

Quote from: Simon on January 27, 2026, 07:38:46 PMAllow editing the file, but checksum on load and warn nonintrusively on mismatch.

Good suggestion, but hard pass. For this, I'd rather just commit one way or the other.

Quote from: IchoTolot on January 27, 2026, 09:01:34 PMI do not have a strong opinion about it, when you wanna hide them for CE, do it. I just remembered why we actually went away from the big exe blob and I feel like that could be a frist step back to it.

I doubt we'd ever go back to a fully-loaded .exe. Certainly not whilst I've got anything to do with it. It's clear that users want to be able to mod their copies, and we should continue to support that.

Quote from: Simon on January 27, 2026, 07:38:46 PMIcho's position is interesting. What do you think about externalizing even more physics?

Important question. If we want to allow users to potentially play with the physics, why not splat height? Builder/Stacker/Platformer brick width? Lem walking speed? etc... If the intention is to allow users access to the physics for modding, where do we stop? If we'd rather not allow access for the sake of simplicity, then the gfx/mask files shouldn't exist in the directory.