NLEditor - a new file-type NeoLemmix editor - Test version

[Simon]

selecting specific pieces and avoiding others nearby. This was very frustrating in old Lemmix.

2 better answers to this:

• Select by pixel. Only when no opaque pixel under the mouse cursor, select by smallest rectangle that encompasses all opaque pixels of a tile; this is helpful to select mesh-shaped terrain. Never select by the size of the graphic.
  
• Hover. (Show what piece would be selected if you pressed the mouse button.)
  

And then you can drag the selected piece immediately.

-- Simon

[mobius]

selecting specific pieces and avoiding others nearby. This was very frustrating in old Lemmix.

2 better answers to this:

• Select by pixel. Only when no opaque pixel under the mouse cursor, select by smallest rectangle that encompasses all opaque pixels of a tile; this is helpful to select mesh-shaped terrain. Never select by the size of the graphic.
  
• Hover. (Show what piece would be selected if you pressed the mouse button.)
  

And then you can drag the selected piece immediately.

-- Simon

excellent ideas. I second these suggestions. (I assume this is how lix works, I can't even remember)


has the bug I posted (when tabbing away can no longer drag pieces) been fixed yet? Downloadable in this topic?

[Nepster]

From now on, the editor will no longer be downloadable here, only via the NeoLemmix homepage and the new-formats update thread.

Version 1.3:
- Fixed hold-to-scroll.
- Fixed tabbing out of the window bug
- Fixed placing of pieces saved in the clipboard
- Fixed hotkey descriptions of delete and duplicate
- Fixed talisman saving bug
- When selecting numeric text boxes, the number will be selected now.

I have not yet implemented any more changes to the grid, but keep an eye on the discussion about it. Nor have I yet implemented any of Simon's suggestions.

[mobius]

thanks for fixing the bugs!!! [they were very annoying]
a minor wishlist:

1) if it would be at all possible; I really liked the 'Align' feature of old Lemmix. You could select a number of pieces then tile them horizontally or vertically (or diagonally if I recall correctly.) It had some interesting uses. It was an option under the "selection" menu. And it allowed for quickly designing some things.

2) I doubt if this is possible under the new way the editor implements things but being able to change a selected tile on screen to another one was kind of nice.

[Nepster]

1) if it would be at all possible; I really liked the 'Align' feature of old Lemmix. You could select a number of pieces then tile them horizontally or vertically (or diagonally if I recall correctly.) It had some interesting uses. It was an option under the "selection" menu. And it allowed for quickly designing some things.

Wow, I didn't even know that this was possible in the old editor. I will have a look at the old editor to see what this does exactly, and then decide whether to add this to the new one depending a bit on the amound of coding work needed.

2) I doubt if this is possible under the new way the editor implements things but being able to change a selected tile on screen to another one was kind of nice.

Sorry, but this will not be possible any more. First of all deleting the old piece and dragging the new piece to its position is almost as fast. On the other hand it would mean coding a new user interface just for this purpose and the background code is not written to allow such things, so this feature would most likely be extremely buggy.

[IchoTolot]

General question: Is the new editor able to reliably load/save levels now?   

I will start and go through every single level of my stuff checking+fixing ceiling dependencies and I only can/want to make further Pimolems edits in the new editor now as the old nxp version has the wrong music set up for the new format version and cannot easily be converted again as then it would require more grep actions to set it right in all text files again ---> using the new editor and letting the old version be would be the best at least for this pack.
For that I really want to know if this is somewhat reliable now as I really don't want to do double work checking all 145 levels of this pack twice.

[Nepster]

Yes, with two exceptions:
- Anything that isn't implemented in the editor, like rotated exits or upside-down hatches, ... The editor will simply ignore such flags when loading a level and hence save them as normally oriented objects.
- Any bugs that may still lurk in the editor code.

[mobius]

how do you make an entrance lemmings come out facing left? I don't see an option in the editor.

[Proxima]

Select the "Pieces" menu (using the buttons at the top) and then "Flip". (This will also flip the graphic, which is rather silly. Not sure if that's still up for discussion.)

[IchoTolot]

how do you make an entrance lemmings come out facing left? I don't see an option in the editor.

Normally we had "face left" for this which didn't flip the graphic and I think in the hatch (and teleporter! + possibly more) case we still need it as often the flipped graphic looks silly with wrong lighting effects and so on.

So I propose "face left" should come back as I can't find it either.

[Nepster]

First of all: The player still distinguishes between "Flip" and "Face Left". It's just a question what is exposed to the level designer in the editor.

And for the editor, I don't want to add a second button "Face Left", which does nothing for almost all object types. I found this absolutely confusing in the old editor. But I am open to suggestions that "Flip" should work differently for some object types:
Hatches: Should it always just change the direction of the lemmings and never flip the sprite?
Teleporters: Thanks for noticing that flipping lemmings in teleporters is still present in NeoLemmix. That's a perfect candidate to be culled. As for the actual topic at hand: As the sprite is the only way for the player to tell in advance whether the teleporter flips lemmings or not, I strongly prefer to keep this visual clue.

[Proxima]

Hatches: Should it always just change the direction of the lemmings and never flip the sprite?

Yes. Nearly all hatches are symmetrical except for lighting and the background seen through the trapdoor. These are too subtle (especially for new players) to act as good visual indicators, so you're left with the lighting looking wrong. I don't think a visual indicator is needed in any case, since you can tell which way lemmings come out facing very easily.

In case some of the usermade styles have hatches that would benefit from flipping, perhaps have the specification for hatches include an optional flipped sprite, and if none is present, don't flip.

Teleporters: Thanks for noticing that flipping lemmings in teleporters is still present in NeoLemmix. That's a perfect candidate to be culled. As for the actual topic at hand: As the sprite is the only way for the player to tell in advance whether the teleporter flips lemmings or not, I strongly prefer to keep this visual clue.

But again that doesn't work with teleporters that are symmetrical except for lighting (don't know if there are any). It's also confusing for new players, since they haven't gotten used to one orientation being the default, and this has to be learned separately for every type of teleporter.

Just cull....

[IchoTolot]

For the hatch I think a direction change would be enough for the flip, but I saw quite a larger number of cases that used graphically flipped hatches as well, so I am not sure about the merge here. Hatches where the graphic flip really sticks out would be hatches like L2_medieval. For me a direction flip would be enough though.

I am 100% against the direction change cull of the teleporter, but details to that in the topic: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=3524.msg67299#msg67299

[mobius]

It would be really nice if it were possible to copy terrain from a level, close the level, open another and paste it. It currently is not; when you try to do this a message says: "no material on clipboard; continue operation?" and clicking NO closes the program!

It's not something I used on the old editor real often; but can really come in handy; allowing you to create/copy huge or complex structures very fast.

[IchoTolot]

It would be really nice if it were possible to copy terrain from a level, close the level, open another and paste it. It currently is not; when you try to do this a message says: "no material on clipboard; continue operation?" and clicking NO closes the program!

It's not something I used on the old editor real often; but can really come in handy; allowing you to create/copy huge or complex structures very fast.

I would support this. As mobius said I didn't use it that often too, but in these cases he described it's really handy.