It's a good idea, but it sounds like either you'll need someone who can program, or else be stuck with a preset list of missions that Peter included in the program. &#A0;And I'm not still entirely sure how this truly adds to the game in a way that couldn't be done what Cheapo currently has. &#A0;Can someone give a very concrete example on this idea?
Let me clarify what I'm asking. If I were to program this in its currently vaguely-described form, the first questions I would start asking is: how does the game check whether you accomplished the "mission"? And how does the game progress from the starting state to a state that defines "mission accomplished"?
For example, someone mentioned about getting a car across a bridge. So there would need to be this new "car" object, presumably, that would presumably be moving. Does it always move on its own, or does a Lemming have to somehow "start" the car? How does the moving car interact with Lemmings on its path? How does it interact with other terrain and interactive objects (besides bridges and water, whose interaction with the car is more or less implied by the mission). Can the player directly influence the car in some way, just like right now the player can directly influence Lemmings by assigning skills to them? etc.
Similarly with the idea someone mentioned about hamsters. The hamsters would again be a totally new class of objects.
So a slightly different take on the "mission" idea is, instead of inventing totally new classes of objects and have to deal with the nitty-gritty of defining their behaviors with respect to everything else in the game, perhaps we can use the idea of "colored Lemmings" instead. The concept being that instead of having one type of Lemmings, a level can now have two or more types of Lemmings, of which only one type can be assigned skills to. The other Lemming types will walk around and otherwise behave exactly the same as normal Lemmings, just that you can't assign them any skills. Also, the exits in the level are also "colored" in such a way that a Lemming can only exit through exits of the same color as the Lemming itself. (And entrances are colored as well.)
Together with the ability to define separate goals for each color of Lemmings (possibly 0% for certain colors, particularly those you can assign skills to), this method will seem to cover the kinds of missions people have mentioned so far, but without the need to program in new objects or to explain the new objects' behavior to the player. It also builds infrastructure for providing multiplayer support in the future. It is admittedly a little less snazzy, but if the style customization allows you to use totally different graphics for different "colors" of Lemmings, you can effectively get your second color of Lemmings look like cars or hamsters or whatever you want.
