NeoLemmix (Player: V1.26n-C | Editor: V1.26n-B)

[Wafflem]

Thanks for all the new features you added.

Low-priority suggestion: MAIN.DAT with the LPIII/LPO color palette of the toolbar in the gameplay area, not just for the LPII/LPIII styles, but also the official and Sega styles. Also, the fonts that were used for the skill count in LPIII (there was one for the first demo of LPIII that looked like a digital clock, and the other one is, of course, the one officially used for LPIII/LPO).

Also, just wondering, but even after you finalize the NeoLemmix players, will you still accept submissions of Lemmings levels for the Extra player?

[Tsyu]

I noticed a few bugs (not necessarily new ones) that you should fix in the next version:

• The editor is expecting the INI file of the SuperLemmini Xmas style to be called Christmas.ini, which is happening because the editor is using the GraphicSetName field for the INI file. Here's what I suggest doing for Lemmini/SuperLemmini styles: Remove the GraphicSetPath field and instead use [GraphicSetInternalName]\ for the path. For the INI file, use [GraphicSetInternalName].ini. For special styles, the path should be special\[GraphicSetInternalName]\ instead.
• You need to make the Shift Level dialog box slightly bigger. On my Windows 7 system, unless I switch to the Windows Classic theme, the dialog box is a bit too small, causing scroll bars to appear that hide the OK and Cancel buttons. The same should also be done to the Level Errors and FormCompile (the one that shows compile progress) dialog boxes since they also have the same problem, albeit not as bad.
• When you get the chance, go through the items in the drop-down menu and make sure that every item that's guaranteed to launch a dialog box ends with an ellipsis, and that all the others do not. ("Close level..." and "Shift level" are examples of items that should have an ellipsis added or removed.)

[Minim]

The RescueBlink feature really is distracting me right now. (And would definitely give my mum a migraine if I encouraged her to play this with this thing on. ) I believe it's better to invert the blink mechanics for the next update - in this case, blink when enough lemmings have been rescued, rather than not enough lemmings and to prevent more distractions, if you could get the feature to blink only once, would be a real treat for me.

[namida]

Thanks for all the new features you added.

Low-priority suggestion: MAIN.DAT with the LPIII/LPO color palette of the toolbar in the gameplay area, not just for the LPII/LPIII styles, but also the official and Sega styles. Also, the fonts that were used for the skill count in LPIII (there was one for the first demo of LPIII that looked like a digital clock, and the other one is, of course, the one officially used for LPIII/LPO).

Also, just wondering, but even after you finalize the NeoLemmix players, will you still accept submissions of Lemmings levels for the Extra player?

MAIN.DAT: I don't have the demo one anymore, but I've attached the LPIII main.dat (latest version) to this post. The images you're looking for (once extracted) are skill_#_##.bmp, panel_01.bmp, and skillicon_##.bmp. Also, the Floater and Glider graphics, maybe.

Extra: Hopefully, we'll get all the levels *before* that.

I noticed a few bugs (not necessarily new ones) that you should fix in the next version:

• The editor is expecting the INI file of the SuperLemmini Xmas style to be called Christmas.ini, which is happening because the editor is using the GraphicSetName field for the INI file. Here's what I suggest doing for Lemmini/SuperLemmini styles: Remove the GraphicSetPath field and instead use [GraphicSetInternalName]\ for the path. For the INI file, use [GraphicSetInternalName].ini. For special styles, the path should be special\[GraphicSetInternalName]\ instead.
• You need to make the Shift Level dialog box slightly bigger. On my Windows 7 system, unless I switch to the Windows Classic theme, the dialog box is a bit too small, causing scroll bars to appear that hide the OK and Cancel buttons. The same should also be done to the Level Errors and FormCompile (the one that shows compile progress) dialog boxes since they also have the same problem, albeit not as bad.
• When you get the chance, go through the items in the drop-down menu and make sure that every item that's guaranteed to launch a dialog box ends with an ellipsis, and that all the others do not. ("Close level..." and "Shift level" are examples of items that should have an ellipsis added or removed.)

1. Good idea. It is somewhat redundant having both.
2. I'd been meaning to do this, but obviously forgot about it before doing the release.
3. Is this the standard for menus? If so, I'll do that.

The RescueBlink feature really is distracting me right now. (And would definitely give my mum a migraine if I encouraged her to play this with this thing on. ) I believe it's better to invert the blink mechanics for the next update - in this case, blink when enough lemmings have been rescued, rather than not enough lemmings and to prevent more distractions, if you could get the feature to blink only once, would be a real treat for me.

I put it the way it is to keep it consistent, but I can probably add an option to do it the way you're asking for instead.



EDIT: I should mention with the LPIII MAIN.DAT, you'll probably want to turn on the SYSTEM.DAT option to center single-digit skill counts. If you're using an older version (that uses LemMain-generated SYSTEM.DAT sections in MAIN.DAT), IIRC this option is called "center_digits"; while in the NeoLemmix Editor's SYSTEM.DAT editor it's called "LPIII Style Skill Counts". If you don't want to use this option, you'll probably want to edit the left-side 0 digit.

[Minim]

The RescueBlink feature really is distracting me right now. (And would definitely give my mum a migraine if I encouraged her to play this with this thing on. ) I believe it's better to invert the blink mechanics for the next update - in this case, blink when enough lemmings have been rescued, rather than not enough lemmings and to prevent more distractions, if you could get the feature to blink only once, would be a real treat for me.

I put it the way it is to keep it consistent, but I can probably add an option to do it the way you're asking for instead.

Yes please. It makes more sense in my opinion.

Also, I encountered lots of glitchy behaviour involving the wraparound gimmick using certain skills, mainly because of disappearing sprites. I tested some of the skills concerned on Tricky 1, the level with terrain on all four corners, and Fun 12, a level in the open.

Here's the list, with H & V being Horizontal and Vertical wraps:
* Digging an H: The lemming digs one side of the hole rather than both sides. Also, it keeps digging even when there's no terrain if combined with V.
* Mining an H: The miner keeps going but there's a wall on the other side, preventing anyone else going through the miner's tunnel.
* Bashing an H: The basher stays still ands keeps bashing without advancing further.
* Building and platforming H and V: It keeps building as normal but a step cuts off at the other side, making the other lemmings fall off.
* Mining a V: The miner stops and turns into a walker.

The V digger and the Climbers, Floaters and Gliders work perfectly, but other than that, you might want to fix those disappeared sprites...

[Tsyu]

3. Is this the standard for menus? If so, I'll do that.

Actually, I should amend that to "items that always need to get additional input from a dialog box to do anything." So, things like the Inspector and Level Properties windows and the About item would not take ellipses. And yes, that's the standard as far as I can tell.

I have another bug to report: The "One-Way Inversion" check box shows the opposite state of what's in the level file, so it's checked when it shouldn't be and vice versa. The same thing applies when it's saved.

[namida]

That way of working / level formatting is intentional; to allow the more logical opt-in being default, while not breaking existing levels.

[Wafflem]

In the NeoLemmix editor, some levels refuse to load if the release rate was previously set at 100; an example of this is Level 7 of geooPk1.dat. The error reads:

Invalid release rate (100)

Also something worth pointing out, and this has also happened in EricLang's version: some levels that were previously made in DOS LemEdit end up with white lines. Attached is an example. Clicking on a white line gives me the error "List index out of bounds (61)"

[Tsyu]

That way of working / level formatting is intentional; to allow the more logical opt-in being default, while not breaking existing levels.

What I mean is that the option currently works like this:

option checked -> flag not set
option not checked -> flag set

...whereas it should really work like this:

option checked -> flag set
option not checked -> flag not set

To get the behavior that you want, the editor should enable the flag by default, similar to how the "extended format" option worked.

(In case it's not clear, "option" refers to the check box in the Level Properties window, and "flag" refers to the relevant flag in byte 0x09.)

[namida]

In the NeoLemmix editor, some levels refuse to load if the release rate was previously set at 100; an example of this is Level 7 of geooPk1.dat. The error reads:

Invalid release rate (100)

Also something worth pointing out, and this has also happened in EricLang's version: some levels that were previously made in DOS LemEdit end up with white lines. Attached is an example. Clicking on a white line gives me the error "List index out of bounds (61)"

This is related to the issue with levels that have invalid pieces being problematic. When I fix one, the other will fix as well, as they're both the same root cause.

That way of working / level formatting is intentional; to allow the more logical opt-in being default, while not breaking existing levels.

What I mean is that the option currently works like this:

option checked -> flag not set
option not checked -> flag set

...whereas it should really work like this:

option checked -> flag set
option not checked -> flag not set

To get the behavior that you want, the editor should enable the flag by default, similar to how the "extended format" option worked.

(In case it's not clear, "option" refers to the check box in the Level Properties window, and "flag" refers to the relevant flag in byte 0x09.)

I did consider doing it this way, but it could be confusing... also, do keep in mind that the average end user is probably not going to know the technical side of the level format, so it makes no difference to them. Ultimately - the editor is consistent; the option in a terrain piece is described as *enabling* one-way, so to the average end user, they won't see a problem. How it works behind the scenes, similarly, is described consistently in the level format document. However - just to be clear on this, I'll add a note to the format documentation pointing out that the editor handles it this way (if I didn't already put one there).





By the way, I added this to the above post where I attached the LPIII MAIN.DAT, but I'll post it here too since you might not see it above:

I should mention with the LPIII MAIN.DAT, you'll probably want to turn on the SYSTEM.DAT option to center single-digit skill counts. If you're using an older version (that uses LemMain-generated SYSTEM.DAT sections in MAIN.DAT), IIRC this option is called "center_digits"; while in the NeoLemmix Editor's SYSTEM.DAT editor it's called "LPIII Style Skill Counts". If you don't want to use this option, you'll probably want to edit the left-side 0 digit.

Finally, although I haven't done any fixing yet, I've made a note in the respective todo lists of all the bugs that have been reported here (and the alternate rescue blink mode suggestion).

[Tsyu]

I did consider doing it this way, but it could be confusing... also, do keep in mind that the average end user is probably not going to know the technical side of the level format, so it makes no difference to them. Ultimately - the editor is consistent; the option in a terrain piece is described as *enabling* one-way, so to the average end user, they won't see a problem. How it works behind the scenes, similarly, is described consistently in the level format document. However - just to be clear on this, I'll add a note to the format documentation pointing out that the editor handles it this way (if I didn't already put one there).

OK, I think I see what you mean.

Speaking of the documentation, I noticed that the "General structure of a level" section still describes the object section's size as being 16 bytes x 64. This should be updated.

[namida]

Thanks for that. Fixed.


Anyway, as far as bug fixes for the player go... I've fixed the issue where wraparound lemmings are still only visible on one side (they somewhat "jump" from one side to the other). This is only graphical though; I haven't fixed the functional side of anything yet, though I have found a few more issues. In general - any skill that modifies the level needs fixing, while the skills that affect the lemming itself only don't seem to have issues. I'm pretty much just going to test all the skills very thoroughly with the wrap gimmicks and see if there's any issues, except for three that I can tell won't have issues (Walker, Mechanic and Cloner, the Mechanic because trap trigger areas themself don't wrap and the other two for obvious reasons) and two that I already know work fine (Floater and Glider).

Before that though, very next one to fix is that a lemming can only be selected on one side or the other when it's near the edges, instead of being selectable on both sides. EDIT: Done that, now on to testing skills.


Walker: (no testing needed)
Climber: No issues.
Swimmer: No issues.
Floater: (no testing needed)
Glider: (no testing needed)
Mechanic: (no testing needed)
Bomber: Issues identified, fixed.
Stoner: Issues identified, fixed.
Blocker: Issues identified, fixed.
Platformer: Issues identified, fixed.
Builder: No issues. *
Stacker: Issues identified, fixed.
Basher: Issues identified, fixed.
Miner: Issues identified, fixed.
Digger: Issues identified, fixed.
Cloner: (no testing needed)

* I did notice the reported issue above, but this didn't happen when testing. Most likely, fixing the Platformer also fixed the Builder, as the section of code where the Platformer fix was implemented is a part that's shared between the two skills.


minimac, I couldn't reproduce the glitch you mention about a digger continuing when there's no terrain with H + V wraps. Could you tell me exactly how you triggered this?


Next things to do for the V1.25n-B release will be the level modifications on Extra, and possibly some (or even all) of the Lemmings Plus levels. Just for reassurance, none of the Lemmings Plus levels (except of course Holiday Lemmings Plus which already uses them) are going to be modified to use the new skills; it'll only be the sizes, making sure they still work properly under the latest mechanics (and perhaps in some cases making use of new features like the one-way options), and possibly minor modifications to decorative terrain. I might also implement the highlight feature, not sure yet.


EDIT: Highlight lemming is definitely in the next update. It's already 95% implemented; the missing 5% being the graphic to show which lemming is currently highlighted. Default behaviour is right-click a lemming to highlight it (with select-walker now being moved to Ctrl+Click; there's an option in the INI to swap these around for those who are used to right-click for walker selection); to select a skill for them, right-click the skill.

EDIT: Fully implemented now!


Something else. I was going to implement the "ghost rank" option, then I realised that with the way those two features it'd be useful for (oddtabling and the "rickroll" gimmick), it probably isn't even nessecary to do any special code - it should be as simple as including an extra LEVELxxx.DAT file that's outside the number of ranks. And indeed, doing that works!

Anyway, I'm now working on the levels for Extra. At the moment, Present and Sunsoft are done. (The "Genesis" rank isn't, as I'm doing these three in reverse order, to make it easier to apply the oddtabling as needed - currently it doesn't use oddtabling where it could (some of the Genesis/Present/Sunsoft levels, as well as Sega One, Two, Four and Five (Sega Three has a minor terrain difference between the two versions).)

[namida]

Extra is mostly done. What I'm going to do (I'll start soon) is not release all the V1.25n-B's at once when they're all done, but rather, I'll put up the already-done-in-V1.25n ones as well as Cust and Flexi soon (once I completely finish Extra - still got to test a few things, as well as do the VGASPEC levels and double-check that oddtabling is used wherever possible), and roll out the Lemmings Plus ones one-at-a-time as they're done (Holiday Lemmings Plus will be available right away since it doesn't *need* any changes; it has no one-way arrows and already uses the variable sizes).

The only new engine features are the bugfixes relating to the wraparound gimmicks and the Highlight Lemming feature.

(Just to reassure everyone, I haven't forgotten about updating Traditional Flexi to use the new SYSTEM.DAT. I'll do it sometime soon. )

[namida]

As for the old format support in the editor:
For now, they'll be kept. I'm going to look at reworking it in other ways to more efficiently differentiate between formats.

And just for peace of mind - even if support for saving and editing traditional Lemmix and/or Lemmini levels is dropped, support for loading them will be kept.

[namida]

Okay, rolling out of V1.25n-B updates has begun.

NeoLemmix V1.25n-B
------------------------------
*  Added a highlight lemming feature. To use this, right-click a lemming (or hold Ctrl
   and click a lemming, if CtrlHighlight option is turned on in the INI file) to mark
   it, then right-click a skill to assign it to that lemming. Right-click an empty space
   to deselect the lemming without selecting a new one.
*  Selecting a walker only has been changed from right-click to Ctrl+Click, as right-click
   is now used for highlighting a lemming. If the CtrlHighlight option is turned on, then
   selecting walkers only is reverted to right-click.
*  Fixed many issues with the two wraparound gimmicks.
*  Fixed the positioning of countdown digits above left-facing lemmings.
*  When dumping levels, the popup asking whether to hard-apply oddtabling or not only appears
   in Orig, Extra, LPDOS, Cust and Flexi (since other players don't use oddtabling).
*  Levels have been adjusted in all players.

Downloads are here. Note that this is the same folder as the V1.25n players, so those that haven't yet been updated will just be V1.25n. They are not yet available on the NeoLemmix website; I'll put them up on there once all of them are completed.

EDIT: They're all done now.