Possible feature: Achievements

[namida]

What do people think about the idea of adding an achievements system to NeoLemmix?

Obviously, there wouldn't be any online database - it'd just be a fun thing that's kept track of in the save file and players of packs can aim for. Of course, it'd be supported in custom packs, as well as me adding some of my choosing to the Lemmings Plus games and Doomsday Lemmings (and perhaps we can look at some community-chosen ones to add to the NeoLemmix players of the official games too).

These could be things like "Save 100% on level x", "Complete level x without using builders", "Find all the secret levels" etc, as well as the more-generic ones for completing each rank.

Let me know what you think about this feature; it's one I considered in the past (in fact, originally I thought about having it debut in Lemmings Plus Omega, but never got around to making it) but didn't implement yet.


Now that this feature is confirmed, I'd like to start gathering suggestions for achievements for the official games. Feel free to make suggestions either in this topic or by PM. Please take into account the limitations of the achievements feature. The primary one is that achievements take the form of challenges on a single level, there can't be any that span multiple levels in any way. It is, however, possible for a single level to have more than one achievement related to it. That aside, the criteria for achievements must be among the following (it is possible to mix-and-match more than one of these in a single achievement):
> Saving a certian number of lemmings
> Completing the level in under a certain time (this can involve seconds and even frames, rather than just whole minutes)
> Limiting the quantity used of a specific skill
> Limiting the total number of skills used
> Keeping the release rate within a specified range

Regarding Copycat Lemmings, I will first contact Essman to see if he'd like to pick them himself, and if not, I'll take suggestions here for that too. EDIT: Essman has said that while he'd like to come up with them himself, he's also happy for some community input. Thus, I'll take suggestions here, but it'll be ultimately Essman's decision which ones do or don't make it into the game.

Remember - for obvious reasons, the challenge must be possible in NeoLemmix. Just because it's possible in DOS / traditional Lemmix doesn't mean it's possible in NeoLemmix; if it doesn't rely on glitches it's probably possible, but this isn't always true, either due to subtle mechanics differences, or differences in the levels themself (for example, the Orig and H94 levels in NeoLemmix are based off the Amiga versions, not the DOS versions; and a lot of levels have further minor modifications to make use of NeoLemmix's capabilities). Some that are very challenging under DOS may also end up being trivial under NeoLemmix, for example one that was suggested was "Complete Taxing 30 with no more than 20 diggers", which would be quite challenging under DOS / traditional Lemmix, but it can be done with only two diggers very easily in NeoLemmix.

Achievements may be rated as Bronze, Silver or Gold, depending on their difficulty. However, let's get a collection of suggestions before we decide on ranking them, or on which ones to actually use. The (virtually-)direct-ports of official games will also get achievements for simply beating their final levels, but these aside, none should be simply "Beat level X" without further requirements.

Original Lemmings
Save 100% on Fun 8 without builders
Save 100% on Fun 10 without floaters, miners or diggers
Save 100% on Fun 27 in under 1 minute
Complete Tricky 11 without builders
Save 99% on Tricky 23
Save 100% on Tricky 25
Complete Mayhem 3 with only 4 skills
Complete Mayhem 13 with no more than 6 skills
Complete Mayhem 25 with no more than 5 builders
Complete Mayhem 26 without blockers
Complete Mayhem 30

Oh No! More Lemmings!
Complete Havoc 20

Xmas Lemmings 91/92

Holiday Lemmings 94
Complete Hail 16
Complete Blitz 16

Covox

Prima

Extra

Copycat

[Wafflem]

This is a feature I was also thinking! I was also going to suggest that but I wasn't sure when the right time was.

This will be an excellent idea and will really give a lot of motivation for challenge.

Ideas: (this was originally short, but I couldn't resist my ideas, so...)

General:
1. Complete this level in X time.
2. Fail a level X times.
3. Press "Esc" to quit levels 100 times (this can be done on any level, e.g. press Esc on Taxing 5 "The Prisoner" 50 times, "Esc" on Mayhem 24 "All Or Nothing" 25 times, "Esc" on Tricky 23 "From the Boundary Line" 25 times).
4. Beat 10 levels consecutively without pressing 'R' or failing the level.
5. Beat every level in the game consecutively without pressing 'R' or failing the level (too extreme, I would really not recommend this one, it just occurred to my mind).
6. Complete all levels of the Dirt style/Column style/Martian style/ etc.
7. Complete all levels with Cheat Mode off.
8. Complete any level in a different colored background.
9. Complete levels with as few builders as possible.

Official Lemmings:
1. Complete Tame 13 "Thunder Lemmings" with just one builder
2. Find the backroute for Mayhem 17 "Stepping Stones"
3. Use only one digger in Fun 1 "Just Dig!"
4. Beat Fun 8 "Not as complicated as it looks" without using the blocker at all.

Lemmings Plus:
1. Find all secret levels.
2. Find the secret level to Dodgy 18 "United States Method"
3. Beat all gimmick levels in an LP game.
4. Unlock all secret levels in the LPIII Bonus Pack.
5. Beat all the Fierce levels (okay, bland suggestion, but do consider that Fierce is the hardest rank in all of the Lemmings Plus games)
6. Complete Breezy 21 "Triplicity" with 45 lemmings.
7. The lowest number of bombers in Cheeky 13 "Above the Forests"
8. Complete all levels in Lemmings Plus Flashbacks (bland suggestion again, but these are the 32 best levels of Lemmings Plus I-III, so it would be quite an achievement for someone new to Lemmings Plus to complete them all)
9. Complete all locked exit puzzles in LPIII/LPIIIB/LPO (sorry, couldn't resist suggesting that)
10. Beat Medi 16 "The Oddstack" in under 3 minutes (bringing back the V7 version of Medi 16)
11. Do not press "R" at all in Rush 3 "Floater Frenzy: Perfect Edition"
12. Complete all pre-V7 Levels in LPI.

NeoLemmix Skills Tutorial Pack:
1. Beat "Maybe not JUST Walk" without using any walkers.
2. Beat "Back-Stroke" without using any swimmers.

Doomsday Lemmings
1. Beat Outbreak 4 "Making a Run For It" without taking the upper route.
2. Save all lemmings from being zombified in Outbreak 3 "Undead Lockdown".

How will the player be informed of an achievement? By dialog box? By something similar to a post-text screen (the player is informed of the unlocked achievement after either failing or succeeding the level)

[GigaLem]

Im torn on this one i can't really decide
i like this idea but how are you find secret levels becuase well
in the system.dat edition you have an option to put in secret level the question is how are you susposed to know the codes to them?
but however i wanna see how this plays out

[exit]

This is a great idea.

Here's some more achievement ideas:
Get 100% on 25 levels
Get 100% on 50 levels
etc.
Beat Lemmings Plus DOS Project
Beat Lemmings Plus II
Beat Lemmings Plus III
etc.(any packs released for neolemmix could be included here)
Get the maximum amount(that's known) that can be saved on EVERY SINGLE LEVEL

For some of these you would need a system similar to Lemmini's/Superlemmini's that would include all of the packs, and would have the maximum save amount.
You would also want to possibly include the original games with it, if you were to do the above.

Anyways, very great idea!

[GigaLem]

An achievement for
- Getting the max % possible on every level
- Beat every secret level
- Beat a staff's time solution on a level

[namida]

Im torn on this one i can't really decide
i like this idea but how are you find secret levels becuase well
in the system.dat edition you have an option to put in secret level the question is how are you susposed to know the codes to them?
but however i wanna see how this plays out

Well, generally secret levels are accessed by a secret level trigger (the small 8x8 solid color block objects in each graphic set). You set the S value to the rank and L value to the level number of the secret level. (eg: If Taxing 31 was a secret level in Orig, you'd set the S value to 3 and the L value to 31)

However, you can indeed hide them by code - though obviously, make sure there's some way for people to figure out the code. In this case, the best way to find the code would be to enable accessing secret levels via cheats, then use a cheat code to reach the level. The code will be displayed on the failed screen, as always. You can then turn the option to allow reaching secret levels via cheats off after you've got the code (or leave it on if you prefer).

It isn't possible with Flexi to have a set code for the secret level (in the way that "Trivia Time!" from LPIII Bonus has). That was a hardcoded thing specifically for that pack.

I'm considering adding more ways to unlock secret levels in future versions.


On the subject of ones for existing games, the only one I definitely have in mind for an official game is 100% on Tricky 25 "Cascade".

I don't plan to make a "combined" player, so there won't be any cross-game achievements.

One for completing each rank is something I'll definitely include by default (possibly excluding, eg. the 2P ranks in Orig / OhNo).

I'd like to stay away from really pointless ones, like quitting a level via Esc 100 times.

Likewise, the "no upper route" one for Doomsday Lemmings Outbreak 4 is probably a bit complex to include while still allowing flexibility to enough of an extent for people to make their own packs. It'd probably be limited to things like "find / beat a certian level", "complete X levels", "find a secret level", "beat a level under a certain time", "beat a level without a certain skill or with no more than X of a certain skill", etc.

Also - the 1-builder one for Tame 13, I don't know if that's possible on NeoLemmix. IIRC, it relies on the blocker-pushing-into-terrain glitch, which is fixed in NeoLemmix (as is virtually everything considered a "glitch", apart from direct drop which I've intentionally left unfixed).

[namida]

Seems like enough people would like this idea - and of course, it's not like it's an obligatory feature, so those who don't could of course just ignore it.

So... let's get on to discussing some ideas for some for the main games! (I'll probably come up with them of my own accord for my packs, and I'll discuss with Essman (if he's interested in giving input) for Copycat Lemmings.)

We'll worry about the large packs (Orig, OhNo, H94 and Extra) for now. I'm thinking we go for 30 of them per game, with a seperation of:

Bronze: 20
Silver: 6
Gold: 3
Platinum: 1, which would always be "get all the other achievements"

(Also, I'm thinking of calling them "Talismans", to keep with the Lemmings theme (a L2 reference).)

I'll list my ideas here; feel free to say if you don't agree with any of them (whether it's the achievement as a whole, or just how it's ranked and/or named), as well as suggest others. Some of them I'll need names for, even if I've gotten an idea. For now, I've just come up with some for Orig.

And for the record - this won't be a V1.29n feature, so no rush to organise them.

Disregard this list.
It was put together at a time when this feature was still nothing more than a "possible distant future idea", and thus does not to any degree take into account how the feature ultimately ended up working. Those which are suitable have been added to the new list, which can be found in the first post.

Orig
Bronze
"First Steps" - Complete Fun 1
"Lemming Licence" - Complete Fun 7
"Having Fun?" - Complete all of Fun
???? - Complete all of Tricky
???? - Complete all of Taxing
???? - Complete all of Mayhem
"Lonely Lemming" - Complete all the 2P levels
"Perfect!" - Save 100% on a level that doesn't require it
"Well That Was Pointless" - Complete Fun 6 and Tricky 17, or Fun 18 and Taxing 19 (pairs of levels that have virtually no difference under NeoLemmix)
"Falling Down" - Complete Fun 13, Tricky 2, Taxing 30 and Mayhem 11 (the four "We All Fall Down" levels)
"Oooh, Fancy!" - Beat Fun 22, Tricky 14, Taxing 15 and Mayhem 22 (the four special graphics levels)

Silver
"Cascade Master" - Save 100% on Tricky 25
???? - Solve Mayhem 25 with only 5 builders

Gold
???? - Complete every level in Fun, Tricky, Taxing and Mayhem
???? - Save 98% (if possible on NeoLemmix; I'll have to check) on Tricky 23
"Superhero!" - Complete Mayhem 3 with only four skills

Platinum
???? - Get every other achievement

[GigaLem]

Truly Awesome - Get 100% on Taxing 18 without using builders
Feeling Special - Beat all special levels
Lots of Fun - Complete fun
Tricks of the trade - Complete tricky
A Taxing Taxi - Complete Taxing
Mayhem Stopper - Complete Mayhem
Soak up the sun - Complete sunsoft
A master's Presents - Complete Present
Blast processing - Complete Genesis
You are Red E - Complete the PSP levels
Extras don't go to waste - Complete the Extra levels
Christmas Saver - Complete all the Xmas lemmings level 91-94

[namida]

100% on Taxing 18 without builders isn't possible in either Lemmix or NeoLemmix. In fact, completing it without builders full stop isn't possible in either version. Under regular Lemmix it can be beaten with only 1 builder (but you need more for 100%), in NeoLemmix you need far more than this due to the absence of steel glitches.

I do like the idea of one for beating the 4 special levels.

[Proxima]

I'll list my ideas here; feel free to say if you don't agree with any of them (whether it's the achievement as a whole, or just how it's ranked and/or named), as well as suggest others. Some of them I'll need names for, even if I've gotten an idea. For now, I've just come up with some for Orig.

I don't agree with separate achievements for completing all of Fun 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. It's good to have an easy achievement for starters to give players confidence, but spending seven out of thirty on the tutorial levels is overkill.

I also don't agree with "Save 100% on a level that doesn't require it" -- this is really trivial on Fun 5 and most players will get it the first time they play the level. Instead, I'd have one for "Save 100% on 10 levels that don't require it" or some other arbitrary number.

Other suggestions... these are kind of like a "lite" version of challenges, i.e. it's okay to suggest ones that the experienced players here would find easy, but new players might find stimulating. I enjoy thinking of these.

100% Fun 8 without builders
100% using the hidden exit in Fun 23
100% Fun 27 in under a minute
100% Fun 28 with no lemmings touching the long floor at the bottom
Solve Mayhem 25 with five builders

[ccexplore]

Proxima, it may be worth mentioning that at least from my experience with actual commercial games that have achievements, some of them can often be pretty inane. (I tend to look at it as "cheap unimaginative way to artificially pad the game's replayability", though to be fair it doesn't have to be like that.)

I do think having one per each level of Fun 1-7 might be somewhat repetitive though, it would probably be more than sufficient to do one for completing Fun 1, and another for completing the entire set of tutorial levels (ie. all of 1-7).  On the other hand, because each such level highlights a specific skill, it does open up to naming each corresponding achievement in a fun way based on the skill featured, so perhaps it's not that bad from a "fun" perspective (how-ever you want to look at what "fun" means in the context of achievements).

Also worthwhile to mention that sometimes achievements are defined in terms of failures rather than successes, imagine things like "nuked the same level 10 times", or even one for missing the save requirement by 1% or 1 lemming (bonus if it's on a level where this may actually be nontrivial to achieve in a way that doesn't involve bailing out the level early).  Yes, this is definitely one place where it can start slipping into inane territory so I'm not suggesting it as necessarily a good idea, just throwing it out there.   Another style of achievements that are often featured are the "do something so-and-so many times" that doesn't directly tie to solving levels and such.  Definitely very much in inane territory for that one, but who am I to judge how people want to play?

[keiya]

Well that was pointless - Beat two levels rendered identical by Neolemmix changes. (Fun 6 - A Task for Blockers and Bombers and Tricky 17 - Diet Lemmingaid, or Fun 18 - Let's Block and Blow and Taxing 19 - Bomboozal come to mind)

[namida]

^ Heh, I actually somewhat like that idea. xD

[Nepster]

I do think having one per each level of Fun 1-7 might be somewhat repetitive though, it would probably be more than sufficient to do one for completing Fun 1, and another for completing the entire set of tutorial levels (ie. all of 1-7)...

I would actually prefer to have even less achievements of the type "Complete ...", i.e. having only one for "Fun 1-7", "All of Fun", "All 120 levels" and perhaps 2-3 special ones. As Proxima said, it is good to have some easy achievements, but I would feel cheated if I got more than 20% of the achievements simply by completing the game.

?? ?? - Save 98% (if possible on NeoLemmix; I'll have to check) on Tricky 23

I think even 97% would make for a good achievement.

I totally second all of Proxima's suggestions for "lite" versions of challenges. Here are some more:
- Fun 10: 100% without floaters, miners or diggers
- Tricky 11: without builders (the level can be replaced, if you find a better one for this kind of achievement)
- Taxing 18: 100% without using the direct drop glitch
- Taxing 30: with only 20 diggers (instead of the current "Falling Down" achievement suggestion)
- Mayhem 13: with only 6 skills
- "Perfect Rendezvouz" Mayhem 30: save 100% (not because this is terrible interesting, but just because it feels like an achievement to save every single lemming on the final level)
- "Karoshi Master": Solve a level while killing lemmings in at least 5 different ways (e.g. on Taxing 2 you have 2 kinds of traps, drowning in water, splatting, bombing, falling out of the screen, nuking/out of time)
- "SuperLemming": Solve all levels with the Superlemming gimmick on 

[namida]

Unless you change that last one to "SuperLemming + Frenzy", it doesn't really do much in NeoLemmix (or even regular Lemmix) due to the fine-control features...

[namida]

With regards to the 98% on Tricky 23 suggestion - this is possible on NeoLemmix after all. But only if you go by the letter, not the spirit, of the challenge. 98% on this level in traditional Lemmix is lose-1, due to the level having 80 lemmings there. The NeoLemmix version, due to being based off the Amiga version of the game, has 100 lemmings, so 98% is lose-2 - this is possible. So far, lose-1 doesn't seem to be possible on this level under NeoLemmix.

There might still be room for improvement though - using the exact solution used for 98% under traditional (if I'm remembering it correctly) only got 94%, but some tweaks to it were able to bring it up to 98%. So squeezing out an extra 1% might be doable. I'll keep trying and see what I can do.

[Proxima]

I would put the requirement for the challenge at 95% -- that shows you've found the solution and doesn't require fiddly tweaks.

95% is probably the maximum possible in Mac Lemmings, for example.

[namida]

Okay, nevermind! 99% on NeoLemmix Tricky 23 confirmed possible.

[ccexplore]

Okay good, because I was just going to say with the possible exception of one trick that only affects one lemming, I would expect the lose-1 solution should work regardless of total number of lemmings, assuming details like basher/miner masks and exact timings are the same in NeoLemmix of course.

It is true that the lose-1 solution may not be possible on Mac Lemmings, but that is actually due to subtle changes in the miner mask there (partly due to the higher resolution graphics), which as I recall may lead to requiring an additional miner stroke (when using the "lose-1" method) to contain the crowd, and thus result in a few additional losses.

[note: I don't have NeoLemmix set up so I haven't looked at the replay yet]

[namida]

There's no difference in the shape of the masks (except bomber mask, which is now symmetrical), but the placement of the miner mask slightly differs. The biggest difference is to do with lemmings hitting a wall and turning around - there's basically an extra frame in traditional mechanics, since when they turn around, they're effectively one pixel inside the wall; this doesn't happen on NeoLemmix (they'll be in the exact same spot as before, just facing the other direction, which is where they'd be one frame later under traditional mechanics). Climbers are also slightly more sensitive to overhanging terrain; I'm not sure if the difference is enough to have an effect here.

Bashers are also don't need quite as much terrain in front of them as under traditional mechanics (but the trade-off is that they check every stroke, not every two strokes), but this difference isn't significant enough to affect this solution; you can still do the dig-bash at the end and be low enough for the crowd to step up from the top of a builder's bridge.

[namida]

I'm going to start work on implementing this - hoping to have it ready by LPIV's release, even better if it can be ready before LPIV goes into testing.

I'm also going to make it more challenge-foucsed; in other words, all achievements will relate to a single level only, and will be only available when none of Challenge Mode, Timer Mode, Forced Gimmick or Forced Skillset are active (ruling out any based on use of those). (EDIT: On second thought, all of these aside from Forced Gimmick probably don't matter, as they can be limited within the challenge's criteria if need be.)

The conditions that may be attached I'm planning for so far are:
- Saving a certain minimum number of lemmings
- Completing the level in under a certain time
- Limiting the total number of skills used (ie: "solve this level with no more than 10 skills total")
- Limiting the number of specific skills used (ie: "solve this level without using more than 5 builders or more than 3 bashers")
- Solving the level while keeping the release rate within a certain range (this would obviously need to only take the release rate into account between the time the first lemming spawns and the time the last one does, particularly to allow the player to get within the needed range at the start of the level)

These can be either a standalone one (eg: "Save 100% on this level"), or multiple of these in combination (eg: "Save 95% in under 2 minutes while using no more than 10 skills total and no more than 2 builders and/or 3 bashers while having the release rate between 60 and 70 the entire time", to give a really extreme example).

Any other ideas you'd like to see implemented?


Initially, achievements will be limited to Lemmings Plus packs, with later additions to the NeoLemmix versions of the official games (to give more time for community input on what these should be, as opposed to Lemmings Plus where I'll be choosing all of them myself, though I'll give consideration to any suggestions that are made). Support for their use in custom Flexi-based packs will come last. I do not plan to support them for NeoCustLemmix level packs. In keeping with the challenge theme, I'm going to ditch the whole thing of giving them names.

EDIT: I take that back about Flexi. It'll probably be supported long before the NeoLemmix versions of official games have any achievements.

[namida]

Progress on adding this:

- A tool to edit achievement data has been made and is fully functional.
- The player is fully capable of loading achievement data from this file, and determining when a player has unlocked an achievement.
- I haven't yet made it disable achievement unlocking when forced gimmicks or LookForLVLFiles are active. Have now.
- There's currently no notification that an achievement has been unlocked. Is now; a notification replaces the "All lemmings accounted for" text on the postview screen if you got one.
- There's a glitch relating to the save file in regards to these - either loading or saving (or both) is not working properly. Thus, achievements are reset when the player is restarted. FIXED!
>>>EDIT: Confirmed it's the loading that has the issue; saving works fine.
- There's also no proper way to view the earned (and not-yet-earned) achievements yet.

(In terms of knowing that they're unlocking properly, I wrote some temporary code that dumps achievement progress data to a human-readable INI file. This is just for testing purposes; it'll be viewable in-game once this feature actually goes live.)


The so-far supported factors for unlocking achievements are all the ones mentioned in the previous post; I didn't add any others yet, but I did design it in such a way that other factors could be added later. It should be noted that (and this is intentional) that stuff that shouldn't usually be possible in the level, but is through Challenge Mode, Timer Mode or Forced Skillset, will still unlock the achievement, as will results that don't actually reach the normal save requirement. However, this can quite easily be averted by putting the standard requirements for these as part of the achievement's criteria; the achievement editor can load the "normal" stats from a LVL file, and additionally there are shortcuts of that if the save requirement or time limit for the achievement is set to zero, the level's save requirement / time limit will be used.


EDIT: So at this point, all the behind-the-scenes stuff is there, as well as a notification on the postview screen when you unlock an achievement; and all the design-side support is done too. All that's left is making a menu to display a list of achievements.

[namida]

Achievements are now fully functional. Or, "Talismans", as I actually called them (I think I mentioned earlier that I was considering this name), to keep a Lemmings theme to it.

The only thing currently missing is I haven't added any way in-game to distinguish between Bronze, Silver and Gold. That will come later; but for now, you can see the list of them, and which ones you have / haven't received. That probably will not be implemented in the first version to have these, as it'll require a MAIN.DAT modification to store the graphics of the various types.

Just for reference, the way they're saved in the save file does allow changes to be made to the talismans without players losing them, including reordering them or changing their ranking (bronze/silver/gold).



Anyway, let's get some suggestions going for the official game ones, now that we have a solid decision on how they actually work! Remember, they must relate to a single level only, and the factors may only be (but can be a combination of multiple of these options):
> Number of lemmings saved
> Time taken
> Quantity used of specific skill(s)
> Quantity used of total skills
> Keeping the release rate within a certain range

Let's avoid ones that require forced skillset to use the NeoLemmix skills; but using larger quantities of skills (or more than the usual time) is fine, since Challenge Mode / Timer Mode can be used for these. Forced gimmicks can't be used for them.


Other factors can maybe be added if there's good challenges for them.



In terms of those for Lemmings Plus and Doomsday Lemmings, feel free to give suggestions there too (note that I don't plan on adding talismans to Lemmings Plus Flashbacks) but I'll be putting less weight on community-suggested ones there than I will be for the official games. I've already come up with 23 for Lemmings Plus I, but ideally I'd like to come up with two more (so that it's a round multiple of 5, as that's how many the talisman record screen can display at once).

[namida]

I had a look back through the topic and added most of the Orig ones that are feasible under the way talismans work to the suggestions list in the first post.

- Taxing 30: with only 20 diggers (instead of the current "Falling Down" achievement suggestion)
- Mayhem 13: with only 6 skills

While these two are both completely feasible, I didn't add these two because
Taxing 30 - NeoLemmix digger mechanics are more in line with Amiga / Genesis digger mechanics than DOS ones, and as such, all versions of We All Fall Down can be completed with just two diggers.
Mayhem 13 - The normal solution to this level only uses 6 skills, doesn't it? 1 Climber, 1 Floater, 2 Builders, 2 Bashers...



I also tried most of these myself, and I must say the Mayhem 25 with 5 builders one was pretty interesting.

[Proxima]

Mayhem 13 - The normal solution to this level only uses 6 skills, doesn't it? 1 Climber, 1 Floater, 2 Builders, 2 Bashers...

This level has a very elegant and beautiful main solution, but unfortunately has lots of backroutes that are easier to find but use more skills. Requiring only 6 skills to be used (for the achievement) would help people who might otherwise never find out about the main solution to discover it.

[Nepster]

Interesting! Up to now, I thought that you need at least one additional skill to delay the athlete in the main solution...
The solution I had in mind uses 1 climber, 1 blocker, 2 builders, 1 basher and 1 miner. See replay (NeoLemmix version 1.33).
Either way, I agree with Proxima's reasons for including this achievement.

[namida]

Nope; the solution with just those skills is definitely possible in NeoLemmix. I'm also 99% sure I remember it being possible in traditional Lemmix too - although the difference in basher range means the lemming gets there quicker, the climber->faller positioning bug means he'll still land on the bridge.

Anyway, added it to the list.

[namida]

Here's a pic showing the talisman screen, with one talisman of each color unlocked (yeah, I added them already xD).

I'm considering also adding an overall score (basically, a percentage of how many talismans the player has unlocked, with some system like bronze = 2pts, silver = 3pts, gold = 5pts, and working it out as a percentage of the total points available).

EDIT: I've released an update to Lemmings Plus I with the talisman feature added. Give it a go and let me know if you think there's anything that needs improving or changing. If all seems well, I'll release the full set of V1.34n updates (though the official games will be without talismans at first; they'll be added over time; they'll be usable in Flexi right away).

One thing in particular I'd quite like feedback on is the in-game ordering of them. Currently, the game doesn't sort them in any way - it just keeps the same order they're in in the data files. However, I'm tossing up two possible options:

1) Sort by level order
2) Sort by color (bronzes first, then silvers, then golds)

[Wafflem]

This is a really excellent feature and adds a lot of challenge to the Lemmings games!

I think the sorting by color is a better idea - it keeps things tidy.

By the way, even after you release the other Lemmings Plus players with the Talismans, will you still accept more suggestions for them (as well as those of the official games)?

[namida]

For the Lemmings Plus games, they're likely to be considered finalized once they're released. The official games I could possibly be a bit more flexible on.

[Wafflem]

Should there also be Talimans that are related to objects? Examples can include:
-Don't use the radiation/slowfreeze object at all when solving a level.
-Don't use the teleporter as part of the solution. Perplexing 16 "Wiring Defect" comes to mind, though I haven't tested that yet.
-In a locked exit puzzle level, press the buttons in a certain order. For example, in Rough 9 "Collection Pit" ,press the back two buttons first before the front two buttons. Yeah this one's not possible, but it's just an idea.
-Pickup skills - try not to pickup any of them at all.
-Solve a Karoshi level without using the trap.
-Finding a secret level (in which case, the Talisman should say something like "Find the secret level for Nice" etc.

[namida]

The secret level finding should definitely be in there, I'll be sure to add it (though I'm most likely not going to add talismans just for finding secret levels in my packs). As for the others, I'll think about them.

The messages associated with each talisman can be chosen when creating talisman data, so it's up to the pack creator how they want to explain it.

I'm also considering adding "assign skills to one lemming only" and "assign no more than one skill to each lemming".

EDIT: Okay, now that I'm at home rather than replying from a smartphone.

Most of these suggestions, apart from the secret level one, really come down to that most levels are either going to *require* you to use those objects, or to make a point of avoiding them. There may be the odd exception particularly in easier levels (for example, Nice 9 without using the trap, though this is trivial to achieve), but I certianly don't see any that are talisman-worthy, except maybe LPIII Dodgy 11 without the extra builders. However, you can pretty much get the same effect as "don't get the pickup skills" simply with the skill limit-based feature that already exists, by limiting to the (non-pickup-skill) quantities. This doesn't require the player to actually avoid picking up the skills, but does require them to not *use* the extras.

With that being said, if you (or anyone else) are actually working on a Flexi-based pack where you see potential for those, I can maybe implement them. I'll implement the "find a secret trigger" one (note that this would override any save requirement in the same talisman, for obvious reasons; but it could still be combined with time limits or skill limits), and most likely the "skills on one lemming only" and "one skill per lemming" before a general release of the V1.34n update.

[namida]

Alright, so I've added (though have yet to fully test):

> One skill per lemming
> Assigning skills to one lemming only
> Finding a secret level

> Unlocking a secret level when a talisman is unlocked (optional, of course)
> Automatically sorting the talismans. It will sort them first by Bronzes first, then Silvers, then Golds. Within a color, they'll be sorted in the order the levels are in. Finally, in the case of more than one talisman for the same level, they'll be sorted in alphabetical order of their description texts.
> A percentage of talisman completion on the talisman list screen. There is a slight weighting by color; Bronze is worth 3 points, Silver is worth 4 points, and Gold is worth 5 points.
> Fixed the "hold down left/right causes crash" glitch.

I still need to update the Talisman Editor (no, you haven't missed this - I haven't released it yet ) to support these new properties, though.

I might see if I can come up with two more for Lemmings Plus I using the new additions (obviously not the find a secret level one); it kinda bugs me to have an incomplete page of them.

[namida]

Okay so, it seems that so far, regarding the implementation of them in-game itself, everything works fine; though there are some things I still need to test (particularly the secret level related features). The Talisman Editor itself though has a few bugs that still need to be ironed out.

Obviously, adding the talisman graphics required a few additions to MAIN.DAT; but the way it's done is such that a new MAIN.DAT will be perfectly compatible with pre-talisman player versions. Likewise; the player has fallback code of using text instead of talisman icons in the case that a MAIN.DAT without talisman graphics is being used, though it goes without saying that it's better to have proper graphics (for one, the fallback text-based code does not differentiate between the three colors, except by the order in the talisman list).


EDIT: Confirmed; both triggering talismans by finding secret levels, and unlocking secret levels by receiving talismans, work. It's also possible to have a talisman that doesn't appear on the list (and doesn't count towards completion percentage) that still unlocks a secret level.

[namida]

From what I can see, there seems to be no problems with the talismans feature; so I'll finish up any other V1.34n fixes (which'll generally be quite minor) then get it released.