Lemmings Plus II Topic - <100% completed>

[Tim]

Was just wondering lol. Besides the videos on my Youtube channel, I am not sure if anyone had downloaded my custom graphics sets to make levels with. My guess is nobody has, but also I dont even know if my sets are even usable to make levels with. Maybe I need a tester?

[namida]

Well, you can't edit Lemmini levels under LemEdit. I'm not sure what the case is with the Lemmix editor (it has *some* degree of support for them, but I don't know how far that support extends), but you can definitely edit Lemmini levels (including ones using custom styles) with jLevelBuilder. All you have to do is copy and paste the tileset's folder, I think. (You'd have to ask its creator for a definite answer on that - while I'm using jLevelBuilder for some tasks now, I still primarily rely on LemEdit personally.)

[Ryemanni]

I tested the demo and it is really good. I like the custom styles really much.

[namida]

Thanks, glad to hear it! I'm pretty much done with the styles now, so they're not really open to further changes, but is there anything you particularly liked or disliked in the level design?


EDIT: Desert style has now been completed. The last addition - palm trees! (And a couple of traps, but I have to keep *some* things a surprise. Yeah, on that note, I can assure you that while I'm revealing a lot, there's stuff I'm very carefully keeping under wraps too. )

[namida]

I got bored so I decided to have some fun with the plain colored squares in the Psychedelic style. I KNEW there was a reason I added them. =P

Also, the completion of the level I made before this one (assuming it doesn't get moved, Cunning 4, the title is "Droppin' Bombs") pushed progess over the 70% mark! Not much further to go now! It's amazing to think that this project was only started not even a month ago.

I also just realised... this'll be the first Lemmings Plus pack (other than LP1 waaaaay back in the day) that doesn't have a level using the Oblivion trick. o_O I think that trick's well and truly run its course by now, though. Even including it in LPDOS was pushing it, but since it's a classic of mine I felt it had to be in there if it was possible (and thanks to ccexplore, it was).

[namida]

Here's another random screenshot for you. I've blanked out the skills on this one, and I won't say what level it is, that'll be a surprise.

[mobius]

I played the demos finally I liked all the demo levels.

I think I like the tree set more than I first thought. I'm surprised nobody voted for it.

I love the new pass-through wall concept. Did you come up with that yourself or peek at the topic I made a while ago about new features for Lemmings?

In Just some leftovers, Are these red walls pass through as well or are they different? I notice lemmings do not climb them.

One small criticism: It's hard to tell at first what is steel and not in psychedelic set. maybe make the steel different.. just something that stands out more.

Is it possible for you to make these graphics available for other people to use with Lemmix or other programs? (again I apologize if you already answered this)

edit: that's a funny idea, with the hidden skills 

also, like Akseli said, I too really liked  that LEMTRIS level from Revolution, it's a fun idea for sure. In that level if you press the pause button the sound of an evil laughing weasel plays. I could give you that sound I lost in in my PC crash  ccexplore or GuyPerfect might have that sound, they  extracted files from that game when they were testing it out a year ago.

[namida]

The hidden skills isn't a feature of the level; I manually edited the screenshot. It's just me not revealing stuff. =P Also why I went with a screenshot rather than a level map (on the other hand, for the level with the palm trees, it's becasue I didn't update my converted-to-jLevelBuilder copy of the graphic set to create a level map yet), to keep some mystery around it. At first I was going to say "but, if I'm making another pack, remind me of that idea for a gimmick level", though now that I think about it that'd probably just be annnoying...

The second demo has the graphic sets (except Desert, since that wasn't yet made at the time) included in the ZIP. You don't need those files there to run the demo (as always the EXE has them built in), the non-built-in copies are only there so you can use them with LemEdit / Lemmix / CustLemm / whatever else. And I'm more than happy for you to use them. Desert style (and another copy of the other four) will be included with the full release.

If you're wanting to combine them with the original styles, I believe in Lemmix (but *not* the DOS games, LemEdit or CustLemm) you can simply continue by naming files ground10o/vgagr10, ground11o/vgagr11, etc. I know the player supports this; I'm sure the editor would too as they share a lot of their code.

The pass-through walls actually aren't my own concept. They already exist in Lemmings in the code (indeed, they'll work even in CustLemm), it's just that no official style uses them (however, the game itself uses it for technical purposes; they're used for creating a blocker's field of effect). The only difference between the two pass-through walls are the sizes of them, their function is identical. And for the reason stated just before, they function more like one-way-blockers than one-way-walls (indeed, try building into them). I simply saw "hey, Lemmings has this in the code, why not use it". It's also possible to set objects that have a steel field, or a field that simply doesn't allow you to assign blockers within it.

I didn't actually think about adding a sound when the player attempts to pause in Floater Frenzy. If I did, I wouldn't want to use that one though, since the weasels really have nothing to do with this game... maybe a nice "oh no!" might do? xD

For the psychedelic steel blocks, since that's not a functional change (merely a cosmetic one), I could do that. How's this?

[namida]

Here, first Genius level I've made in a while. =D

75 lemmings, 93% required (70 lemmings).

[ccexplore]

If you're wanting to combine them with the original styles, I believe in Lemmix (but *not* the DOS games, LemEdit or CustLemm) you can simply continue by naming files ground10o/vgagr10, ground11o/vgagr11, etc. I know the player supports this; I'm sure the editor would too as they share a lot of their code.

The DOS-based game programming can actually go beyond 9, although rather than a number like "10" it will instead become a letter/symbol in the file name, and thus there are certain graphics set numbers you can't use because they correspond to symbols not allowed in file names.  I guess if there is interest I can post a little more details in the technical board (though people who have some programming background can probably figure out from my brief description how it works out).

[namida]

I'm guessing it just follows the ASCII character set, eg after VGAGR9, a graphic set of 10 would correspond to whatever character comes after 9 in ASCII (I don't know it off-hand)? Even so, my point still stands, since you can't do it with simple numbers. =P That's still a useful piece of info though.

Of course, no editor directly works that way (LemEdit might load them correctly, though, I obviously haven't tried yet xD), so editing the levels may also become problematic. Probably wouldn't be that hard to modify Lemmix to do so, though.

Anyway, Oblivion from LPDOS aside, I think I've just set a record for the highest number of terrain pieces for a level that almost fits on one screen... xD (Though I'm going to remove the piece immediately to the left of the entrance.)


(EDIT: Modifications. Other than the one mentioned above. Some were to the skillset/stats too. Changed the pic to the level's current look.)

This one's another Genius level. In fact, it might be the hardest LPII level so far.

[namida]

First Genius level using the Desert style!

This level was originally a Sneaky level, then I found a more complex solution, blocked out the old one by removing some skills and upping the requirement, and popped it into Cunning. Then I found a solution without touching the ground in the middle (with a couple of skills added), so I made this the solution, added the water, and put this level in its current home, Genius 12.


Genius 12 - "King of the Sandcastle"
100 Lemmings, requires 97%
Release rate 20
Time limit 4 minutes
3 climbers, 0 floaters, 1 bomber, 3 blockers, 6 builders, 13 bashers, 5 miners, 10 diggers

It's quite easy to tell what trick this level uses; exactly where to do it and how to set it up is another matter.


EDIT: Not due to the above level, but now only 25 levels to go! =D The downside being it's mostly Cunning/Genius levels I have to come up with (indeed, I've been reluctant to fill the last few slots in the lower difficulties, so if I make a level that turns out too easy I can chuck it into one of those rather than it being a wasted effort - if they remain unfilled, it's very simple to throw together a Nice or Cheeky level, and Sneaky isn't too much harder to work with). My other concern is that I don't want the styles to become too unbalanced. I'm not aiming for 4 of each style per rank, or even 20 of each style altogether (perhaps more along the lines of "between 15 and 25 of each"), but I don't want a case like with crystal in the original game where barely any levels use it and those that are aren't overly notable. At the current point, Tree and Purple have 15 levels each, Psychedelic and Metal have 17 levels each, and Desert has 11 levels. Pretty good that Purple's completely caught up and Desert isn't far off, considering how much later those two (especially Desert) were made than the other three - and in desert's case, it didn't get an easy freebie in the form of a Floater Frenzy.

EDIT AGAIN: Just noting, the above shouldn't be taken to mean that the Nice/Cheeky/Sneaky levels are rejects from Cunning and Genius. While that is true of a few levels, the majority were intended to be low-rank levels from the earliest point at which there was any clear "intention" at all. In fact, the reverse is far more common (lower-rank levels getting bumped up when I reassess their difficutly or revise them to increase it) - you could say that a lot of the Cunning and Genius levels are rejects from the lower ranks. =P

[Clam]

I tried the demos just now. I'm loving some of the quirky new features! Whatever name you'd usually use for a custom levelset, this certainly feels more like a proper fan-game

[namida]

Well whatever it's called, thanks for the comment! ^_^ Anything in particular you liked or didn't like? How did you find the gimmick level?

Just passed 80%! Here's the level that pushed us over the mark, and what do you know, it's another Desert level in Genius.

Genius 7 - "Another Fall Survival Puzzle"
75 lemmings, 90% required (68 lemmings)
Release rate 1, time limit 3 minutes
0 climbers, 1 floater, 1 bomber, 0 blockers, 4 builders, 2 bashers, 1 miner, 0 diggers

This one's probably going to be a backroutefest... I've already weeded out two backroutes, and I'm terrible at spotting them in my own levels... T.T The intended solution is quite neat, even if a tiny bit on the easy side compared to some of the Genius levels, IMO. (Realistically, it'd probably be more suited to a Cunning level if the difficulty curve was constant, but you know how I am - I like to mix in easier and harder levels at times.)

The name is a reference to the sheer number of those that I've made - they're not repetitive, each one (at least as far as I'm noticing) is quite different from the others, but the core idea of dealing with a large fall in (sometimes) unconventional ways appears to be becoming a recurring theme... (Though in all fairness, they're probably far outnumbered by entrance-at-bottom-left, exit-at-top-right, one-screen levels... I'm notorious for those...)


EDIT: The jLevelBuilder-generated level map came out a bit glitchy, so here's one made with screenshots from Lemmix (and thus, definitely accurate).

[LJLPM]

The jLevelBuilder-generated level map came out a bit glitchy, so here's one made with screenshots from Lemmix (and thus, definitely accurate).

Hi,
does the bug occur with the latest version of jLevelBuilder (1.62)?
If yes, could you give me more info about what's wrong, and could you provide me with the level file, please? It's the only way I can fix the bug. I'll check this out. Thanks!