1. Removing most of the time limits.
It is generally a convention in NeoLemmix to not have a time limit unless it's preventing backroutes or a major part of the challenge. Should we go through and apply this to the NeoLemmix conversions of the official games too? Obviously levels like "It's Hero Time" (backroute prevention) or "Heaven Can Wait (We Hope!)" (major part of the challenge) would retain them. Levels where the time limit is barely a factor, such as pretty much all of Fun, on the other hand, would change to having no time limit.
Some levels are a bit borderline. These are levels where the time limit isn't clearly the main factor, but does to some extent contribute to the difficulty. Levels that come to mind here include, for example, the later iterations of "We All Fall Down" (and in this case, with the time limit being identical across all iterations, we should probably keep it even on the early ones if keeping it at all). If this proposal goes ahead, we would also have to decide how to treat these cases.
Yes, it makes sense to remove levels where the time limit serves little to no purpose other than to annoy the player. We should all have a discussion on which levels should be removed.
2. Rename "Introducing SUPERLEMMING"?
Although it hasn't been removed yet, the next (major) update will be removing the Superlemming mode. As such, should this level be renamed? Or, could it be thought of as that it still fits due to being a large, single-lemming level?
Hmmmm…that’s a good question. You’ve changed “SUPERLEMMING II: Desert Quest” of Lemmings Plus II to just “Desert Quest”. Yeah, maybe the title of this should be changed, to avoid confusion. The problem is, what the title should be changed to..
3. Move the 2-player maps into the Extra Levels pack.
The vanilla Lemmix players already have the 2-player maps in the Extra Levels pack, rather than the official game they're attached to. I feel that this makes a lot more sense, the more I think about it. So should we perhaps move those?
Yes, I would go ahead and do that. The 2-player maps don’t really serve much of a purpose except for completeness purposes. Even some of the levels like Lemmings 2P 19 “Island in the Sky” just solve themselves without the need to do anything.
4. Remove redundant repeats?
Due to instant bombers in NeoLemmix, some repeat levels are completely redundant, or very close to it. The four levels in particular that come to mind (there may be more among the Genesis levels too), with the middle two in particular being redundant, are:
Tricky 15 "Ozone Friendly Lemmings"
Tricky 17 "Diet Lemmingaid"
Taxing 19 "Bomboozal"
Mayhem 19 "Time To Get Up"
Assuming the 5th proposal below gets a "No" response, we'd then need something to replace these levels with. I would think that unless we decide against it altogether, the middle two will go for sure. So we may need anywhere from two to four levels to replace them with.
In the event of needing two, my proposal would be to use the two Amiga Bookclub version levels ("Through The Graveyard" and "Something Weighing On Your Mind?"). In the case of three, perhaps "Going Their Seperate Ways" could be added to the list. In the case of all four, I'd ditch those suggestions and instead propose using the Budget Amiga levels (ie: "Go For It", "Lemming Lament", "It's not over 'til it's over" and "Don't make the wrong choice!"). I also considered the possibility of extra repeats / earlier versions. The levels that I thought may be suitable for repeats are Tricky 27 and Tricky 29, while those that may be suitable for easier versions are Taxing 13 and Taxing 24. (Maybe also a repeat of Fun 3.)
It may be the case that there's also a level in Oh No! More Lemmings! that is purely bomber timing and nothing else. A problem here is that without introducing an entirely new level (which I would feel uncomfortable with going that far), the only spare ONML style level we have available is "Vacation in Gemland" (remember that NeoLemmix conversions are based off the Amiga version, so this level is not used in the H94 conversion).
Regarding the ONML level, which level is it exactly? Also, I would rather "Vacation in Gemland" stay where it is currently, as it is seen more as a Holiday Lemmings level than an ONML level.
I don’t think we should do the extra repeats idea; I’d rather stick to what Psygnosis/etc. has created for us. We already have people like Ben Conway, Clam, DragonsLover, BulletRide, Proxima, möbius and Colorful Arty making challenging or easier modifications of Orig / Oh No levels.
There are two other levels which are redundant: Mayhem 24 “All Or Nothing”, due to that we have directional select and therefore strongly defeats the purpose of this level, which is basher timing, and Mayhem 25 “Have a nice day!” because the solution is the exact same as Tricky 13 “Lemming Drops”. So assuming we take these six levels out, we could then add the four Budget Amiga levels, and the two Amiga Bookclub levels. But that leaves out the levels Other 1 “One Way to Freedom”, Other 2 “The Apple Computer Level” (if we even need to include that at all), Other 6 “Going their Separate Ways” and Other 7 “Ohayo Lemming-San”. Perhaps we can include those four levels in the main difficulties (Other 2 in Fun, Other 7 in Tricky, Other 6 in Taxing, Other 1 in Mayhem), which brings them to 31 levels each (and still consistent). Or we could also consider Proposal #5, which really needs a hefty amount of discussion.
5. Integrate other version levels into the main games.
This is probably the most radical proposal here. Should we integrate the levels that come from other versions into the main game? This is of course only really relevant to Orig. I would not propose moving the PSP levels in, but certianly the Genesis levels, the Amiga Budget / Bookclub version levels, the alternate Tricky 21s, etc. I'm undecided about the SEGA levels from the Master System version (and would say no to the alternate Tricky 12 repeat and "Sixes Not!"). The alternate special graphics levels from Genesis would most likely also not be integrated. Of course, these levels (as well as any removed under the above proposal) would remain in the Extra Levels pack!
The next question would then be how. Except perhaps in cases to replace the levels removed in proposal 4, I would think the tidiest way (to minimize inconsistency of what level a position refers to) is to only add levels at the end of ranks. This may result in a somewhat erratic difficulty curve, but it's hard to say that Lemmings doesn't to some extent have such in the first place. In the case of Present and Sunsoft, these tend to span the entire range of difficulties; so should they be kept as seperate ranks, or should these too be integrated into Fun / Tricky / Taxing / Mayhem as appropriate? And if so, how do we decide which level goes where? We would probably want to keep a consistent amount of levels per rank, which may somewhat influence the decisions.
I like the idea of keeping Present and Sunsoft in their separate ranks, and just putting the Genesis levels with Fun-Mayhem after the end of their ranks. I’ll think about this one more, because this one really needs discussion.
Looking through the Extra Player, if we don't count the alternative special graphics, the two test maps (though I wouldn't mind including the test maps) and the remakes of the ONML levels, since that would also count as redundant, here's how many levels we have (I may have miscounted):
7 Fun Levels
9 Tricky Levels
9 Taxing Levels
10 Mayhem Levels
This would bring the number of levels to 37 Fun levels, 39 Tricky levels, 39 Taxing Levels and 40 Mayhem levels. If we keep the number of Present and Sunsoft levels (but again, exclude the ONML levels), we get 29 levels for each. SUNSOFT Special should definitely be kept, since that is a unique VGASPEC level.
But yes, we have a very unbalanced number of levels for each rank if we go ahead with #5. So it could work to move integrate the Present and SUNSOFT levels to the main ranks, but even some of these levels, are much harder than Mayhem. I also wouldn't mind integrating the Sega levels into the main ranks, but seeing as Mayhem has the repeats of all five Sega levels, this can cause even more imbalance. Therefore, we gotta think this through...
Alternatively, since #4 and #5 can potentially overcomplicate things, I would say we should just leave the levels the way they are. Proposals 1-3 could work, though.