[NeoLemmix] PimoLems [Difficulty: Medium]

[ericderkovits]

I just noticed in the Neolemmix version of Pimolems, Icho added 2 special levels from his Reunion Pack(Castle Rush and Another Brick in the Wall, Nightmare 2 and Nightmare 16).
 I wonder why he did that since that isn't part of Pimolems.

[IchoTolot]

I just noticed in the Neolemmix version of Pimolems, Icho added 2 special levels from his Reunion Pack(Castle Rush and Another Brick in the Wall, Nightmare 2 and Nightmare 16).
 I wonder why he did that since that isn't part of Pimolems.

I just found a tiny 3 level special rank was a bit weird. So I put 2 Reunion levels I made with the same special style in there to bump it up to 5.

[IchoTolot]

V 3.1 is out!

Naming of the rank signs adjusted. For the update please delete the old version of the pack first.



I am also aware of Swerdis solution videos and there have been a few backroutes already in these. Will prepare another backroute fix update after all the pack is completely covered.

[Swerdis]

That's true though there are not as many as in DoveLems, especially in the higher spheres. I will make some comments when I am through the hurricane rank.  For consistency, I will finish the pack with the old version, though.

[kaywhyn]

That's true though there are not as many as in DoveLems, especially in the higher spheres. I will make some comments when I am through the hurricane rank.  For consistency, I will finish the pack with the old version, though.

There have been around 30 patches for the pack so far, so that's largely why, but mostly because Pieuw seemed to had carefully designed the levels along with a very tight skillset in the later ranks so that they're either impossible or not as easily backroutable.

I haven't watched any of your solutions, but I've been following your quest on beating Pimolems, and I know that you are currently quite far into the pack just from the video title. I got to say I'm quite impressed with the progress you have made. This pack's got nothing on you. Keep up the great work! Almost there at the finish line!

[uberwolfie]

Hello everyone!

I finished PimoLems a week or two ago, have just been writing up my complete thoughts since then, which again may be of no interest to anyone but me. Seeing that Swerdis is well on his way to finishing it up himself, and wishing to give Icho a whole set of replays to look at before releasing the next version, I was spurred on to finish that document so I could submit my replays here and the writings at the same time. I'll have to give the document a little proofread before sharing it with you, but in the meantime here are my replays.

I think you may find several of them interesting for backroute-related purposes, particularly you may want to examine:

Calm: 18
Windy: 2 4 14*  15  18
Stormy: 3* 4 7 8*(?) 14*(!) 18
Hurricane: 11 15* 16 17* 18
Pickaxe: 7* 15 16*(?) 17*(note the two replays - I think I found the intended solution in the later one, but it's currently not necessary to utilize the left hand area at all) 18*
One: 5* 7 9 11 15* 16* 18 20(is this what you intend with the walkers?)
Extra: 19 20*

The ones marked with * are ones I'm almost certain break the level in some way. There may be one or two others that I've missed, but probably nothing major.

Ok, now onto more modern packs I think, starting with United...

[IchoTolot]

Thanks for the replays.

I will check them up together with Swerdis solution videos then when they are completed and prepare a patch after that.

[kaywhyn]

Hello everyone!

I finished PimoLems a week or two ago, have just been writing up my complete thoughts since then, which again may be of no interest to anyone but me. Seeing that Swerdis is well on his way to finishing it up himself, and wishing to give Icho a whole set of replays to look at before releasing the next version, I was spurred on to finish that document so I could submit my replays here and the writings at the same time. I'll have to give the document a little proofread before sharing it with you, but in the meantime here are my replays.

Congrats on finishing Pimolems. Note that while Swerdis is still far from completing the entire pack, he is close to finishing all the main ranks of Pimolems, ie, almost done with the Hurricane rank. I believe he stated when he's done with that rank, he'll provide his thoughts/feedback.

Ok, now onto more modern packs I think, starting with United...

Great to hear that you're thinking of taking on United. While absolutely not required, seeing how you started Reunion some time ago, I still suggest finishing that pack before taking on United. I'm not just saying this because United is a sequel pack to Reunion, but rather I feel one's transition into United should go as smoothly as possible, and this can certainly help. Again, it's not necessary in any way to finish Reunion before playing United. Just a thought. Or, you could even do both concurrently. If you ever get horribly stuck on United, you could then play some Reunion or some other packs in the meantime. It is normal to get stuck, so don't worry if it happens. Happens to me all the time, even in packs that aren't anywhere near as difficult as United or Nepsterlems, for example. Either way, prepare for an extremely long and very difficult journey, considering it's a 200+ level pack (currently 238 levels) and the huge amount of tough nuts in the pack. Despite the very high difficulty, I still recommend United, as it's just a very well-done pack in so many ways. It's probably my most favorite level pack that I've finished solving currently, although I still like all the other packs I've finished playing very much as well.

[ericderkovits]

Can't wait for Icho to patch this pack, so hopefully some levels in my Superlemmini conversion pack can also match Neolemmix's. Of course only ones that don't involve pickup skills.

[uberwolfie]

Hello folks

Here is my document, outlining my complete thoughts and experiences playing PimoLems. It is a companion to my previous similar effort on the subject of DoveLems, and the goal is to document what was an amazing experience of expanding my Lemmings horizons, as well as laying out the similarities and differences between the two packs that I noticed. I doubt I will do such a complete analysis of a level pack again.

I see that a number of you downloaded and potentially read at least some of my DoveLems document. I hope it is of interest, the observations are quite personal, and I am not as seasoned a designer or player as many of you forum regulars. I did want to bring up a few specific levels where I have questions for Icho about changes he's made (at least I assume it must have been him). These are all brought up in the document, but obviously I can't expect everyone to slog through that on the off chance they'll run across these points and then be compelled to respond...

Windy 11: "From Pillar to Post": I really question the added steel on the leftmost platforms, which prevent you from digging through from a higher level, as Pieuw's original solution on his YouTube uses this possibility, and I strongly think levels are better with more solutions, so long as they are roughly equivalent in spirit and difficulty, which I think these two (Pieuw's and mine/Icho's) are. Is there a backroute that this seals up that would otherwise completely break the level?

One 10: "Bombing All the Way Home": In a similar vein, I much prefer the idea of this level as one with several different approaches, like the one from the creator himself, which is ingenious, and now seemingly not possible. This level really, for me, seems to have lost some sense of richness with the removal of that one builder, essentially forcing the current solution. Would like to know if others agree with me. Sometimes removing all backroutes makes a level disappointingly one-dimensional in this way.

All other levels I really appreciate the changes and see that this makes them much stronger

Great to hear that you're thinking of taking on United. While absolutely not required, seeing how you started Reunion some time ago, I still suggest finishing that pack before taking on United. I'm not just saying this because United is a sequel pack to Reunion, but rather I feel one's transition into United should go as smoothly as possible, and this can certainly help. Again, it's not necessary in any way to finish Reunion before playing United. Just a thought. Or, you could even do both concurrently. If you ever get horribly stuck on United, you could then play some Reunion or some other packs in the meantime. It is normal to get stuck, so don't worry if it happens. Happens to me all the time, even in packs that aren't anywhere near as difficult as United or Nepsterlems, for example. Either way, prepare for an extremely long and very difficult journey, considering it's a 200+ level pack (currently 238 levels) and the huge amount of tough nuts in the pack. Despite the very high difficulty, I still recommend United, as it's just a very well-done pack in so many ways. It's probably my most favorite level pack that I've finished solving currently, although I still like all the other packs I've finished playing very much as well.

Yeah I just got a little bored of Reunion, not because it's intrinsically boring, just I'm getting a little tired playing all these packs from the Lemmini era when there are bigger and newer things to explore! But what you suggest is a good idea, I'm sure I will use many other packs as breaks from United, I'm almost finished with Pacifism, although obviously this still leaves me only at the foothills of the mountain. Having a great time so far, there's a sort of wonderful exhilaration to some of the designs, it's a whole beautiful mysterious world to explore. I also tried some early levels from a bunch of other packs, like SEBLems, Doomsday Lemmings, and MazuLems. Some fun things! I should try NepsterLems too, given your comments elsewhere on its quality and difficulty. Also I think I will be enjoying your let's plays, I started watching Doomsday Lemmings, and I'll see if I can play it along with you (not in real time though of couse).

[kaywhyn]

Very nice thoughts outlined in your PDF file as usual. Regarding your final thoughts, I still stand by my notion that Pimolems isn't necessarily better quality than Dovelems, because again to me not only is it an unfair claim to make, it doesn't make sense to compare packs from different authors that way. It does make sense to me to compare packs from the same author, eg, Reunion and United. I am in agreement that the puzzles in Pimolems tend to be better and hence there's greater satisfaction in figuring them out and beating them as compared to beating the levels in Dovelems. Another thing that we seem to differ on is how you seem to think the quality of a pack suffers from being backroute ridden, like it is with Dovelems, while Pimolems doesn't have as much. This is where I don't necessarily agree. Just because a level is backroutable doesn't automatically make it a bad level. A backroutable level can still be really good. It just simply means that the level hasn't 100% enforced the intended solution yet. As I have also pointed out, Dovelems is still a really good pack despite how backroutes abound. Both Dovelems and Pimolems are excellent packs in their own ways, which you seem to be in agreement. In the same way, despite all the backroutes I found in United when I played through the pack, in my eyes United is still a very well-done, very high quality pack in my eyes, so therefore the quality has never suffered or too much in my eyes to make me think otherwise. Then again, it's very difficult to find a Lemmings level that I don't really like. In all the packs I have played, there have generally only been around 2-3 levels in each rank I wasn't a fan of. Not to mention that I generally only have very good things to say about the levels whenever I give the pack author feedback. It takes a lot before I start to rage at a level. In general, I seem to have a much higher level of patience compared to most when it comes to solving levels.

Yeah I just got a little bored of Reunion, not because it's intrinsically boring, just I'm getting a little tired playing all these packs from the Lemmini era when there are bigger and newer things to explore! But what you suggest is a good idea, I'm sure I will use many other packs as breaks from United, I'm almost finished with Pacifism, although obviously this still leaves me only at the foothills of the mountain. Having a great time so far, there's a sort of wonderful exhilaration to some of the designs, it's a whole beautiful mysterious world to explore. I also tried some early levels from a bunch of other packs, like SEBLems, Doomsday Lemmings, and MazuLems. Some fun things! I should try NepsterLems too, given your comments elsewhere on its quality and difficulty. Also I think I will be enjoying your let's plays, I started watching Doomsday Lemmings, and I'll see if I can play it along with you (not in real time though of couse).

Haha, I understand! Dovelems, Pimolems, and Reunion were all originally packs made for Lemmini. Particularly since NL is pretty much the primary go to engine to play custom packs these days. Playing other packs in the meantime when you're horribly stuck on a particular pack does wonders. Sometimes, after spending a lot of time away, you all of a sudden are able to breeze through a level that previously was a roadblock and then you wonder why it was one in the first place.

The Pacifism rank should be doable for anyone with some experience with both the Lemmings games and some custom packs, although as you have probably seen it's still no pushover for a first rank. For me, there was no challenge until I got into the mid to late 30s levels in the rank. Even then, I only remember two of them being difficult, Pacifism 36 and the rank finisher, Pacifism 41. 

Regarding Nepsterlems, I still need to go back and finish solving the pack. I'm currently stuck on the very first level of the final rank. It'll definitely be interesting if I can solve even just one level in the Black Hole rank. No chance of LPing that one from me, since I already have too much of it solved long before I started doing LPs. Glad to hear you been watching my LP. I'm already done with solving all of Doomsday Lemmings, meaning my LP of it is already done, so if you mean solving the levels before you watch my solutions to them, then yea, that's what I do as well if I come to a level that I myself haven't solved on my own. I simply stop watching at that point until I do. Seb Lems is on my to-play list at some point, whlie Mazulems was my very first custom Lemmings pack I played on Dos from more than 15 years ago. 

[uberwolfie]

Very nice thoughts outlined in your PDF file as usual. Regarding your final thoughts, I still stand by my notion that Pimolems isn't necessarily better quality than Dovelems, because again to me not only is it an unfair claim to make, it doesn't make sense to compare packs from different authors that way. It does make sense to me to compare packs from the same author, eg, Reunion and United. I am in agreement that the puzzles in Pimolems tend to be better and hence there's greater satisfaction in figuring them out and beating them as compared to beating the levels in Dovelems. Another thing that we seem to differ on is how you seem to think the quality of a pack suffers from being backroute ridden, like it is with Dovelems, while Pimolems doesn't have as much. This is where I don't necessarily agree. Just because a level is backroutable doesn't automatically make it a bad level. A backroutable level can still be really good. It just simply means that the level hasn't 100% enforced the intended solution yet. As I have also pointed out, Dovelems is still a really good pack despite how backroutes abound. Both Dovelems and Pimolems are excellent packs in their own ways, which you seem to be in agreement. In the same way, despite all the backroutes I found in United when I played through the pack, in my eyes United is still a very well-done, very high quality pack in my eyes, so therefore the quality has never suffered or too much in my eyes to make me think otherwise. Then again, it's very difficult to find a Lemmings level that I don't really like. In all the packs I have played, there have generally only been around 2-3 levels in each rank I wasn't a fan of. Not to mention that I generally only have very good things to say about the levels whenever I give the pack author feedback. It takes a lot before I start to rage at a level. In general, I seem to have a much higher level of patience compared to most when it comes to solving levels.

Absolutely, no real argument on anything here. I should be clearer though, it's not the quality that suffers from backroutes, it's the experience, like how I feel the one I had from DoveLems was affected by the ease of solving some key puzzles. You're absolutely right that this is a matter of testing and refining rather than initial design - the key problem is thus the expectations of the player going in rather than the nature of the levels themselves. DoveLems certainly is still going through this testing phase it seems, thanks mostly to Icho. So the fact that I was disappointed means that my expectations should have been different going in, not that I genuinely think one pack is superior to the other on every single metric (clearly this is not true, and I think I explore in detail the strengths and weaknesses of each).

I think it's interesting to speculate about level design in terms of whether this process of testing and refinement is initially smooth, that is the initial concept is solid enough that it stays true even with some small tightening, or whether there was a flaw in the initial concept to some degree and the whole thing needs rethinking to bring it to the same place. I do make the very weak claim that DoveLems may be more prone to the latter as it exists now, and with the author not really present, those levels will probably stay that way unless Icho decides to be more hands on (which he probably won't, out of respect). This claim is impossible to prove, but I'm still very interested in the precise mechanics of the creative process generally, and Lemmings levels of the quality of both these packs have given me a lot of food for thought regarding this. It's fascinating to me how designing Lemmings puzzles is a huge process of testing against other minds, not just a solitary endeavour.

[kaywhyn]

Absolutely, no real argument on anything here. I should be clearer though, it's not the quality that suffers from backroutes, it's the experience, like how I feel the one I had from DoveLems was affected by the ease of solving some key puzzles. You're absolutely right that this is a matter of testing and refining rather than initial design - the key problem is thus the expectations of the player going in rather than the nature of the levels themselves. DoveLems certainly is still going through this testing phase it seems, thanks mostly to Icho. So the fact that I was disappointed means that my expectations should have been different going in, not that I genuinely think one pack is superior to the other on every single metric (clearly this is not true, and I think I explore in detail the strengths and weaknesses of each).

Fair point! Thanks for clearing this up. Indeed, I realized after posting that you were already in agreement with almost everything I have said and that something didn't sound right to me in my mind when it sounded as if you were referring to the decline in quality due to backroutes. It does seem to be the case that most tend to associate the quality of levels decreasing when backroutes are present, but as I have previously mentioned, I don't necessarily agree with this, since levels with backroutes can still be really good levels themselves. All it means is that they have the potential to be even better levels than they are currently if the backroutes are patched/blocked.

Indeed, it's clear that our expectations and experiences with the packs are quite different. My experiences have been quite positive with both packs, and my expectations with each one have kind of been exceeded. In contrast, I think Dovelems is still really good despite how it's still very backroute ridden. My perception of the pack stayed quite high throughout, and none of the levels disappointed me in any way. Hence why I said it's extremely difficult to find a level that I'm not a fan of. On the other hand, the only time I felt disappointed with Pimolems was just due to my playing experience in Lemmini of the pack back in the days. There were some otherwise really good Pimolems levels that I ended up not liking as much due to just being overly frustrated with how I had to restart so many times, as the absence of convenience tools make some of the levels on Lemmini much harder to execute. The puzzles themselves are really good, just my perception of some otherwise really good levels due to certain maneuvers/tricks that are required in some of them slowly declined the more I had to restart. Nevertheless, I still think Pimolems is an excellent pack just like Dovelems, and I definitely enjoyed the former more for its challenging puzzles and the satisfaction that resulted from figuring out the solution and finally getting the execution right. Definitely the playing experience is very different depending on what engine you're playing on. I'm sure once I start playing the pack on NL, I will enjoy it way more than I did on Lemmini, although I'm certainly not a hater of the engine, since I did stay with Lemmini/SL for at least 4-5 years before I dove into NL last year due to how they're closer to the original playing experience with the Dos engine I enjoyed and grew up with.

Still, it's always great to hear other people's thoughts on these matters, as these can spark very interesting discussions. Again, thanks for sharing your thoughts, as I always love reading them

[ericderkovits]

Also remember Dovelems and Pimolems didn't start in NL, but Lemmini. So it was much harder to backroute block levels as there are no pickup skills to help with that. Even my Superlemmini
lemmings reunion, there are some levels that can still be backrouted because of no pickup skills. So when Dodochacalo and Pieuw were designing levels it was very difficult to prevent backroutes. I think if Dodochacalo and even Pieuw were designing the pack to begin with in NL, their packs would have been less backroute-ridden. So one really shouldn't put any fault on either designer, since
the engine they were dealing with was Lemmini.

[kaywhyn]

Also remember Dovelems and Pimolems didn't start in NL, but Lemmini. So it was much harder to backroute block levels as there are no pickup skills to help with that.

Right, we both already acknowledged this. They were also made at a time long before stable New Formats NL was even a thing and in existence. It still goes without saying that they were, and still are, both excellent packs for Lemmini for their time back when Lemmini was quite popular before they were converted to other engines.

So one really shouldn't put any fault on either designer, since
the engine they were dealing with was Lemmini.

For the record, I don't think anyone on here thinks poorly of either of these packs, although of course everyone thinks differently. Like I said many times before, both packs are very well-liked and held in high regard by most. This also goes back to what I said about Dodochacalo and Pieuw being two very different level designers, as well as how some authors don't care about blocking backroutes as much as some others. They're both really good in their own ways, and I certainly regard both as extraordinary level designers. They both made an excellent Lemmini level pack IMO.