[NeoLemmix 1.43] Lemmicks - Lemmings with gimmicks! ANOTHER UPDATE

[Strato Incendus]

The day of the first release is finally here!



...is a pack for NeoLemmix 1.43 which features the gimmicks - which were culled from the current versions - in a systematic rank-by-rank approach.

You'll need NeoLemmix Player 1.43 to play this! Get it here.
This means:
- The level sides are solid, not deadly.
- Some levels feature ghost lemmings which are unaffected by any type of object, but can be assigned skills by the player.
- There is no fencer skill, no skill blueprints, and no clear physics mode.
Technical stuff:
- If you rewind or framestep, the NeoLemmix player will also switch the selected skill to what you had selected at that particular frame, rather than keeping your current one selected.
You can change this in the settings, however! I'd certainly advise for this because it's an unnecessary and easily avoidable source of confusion and annoyance .
- If you can't solve a level, you can press 1 on your keyboard to advance to the next one and try later - or jump between levels by using the arrow keys on the level preview screen.
You don't have to write down all the access codes! You simply cannot choose directly from a level list, but you can still play these levels in whichever order you choose.
- The music is slightly louder .

Lemmicks is my largest pack to date with 170 levels total.
Each rank is dedicated to a separate gimmick or combination of gimmicks which remains consistent across the entire rank.
There are no time limits on any of the levels. Some will still require you to be quick in one way or another.

Download:
Level pack
Styles folder (to make sure you have all the tilesets for 1.43, put this in the same folder as the 1.43 NeoLemmix Player)
Music pack
The music mainly consists of Lemmings 3D tracks, plus the regular Lemmings / ONML ones and an occasional throw in from Lemmings 2: The Tribes.
Some levels however feature sneak previews at the music for Lemmings World Tour, my next pack in line!
Everything is in MP3 format, because these files actually turned out smaller than if I tried to convert them to high quality .oggs.

Currently, my own music tracks don't loop as nicely in NeoLemmix yet as they did in the software I recorded them in. So I'm open to any suggestions on how to improve this!

And now, on to the ranks!

1. BASIC (20 levels)
Gimmicks: None (unless "Ghosts" and "Solid sides" count )
This rank is supposed to introduce you to the skills and objects of NeoLemmix (1.43) in the quickest way possible.
For seasoned NeoLemmix players, this means predominantly:
- Getting you used to solid level sides again.
- Familiarise you with Ghost lemmings.

The 8 commandments

2. MOIST (10 levels)
Gimmicks: Rising water
All permanent objects rise at the slowest possible rising speed of 255 frames per 1 pixel rise. This may cut off paths you want to take, buttons or pickup skills you want to hit, or endanger the crowd you leave behind - but it might also be helpful on other occasions!

Bathroom leak

3. CIRCULAR (10 levels)
Gimmicks: Vertical and horizontal wrap
Whenever a lemming leaves the screen at one end, it will reappear at the other.

Circular logic

4. CONSEQUENTIAL (10 levels)
Gimmicks: Countdown other skills
You don't lose 1 of the skill you use, but one of every other skill instead.

Limited resources

5. TWISTED (10 levels)
Gimmicks: Backwards walkers
Lemmings walk backwards, but still perform skills in the direction they are facing.

Face the danger

6. WHIMSICAL (10 levels)
Gimmicks: Turnaround on assign
Lemmings walk as normal, but turn around whenever you assign a skill to them.

All along the watchtower

7. ETERNAL (10 levels)
Gimmicks: Hardworkers, Non-fatal bombers, Permanent blockers
Bashers, platformers, and builders go on indefinitely; this extends to miners and diggers as long as they have terrain to stand on.
Bombers don't kill lemmings.
Freed blockers become blockers again as soon as they have solid ground under their feet. They can only be turned loose using walkers.
Stackers and stoners are unaffected, as well as all skills which are permanent skills already.

May the Force be with you

8. EPHEMERAL (2 x 5 levels)
The only rank with a split set of rules.
Gimmicks Levels 1-5: Non-permanent skills
Lemmings lose their athletic skills again after one successful use.

Ignorance is bliss
Gimmicks Levels 6-9: Exhaustion, Lazy Lemmings
Lemmings stop performing skills earlier than they would normally do; athletic skills still stick to the lemming, but only work for short heights.
Swimmers and disarmers are unaffected.

The average Joe
Gimmick Level 10: All three gimmicks combined!

9. HASTY (10 levels)
Gimmicks: Frenzy, Superlemming, Instant Pickup Skills
The pause button doesn't work, the game speed is increased, and Lemmings use pickup skills they walk through instantaneously, if possible.
You can however still rewind using the minus key - and you'll probably have to do this a lot!
Also, be sure to use the hotkeys (the F-keys at the top of your keyboard) to select skills! You won't always have enough time to do this with your mouse.

Frenz with benefits

10. COSMIC (10 levels)
Gimmicks: No gravity
Lemmings can't fall down, but walk in the air. You can still use diagonal slopes of terrain to get them down, though.

NASA training lab

11. SUICIDAL (10 levels)
Gimmicks: Karoshi
You have to kill the Lemmings rather than saving them - the way you accomplish this is up to you!
The nuke button is disabled here, and dropping the Lemmings into the abyss at the bottom of the screen doesn't count as "killing".

Kill Lem all

12. BEDLAM (40 levels)
Gimmicks:
All gimmicks introduced in the previous ranks can appear in any combination with each other, as well as with new gimmicks which weren't covered before. Most of the time, a pre-level text screen will inform you about the active gimmicks, but sometimes you'll just have to figure them out for yourself!

Eternal endless infinity

13. NOSTALGIC (10 levels)
Gimmicks:
A bonus rank dedicated to all the features removed from NeoLemmix in the meantime.

Give up the ghost

Feel free to send me your replays and/or information on any backroutes you find!
I didn't receive anything along these lines while the demo version was up during the development phase, so the testing only starts now with the official release.

Hope you enjoy this little trip back in time!

[Flopsy]

AWESOME! I will commence my Youtube LP of this pack at the earliest convenience.

The first video will be on Tuesday March 20th following the last LPIV Talisman Hunt video and then will be every Tuesday after that!


I'm going to have problems recording this because I can't get v1.43 to work full screen currently due to my odd screen size of 1366x768.

At least leading zeros are back!

[Strato Incendus]

Great, I'll be looking forward to it!

When you say the first video will be uploaded on March 20th, how much buffer do you usually have between uploading and the actual playing and recording of the video?

I'm just asking because, with about a month left in between, there may be some replays by other people sent to me in the meantime, so I might already be able to overhaul some levels which may have turned out to be backroutable by then .

That way you'd already get to play a "more fixed" version of this for the LP, rather than being the primary backroute seeker that nin10doadict became for "Pit Lems" !

I'm going to have problems recording this because I can't get v1.43 to work full screen currently due to my odd screen size of 1366x768.

Perhaps someone who was involved with 1.43 can help with that? namida, anyone?

At least leading zeros are back!

Haha, I was considering whether I should check the box "center single digit numbers", but then decided I had gotten used to the leading zeros so much during testing that I left it the way it was.

Good to see my decision is being approved!

[namida]

You don't have to write down all the access codes! You simply cannot choose directly from a level list, but you can still play these levels in whichever order you choose.

You can also enter the rank name and level number (eg. "TRICKY25"), or the rank and level number - making sure to put both as a two digit number (level number can be three digits if it needs to be, but cannot be single-digit - add a leading zero) (eg. "0205") as a password. This won't work if your pack is set up so that levels are locked until the previous level is beaten, though (or more precisely - it will, but only for levels that have already been unlocked).

Perhaps someone who was involved with 1.43 can help with that? namida, anyone?

1.43 always displays 320x160 of level area on-screen at a time, plus the 320x40 skillbar. This can only be scaled by integer amounts; and 1366 x 768 is an odd resolution for this - the highest integer zoom that can fit on screen is 3x, giving 960x600, which leaves quite a large black border.
If you're using capture software that allows you to capture only *part* of the screen instead of the whole screen, set it to capture the area between 203,84 and 1163,684 (960x600 area).
As a last resort, you could always try using window capture and run NeoLemmix in windowed mode, or set your screen resolution to something else temporarily (although most common widescreen resolutions less than 1920x1080 suffer from the same problem; the only one that may work better is 1280x800, but chances are this won't work with your screen).

[Flopsy]

I've already started recording the pack, I've already finished the Basic Rank but I had to skip over 2 levels.

Spoiler

Level 6 - this level was way too precise and even on assigning the cloner at the beginning, the disarmer still died to the spike trap. I ended up skipping over it because I couldn't be bothered with the level.

Level 11 - yeah, this one just plays on Hard For Flopsy mkII for me, I hate gliders and stoners used in unison! I gave this one a good try but no cigar!

March 20th is when the LP will start on my YouTube channel, I don't usually set myself a buffer I just try to record everything as soon as possible to save myself becoming overwhelmed.

To be honest, Lemmings Squared I'm still kind of stuck at the moment and DoveLems I have to wait on my co-commentators for that now so it's nice to have something else to play.

I've found a way around the no full screen option, I've just switched to windowed mode because my capture software allows me to snap to a window only.

The Basic Levels were not a good sight to see when coming to the pack to play Gimmick levels but I persevered and finished the gimmick-less rank to start us off!

[Strato Incendus]

Good to know, I already uploaded an updated version - the change however only affects the last Bedlam level (I added some steel there to make the Rising Water gimmick relevant). So you might want to update before you get there, but this will probably take some time, considering it's the 160th level in the pack .

But of course you're free to play the ranks in any order you wish! As I said, there is no increasing difficulty between the ranks per se, just different gimmicks - although the gimmicks featured in the higher ranks do add more complexity to the game than in the lower ones.

If players want to skip the Basic rank and get right to the gimmicks, more power to them! I just think at least ghost lemmings are something many of the newer community members are probably not familiar with. Plus, as you probably noticed, quite a few levels in the Basic rank exploit the solid level sides, which it also takes some time to get used to again, I guess.

Therefore, since these changed game mechanics required me to create some introductory levels anyway, I thought they might as well be a little challenging in and of themselves !

To your level remarks - first of all, I attached replays for the two levels in question.

Spoiler

Level 6, "Do not fear":
A disarmer can't disarm while climbing - this is the only way I can imagine how your disarmer died to the spike trap.
Destructive and creative skills however will stop when a disarmer runs into a trap and he will start disarming it.
Hence, you have to send a lemming over the top to dig down the side of the wall - which means the cloned lemming has to be a disarmer as well (i.e. the disarmer has to be assigned before the cloner so that there are two disarmers in total, one for the rope traps and one for the spike trap).
It's still precise, I agree, because the lemming from the top arrives at the spike trap trigger just in time when the second disarmer climbs up. But when you see it working out, it looks pretty cool!

Level 11, "Mene mene tekel u-parsin":
Don't worry, I've learned my lesson from "The Lempire strikes back" that gliders can't bump their heads on stoners, because their position trigger is at their feet.
There is a reason why the last updraft doesn't reach all the way to the edge of the level - there's a gap there so the glider can fall down again. He then bumps into the solid level side, turning around, and then you can make him a stoner. In my replay I needed two stoners applied this way in order to cover the gap all the way to the level side. Then the next lemming can climb it up.

[Colorful Arty]

Hey Strato, I played some Lemmicks over spring break, and it's a pretty sweet pack! I love these gimmicky levels, and it's a nice refreshing take on Lemmings!

Some thoughts on the levels and ranks I have played:

Basic:

Spoiler

First things first, I love the Biblical references in the titles!

Secondly, this rank took me completely by surprise by how brutally difficult it is! I got stuck on level 6 for a long time because I thought there was a gap to the left of the leftmost pillar, and it wasn't at all obvious that a lemming could climb + glide to the top. Even after that, the timing is way too tight. I recommend making it more obvious a lemming can climb+glide up the left side and raise the needle trap by at least 8 pixels.

Level. 8. One of the hardest levels I've seen in years. I spent HOURS on this level unable to solve it; I literally had to ask Flopsy for help in solving it. I did not think it was possible to trigger the radiation by going under it; every time I tried either the lemming was too low, or too high. Since this is a tutorial level, please add a basher to the skillset to make it easier to execute. I haven't tried any other levels in the rank.

Moist:

Spoiler

Really great levels in this rank! Level 2 was much harder than any of the other levels, but still an awesome solution! Currently I am stuck on level 7.

Circular:

Spoiler

My favorite rank by far! I love the screen wrapping and it makes for some very fun levels! I'm currently stuck on Lem it snow.

Consequential:

Spoiler

I like this rank much more than I thought I would. I'm only on level 3, but the first two levels were fun challenges.

Twisted:

Spoiler

I cannot even play this rank as NeoLemmix gives me an error saying:

Access violation at address 008A8A0B in module 'NeoLemmix Old.exe'
Read of address 00000000

This same error pops up in the Suicidal rank on level 2.

Whimsical:
Eternal:

Spoiler

Another one I liked more than I expected! I'm current stuck on level 9.

Ephemeral:

Spoiler

Very fun rank! I'm on "I'm no Superlem" (is that a Scrubs reference?) but haven't really attempted it yet.

Hasty:

Spoiler

I'll be honest, I do not like this rank. The no pausing and SuperLemmings don't add to the difficulty due to the rewind feature existing, they just make the levels annoying and unfun to play. If you only had the instant use pickup skills gimmick for this rank, this would be more fun to play (or eliminate rewind abilities )

Cosmic:

Spoiler

Me personally, but I HATE the no gravity gimmick; I could never figure it out. I will likely not play this rank.

Suicidal:

Spoiler

I was very confused when I learned that bottomless pits apparently don't kill Lemmings. Still, this should be a nice rank if only I could get the second level to work.

Bedlam:

Spoiler

I am stuck on Lem Jong Un (amazing name by the way). I've tried a lot of stuff but I'm getting no where.

Nostalgic:

Spoiler

I'll attempt this at the end.

I've attached my replays.

[Strato Incendus]

Ah, great, thanks for playing, Arty!

First things first, I love the Biblical references in the titles!

I was indeed hoping for you to do so, more than for anyone else .

Basic

Spoiler

I got stuck on level 6 for a long time because I thought there was a gap to the left of the leftmost pillar, and it wasn't at all obvious that a lemming could climb + glide to the top. Even after that, the timing is way too tight. I recommend making it more obvious a lemming can climb+glide up the left side and raise the needle trap by at least 8 pixels.

Moving the needle trap might be worth considering indeed . I like the way it looks at the moment, with the needle trap locking exactly with the terrain, rather than sticking out - perhaps it will work if I just invert the object, so that the trigger area is a bit higher, but the graphic remains in the same place? After all, it's always just one of the four needles that actually triggers the animation.

For the left side: You mean it wasn't obvious that the terrain goes through all the way to the level side? Well, that's easy enough to try with the cloner right at the start, isn't it?

I could move the wooden bar at the top slightly more to the right to make it more visible that you can climb past it on the left. However, due to the low height of the entire region, I can't really move it all that much because the glider needs to be able to land on it when falling from the ceiling, and he doesn't have that much way to go to the right.

I'll have to watch Flopsy's struggles with this level, because he also mentioned it and actually couldn't solve it. Watching him think about this live will hopefully demonstrate where the problem with this one is .

The replay you sent me, for that matter, was the solution exactly as intended !

Level. 8. One of the hardest levels I've seen in years. I spent HOURS on this level unable to solve it; I literally had to ask Flopsy for help in solving it. I did not think it was possible to trigger the radiation by going under it; every time I tried either the lemming was too low, or too high. Since this is a tutorial level, please add a basher to the skillset to make it easier to execute.

If my calculations are correct, that would break the level because it would make the radiation useless - you could just mine to the left and then bash twice to remove all the terrain above the exit without having to blow up a lemming. And as it has become a hobby of mine to create interesting radiation levels - partly just to show everyone the potential that was lost by removing it - I'm glad to hear I was actually able to create something that challenging with it!

Curiously, this one wasn't on Flopsy's "hard to do" list. So again, I'll have to watch his solution to this and how quickly he figured it out.

It should be noted though that the main point of the Basic rank is to reintroduce the seasoned NeoLemmix player to the different game mechanics of NeoLemmix 1.43, and how NeoLemmix skills like the Glider behave differently with it (also referring to "Mene mene tekel u-parsin" here ).

A player entirely new to NeoLemmix skills and objects should probably not start with Lemmicks as their first pack anyway, because then, they'd have to learn about all the standard NeoLemmix-elements in addition to the gimmicks, which will probably just end up with a complete sensory overload .

So it's really a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation here: Flopsy could have done without the non-gimmick levels entirely, but seeing how much confusion climbing up the level sides is causing already, I guess it's important to include these levels that rely on this mechanic - without already introducing gimmicks on top of that. Yes, some levels teach you this the hard way, but on the other hand, that makes sure you remember it!

Would be quite a bummer to get surprised by the solid level sides in e.g. the Cosmic rank, where a lemming climbing up the level side won't come down again, which can ruin your entire plan! .

Moist

Spoiler

Level 2 was much harder than any of the other levels, but still an awesome solution! Currently I am stuck on level 7.

You used the cloner in a different spot than I did, perhaps that simultaneous management of two lemmings made it more difficult than it had to be .

With regard to level 7 however, that might be more necessary. Without having seen your attempts, I guess you may already have considered the possibility that a single pioneer lemming might be too slow to get everywhere in time.

Circular

Spoiler

I'm currently stuck on Lem it snow.

Conception-wise or execution-wise? I was hoping the title would provide enough of a hint of what you have to do. Pulling it off however might be a little fiddly, but that's always a thing with slowfreeze.

The reason I like both radiation and slowfreeze however is not to annoy the player with getting the exact spot of assigning right, but rather because it allows to restrict the use of bombers and stoners to a certain area - namely, the distance of terrain the lemming can cover before the countdown reaches zero.

Pickup skills can only do that with very strict sequencing, because once collected, they can be assigned anywhere. A slowfreeze object is like a mean value, and 9 seconds to the left and to the right is the standard deviation . Everything which falls outside of that interval, the lemming can't use the stoner there.


Regarding the technical difficulties on the Twisted and the Suicidal rank: Perhaps it's down to the name? I created an entirely different folder for NeoLemmix 1.43, which is a bit of a waste because this way I also have a music folder in each of them, which obviously takes up more space. However, that allows for a NeoLemmix.exe to be in each of them, too. Perhaps it's the name "NeoLemmix Old.exe" that causes the problem?

I'm only speculating here, I just tested both ranks again and everything works fine.

Although there were some levels in either Wafflemm's hard drive or namida's recycle bin-pack which I couldn't play either. But then again, these collections of levels aren't maintained as actual packs anymore, so I just attributed the error messages to that :/ .

Eternal

Spoiler

I'm current stuck on level 9.

Seems like it's aptly titled then !

Ephemeral

Spoiler

I'm on "I'm no Superlem" (is that a Scrubs reference?) but haven't really attempted it yet.

I haven't really watched that much Scrubs, I was more into House, M. D. . But I did indeed have the title song in my head when creating this level, so I guess that counts?

Hasty

Spoiler

The no pausing and SuperLemmings don't add to the difficulty due to the rewind feature existing, they just make the levels annoying and unfun to play. If you only had the instant use pickup skills gimmick for this rank, this would be more fun to play (or eliminate rewind abilities )

Perhaps a split of the gimmicks, similar to the Ephemeral rank, might be useful here then?

The issue is that some levels, like "Lem out of Hell", "Optimal utilization", "Throw me a lifeline", and "Heart attack" are merely about fast execution, while others are mainly about the instant pickup skills. In the latter levels, the other two gimmicks are just annoying, because the levels are difficult enough conception-wise already. However, if I removed Superlemming and/or Frenzy from the entire rank and made it just about instant pickup skills entirely, then half of the levels would become completely pointless.

So perhaps a split in the middle of the rank will do wonders.

I'll watch the rest of your replays soon and comment on them later!

Remember that you can still use the arrow keys to jump to the next level if you get stuck anywhere! There's no need to stick to the level order just because there isn't a level list like in new NeoLemmix. You still don't need a level's access code to play it, fortunately .

Especially in the Bedlam rank, each level is designed as a challenge for itself, so feel free to jump around if you can't get past "rocket man"!

[nin10doadict]

I did some leafing around and found some solutions that appear to be backroutes. Most of the pack is too hard for me to really delve that deeply into, especially considering there are a few troll levels thrown in. The entirety of the Hasty rank comes to mind. Can't even do Hasty 1 because I can't click that fast. Terrible.

[Strato Incendus]

Thanks for playing, nin10doadict!

Spoiler

Bedlam 06, "Temple Run": I didn't know it was possible to use the slope in the water! But I don't have a problem with it either. It's quite a creative solution indeed, so I don't want to ruin it.

Bedlam 19, "Lem Norris": Once again, a very clever solution to bypass the disarmer! With Karoshi levels in general, it will be hard to switch off all possible ways of killing a lemming. Finding creative ways to kill them is actually the main appeal of this kind of levels. So think I will leave this option available, too. Would be easy to remove it by simply removing the slicing trap, but I actually think it's pretty cool to solve it this way!
I could even remove a couple of skills to make the Slowfreeze (the intended killing option) a red herring, so that one has to use your solution! But I guess I won't be that mean...

Bedlam 25, "Individual practice routines": That was actually exactly as intended. There simply isn't much design space with this combination of gimmicks.

Bedlam 30, "We all fall down as one": That on the other hand is a backroute indeed. Looks like the terrain I offered was slightly too long. So either I'll have to cut away a bit of terrain or increase the number of lemmings.

Bedlam 32, "Burn at the stake": This is also a backroute. I'll have to cover the platform with the exit entirely in steel to remove it.

Circular 06, "An arrowr in the level design?": Oops, yeah, I should have made that one-way wall go through all the way to the ceiling. Thanks for finding this backroute!

Eternal 06, "Coming soon: Shimmiers": Nope, pretty much the intended solution as well. You just used the bombers for stalling, rather than for creating a trap pit. That way, the lemmings already hovered across the lava while the builder was still busy, rather than "shimmying" along beneath the platformer bridge. So you just missed out on the visual effect I was going for, but the solution in itself is correct .

Moist 04, "Need a lift?": I tested this level for a backroute where one just goes through the arrow-shaped piece of terrain at the ceiling, and found that there weren't enough builders to do this. Now you've figured out a way to go right away to the left, however you still had to use the main "trick" of the level, so I don't know whether this is that much of a problem.

With regard to the Hasty rank: I will release an update soon which is going to include the announced mid-rank split between the gimmicks, similar to the Ephemeral rank. Now I have the opportunity to fix a couple of backroutes in the process, too .

The instant pickup skill-levels won't have Frenzy or Superlemming enabled, and they will make up the first half of the rank, i.e. putting the more "puzzly" levels at the beginning of the rank.

The "speedy levels" will then come at the end of the rank, levels 07 through 10, thereby making them more optional . Instant pickup skills won't be relevant on those levels, since these levels don't include any pickup skills anyway.

I'm announcing this already now, just to prevent Flopsy from possibly rage-quitting and skipping over the entire rank , in case he's already played that far.

[Strato Incendus]

And the update is here! The link is still the same as in the starting post, so you can also just download the pack again from there!

Changelog

Spoiler

Hasty rank: Levels now have either the instant pickup skills gimmick or the Superlemming + Frenzy gimmicks enabled. I have rearranged the level order so that the instant pickup skills levels come first, because those are easier execution-wise.

Basic 06: Instead of raising just the spike trap, which would have looked weird, I raised the entire section of terrain a little to reduce the pixel precision required here. No changes to Basic 08 yet, waiting for Flopsy's solution here .

Moist 04: Added some steel and one-way arrows to make this one harder to backroute. May still be possible though.

Circular 06: Made the one-way arrows go all the way through and added steel to fill some gaps.

Eternal 04: I hadn't considered the fact that the gap between the tree and the piece of steel, which was intended as a trap, actually auto-solves the level with swimmers if the water goes all the way through. So I removed some of the water and cut it off with steel, to be on the very safe side:) .

Eternal 06: Added hatch labeling for the gliders in the bottom hatch. I had gone over all levels to label the hatches prior to release, but apparently this one escaped me.

Ephemeral 02: Removed the stacker to enforce a more specific solution.

Ephemeral 03: Added some steel to cut off a backroute that doesn't require the use of climbers.

Ephemeral 07: I found out my intended solution didn't actually require the diggers. So I've slightly altered the terrain on the lefthand side of the level to enforce what I had in mind originally.

Bedlam 01: Required even more steel to cut off even more backroutes.

Bedlam 30: Shortened the ledge at the bottom to prevent a release-rate based backroute.

Bedlam 32: Made the platform with the exit entirely steel so it can't be dug into.

[Flopsy]

Sadly I've taken the tough decision to stop LPing this pack, it is too difficult to play on this Laptop I'm using because the screen size is 1366x768 which makes the screen size odd and I have to resize all my recording tools to account for this.

Also I feel the pack is a little too over precise for NeoLemmix v1.43 and the levels are too difficult for me. I feel like I'm a victim of needing clear physics and a splat ruler which I've taken for granted.

Also because my laptop can only seem to handle short burst recording sessions, this seems to have worsened the issue and is having a severe effect on me being able to record any Lemmings videos full stop.

Either way, I have little interest in further recording videos for it and I feel like the difficulties described above are only going to shadow my judgement on the pack ultimately and I'd rather not rage quit (like I have in other packs) in the later ranks which is almost 110% guaranteed with the difficulties on top of this!

This is not Strato's fault and I encourage everyone to still play this pack as it is a very high quality pack, it's just the timing is wrong for me to play this pack right now. I would like to pick up playing it again if and when I get a better laptop which is not an obscure screen size but that might not be for a while yet.

The videos will continue until 8th May (Part 8) and I reached Level 9 in the Moist rank but then they will stop after that.

[GigaLem]

The best thing I could suggest for you flopsy is saving up and investing in a desktop rig.

[namida]

I would like to pick up playing it again if and when I get a better laptop which is not an obscure screen size but that might not be for a while yet.

1366x768 isn't "obscure", just "not well handled by older NeoLemmix". It's actually the most common resolution for laptop screens at the moment, with only 1920x1080 even coming close.

There might be an old commit of the source code somewhere in GitHub that's new enough to have the "use all available screen space" feature, but old enough to still have gimmick support. Not 100% sure on this, I forget which order those changes were implemented in. If there is, getting a build of that could be a possible solution here, although keep in mind it'll probably also have physics somewhere inbetween those of V1.43 and V1.47 overall.

[Strato Incendus]

Technical difficulties can absolutely suck the joy out of any game, for that matter, so I feel for you, Flopsy . However, your computer only being able to do short recording sessions seems to be a general problem, not a Lemmicks-specific one, I guess?

I'm having similar issues with my laptop as well; games from 2009 that used to run smoothly before now get really laggy frequently - probably because I was using Windows 7 back then, and Windows 10 takes up a lot more with regards to both space and RAM (it's not uncommon for 2 of my 4 GB RAM to be in permanent use by some kind of background processes, even when I'm not doing anything on my laptop). It's from mid-2010, after all, and both new games and new operating systems have the annoying tendency to exploit the most current hardware capacities to full extent just for the sake of it.

That's one of the things that brought me back to Lemmings, actually, because it's so light on the graphics but has great gameplay. Most modern games are the exact reverse, it seems .

So I hope you give this pack another shot, should you decide to get a new PC anyway (whenever that may be). I know I'll have to do that soon, even though I don't necessarily want to, because I'm not that interested in that many new games; but unfortunately, a lot of what I'm already using is constantly getting updated, too, until my laptop won't be able to keep up with that anymore either.

However, you made some comments with regards to gameplay as well, and that's something I might be able to fix - so let's get ahead:

Also I feel the pack is a little too over precise for NeoLemmix v1.43 and the levels are too difficult for me.

Can you name any examples? As I've said before, "Do not fear" was not intended to be that precise and I wholeheartedly apologise for that one . I just solved it in the way that seemed most natural to me and had no idea I was just one pixel short of failing. But that level should be fixed by now, and you also told me you've solved it in the meantime.

So I guess you've found some more?

Or are there some specific gimmicks you're having trouble with?

Because if you've played the Basic and the Moist rank, you haven't gotten into the level mechanic-warping ones yet.

Basic relies heavily on solid level sides to really hammer them home. And while you did overlook that rules change in several levels, I guess that would just make you more likely to remember it in the later ranks .

Moist shortens your time for solving levels due to rising water, or exploits swimmer dynamics (like in "Here comes the flood", "Need a lift?" or "Baptised by the Holy Ghost"). But apart from that, it doesn't mess with the game mechanics.

If you're just intimidated by "Bathroom leak", remember that levels are only sorted by difficulty within the ranks. The ranks relative to each other are NOT increasing in difficulty.
"Bathroom leak" is hands down one of the hardest levels in the pack because there is so much going on. That doesn't mean all the levels coming afterwards will be even more difficult - quite the opposite, actually .
That's why I encourage jumping around in this pack, like one would jump around in "Lemmings 2: The Tribes":

I didn't want to create only easy "Rising water" levels, and only hardcore "Karoshi" levels, but easy and hard levels for each gimmick.

I feel like I'm a victim of needing clear physics and a splat ruler which I've taken for granted.

With regard to clear physics, I have largely refrained from using hidden traps here precisely for that reason (as I announced in the development thread).

There are a couple of levels using the Purple graphic set where the traps can be considered hidden - that's because these traps were designed to blend in with the terrain, like the boulder trap from the Dirt tileset (which is also used on one level I think, and therefore hard to spot).

With regard to the splat ruler, I'm not aware of any levels among those you've played so far (meaning up to "Bathroom leak") where fall height is a critical variable - drops should either be small enough to know they are not splat height, or so great that it's obvious they are splat height.

Then again, of course I don't know yet what kind of solutions you have come up with .

The only levels where I could see fall height being difficult to assess are the several "We all fall down"-mockery levels throughout the pack. You will clearly be able to identify those by the way they look. In all those cases I can assure you that the terrain is placed exactly at splat height , just like in the level that inspired them.


Well... I guess the pack is up for grabs, then? I didn't intend to "beat" Flopsy with this pack, least of all that early (in contrast to other level creators who openly proclaimed that "beating the player" is their goal ). And I see that all the technical difficulties make this harder than it has to be. Most importantly, I don't want to "beat" any player by creating something that's just not fun to play.

But apparently, even with regard to pure puzzling difficulty, I have still managed to create something one of the long term and experienced forum members considers too hard for him, so... I guess that's some kind of achievement?

So... anyone else willing to test their skills on this - now reportedly difficult - pack in public in the meantime?

I only have a few select replays so far, so I can't really tell how hard most of what I've come up with here actually is... (well, except for the last levels of the Hasty rank, of course ).

[namida]

I'm having similar issues with my laptop as well; games from 2009 that used to run smoothly before now get really laggy frequently - probably because I was using Windows 7 back then, and Windows 10 takes up a lot more with regards to both space and RAM (it's not uncommon for 2 of my 4 GB RAM to be in permanent use by some kind of background processes, even when I'm not doing anything on my laptop).

Two suggestions here. Firstly, reformat your laptop (if we're both on IRC at the same time at some point, I'd be happy to walk you through this - you're going to need something to back up your important files to first (external hard drive, optical discs, Dropbox), as well as either an 8GB+ USB stick or a blank DVD). Secondly, upgrade it to at least 8GB if you're easily able to do so - if you have to take the whole laptop apart to do this you'll probably want to get a technician to help you (though it is entirely possible to DIY it), if you just have to pop off a panel on the bottom you can very easily do this yourself.

[Flopsy]

It's not really so much that the levels are difficult, I'm just really struggling to get to grips with v1.43 gain and its limitations and that is making the levels harder to beat. The amount of times I pressed clear physics and the splat ruler hotkeys in this LP is unreal, I just cannot get used to the fact that they aren't there.

I forgot to mention that in my reply it seems.

When I can afford to, I'll invest in an even higher end computer.

I'd like to point out that there is nothing wrong with Moist 9 and I barely even had a chance to attempt it when I had to stop recording so the level hasn't beaten me.

I'd also like to point out that the pack hasn't beaten me, I have just not got the time to put into it right now and I'm making that known to you rather than just keep quiet then you wonder why the videos stopped.
If the pack had beaten me, it would be going into post commentary format like Migration, Reunion and Master Degree in Lemmings did but I'm not ready to do that yet.

I do feel bad that I have to stop recording this pack for now because it really is a well done pack but the timing is just all wrong right now and I would like to point out that I fully intend on coming back to this pack in the future

There are lots of other factors coming into me giving up this pack
1. I'm about to move house
2. I'm about to start a new job which has intense training involved (factored with the moving house)
3. This LP was way behind schedule and it was near impossible to catch up.
4. While I love gimmicks, the flaws of v1.43 compared to the latest v10 of NeoLemmix are really difficult to overlook.

Regarding pack issues
1. Jumping around ranks is not really my style and it is not my LPing style, I would like to complete a rank before moving onto the next and I always play the pack in order unless I've been advised otherwise.
2. While I respect that the clear physics and splat ruler might not have been needed, it doesn't stop me from being freaked out by pressing them and nothing happening.

and namida, I'm not even considering upgrading this laptop, it's a very bad model and I'm convinced upgrading the laptop is going to have no effect on the recording issues. My CD/DVD drive falls out of this laptop on a regular basis because it is so badly put together. I've had bad experiences with computers, my last laptop died from a hard drive failure after replacing a part on it.

[Strato Incendus]

@namida:

Secondly, upgrade it to at least 8GB if you're easily able to do so - if you have to take the whole laptop apart to do this you'll probably want to get a technician to help you (though it is entirely possible to DIY it), if you just have to pop off a panel on the bottom you can very easily do this yourself.

Yeah, we just recently did that with my father's Macbook, which is also from mid-2010, so I know how it works, but thanks! The question is rather, similarly to Flopsy, whether I want to upgrade this old thing. For example, my father suggested using external graphic cards via USB 3.0, but my USB ports are all just 2.0, so that seemingly brilliant idea goes out the window right away again . Also, most modern games seem to rely on 16 GB RAM already, most certainly with their recommended settings.

So upgrading to miserly 8 GB would probably just mean delaying the inevitable, I fear .

@Flopsy:

There are lots of other factors coming into me giving up this pack
1. I'm about to move house
2. I'm about to start a new job which has intense training involved (factored with the moving house)

First of all, good luck with all that! RL comes first, of course! I was just wondering because you explicitly mentioned the difficulty of the levels.

Your last post now reads more like, apart from your generally busy schedule of course, that it's really predominantly the technical stuff surrounding this pack that's creating the difficulty in the first place .

The technical issues of 1.43 are annoying, of course, but fortunately the imho most annoying ones can be switched off easily:
- the "jumping back to previously selected skill when rewinding" setting
- the fact that there is no level list; having to write down level access codes really would have s*cked, so I'm glad it's still possible to just jump around using the arrow keys

With those two peeves out of the way, I got used to the rest of them fairly easily, because of course I had to, when designing and testing the levels .

That's one of the main reasons I'm so keen on improving this pack: I want to make sure the gimmick levels are really worth that effort of dealing with 1.43 again!

2. While I respect that the clear physics and splat ruler might not have been needed, it doesn't stop me from being freaked out by pressing them and nothing happening.

Well, in exchange you get your beloved leading zeros back...

Can't have it both ways, unfortunately.

I'd also like to point out that the pack hasn't beaten me, I have just not got the time to put into it right now and I'm making that known to you rather than just keep quiet then you wonder why the videos stopped.

Thanks for informing me this early, of course! Though it would have been a whole month left to go anyway before I even could have started to wonder. I'm still curious to see how you solved the Moist and the remaining Basic levels!

Therefore, I am probably going to upload another minor update after the (preliminary?) end of the LP on May 8th, with all the backroutes you've found so far fixed. I also wanted to update the preview text for the final level anyway.

After that, I can get back to Lemmings World Tour at last. Though those levels take a lot longer to design, because painting with level tiles Arty-style is one thing... but making levels look like real world-places on top of that a totally different one!

[Nessy]

Just letting you know that I have decided to officially LP this pack and some other packs by you as well. I personally have zero experience with gimmicks that aren't zombies and would love to see what you have come up. Based on what I have seen from Flopsy's own LP I saw a lot of good stuff and would love to get further into it. Unfortunately it will be a while, but it is definitely planned

[Strato Incendus]

Great, thanks a lot, Nessy! I'm glad to see Lemmicks sparking some more attention!

I don't think Flopsy will mind either, there are other packs that have been LPed by several people (like NepsterLems, for example), and that "overlap" is always helpful to see what different solutions different people come up with. More often than not, that means more backroutes will be found and, consequently, be fixed .

Speaking of that, it's good anyway if it still takes some time till you get started with Lemmicks, because I still have a couple of Flopsy's backroutes to fix .

[Strato Incendus]

And here is the updated version with all of Flopsy's backroutes fixed!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/a35ugjpn0y6185w/Lemmicks.nxp?dl=1

(The link is the starting post should also work.)

I even managed to fix "Eye of the needle" by incorporating a pretty nasty trap placement. ^^

Spoiler

It should be absolutely impossible now to allow a lemming to go into the teleporter facing to the left without that lemming getting killed instantly. I tried turning it into a stoner, and my stoner count in the skill panel did get reduced by one - but at the same time, the lemming was shot .

I will probably also update the music pack along the way as I continue to improve my custom recordings of the lemmings music (mainly timing issues, I'll have to do some more editing on my rhythm guitars, I noticed .)

This is not going to affect the rest of the music for "Lemmicks" though, so @Nessy, don't let that be a hinderance to you.

Please just make sure to download this version of the pack before you start your LP!

[Strato Incendus]

Here is another update with some further minor backroute options in the Basic rank fixed:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/a35ugjpn0y6185w/Lemmicks.nxp?dl=1

(The link in the opening post also works.)

Since these are the earliest levels in the rank, it's going to affect players pretty quickly, so I suggest you update as soon as possible!

Changelog

Spoiler

Basic 10, "In your hands I commit my Lems": I altered the ground by the exit to be entirely made of chains, i.e. lower at the place of the drop, making the fall higher, thereby enforcing the use of a floater on the ghost lemming.

Basic 16, "Gates of Heaven": The vertical pillars were misplaced here so that lemmings could walk from one chamber with a button into the next one. I discovered that by accident while re-watching Flopsy's LP; these chambers were supposed to be closed, and now they are!

Basic 17, "Good Lem, Bad Lem": I threw in one-way arrows so that the crowd on the left has to be freed from the right, either by the other crowd or by the ghost. Since using the crowd would require building over the exit, though, and the builder is required to gain sufficient height for the crowd on the left, I believe this way I enforced using the ghost, which ultimately was what I was going for originally.

[Strato Incendus]

Just a question that came to my mind, considering the obtain loop errors that occured for some people playing Lemmings World Tour:

I remember having to search quite some time for the old versions of especially the L2 and L3 tilesets that were compatible with 1.43. Would it help if I uploaded my style folder for NeoLemmix 1.43 here, as well? Because I don't get any errors when playing this pack, but there were other people who couldn't access certain levels.

[namida]

I remember having to search quite some time for the old versions of especially the L2 and L3 tilesets that were compatible with 1.43. Would it help if I uploaded my style folder for NeoLemmix 1.43 here, as well? Because I don't get any errors when playing this pack, but there were other people who couldn't access certain levels.

When dealing with old-formats, any styles that aren't included with NeoLemmix should be built into the NXP. (This advice should be applied even to 10.13.xx at this point, as - if they aren't already broken - there is zero guarantee that the auto-download feature will continue to work in the future; there really isn't much reason to keep the files on the server now that 10.13.xx is long dead.)

Better yet, don't continue creating content for versions that are now several years out of date, then you won't have version-related issues. You bring these matters on yourself by refusing to use the current version. A lot of gimmick levels can actually be reworked into standard levels with a bit of effort (best example among my own levels would be "The Takeover" (LPII) - the solution to the current version is almost identical to the solution to the old version using the Karoshi gimmick). Radiation and Slowfreeze can often be substituted reasonably well with pickup skills. And those that can't, you can usually make a new puzzle, or at worst a X-of-everything level, from the map.

If your issue is with the new editor, you can always create your levels using the old one (you'll need old formats versions of the styles, though), and convert them (simply open then re-save them in the new editor, or build them into an NXP and run it through the convertor - though be aware the convertor can be a tad buggy when it comes to non-critical features like talismans and backgrounds); though in my opinion, while the new editor seemed annoying and weird at first, it didn't take too long to get used to.

[Strato Incendus]

I don't plan to create another gimmick pack; I just want Lemmicks to work for everyone who wants to play it . And while simple gimmicks such as wraparound can indeed be emulated with e.g. teleporters (I've done so myself repeatedly), more complex gimmicks like No gravity or Karoshi can't.

I would have loved to create such a pack for New Formats, or convert Lemmicks to New Formats. I wasn't the one advising for gimmicks to be removed! If people abused them to troll, that's their loss because they caused the gimmicks to be removed through that behaviour. The point of Lemmicks is to show that gimmicks can be used for fair level creation!

So I guess this is precisely the wrong pack where one could try to convince me to take it to New Formats, because that isn't even possible in the first place .

For Lemmings World Tour, a conversion has much more upsides, like hopefully reducing the number of tileset-mixing based crashes. The main roadblock here is the split-in two Ancient tileset that exists as "angel island" and "chaos angel" in New Formats. We're going to have to have this tileset twice - once split and once complete - in order to make any existing ancient-based levels convertable.

If your issue is with the new editor, you can always create your levels using the old one (you'll need old formats versions of the styles, though), and convert them (simply open then re-save them in the new editor, or build them into an NXP and run it through the convertor - though be aware the convertor can be a tad buggy when it comes to non-critical features like talismans and backgrounds); though in my opinion, while the new editor seemed annoying and weird at first, it didn't take too long to get used to.

My main issue with new formats currently is the horrendously ugly level preview screen. (And, by extension, the level selection window.) It just doesn't feel like playing Lemmings anymore to me. If it were possible to customise it, like pre-level texts where you can enter empty lines, maybe all this unused space could be filled out a little better. I'm curious to see what the next compromise is going to look like, because other forum members have uttered as well that the lines are a little too close together.

I have already built levels with the new editor in preparation for the introduction of the shimmier, so I'm familiar with the controls (the C key to duplicate was the most important part for me, didn't know about that before).

Creating levels in old formats with the purpose to then convert them to new formats is something I only do for my own tilesets, because if I make the effort of creating them once, I want to have them available on both platforms. I don't go so far as to create them with the old graphics tool for 1.43 and then convert them "forward" twice, but that's mainly just because I don't see the need for another gimmick pack at the moment.

Apart from that, using the old editor for new formats level creation is rather pointless - not only because of the graphic sets (and soon: skills) you can't access in it, but also because of the graphic sets you do have available that aren't available in new formats yet .

Like the remaining Gronkling tilesets: I have converted the last three remaining ones for myself (ancient, electric, and digital), I only need to get the rest of the "formal" stuff from the "how to convert a graphic set"-list out of the way.

And those that can't, you can usually make a new puzzle, or at worst a X-of-everything level, from the map.

You kind of put your weakest argument last here, because you know how much I hate X-of-everything levels. I'd rather remove a radiation or slowfreeze-based level completely and have it as it was meant to be in the original pack than turn it into something generic just for the sake of still having it in the pack.

Anyways, I copied my NeoLemmix 1.43 styles folder into my dropbox and put a link to it in the starting post. Everyone who has trouble with certain levels from this pack, download that folder and integrate it into the styles folder in your NeoLemmix 1.43 folder.

[Proxima]

If people abused them to troll, that's their loss because they caused the gimmicks to be removed through that behaviour. The point of Lemmicks is to show that gimmicks can be used for fair level creation!

You're confusing the gimmicks removal (which was before your time) with other culling discussions, e.g. fake objects. Gimmicks were removed because they made a mess of the code and stood in the way of implementing features we actually wanted to see; any new feature would have required additional code for every interaction with a gimmick. (Caveat: I'm not a coder myself, but what I've said is my understanding of the situation.)

The main roadblock here is the split-in two Ancient tileset that exists as "angel island" and "chaos angel" in New Formats. We're going to have to have this tileset twice - once split and once complete - in order to make any existing ancient-based levels convertable.

New-formats is text based, so you can open your favourite text editor and change all "ancient_piecename" to "angelisland_piecename" or whatever. I accept this would be laborious with a large number of levels, but I think namida or Simon could help you out with a conversion tool?

I'm curious to see what the next compromise is going to look like, because other forum members have uttered as well that the lines are a little too close together.

We already had a discussion on this and decided on a compromise. Link with screenshot.

[Strato Incendus]

First of all, thanks for linking to that screenshot; I've replied to that in the respective thread.

Gimmicks were removed because they made a mess of the code and stood in the way of implementing features we actually wanted to see; any new feature would have required additional code for every interaction with a gimmick.

Ah, you mean like the fencer? Okay, that's a fair point - the shimmier probably would take a lot longer to implement as well if all the gimmicks had to be considered on top of everything else. It was quite radical though to remove all gimmicks at once, except for zombies - there were clearly more and less useful ones. So while I get that things like hardworkers and no gravity must be a nightmare to code when it comes to new features, I guess things like ghost lemmings or the Karoshi gimmick were much less affected by this.

New-formats is text based, so you can open your favourite text editor and change all "ancient_piecename" to "angelisland_piecename" or whatever. I accept this would be laborious with a large number of levels, but I think namida or Simon could help you out with a conversion tool?

I don't understand why it was split up in the first place - that wasn't done to any other tileset, and not only does it not help in converting levels, it even actively prevents conversion of pre-existing levels with this style, while at the same time making the terrain pieces redundantly available. This just reeks to me like more of the "we don't care about backward compatibility" mentality that was present around the time of the formats shift .

To me it would be a lot easier to convert the entire graphic set and have it as "ancient" in new formats, just like before. Don't know how many people have built new levels with angel island and/or chaos angel in new formats in the meantime, though. But I guess it's less than the number of levels created with ancient before .

One point where I did shoot myself in the foot indeed was adding the extra pieces that were created for the original Lemmings tilesets in New Formats into my Old Formats versions as well. While the problem for the player was easily fixed by providing my styles folder in the download of Lemmings World Tour, when I try converting such a level, obviously these pieces aren't recognised and simply left blank. And sadly, I've built whole structures consisting only of these, so it's not just like "add in a missing piece here, and you can already see exactly where it has to go". I'll have to rebuild these structures by hand once I convert those levels - there aren't too many of them, though.

[namida]

One point where I did shoot myself in the foot indeed was adding the extra pieces that were created for the original Lemmings tilesets in New Formats into my Old Formats versions as well. While the problem for the player was easily fixed by providing my styles folder in the download of Lemmings World Tour, when I try converting such a level, obviously these pieces aren't recognised and simply left blank. And sadly, I've built whole structures consisting only of these, so it's not just like "add in a missing piece here, and you can already see exactly where it has to go". I'll have to rebuild these structures by hand once I convert those levels - there aren't too many of them, though.

Not at all - you just need to modify the relevant NXTT file (in data/translation) to add the new pieces to it. Very little, if anything, is hardcoded in regards to the old-to-new conversion; it reads from these files to figure out what piece number in old-formats corresponds to which name in new-formats.

Like most (if not all) NeoLemmix files that have a four-letter extension starting with NX (or alternatively: any extension starting with NX, except for NXP), these files are simply text, and you can modify them with any text editor. Just look at the existing data, it should be fairly easy to figure out how to modify it for your additional pieces.

Both NeoLemmix itself, and the NXP conversion tool, will make use of your changes to these files when you try to load levels from old-formats or one of the supported non-NeoLemmix formats. (The editor too, in practice; though on a technical level the editor doesn't understand any file other than NeoLemmix new-formats levels. If it encounters anything else, it asks NeoLemmix to convert it - so essentially, it supports any format NeoLemmix itself supports - which includes DOS levels, old-formats NeoLemmix levels, (Super)Lemmini levels, and an obscure clone I can't recall the name of, but the format was very simple and someone requested it so I added support.)

[IchoTolot]

I'm just going to link the graphic set conversion topic here again, as it explains the whole translation table thing : https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=3393.0

[Strato Incendus]

Ah, okay, thanks a lot, namida and IchoTolot! For the levels in original Lemmings tilesets, this is certainly viable. For the Ancient levels, which are usually huge and consist of all kinds of pieces, this is going to be more fiddly, because a lot of pieces look very similar and it's often not clear which piece has to go where in a level.

So I text-edit the single level to add pieces to it - not the translation table of the style file, right? Because if I did the latter, we'd end up with two versions of Fire, Pillar, Marble, and Brick again.

All of this is only relevant to Lemmings World Tour, though, not to Lemmicks .

and an obscure clone I can't recall the name of, but the format was very simple and someone requested it so I added support.)

Maybe WinLems? That was what I used before I discovered NeoLemmix.

[namida]

So I text-edit the single level to add pieces to it - not the translation table of the style file, right? Because if I did the latter, we'd end up with two versions of Fire, Pillar, Marble, and Brick again.

No - edit the translation table. These are only for your personal modifications that you've made to old formats styles for *your* levels (hopefully - please tell me there haven't been alternate versions of these styles going around in the wild!), so you never need to distribute these modified NXTT files.

The only purpose of the translation table files, is in conversion from older formats to the current NeoLemmix format. Once the level is converted, the translation table no longer affects it, so people do not need your modified NXTT file to play your converted levels. (Of course, they do still need the new pieces themself - but if I'm understanding you correctly, these arent' custom pieces, just new-formats pieces you back-ported to old formats. So, everyone should already have them.)


And, on a side note...

So I guess this is precisely the wrong pack where one could try to convince me to take it to New Formats, because that isn't even possible in the first place .

Actually, this is a perfect example of a pack to use - because it's one where you went out of your way to use old formats, to create a pack that couldn't even work on new formats. Not only that, but even by old formats standards, the version this pack requires was extremely outdated.

[Strato Incendus]

but if I'm understanding you correctly, these arent' custom pieces, just new-formats pieces you back-ported to old formats. So, everyone should already have them.)

Yes, that is indeed the case, nothing new created by me. I just "maintained" the old formats versions of these tilesets for a while, as the new formats versions kept getting updated .

Thanks a lot for explaining the purpose of the translation table to me! I had already read through the conversion instructions that IchoTolot linked to here again several times while doing my conversions of the graphic sets, but it wasn't clear to me that the translation table could effectively even be thrown away entirely, once a given user has converted all of their own levels featuring a particular style.

Actually, this is a perfect example of a pack to use - because it's one where you went out of your way to use old formats, to create a pack that couldn't even work on new formats. Not only that, but even by old formats standards, the version this pack requires was extremely outdated.

Yeah, but not out of spite or aesthetic preferences (like with New Formats and the level preview screen), but in this case purely for game-mechanical reasons. Lemmings World Tour probably could have been created without radiation or slowfreeze, minding the levels where you need them to interact with zombies (Only time, Blowing in the wind, and All you zombies). Lemmicks however literally couldn't have worked on any other platform.

It wasn't an easy choice to create levels that were bound to be without the fencer or tileset mixing from the beginning. But the sheer amount of absolutely unique design space opened up by the gimmicks was definitely worth it!

Mechanic-wise, Lemmicks has caused me no performance issues whatsoever, in contrast to Lemmings World Tour, where I brought it on myself with the tileset mixing. Lemmicks, for all the features it's missing, runs pretty smoothly on my PC (partly perhaps precisely because you cannot mix tilesets in 1.43 ).

So I don't see the issue with these styles being outdated. If outdated merely means "old-fashioned", I'll happily take it!

All I wanted to do now is make sure that works the same way for other players, because there were certain levels they couldn't access while I could.

[607]

I managed to beat The 8 Commandments, and enjoyed it! I feel like I got rather close at Do not Fear and Salem Chaverim (by the way: I love the level titles here!!). I'll now check out a gimmick rank, as I've heard every rank starts out easy.
Edit: I tried the first level of Moist but when I didn't get it quickly moved on to Consequential, as that is the gimmick that most intrigued me when I was into NeoLemmix level creation myself. I beat Ticking down, and really like it!
I probably won't play more soon, as I rarely play Lemmings, and prefer the original above NeoLemmix. But I'm a bit sick/ill, and when I saw this topic, I got the impulse to try this out. (and when I'm ill, I tend to give in to impulses very easily )

[Strato Incendus]

Thanks, 607, that's good to hear! If you need help with those two levels, save a replay of what your doing so far by pressing U while in the level. (This old replay format is called .lrb)

Yes, all the gimmick ranks start out pretty easy, but with only 10 levels per rank, the difficulty obviously increases pretty drastically. Don't let yourself get intimidated, though, and start with whatever gimmick looks most appealing to you! There's a pre-level screen on each first level of every rank telling you what gimmicks are active.

When it comes to the Bedlam rank, I may still remove the Frenzy- + Superlemming-gimmicks from a couple of its levels to make them less annoying to execute.

EDIT: Yes, the first two Consequential levels I'm rather proud of . I must admit though that they do get a little weaker in the sense of "more generic" towards the end. It's pretty clear that whatever skill you have the fewest of, that's the one you have to use first. And if you have an equal number of every skill, i.e. an X-of-everything level, that just adds so many degrees of freedom to the level that backroutes are hard to prevent. Still, if that's the rank you're most curious about - and if it helps you recover more quickly - go ahead and try it!

[WillLem]

Really enjoying these so far

I'll get some replays over when I've made a decent way through the pack. Just a quick question in the meantime - is it possible to customise Lemmings sprites and/or in-game graphics in NL 1.43?

[namida]

Just a quick question in the meantime - is it possible to customise Lemmings sprites and/or in-game graphics in NL 1.43?

A pack can provide custom graphics; but the user can't modify them themself.

[Strato Incendus]

Hi WillLem,

I'm glad this pack is receiving some more attention! I think it whent somewhat under the radar after Flopsy dropped his Let's Play for technical reasons (he couldn't record NeoLemmix 1.43 in full-screen mode).

Nessy had announced his attentions to Let's Play this pack on his channel a while ago, but maybe he changed his mind.

Packs for older versions than New Formats are now also more "hidden-away" than they used to be when everything was in one and the same forum. Consequently, fewer people find them. But I get that it would become very confusing to have everything mixed up in one forum, especially given the large number of packs which are still unconverted.

Feel free to send me your replays, of course! I have only received selected ones from various single levels, as well as having watched Flopsy's LP up to the upper middle of rank 2. So many ranks seem to be completely unplayed, and therefore probably also still full of backroutes. It probably won't take long until I have to release another update then .

I might also use this opportunity to make some of the Bedlam levels at the very end of the pack a little fairer.

Specifically, the Hasty rank used to combine the Superlemming gimmick (=increased game speed), the Frenzy gimmick (=no pause button), and the instant-pickup-skills gimmick on every level. Since the latter gimmick makes for better puzzles, while the first two just require fast reactions, I split the rank in the middle, with the puzzles coming first, then the reaction-time levels. However, some of the Bedlam levels still feature the complete combination of Superlemming, Frenzy, and Instant Pickup Skills. The worst offender here is probably a level called "So much to do, so little time". This is something I want to look into again.

But it will probably take a while until you arrive there, so I should have enough time to fix this level - and some of the backroutes you might discover on the earlier ranks - in the meantime.

[WillLem]

Hi Strato,

Is there a way to 'unpack' the NXP file to get to the individual levels? Or - do you have the levels as separate LVL or INI files which can be opened in the editor?

I ask because since SuperLemmini supports most of the gimmicks, I think it's well worth giving this pack an SL port now that Tsyu has done an update - it'll look glorious in hi-res.

Let me know what you think.

[Strato Incendus]

I think it should be possible to press a key in the main menu that allows you to "dump" all the level files, i.e. extract them from the pack. They will then show up in a folder in your NeoLemmix folder called "dump".

I don't remember which key it is, since that features was only necessary in Old Formats - in New Formats, you already have every single level file, and the pack is pieced together in the NeoLemmix player, so it's exactly the other way round. But if you look at the preferences window in the main menu, if NeoLemmix 1.43 already had the "level dump" function, simply look for that keyword "dump", and then see which keyboard shortcut ist assigned to it.

That said, I don't see how this pack would work in SuperLemmini, given that it uses NeoLemmix skills? Neither the Fencer nor the Shimmier were available back then, but the pack still makes use of Disarmers, Walkers, Gliders, Shimmiers, Cloners, Stackers, Platformers, and Stoners. So unless Tsyu has added all those to SuperLemmini, I don't see why this would work. Also, SuperLemmini has timed Bombers, to my knowledge? The levels weren't designed to work with those. In fact, I think that's obvious, not a single level in this pack was designed to work in SuperLemmini. So I won't guarantee for anything in this regard.

Try whether the level dump-feature works from the main menu of NeoLemmix 1.43 when you start "Lemmicks". If not, of course I still have the individual LVL files, which I could put in a ZIP folder or similar. But you might already be able to extract the level files yourself from the main menu. I definitely did not actively disable level dumping when compiling the pack. Meaning, there was an option to actively not allow the extraction of single level files from the pack. But to my knowledge, the only user who ever did that was Colorful Arty on SubLems, probably to protect his "paintings" from being re-used by other forum members...

[WillLem]

Thanks for the reply, I'm not seeing the "Level Dump" feature anywhere in the NL Main Menu. There was an option that says "Look for LVL files", so I checked it but I don't think that has anything to do with unpacking levels.

It didn't occur to me that, of course the levels won't work in SL as the new skills aren't there! I'd forgotten about that.

If you fancy sending me the individual LVLs anyway so I can see what's possible, that'd be great. Lemmicks is a cool pack, I think it's worth investigating further.

[Proxima]

It didn't occur to me that, of course the levels won't work in SL as the new skills aren't there! I'd forgotten about that.

I'm also pretty sure it doesn't have gimmicks! Other than Superlemming (which is from the original games) and wrap (which Lix also has) the gimmicks have, as far as I know, only ever been a feature of NeoLemmix before they were removed. Or am I wrong about that?

[Strato Incendus]

The level dump feature definitely does exist in NeoLemmix 1.43, because I have a folder named "Dump" in my NeoLemmix 1.43 folder. But anyways, here's all the Lemmicks level files attached as a ZIP! Usually those aren't too useful for people, because if you wanted to play the "pack" this way, you'd have to open every level separately in the editor. But that's kind of how I did pre-release testing for this pack: By uploading a ZIP folder with the levels finished so far to the development thread.

It also includes some of the rejected / unfinished levels, for those interested - I pretty much just grabbed the entire folder in its latest iteration and converted it to ZIP.

[mantha16]

is there any chance this can be converted for a more up to date player?  I can't get to grips with it without the frame rewind function im too rubbish at the game without it lol

[WillLem]

is there any chance this can be converted for a more up to date player?  I can't get to grips with it without the frame rewind function im too rubbish at the game without it lol

The new player unfortunately doesn't support any of the "gimmick" features included in the Lemmicks pack, so even if it were converted to new-formats, it wouldn't work anyway!

You can use framestepping in the old version, though. Press F3 in the main menu screen and under the Global Options tab click the "Hotkeys" button. From here, you can customise any key you want to be assigned to forward/backwards framestepping.

For example, in this picture you can see that "B" is assigned to Time Skip -1, which means it will skip backwards 1 frame:



Of course, you can set any key to skip forwards/backwards any amount of frames. The only thing to be aware of is that, in this version of NL (1.43), time skip doesn't automatically pause the game, so if you want to skip forwards and backwards whilst paused, you have to press pause first.

[Strato Incendus]

Thanks for explaining, WillLem, you're doing my work for me here...

Note that the default setting in NeoLemmix 1.43 is that, when you rewind, the skill selected on the skill panel also switches back to whatever skill you had selected at that frame (see starting post). It is possible to switch this off in the preferences window, though (which I did, because I've always been used to the "new" way - which already existed in Old Formats, i.e. version 10.13 - in that the selected skill on the panel is not part of the replay file).

[mantha16]

cool thanks both youre slowly but surely dragging me into learning what to do willlem before you know it I'll be designing levels (but not really)

[WillLem]

cool thanks both youre slowly but surely dragging me into learning what to do willlem before you know it I'll be designing levels (but not really)

Looking forward to seeing your first level!

[Strato Incendus]

Just be aware that, if you want to design gimmick levels like these ones right here, you're also going to need the old NeoLemmix editor for version 1.43. It should be accessible via the NeoLemmix homepage under "old versions", but I've attached the one I'm using again (well, I'm not actively using it at the moment, but I still have it, and since WillLem suggested a while ago to eventually make a Lemmicks 2 pack, who knows... ).

Creation of content for outdated versions is of course discouraged by the NeoLemmix community, but by now, New-Formats NeoLemmix has developed so far away from this ancient version that it's almost a different engine. There are three skills which NeoLemmix 1.43 doesn't have, compared to the newest version of New Formats (Fencer, Shimmier, and Jumper, in that order). But in exchange, it has all those gimmicks. And though it looks like wrap may return to New-Formats NeoLemmix eventually, it will most likely look different (infinite scrolling, rather than lemmings leaving the level at one edge and re-entering at the other). Karoshi won't come back, nor will SuperLemming (and those were the only gimmicks even brought up by people as requests for re-introduction).

So yeah, I think there's definitely still design space available for a Lemmicks 2...

[WillLem]

WillLem suggested a while ago to eventually make a Lemmicks 2 pack

I'm thinking Lemmicks 2 should be much easier than Lemmicks, so that the gimmicks, rather than the puzzles, are the main feature of the pack. That way, the player can simply concentrate on having fun with the unusual gameplay styles that the gimmicks themselves present, rather than having to tackle challenging level solutions as well. In all honesty, there are very few levels in Lemmicks that I've actually solved: most of them I've skipped past after a few tries, which is a shame because it has the potential to be a really fun pack.

Not that very difficult levels aren't fun, it's just that if you're playing a level and it's the first time you've ever seen a particular gimmick, really the level needs to be a gimme (as do the next few after it), otherwise I can imagine most players will lose interest quickly.

I'd also suggest only using orig and ohno tilesets, so that the player is learning the mechanics of each gimmick in a familiar setting, again at least for the first few levels in each rank.

The pack should ideally be a showcase of the best gimmicks: it's unfortunate that a lot of the really good ones got culled along with the ones that, frankly, are just annoying; I can see why a lot of these weren't very popular. However, we can bring some of the more wholesome ones back in a fun, enjoyable way which make a good case for the presence of gimmicks in a Lemmings game.

Here's what I'd suggest as a pack structure, starting with gimmicks that are easier to get used to after a few levels and then moving onto the more challenging ones later in the pack:

Rank 1: Wrap (8 levels)
Rank 2: Backwards Walkers (8 levels)
Rank 3: No Gravity (8 levels)
Rank 4: Rising Water (8 levels)
Rank 5: Frenzy (8 levels)
Rank 6: SuperLemming (with Frenzy) (8 levels)
Rank 7: Karoshi (with Mixed Gimmicks) (16 levels)
Rank 8: Bedlam (Mixed Gimmicks) (16 levels)

Note that I haven't included ranks for Turn-on-assign, Instant pickups, Countdown-other-skills, Non-fatal bombers - these are gimmicks which I think are best being featured occasionally throughout rather than having an entire rank devoted to them (instant pickups, for example, is one that loses its novelty very quickly); however, they're good enough ideas to appear occasionally.

I'd suggest leaving these out of the pack altogether, unless you feel strongly otherwise: Hardworkers, Permanent blockers, Non-permanent skills, Lazy Lemmings. These all have far more annoyance value than novelty value.

The main thing I'd emphasise for this pack is that it's straightforward in terms of its puzzle content, at least for the first 4 or 5 levels of each rank. Of course, the last few levels in each rank can present more of a challenge once the player is used to the gimmick.

Let me know if you're in agreement with this, and if so then it can be a fun ongoing side project for us to add levels to every now and then when we get good ideas.

Incidentally, is there a way to customise the skill panel for packs in 1.43?

[mantha16]

I have to be honest I gave up after 6 levels I just don't enjoy the older players that much anything above 10 is fine as that has most of the things I like.

I really wish I could design levels but I don't think I have the skill or patience.

[Strato Incendus]

Thanks for your suggestions, WillLem!

I'm happy that mantha16 posted in the meantime, though, because her post is a great example of the fact that, contrary to what you seem to assume, the main thing keeping people from diving deeper into Lemmicks, as far as I can tell, is indeed not the difficulty, but the fact that it relies on an older and "clunkier" version of the NeoLemmix player, without many of the modern conveniences people have grown accustomed to.

I know you come from a different design philosophy, so I can understand that the puzzle difficulty might be what makes the pack less enjoyable for you personally.

This also reflects in the gimmicks you suggest to choose for Lemmicks 2. If you have a look through this thread, you will notice that neither No Gravity, nor Frenzy, nor SuperLemming were particularly liked by the community at large. Some people outright refused to play the Cosmic rank because of the No Gravity gimmick - not because of the puzzle difficulty.

Puzzle difficulty was only explicitly mentioned by people in context of the Basic rank, i.e. the only one without any gimmicks. I guess that was because some expected it to be an auto-solve rank, rather than one that was designed to get them used to the changed physics, such as solid level sides, again. This caught some people off-guard, even though it was mentioned in the beginning and emphasized repeatedly on several levels of the Basic rank.

Rising water also introduces a timing-based challenge into levels that can be conceptualised more as execution difficulty. Only in the levels where the water is used as a "lift" for Swimmers can it be considered part of the puzzle; otherwise, it's just a time limit in object form.

In contrast, instant pickup skills, turn on assign, and countdown other skills are completely "fair" in the sense of predictable from the start of the level.

The majority of the NeoLemmix community, as far as I can tell, favours challenging puzzle-style levels. Using NeoLemmix 1.43 for a pack is already going to reduce the number of potentially interested people drastically. Straying from the core philosophy of NeoLemmix on top of that might just reduce that number to zero.

Especially Frenzy in combination with SuperLemming was removed from the Hasty rank for good reason (see the previous pages as well as the Lemmicks development thread) and definitely NOT what most people in the NeoLemmix community would consider "fun" .

There are still a couple of Frenzy-SuperLemming levels on the Bedlam rank, but I'm thinking about fixing those levels as well.

[mantha16]

Thanks for your suggestions, WillLem!

I'm happy that mantha16 posted in the meantime, though, because his post is a great example of the fact that, contrary to what you seem to assume, the main thing keeping people from diving deeper into Lemmicks, as far as I can tell, is indeed not the difficulty, but the fact that it relies on an older and "clunkier" version of the NeoLemmix player, without many of the modern conveniences people have grown accustomed to.

I know you come from a different design philosophy, so I can understand that the puzzle difficulty might be what makes the pack less enjoyable for you personally.

This also reflects in the gimmicks you suggest to choose for Lemmicks 2. If you have a look through this thread, you will notice that neither No Gravity, nor Frenzy, nor SuperLemming were particularly liked by the community at large. Some people outright refused to play the Cosmic rank because of the No Gravity gimmick - not because of the puzzle difficulty.

Puzzle difficulty was only explicitly mentioned by people in context of the Basic rank, i.e. the only one without any gimmicks. I guess that was because some expected it to be an auto-solve rank, rather than one that was designed to get them used to the changed physics, such as solid level sides, again. This caught some people off-guard, even though it was mentioned in the beginning and emphasized repeatedly on several levels of the Basic rank.

Rising water also introduces a timing-based challenge into levels that can be conceptualised more as execution difficulty. Only in the levels where the water is used as a "lift" for Swimmers can it be considered part of the puzzle; otherwise, it's just a time limit in object form.

In contrast, instant pickup skills, turn on assign, and countdown other skills are completely "fair" in the sense of predictable from the start of the level.

The majority of the NeoLemmix community, as far as I can tell, favours challenging puzzle-style levels. Using NeoLemmix 1.43 for a pack is already going to reduce the number of potentially interested people drastically. Straying from the core philosophy of NeoLemmix on top of that might just reduce that number to zero.

Especially Frenzy in combination with SuperLemming was removed from the Hasty rank for good reason (see the previous pages as well as the Lemmicks development thread) and definitely NOT what most people in the NeoLemmix community would consider "fun" .

There are still a couple of Frenzy-SuperLemming levels on the Bedlam rank, but I'm thinking about fixing those levels as well.

*I'm a her

I'm an average player at best and I rarely complete packs because they get too difficult for me.

I like the decorative tilesets but usually end up playing in clear physics mode as the decorative tilesets hurt my age weary eyes

I have always wanted to play lemmicks but it is the player that has put me off

I like levels that are challenging but not insane and I think for a lot of forum members that are active they are way more versed in the game so they want tough levels which is understandable.  I personally wish more people designed easier packs that can occupy my time but not be so difficult i give up. 

[mantha16]

also no more zombies I loathe zombie levels and the honeycomb tileset lol

[Strato Incendus]

*I'm a her

Oops, sorry, there was no info in your profile, and I instinctively thought of your nickname being based on the animal, a "manta", which is male in my native language (German, "der Manta") .

I personally wish more people designed easier packs that can occupy my time but not be so difficult i give up.

Yes, this is an issue I have repeatedly criticised myself. My earlier packs are a lot easier (Pit Lems and Paralems), however they use a lot of outdated features and are therefore not easily updated to New Formats. I'm working on a pack that joins levels fom Paralems, Pit Lems, and Lemmicks and converts them to New Formats, but this takes some time - checking whether all the solutions still work in New Formats, rearranging the levels by difficulty etc.

Since you day everything starting from version 10 is fine for you, you could give Old-Formats Pit Lems a shot. Paralems probably has too many Zombie levels for your taste, Pit Lems just has a select few.

Plus, there's a completed Let's Play on YouTube by nin10doadict, so you can easily look up the solutions in case you get stuck (well, unless nin10doadict backrouted the level and I fixed it in the meantime ).

For version 10, there are also a couple of other great, yet unconverted packs, like Colorful Arty's SubLems, which has an excellent difficulty curve.

A couple of older and easier packs have also been converted to New Formats; they just fly under the radar because they're older, I guess (GeoffLems and MazuLems, for example, come to mind).

[mantha16]

well I'm enjoying designing levels and my husband is really good at lemmings puns so he's going to help me name levels in future pack, for my first pack I'm staying small and designing levels I'd like playing.

Probably my favourite pack is Vamplemmings even though it doesn't add properly and you have to add levels individually to work properly.

I also liked reverselemmings, oh no more reverse lemmings,

There are some packs where I really like the first levels but they get tough for me very quickly like a master degree in lemmings, lemmings squared

I've started most of the packs and enjoyed them got quite far into geofflems and dovelems

pitlems I've played in the past and enjoyed but periodically I delete everything and start again (usually when I have so many packs it starts to take ages to load neolemmix) so I will have to try again.

I've completed lemmings, ohno more lemmings covox lemmings and the additional official packs apart from like 3 or 4 levels.

I enjoy a lot of Willlems packs but he designs some really toughys so I don't get too far into them I especially love the aesthetic of Leminas

as for my name its half of my actual name and is what my grandad used to call me as a child.  if I went for a german animal name I'd go Meerschweinchen cos I have two of them and I like how the word looks

[Strato Incendus]

Another fairly easy pack I forgot to tell you about is CasuaLemmings, also by nin10doadict, but arguably a lot easier than Lemmings Squared. It has only been updated to New Formats recently, which is why I wasn't completely aware of it when I wrote this morning.

[WillLem]

I enjoy a lot of Willlems packs but he designs some really toughys so I don't get too far into them I especially love the aesthetic of Leminas

It's one thing I learned quite quickly - it's easier to design harder levels, because you know the solution! The line between an easy level that's fun & engaging and an easy level that's boring & trivial is a very fine one!

Right now I'm concentrating on what makes a good "easy" level. I have plans to make an LP series playing through just the first ranks of a bunch of level packs by way of research (and entertainment, of course!).

Also, you can expect Lemminas II to be much easier than the first one: I'll be making sure that it never gets harder than about Taxing difficulty, maybe with a few Mayhem-style ones thrown in the last rank for good measure.

Incidentally, your levels are no pushovers! Like I said - it's easier to make harder levels.

[mantha16]

Incidentally, your levels are no pushovers! Like I said - it's easier to make harder levels.

but they all qualify as easy right?

[WillLem]

but they all qualify as easy right?

I'd put them in either Tricky or Crazy, maybe even Wild - so, easy-medium difficulty. They all take a little bit of figuring out, it's not always immediately obvious what needs to happen.

That said, figuring out a solution to these happens fairly quickly given the small size of the levels, and there are multiple possible solutions, so your levels are the good kind of easy.

[kaywhyn]

I just started playing this pack several days ago, and I got to say that I'm really enjoying this pack a lot. I absolutely agree with Flopsy, this is indeed a wonderful pack, as well as with the assessment that it's not a difficult pack, as so far I have managed to solve everything up through Hasty 10 with relative ease. For the most part, the levels do indeed get harder as you progress along in the ranks, but they're not too hard.  Surprisingly, Neolemmix v1.43 has not been all that annoying for me at all, but that's probably because I had just beaten Giga's Resident packs a month or two just before playing Lemmicks, so I guess the timing was just right so that I'm very used to the features compatible with v1.43 only, even when I have played packs on v10.13 in between the playing of Giga's packs and your Lemmicks pack. For example, I got used to the solid sides extremely quickly, although I still occasionally forgot to take advantage of it when containing the crowd or in the solution. Your pack lives on, Strato!

Anyway, I have just beaten 100 levels total, and I thought would be a good time to send my replays. The replays start at Circular 2 and go all the way through Hasty 10, in order. I don't have any Basic or Moist replays, but if you want the ones to Moist I could always replay them, which shouldn't take too long now that I know the solution to all the Moist levels. With what I've played so far, I'm enjoying these gimmicks a lot more than I thought I would. Circular with the wrap gimmick is probably my most favorite, while other gimmicks like turn on assign I would often forget that the lemmings turn, or how backwards walkers I would forget the lemmings would start walking backwards after finishing performing a skill so that timing placement of skills is crucial. Ephermal with the lazy lemmings gimmick was somewhat annoying, alleviated by the fact that the levels in which the lazy lemmings gimmick was active weren't massive spam fests with the constructive/destructive skills. Some remarks on Basic and Moist:

Spoiler

Basic

Wow, even for a rank called "Basic" these levels are no pushovers at all! I say the hardest of the rank would be level 11 - Mene Mene tekel u-parsan. For this level, it's not a difficult solution, but rather the hardest part would be the gliding and stoning near the right edge so that a lemming can climb the side and glide to the platform above. Once that is successful, the rest of the level is easy. Level 10 - Into Your Hands I Commit My Lem isn't a difficult level, but I thought it was strange how the lemmings survived even though part of the flamethrower trap went through the builder staircase as it nearly disappears. Level 15 - Skill Segregation managed to stump me for a good bit, but once I realized that the lemmings on the right that fall to the bottom platform where the exit is can be assigned walkers, the rest of the level was easy.

Moist

3 - Need a lift Is it supposed to take a really long time to solve this? From what I recall, the timer was at 20 minutes when I beat the level. This level also managed to stump me for a good while, when it dawned on me that the gimmick active for this rank is rising water, which means it is unnecessary to use the builders to build to the exit, which I kept doing. All I did, then, was contain the lemmings with a digger pit by having the ghost lemming dig, have a regular lemming build so that the stairs don't go past the pit, max RR, have the ghost climb out to the left, dig before the water pit, then time the release of the crowd so that the lemmings would be bunched up as the ghost was coming back to the left after bashing before the fire trap after the water had risen enough to allow the lemmings to swim to the exit. Then it's a matter of turning the 15 lemmings that survive into swimmers.

6 - Here Comes the Flood After I beat this level, I remember reading about this level in your Perservation topic a long time ago and I'm very surprised that people would actually attempt to climb the right side of the level. It never occurred to me to do such a thing, as surely that wouldn't lead to a solution at all. I always took the left side to get up the level, which is indeed what you're supposed to do. As a result, I thought this level wasn't difficult at all. I actually like this level. It has a really good solution.

9 - Bathroom Leak I agree with you that this is the hardest level in the rank, as I got stuck on this for a while. For a long time, I thought the ghost was useless when in actuality it was very integral to the solution. From what I remember, I had a builder left over. I platformed all the way to the other side above, and near the end I got really scared that some lemmings would drown from the rising water while walking on the lemming's platform bricks to the exit, but luckily they all managed to make it.

Now feedback for Circular through Hasty ranks:

Spoiler

Circular

2 - Endlessly Falling This one is really precise with the placement of the first stoner in order to clone a platforming glider to catch the crowd and to reach the platform to the right. Luckily, this one doesn't take too long to figure out due to the very limited skillset.

4 - Spider-Lem at OSCORP Pretty easy. The bottom lemming is a glider and done, and so the challenge is getting the top lemming home, but if you recall that the wrap gimmick is active, then the only way is for the lemming to climb up the top of the level so that he reappears at the bottom.

5 - Circular Logic This one was a bit tricky, even though it's a 3 of everything level. There's probably a more efficient way to solve this than what I did, though.

6 - An arrowr in the level design? Great and easy level.

7 - Lem It Snow Arty said he was stuck on this one, but honestly I thought this one was easy. It's easy to figure out what needs to be done, it's the execution that can be a bit fiddly. I had to rewind a few times to get the miner correct, but other than that it's pretty straightforward, especially if you keep in mind that wrap is active.

8 - Turn this Club Around Another excellent level. This was probably my favorite one of the rank. I'm surprised I got the digger in the correct position to allow the climbers to appear at the bottom and use the bottom exit. As you can see in the replay, I intended for both crowds to take the top exit due to the stoner step to break the fall.

9 - Drop the Bomb Backroute? I didn't need to have the zombies come disarm the traps.

Consequential

Due to the way the skill countdown gimmick works in this rank, in general it made it difficult to plan out the solution. For this reason, levels like 4 - The Path of Least Resistance was tricky, but it's still a great level that really made me think. Level 6 - Limited Resources was another tricky one, and there's probably more efficient ways than how I solved it due to making the top an all builder fest. Level 7 - The Privilege of Survival I'm not sure if there are other ways of solving this besides the massive builder fest I used in my solution. Level 8 - We Can't Afford to All Fall Down Well I guess I still did manage to make them all fall down digger style lol. 

Twisted

1 - Moonwalk Appropriate title (pretty much every level in this rank can be named moonwalk since they all walk backwards, but what fun would that be lol). Easy level to begin the rank. Easy once you realize that you need to assign a builder immediately at the start.

2 - Bend Backwards Ok, I managed to have a climber leftover. I later came back to this level and was surprised that the stacker can indeed climb over it even though he is facing the wrong direction. I think that's what makes this rank unintuitive when it comes to climbers since most of the time we're used to climbers climbing walls when they are facing the wall instead of facing away. Luckily in both cases, lemmings only climb the instant they touch the wall regardless if they're facing backwards or forwards, so maybe just unintuitive at first.

5 - Hell in a Handbasket Excellent and easy level. I just realized that it wasn't necessary for me to build after the basher was done, but this resulted in another thing that caught me by surprise in this rank: When lemmings ascend 3 pixels or higher they briefly turn around before facing the direction they were facing before. I guess this brief moment they're facing the other direction when ascending can be exploited when you want to build or bash, for example, but this only works if the backwards walking gimmick is enabled.

6 - Flipping the Script Another easy level, but I have a lot of skills leftover.

7 - Face the Danger I lost one of the cloned lemmings, but I later realized that it was not necessary for me to clone near the lava. Instead, I could had used what I did in level 5 and have the lemming build into the wall so that he turns around and then proceed as usual with the solution I used. Thus, the cloner can be removed.

8 - The La-y-rinth This one was somewhat tricky but it was still a great level. Somehow I get the feeling that this is a backroute, especially since I didn't need to platform across the water and bash the OWW.

9 - Hero and Sidekick By far my favorite level of the rank. Easy level and clever solution in a 1 of everything level.

10 - Rite of Passage This one was a tricky one, probably a bit more than level 8, so this was an appropriate rank finisher. Even then, this level is not overly hard, just tricky due to the backwards walkers gimmick.

Whimsical

4 - Screw It! This one wasn't too bad. The turn on assign gimmick makes it easier to catch the lemmings.

5 - All Along the Watchtower This was probably my favorite level of the rank. Really nice level with a great solution

7 - Tossing and Turning This one was a bit tricky, but it's still a favorite of mine. It's a really nice, clever puzzle where assigning the permanent skills to the pioneer are necessary so that the lemming is facing the right direction for digging and bashing long before the lemming gets the opportunity to use the permanents. Nice job!

8 - The Emperor's Palace By far the hardest level of the rank. The major drawback of the turn on assign gimmick is that you cannot get to higher platforms as easily with builders. However, like the previous level, the key is to assign another skill so that the builder turns before assigning the builder skill again. The most annoying thing was repeatedly building into the thin platform the instant the lemming turns around due to the ceiling check.

9 - The Pioneer This was another excellent 1 of everything level with a great solution.

10 - Winding Snakes Nice, two 1 of everything levels in a row. This one was easy for a rank finisher. The only tricky part was getting the stacker and miner right so that the climber that bashed through the OWW does not climb over and get killed later.

Eternal

2 - Snow Ploughing This one was a bit tricky, especially with trying to get past all the zombie stoners. Once I realized I could trap the lemmings with two bombers, that allowed me the necessary skills left over to beat the level.

3 - Having a Blast Together Ok, I cheated on this one. After a few minutes, I was completely stumped on how to get the lemmings down to the lower platform if you don't even have any destructive or constructive skills. The only reason I beat this level was due to reading Nepster's Neolemmix manual on the section on non-fatal bombers. It mentions that the nuke also applies. I then set out to use it, and sure enough that's how you'll supposed to beat the level. I seriously can't believe I never managed to come up with the nuke solution on my own when I was able to on other levels that use it.

4 - Permanently Permeable This one was probably the hardest in the rank, but that's probably because I'm not too good with using stackers to make a staircase. There's probably much easier ways to pull it off than the way I did it.

8 - Brothers in Arms I have plenty of skills leftover, so backroute? I'm not sure I'm supposed to build up that easily and then simply platform all the way across.

9 - And Now You're Screwed This is Whimsical 4, except with the hardworking gimmick instead of turn on assign. This one wasn't hard at all. The only tricky part was knowing where to assign the builder and blocker so that the builder touches the pillar to cancel the building. I probably could had made the blocker assignment easier by using floaters, but at the same time I would need to have some to assign to lemmings who fall off the really high staircase.

10 - Lock and Load This one is tricky, but it's not difficult thanks to the blockers and walkers.

Ephemeral

2 - Ignorance is Bliss The only tricky part is timing the climbers so that you can cancel a miner going to the left with a miner going to the right. Otherwise, nice level.

3 - Part-time Athletes Nice level, especially when you have to keep in mind that you must assign climbers when the lemmings are facing the right due to the non-permanent skills gimmick. For this reason, holding down the right arrow key is an absolute must in this level!

4 - Catch Me if You Can Another good level, where you must make the climber mine once he bridges the gap and turns around, otherwise you cannot win. In this level, it's a good thing that the climber skill is lost, as then he would climb the edge of the level and splat if it remained.

5 - Why Settle for Just One? Yet another good level that managed to stump me for a good 20 minutes or so, only because I kept thinking the lemmings needed to swim in the second water obstacle. Once I realized that the climbers can simply glide to the exit, the solution came to me easily.

6 - Take the Ocean Route An easy level to start off the introduction of the lazy lemmings gimmick. I especially loved how you have to realize that you must climb over the can because you don't have enough bashers to bash through it.

8 - I'm no Superlem! This one wasn't hard per se, just really annoying due to how the drawback the lazy lemmings gimmick really shows in this level and makes it hard to tell how many builders/platformers are needed to bridge the gaps. The ones in the middle that only need 1 are obvious, but the one after that is really hard to tell. After trying it, you will come to the conclusion that you can definitely make it with 4 builders, but what's less certain is whether it's possible with 3, which is only possible by building at the extreme edge and stretching every bridge. Fortunately, the gaps are small enough that it's not a platformer/builder spam fest. Also, the climbing at the very beginning is really difficult to tell if a climber will make it to the top before the lemming gives up due to the gimmick. Luckily, due to the way the gimmick works, climbers give up just before it becomes splat height. This does make me wonder one thing though: Is the splat height higher in 1.43? Honestly it really looks like it should be splat height. Thus, I probably would lower the second platform a bit to make it more certain that a climber will make it over.

9 - The Average Joe Bit tricky but an excellent level nonetheless with a clever solution. The main challenge is figuring out how to get over each wall at the bottom when the climbers will give up when almost reaching the top. Luckily, only one digger is needed to shorten the walls so that climbers will make it over and not give up due to the gimmick.

10 - In the Blink of an Eye By far my most favorite level of the rank that combines both the non-permanent skills and lazy lemmings gimmicks in a very clever way. My only suggestions for this level is just like level 8, to shorten the height of the wall so that it's certain climbers will get over it, because it looks very uncertain. Also, both the stacker and builder have to be placed at the very extreme edge, but luckily it's easy to figure that out and it occurs at the very beginning of the level, so that's not too bad.

Hasty

1 - Instant Gratification Massive backroute? I'm not sure if you intended for players to be able to simply build to the exit this easily and miss all those other pickups.

2 - Frenz with Benefits My favorite level of the rank so far that stumped me for a good 20 minutes or so. It's clear that the digger pickup in front of the exit must be picked up while falling in midair, and also once I remembered that lemmings cannot be a glider and floater at the same time to circumvent a lemming using the glider pick-up that gets collected right away, the solution came to me very easily.

3 - The third lab of the race I think this is also a backroute.

4 - Losing Ground Ok, I totally didn't expect the disarmer skill to be applied to the lemming that is digging at the right edge of the platform. It's not a bad thing, I simply thought that I had to assign it later after it got picked up. Then again, I guess a disarmer is permanent, so I guess it would make sense that the lemming that picks it up would be a disarmer permanently. At the same time, the disarmer skill is not in the skill panel, so you would think that the disarmer skill would be lost if picked up. IIRC this runs counter to the 12.8.2 Neolemmix player where if the disarmer pick-up is collected it gets added to the skill panel so that you can assign the disarmer to a different lemming later, so this definitely took me by surprise. Still, great level nonetheless.

5 - Ghost busters The last level of the pack that I managed to solve. Besides the next level that I'm currently stuck on, I say this is the hardest level in the rank so far, largely because of the ghosts. This one was very tricky and took me a while to figure out. It's clear that the first and last ghost both need to be a bomber and stoner. The main challenge is getting rid of the other ghosts while being efficient in skill usage, especially builders. In my solution, I didn't have to go after the walker pickup, so I wonder if that's a red herring. For a long time, I kept thinking a miner needs to go to the left, which ended up giving me a lot of trouble because I would have to waste a builder to build over the pit but by doing so I would use up all of them. Once I realized that I could mine to the right, then the solution came to me easily.

6 - Circumvent Their Stupidity By far the hardest level of the rank. I was stuck on this level for almost 2 days. Saving the lemmings by swimmers and gliders were the easy ones. The floaters were the hardest, as they take longer to open their parachutes compared to the much faster gliders. I kept trying and trying to see if I could save up two builders for the end so that the floaters can exit, but alas nothing I tried work. I also tried seeing if backrouting the level was possible, but it seems that you made the level completely backroute proof in every way. If so, you did a great job creating a really hard level, as I did mention I was stuck on this level for almost 2 days.

Then while I was showering earlier tonight, it dawned on me to use the stacker pick-ups to try and get the lemmings higher so that the floaters can exit. I first tried a stacker on the ground, followed by another lemming stacking on top of the first stack after he had laid 6 bricks. Then I used a builder to get to the top of the second stack, but to my disappointment this didn't work. It only raised the height by 1 or 2 pixels higher than the maximum height of one builder. Darn! Then, after more experimenting, I found that a builder and stacker can pass through one another and both can still continue. See, I didn't even know this was possible in Neolemmix since I have never encountered levels that have me do this. Since I started stacking at the time the builder had one brick left, this barely raised it enough so that the floaters can now successfully exit, and that's level done.

Nevertheless, I do have a stacker leftover, and I'm not sure if the platformer pick-ups are red herrings, especially since only the right-most platformer pick-up can be collected, so my solution is probably still a backroute.

The remaining levels of the rank weren't hard, because the solutions were obvious, they were just extremely annoying since I had to rewind so much due to pause disabled via the frenzy gimmick and made harder by the fact that it is combined with the superlemming gimmick. I say level 8 - Optimal Utilization was the worst of the bunch with the no pause and superlemming gimmicks. I first tried switching back and forth with the Z and X keys without the rewind feature. The best I could do was 5 climbers and 5 gliders each before I would lose the rhythm of switching between the skills and mouse clicks. Then I started using the rewind feature which alleviated the annoyance somewhat, but it was still annoying since I eventually gave up on even looking at the screen where the lemmings were and my eyes were on the 2 skills so I could check to see how many of each skill I had assigned so that I knew when to rewind and interrupt the replay as necessary. Finally, even with 40 lemmings on the final level of the rank, it wasn't anywhere near as bad as level 8, as the release rate is 1.

70 more levels to go. I can do this! Once again, excellent pack Strato! I'm definitely looking forward to the collaboration pack between you and WillLem for the second Lemmicks pack. Also, I doubt I'm the one who has made the most progress on this level pack.

[Strato Incendus]

Wow, thanks a lot for playing, kaywhyn - I think this is the most extensive and detailed feedback I have received on any of my packs so far! And actually I do believe nobody has gotten deeper into Lemmicks than you at this point.

It will certainly take me some time to go through all your replays. Since you said you don't have any for the first two ranks, did you play those with automatic replay saving disabled?

I'm happy to hear that you didn't find this pack nearly as difficult as other people. The Basic rank was indeed intended to just provide some generally good puzzles while familiarizing the player with solid level sides. It was never intended as a beginner rank, and Lemmicks definitely is not a beginner pack. That said, even some advanced players can get caught off-guard by the changed physics, especially solid level sides, and I guess that's how Basic earned its reputation of being so difficult.

I did make sure to stress any physics changes in pre-level text - but, as IchoTolot once warned me, a lot of people don't read those . As evident by the fact that e.g. you didn't know the gimmick on the Moist rank until you reached "Need a lift?"

I am aware of the annoyance potential of the Hasty rank, and there is one particularly obnoxious level on the Bedlam rank called "So much to do, so little time" for which I'm considering to remove the Superlemming and Frenzy gimmick, so that it's only instant pickups. Having these three gimmicks combined on one level was how the Hasty rank was originally designed to be. But I've realized that they serve opposite purposes: Instant pickups make for great puzzles, especially when having to circumvent badly-placed pickups that almost act like traps; Frenzy and Superlemming, in contrast, only add execution difficulty.

Regarding "Circumvent their stupidity"

I wasn't aware either that Builders can pass through Stackers; thanks for discovering this! Thus, without having looked at your replay yet, I can already tell you that this is most definitely not the intended solution. Maybe it's a backroute; maybe you've made it harder for yourself than it had to be. If all other backroutes you tried didn't work, it might be another case of one of my levels being backroute-proof by accident...

Detailed feedback on your replays coming later!

[WillLem]

The Basic rank was indeed intended to just provide some generally good puzzles while familiarizing the player with solid level sides. It was never intended as a beginner rank, and Lemmicks definitely is not a beginner pack. That said, even some advanced players can get caught off-guard by the changed physics, especially solid level sides, and I guess that's how Basic earned its reputation of being so difficult.

To be quite honest, the solid sides had nothing to do with why I found it difficult - I just couldn't solve a lot of the puzzles generally! Mind you, that's not really saying much because my solving skills are probably average at best.

I think what I was hoping for when I first played Lemmicks were some more Fun-style levels where the player can simply experience the gimmicks in a relatively puzzle-free environment to begin with, before building up to the more difficult levels later on once the gimmicks become second nature. As mentioned previously, this would be my strongest suggestion for Lemmicks 2.

[mantha16]

can i just say it was the old version of the NL player that put me off not the level design

[Strato Incendus]

I think what I was hoping for when I first played Lemmicks were some more Fun-style levels where the player can simply experience the gimmicks in a relatively puzzle-free environment to begin with, before building up to the more difficult levels later on once the gimmicks become second nature. As mentioned previously, this would be my strongest suggestion for Lemmicks 2.

Well, fun is in the eye of the beholder, as we've established, and while I know that what you find fun might differ from what the NeoLemmix puzzle-die-hards like , you may have misunderstood the original intention of this pack there. As far as I remember I've always made Lemmicks's goal clear right from the start: To showcase how the gimmicks - which, as the community told me, "were culled for good reason" - could actually be used for clever and fair puzzle design.

I don't know whether gimmicks necessarily had a bad reputation before that - a lot of people still seemed to be happy I brought them back. But I think it's fair to say that most packs I could still get my hands on which had made use of gimmicks did so in a surprising manner. Meaning not only was the gimmick not announced by the rank name (as it is done in Lemmicks, except for the Bedlam rank), but also you had to explore everything for yourself and figure out by-doing how the changed rules worked.

In other words, what WillLem proposes kind of already existed to some extent , and was seen by some as unfair and nasty surprises. I wanted to show that gimmicks can be used for more than that, so by definition that necessitated a puzzle focus.

I'm open to working on another gimmick pack that has easier puzzles - though it should probably not be named "Lemmicks 2" then, because who would play the second version of a pack before the first one? And that's kind of what players would be advised to do with an easier gimmick pack.

However, we first need to agree on a selection of gimmicks that seem worthwhile. And the fact that WillLem brought up not only one, but two ranks of Frenzy levels (the second one with SuperLemming on top of that) - when this is clearly the least popular rank in Lemmicks, to put it politely - makes me wonder whether our design philosophies are "compatible" in that regard.

I guess my level design philosophy and WillLem's are more compatible than between WillLem and a lot of other level designers, because we both enjoy occasional "troll" or "unfair" elements if they have redeeming qualities like aesthetics.

However, where I'm probably on my own is that I'm not a huge fan of free, open-ended "explorer" levels (like X-of-everything levels, or, in this case "just toy around with this gimmick" levels).

And finally, there's this issue:

can i just say it was the old version of the NL player that put me off not the level design

This seems to be the main obstacle stopping people from giving Lemmicks a try. Not the difficulty, not the mere idea of "it's outdated and therefore you should not use it", but simply the fact that outdated versions do indeed have their legitimate downsides.

I was planning to open a thread for a potential Lemmicks 2 anyway, due to recent activity in this thread, and I think now I have a reason to . So that we can also separate all discussions about level design in a possible second gimmick pack from feedback regarding the levels in Lemmicks.

We should definitely test the waters, though, a) whether there is a demand / interest for further (easier) gimmick levels in the first place, and b) if so, which gimmicks people like and don't like. I don't think we can really afford just picking gimmicks by our own taste alone, because the number of potential players is already severely reduced by the fact that it's NeoLemmix 1.43, and every further turn-off will drive more players away.

[kaywhyn]

can i just say it was the old version of the NL player that put me off not the level design

YMMV, as I did mention that I'm finding v.1.43 not as bad as I thought, though it's kind of helped by the fact that I had previously played through Giga's packs a month or two prior to taking on Lemmicks. But yes, you previously did mention that it's the lack of features in v1.43 that's preventing you from getting further with Lemmicks, and it's pretty much been established that that this is the main reason people haven't played through the pack and not the difficulty. I completely agree with the latter, as up until Circumvent Their Stupidity in the Hasty rank (the 9th rank out of 13) the levels aren't over the top hard. Before this level, the longest I've been stuck on an individual level in the pack was about 20 or so minutes, while the Hasty rank level I just mentioned I was stuck on for almost 2 days! In general, I'm a huge lemmings fan, and despite some of the inconveniences of v1.43 my high praise for the pack, along with my love of the game, have overshadowed my annoyances with the fiddly v1.43 player and helped keep me engaged in the pack tremendously, as IMHO nearly all of the levels I've played so far in the pack are excellent levels. Needless to say, the benefits of the pack through the high quality levels and puzzles far outweigh the negatives of the v1.43 player here in my eyes.

Since you said you don't have any for the first two ranks, did you play those with automatic replay saving disabled?

You are correct. It was kind of both intentional and unintentional on my part. I was aware that the feature isn't enabled by default, but at the same time I didn't really think the Basic and Moist rank would be the problematic ranks. In addition, I enabled the feature starting at Circular 2, so Circular 1 is missing, but it's a very easy level anyway. However, since it sounds like you do want replays for Basic and Moist, I'll be more than happy to replay those ranks once I get through the entire pack and send you them.

I did make sure to stress any physics changes in pre-level text - but, as IchoTolot once warned me, a lot of people don't read those . As evident by the fact that e.g. you didn't know the gimmick on the Moist rank until you reached "Need a lift?"

Actually, I was aware of the rising water gimmick being active in the Moist rank

Spoiler

I just didn't think to use it in the solution at first on Moist 3 and kept repeatedly thinking I need to build up to the exit before the water rises too much to make the level unsolvable. However, this would prove to be futile, as you'll always run out builders this way, which was why I was stumped for a good while, with the solution coming to me easily once I realized that I have to use the rising water. That's why I was perplexed why there were 15 swimmers at first because I didn't make that connection with the rising water. As a matter of fact, Moist 3 would be the very first level in the rank where the rising water shouldn't be seen as a hazard, but rather a helpful feature of the level that needs to be used in the solution and so it's ok to take your time and you don't have to worry about the water taking over before the level becomes unsolvable. This is in contrast to the previous two levels, where you have to beat the rising water (the water is a time limit hazard in object form as you have mentioned) because you cannot use it due to lack of swimmers. For this reason, the change from the water generally being a hazard to it being very useful and helpful and that it must be used in the solution for will probably very likely throw people off at first like it did with me.

Whereas for my progress, I'm currently up at Bedlam 15. 35 levels to go! So, I'm probably not that far from that Bedlam level Strato mentioned with the combined Frenzy + Superlemming + instant pickups gimmicks. I'll let you know how that goes when I get there, although I've already encountered one such level in the rank called ADHD that also has the lazy lemmings gimmick active. That one was an easy level, as it only took me about a minute to see the solution, just annoying that I had to keep pounding the reset hotkey just before the trapdoor opens.

More detailed feedback to come soon when I send my remaining replays!

[Strato Incendus]

Actually, I was aware of the rising water gimmick being active in the Moist rank

Ah, sorry, then I misunderstood this sentence of yours :

when it dawned on me that the gimmick active for this rank is rising water

Spoiler

The change in the water's functionality / purpose was probably more obvious back when "Here comes the flood" was Moist level 02. But after having seen Flopsy struggle with it, I decided that "Here comes the flood" was way too difficult for the second level in the rank. Thus, it moved to a later position, making "Need a lift?" and user-friendly water a greater novelty. I hadn't even thought of that!

In general, I'm a huge lemmings fan, and despite some of the inconveniences of v1.43 my high praise for the pack, along with my love of the game, have overshadowed my annoyances with the fiddly v1.43 player and helped keep me engaged in the pack tremendously, as IMHO nearly all of the levels I've played so far in the pack are excellent levels. Needless to say, the benefits of the pack through the high quality levels and puzzles far outweigh the negatives of the v1.43 player here in my eyes.

Thanks a lot for your kind words!

I really had a hard time judging the quality of the levels so far, given that they defy any standard rules of what counts as "challenging", "fair", "puzzling" etc. I couldn't really compare them to anything other level designers had made. Judging my progress just in comparison to my former self (intra-individual comparison), though, I did have the feeling they were more challenging and overall "better" than what I had come up with for Pit Lems.

No idea whether Lemmicks or Lemmings World Tour has overall better puzzles, though. I guess Lemmings World Tour might be more enjoyable for the average player, especially with all the modern conveniences (in both Old- and New Formats), while Lemmicks might be more frustrating, and if it's just for the Hasty rank.

So I'm glad you've powered through any inconveniences (minor or major) the pack or old engine might have thrown at you! Knowing you're already that far into the pack, I think I'll leave the level "So much to do, so little time" as it is for right now, to give it at least one shot. If you're already used to spamming the rewind key, the post-level text even says "your minus key will never be the same again" .

Also, I'm kind of curious what WillLem thinks of that level, given that he wanted to put Frenzy and Superlemming into one and the same rank in the second gimmick pack. (Granted, not with instant pickups, which "So much to do, so little time" has on top of that.)

If you're looking for it, it's Bedlam 35, right after "These stairs of mine", which is my absolute favourite level in the pack. So you could kind of say the worst level comes after the coolest level.

[WillLem]

you may have misunderstood the original intention of this pack there.... To showcase how the gimmicks... could actually be used for clever and fair puzzle design.

In this regard, I'd say the pack was a success, then!

I guess I'm not taking into account the fact that most players would have been familiar with most of the gimmicks by the time this pack was released, so introductory levels may not have been necessary.

However, since they've currently not been around for a while, maybe a few easier/more open-ended levels for the proposed sequel would not go amiss, and there's no reason at all for such levels to detract from your original goal for Lemmicks (i.e. fair and interesting puzzles), if done tastefully.

In other words, what WillLem proposes kind of already existed to some extent , and was seen by some as unfair and nasty surprises.

I'm proposing that the gimmicks be introduced gradually, fairly and in the context of easier, open-ended levels. I'm not sure how that would constitute a "nasty surprise." The gimmicks would be made clear at the start of the rank, as they were in original Lemmicks, and then the player would have the opportunity to experience them in a safe environment.

I am not, and never have been, in favour of "trolling" players unnecessarily. I simply believe that the occasional unexpected element, if used sparingly, carefully and tastefully, can enhance certain levels. Just wanted to make that clear!

[Strato Incendus]

Yes indeed, I didn't want to misrepresent you here; I'm aware that you want to stick to the "fair gimmick-per-rank" structure.

The fact that the gimmicks were in more recent memory when Lemmicks was released is a fair point! Indeed a lot of new members have joined in the meantime that have only ever known New Formats.

I am not, and never have been, in favour of "trolling" players unnecessarily. I simply believe that the occasional unexpected element, if used sparingly, carefully and tastefully, can enhance certain levels. Just wanted to make that clear!

I know you always have good intentions about this . This is just a labelling issue. The "unexpected" part is what proponents of strictly-fair and predictable puzzle gameplay would often already consider as trolling, even though the level designer may not at all have intended for it to be a troll level.

Interestingly, though, also one of my strictly-fair puzzle levels, which was deliberately designed in-style of Nepster ("You had it coming" from Pit Lems), was called a troll level by nin10doadict during his Let's Play, because the surrounding levels happened to be much easier. So the sudden (but unintended) spike in difficulty was "unexpected" , one could say...

[kaywhyn]

And, pack is done! Wow, just wow. It was an amazing pack from start to finish. I'll send the replays and give even more detailed feedback after I go back and replay the Basic and Moist ranks for the rest of the replays, as well as Circular 1 if you would like that one too. Aside from Hasty 6, I say the difficult mind-bending puzzles were the Bedlam levels, since most of the levels combined at least 2 or more gimmicks from the previous ranks together, as well as introduced ones that weren't in any of the earlier ones. I guess you can say that Bedlam IS the pack itself, particularly since a lot of the difficult levels are here IMO. Where all the previous ranks were warm-up ranks for Bedlam that generally introduced one gimmick at a time, Bedlam really puts the gimmicks to the test by combining them together, creating really difficult levels. I honestly would place a lot of the Bedlam levels at ONML difficulty, because they definitely felt like they were really up there with ONML in terms of difficulty. Some Bedlam levels I say are worthy of the Havoc difficulty! The other ranks I would say were Mayhem at best or lower. Especially since Bedlam has the most levels at 40, it slowed my progress tremendously, but I made it through the rank and had a huge feeling of satisfaction of beating the entire rank and now the entire pack. I guess I'm honored to be the very first person to officially complete the pack, and 3-4 years since its release too!

Spoiler

The change in the water's functionality / purpose was probably more obvious back when "Here comes the flood" was Moist level 02. But after having seen Flopsy struggle with it, I decided that "Here comes the flood" was way too difficult for the second level in the rank. Thus, it moved to a later position, making "Need a lift?" and user-friendly water a greater novelty. I hadn't even thought of that!

As I mentioned in the feedback for this level, which is now Moist 6, I didn't think it was hard at all.

Spoiler

Especially when you look at the skillset provided, there's only one way to release one blocker, and that is with the walker. However, I like how you must choose the correct blocker to release with it, as releasing any other will make the level unsolvable. You do have a miner, but it only allows to release one blocker but it will also result in the miner lemming drowning. Not to mention that wasting a miner for this will also render the level unsolvable. Also, I haven't seen Flopsy's playthrough of the level, but I'm wondering if he was one of those people who tried to climb the ever so tempting but incorrect right side of the level, which I never did because I knew from the start that it cannot be used for the solution. Needless to say, I personally say that its original position of Moist 2 was appropriate. It's an easy level when you know how.

EDIT: Never mind, Moist 6's position is appropriate for the second half of the rank, as there were some tricks that I have forgotten that must be done on this level when I revisited the Moist rank earlier. I totally forgot about cloning a miner on the stairs so that a path to the exit is made and the miner going left will mine into steel and turn around. Even then, I still found the level easy since it didn't take me that long to come up with that. I did mention it once, and I'll say it again: Difficulty of levels will always be subjective. There have been some levels that others found easy that I surprisingly struggled on, or vice versa, where there have been levels that I found easy but others found hard. 

I really had a hard time judging the quality of the levels so far, given that they defy any standard rules of what counts as "challenging", "fair", "puzzling" etc. I couldn't really compare them to anything other level designers had made. Judging my progress just in comparison to my former self (intra-individual comparison), though, I did have the feeling they were more challenging and overall "better" than what I had come up with for Pit Lems.

Now that I've played through the entire pack, IMO there's no unfair levels in there at all. Even the ones with the combined Frenzy and Superlemming gimmicks in the Hasty and Bedlam ranks and possibly some other gimmicks active weren't unfair. At worst, they were just simply annoying. I also agree with your assessment that the two former gimmicks made the execution difficult, but the puzzles themselves were easy. There's definitely challenging puzzles in Lemmicks, and though there was usually a difficult level or two in the ranks before Bedlam, Bedlam I say has a lot of difficult levels. I think I also say this a lot, but once you know the solution then they're easy.

If you're looking for it, it's Bedlam 35, right after "These stairs of mine", which is my absolute favourite level in the pack. So you could kind of say the worst level comes after the coolest level.

Bedlam 35 was actually really easy! Just like ADHD, it only took me 1-2 minutes to see the solution. However, I do have a lot of skills leftover, so it might be a backroute. I'll let you decide when I send the replay. Whereas for Bedlam 34, I too like the concept used in the level. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to set up correctly. Out of all the levels in the pack, this level had me rage the most. It's a great level, as the solution is easy. The execution, though

Spoiler

The builder and miner both need to be assigned at a position so that they meet at exactly the right time. A few seconds too early or too late and either the miner will fall into the water or the builder might stop due to hitting his head. I had to rewind so much to get the timing right. There were a few times I did succeed, but the builder would stop because I started the miner inside the tiny hole and so the builder would run into the terrain. Another time, I got the trick to work, but the miner wasn't able to get the crowd to ascend the wall, even with a stacker next to the wall. That right there made me rage at how very precise the miner and builder assignments have to be to get both the miner and builder to continue, as well as successfully mine the crowd out.

Anyway, I'll send all the replays once I go back and replay the Basic and Moist ranks and Circular 1, along with detailed feedback. Great job on an awesome pack!

[Strato Incendus]

Thanks a lot for your praise of the pack, kaywhyn! Indeed, it's been a couple of years, but now you're officially the first person to have completed Lemmicks! Congratulations!

I'm relieved to hear you still consider levels with an easy-to-see solution that might not be that easy to execute great levels. In my estimation, a lot of other forum members would consider these levels pointlessly annoying (because the puzzle challenge is minor while the execution difficulty makes them "unnecessarily" harder).

Bedlam 35 was actually really easy! Just like ADHD, it only took me 1-2 minutes to see the solution. However, I do have a lot of skills leftover, so it might be a backroute. I'll let you decide when I send the replay. Whereas for Bedlam 34, I too like the concept used in the level. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to set up correctly. Out of all the levels in the pack, this level had me rage the most. It's a great level, as the solution is easy. The execution, though

Good to know; I'll leave Bedlam 35 as it is, then, at least for the time being (unless I find out you severely backrouted it ), and if it's just for WillLem to enjoy Frenzy and Superlemming in comparison!

Bedlam 34 of course is precise to pull off. That's why I have provided Blockers and Walkers to facilitate the correct exact timing. This is a general problem with pretty much any level that involves relative timing between two lemmings (classical case: turning a Builder around mid-performance with a Blocker). But in this case, because it's such a unique thing that's only possible with the Hardworkers gimmick and looks so cool when it finally works out, I think it's worth the hassle.

I've tried to create a comparable level for my upcoming pack Lemmings Open Air ("Paid in full", using my money tileset, on the Heavy rank). But it's still not quite the same.

I think I also say this a lot, but once you know the solution then they're easy.

...and this, in turn, is probably the NeoLemmix ideal: Figuring out the solution itself is the hard part. Once you have figured it out, the implementation should be straightforward. I'm glad you still found a lot of those levels on the Bedlam rank, since I think these are the types of levels also the majority of other forum members will enjoy!

Regarding the difficulty of "Here comes the flood"...

Spoiler

...it had nothing to do with which Blocker you release and how you do it. This is just the beginning of the level, and I think it's pretty obvious which Blocker you have to release to save the most skills . Yes, Flopsy did try to climb the right hand side, but I think he lost most time of the level because he kept assigning the Cloner in the wrong place, so that one of the two worker lemmings always ended up going into the vaporizer trap at the top of the level. I think Flopsy's LP of Lemmicks never even actually shows him solving the level.

Colorful Arty sent me his replays, he did solve the level, but I remember he also struggled a lot with it. I'm happy it was a lot easier for you, but since the number of players who struggled with it are still in the majority right now , I think it should stay in its current position on the rank, as you also said in your edited comment.

[kaywhyn]

As promised, here are the rest of the replays, including Basic and Moist. I've already sent feedback from Basic through Hasty (see reply #59), so I'm just going to do feedback from Cosmic through Nostalgia. However, there is one thing I would like to add for Basic, and that is

Spoiler

Basic 4 - Why did you doubt? I'll be honest, this one is quite difficult for an introduction to stackers and platformers and is a huge step up in difficulty from the previous 3 levels. In particular, the level is very unforgiving in that the platformers must be stretched in order to span the entire water length. Otherwise, you'll run out of platformers for releasing the crowd in the end. Granted, I had no platformers left and two stackers leftover, but it is very uncertain whether one can afford to waste a platformer or two to delay lemmings so that they don't get past the stack to the left. Perhaps you can add a few extra platformers to make the level more forgiving. Not to mention the starting platform is quite small so that it's difficult to ensure the platform bricks don't go past the stacks before the path is ready.

Now for feedback for the rest of the pack.

Spoiler

Cosmic

I'll be truthful here, and that is I wasn't too much of a fan of this rank due to the no gravity gimmick. It was just way too confusing, and I especially think of lemmings going under the stacker was quite surprising and unexpected. Here, I expected lemmings to simply turn around when the stack is done, but nope, they will always slip under a stack in midair and continue walking in the same direction before encountering the stack. Now that I think about it, though, in the same way that lemmings cannot ascend 7 pixels or more, so is the case with the no gravity gimmick, where instead of ascending 6 or less pixels, they instead "descend 6 or less pixels." Even then, I found this more annoying than anything when I expected the lemmings to simply turn around on a stack.

Another unexpected thing that turned out to be very annoying: climbers encountering a miner tunnel when descending from the top of it. If lemmings aren't climbers, they will descend the top of the miner tunnel just fine. However, if a lemming is a climber, instead of descending, the lemming will climb for a single pixel and turn around when hitting the ceiling. This was especially annoying in Cosmic 8 NASA training lab, which is by far the most difficult level of the rank. Saving the non-climbers is easy, but saving the lone climber proved to be a challenge. Near the end with the mining, the climber will go up the miner tunnel as expected, but once up he cannot come back down the miner tunnel he himself made. Granted, I ended up using all skills and so maybe it's supposed to be a hard level.

Even with the confusing gimmick, I still think the levels in this rank were great puzzles. Perhaps this rank is the most difficult to come up with really good puzzles, but you pulled it off just fine. In particular, I had several favorites in this rank, which were Cosmic 5 Buried in rubble, Cosmic 6 Wurmhole required, and Cosmic 10 Back to Earth. The rank finisher just looked really awesome seeing the lemmings "coming back down to earth" descending the builder wall from the other side.

Finally, I have a lot of skills leftover in Cosmic 7 Teaching Ikarus a lesson, so maybe this is a backroute?

     
Suicidal

Just to let you know, this was a great rank, although I'm not much of a fan of killing lemmings. I rather save them.

1 - Kill Lem all Great level to start off the rank

5 - Killing competition This was a great level that featured all the different types of lemmings: zombies, ghosts, and regular. This was also a decent challenge. I was stuck for a time, especially when the ghost would always leave a tiny hole in the platform when mining. To get around that, I stacked with the ghost before mining but then that didn't solve the level since some of the lemmings will still get zombified. Finally, I realized I could stop the zombies from ever encountering the ghost pit by stacking in a way that leaves an overhang so that they cannot climb the wall. Also, I find it amusing that in the ghost pit zombies don't repeatedly turn around due to the "scare" gimmick of ghosts.

6 - Lemocicde Pretty easy. Trap the lemmings with two stacks to the right of the radiation and then simply make the lemmings climb to the left at your own leisure. As a result, I had some skills leftover.

7 - Make Lem Suffer Way too easy especially with the walkers provided. I had some lemmings build due to being too close to the lemming in front so that they wouldn't get past the trap.

8 - To each his own By far my favorite level of the rank, even if we're supposed to kill them all which I prefer not to. Nevertheless, this was pretty easy.

10 - Lem to the slaughter Easy any way you want rank finisher. I liked the idea of leading the two groups to their own deaths, the left entrance can only die by drowning, and the right entrance can only die by traps. Thus, you must make sure there is at least one trap that hasn't been disarmed. Of course, there's also bombing, but you're limited to only 5.

Bedlam

As I said before, the real puzzles were all here in this rank. Many challenging, difficult levels here which as I mentioned in another post that I would definitely place at ONML difficulty, some even being worthy of the Havoc difficulty! Well done! A lot of these levels I really liked. I definitely feel a lot of these levels were well-done and well thought out. This rank must had taken you a long time to make levels, especially since this rank has twice as many Basic levels and 4 times more levels than the ranks that have a gimmick enabled.

1 - Eternal endless infinity Great level to start off the rank!

2 - We Don't Fall Down This was an easy level. I'm still not sure how lemmings can still mine and dig even with no terrain if both the eternal and no gravity gimmicks are active, though. I think it's because lemmings can already bash even with no terrain in front when hardworking gimmick is active, and when no gravity is also active, the no gravity extends it to no terrain needed for miners and diggers, because they will stop otherwise if only hardworkers was active.

3 - Lem Jong Un Whoa, that huge explosion is really cool. Too bad I severely backrouted the level by simply digging so that the zombies fall into the water and didn't even need to resort to the nuclear option. Those zombies got spared from the nuclear radiation. Actually, my several initial attempts had me using the radiation, but I couldn't get it to work since the other lemmings that teleport in wouldn't be able to land on anything. As a result, I struggled and was stuck on this level until I backrouted the level in the way I described above.

5 - For the greater good Did I backroute this level too? I'm guessing the intention was to dig down the OWW, which I didn't have to do at all.

6 - Temple Run Nice level! I do have a builder left over, though.

7 - Concordant crossroads Another excellent level!

8 - Aliens playing Stoertebeker Yet another great level. It's probably just me, but I feel like the space to contain the lemmings to get them down with the builder wall is too small. Then again, I think I could had made it a little easier for myself if I had dug away all of the wall instead of left a bit of it in the air. If you don't mind me asking, what's Stoertebeker? I'm guessing it's German for something?

9 - They might need a job... This one was pretty easy.

10 - Anti World Ok, this one was just really bizzare and took me by surprise at first. In particular, not being able to use skills when the number displayed was 99 really threw me off. At the same time, I guess it could be looked at this way: 99 is essentially the same thing as 0 for a skill when the reverse skill count gimmick is enabled, and the number of each skill you have left is simply 99 minus the current number displayed. This was also the hardest level up to this point, when the previous levels of the rank have been quite easy until this level. In particular, I struggled with releasing the crowd in the digger pit and was quite annoyed at the lemmings not being able to survive drops by falling more than 3 (I think it's 3, I'm not sure) frames from their ground level. In any case, I do have a platformer leftover, so I'm not sure if this is a backroute.

11 - ADHD I already said this was an easy level despite the frenzy and superlemming gimmicks, along with the lazy lemming gimmick.

12 - Minus times minus Equals a positive. I couldn't resist saying this, especially since I was a math major for both my undergrad and grad school. Anyway, this was an excellent 1 of everything level! I did struggle with this level, but only because the platformer wouldn't build when I expected him to when at the extreme edge. I guess it just doesn't work on even ground when turn on assign is active, even though that's what you would expect because of how lemmings are able to platform just fine when facing forward.

14 - Have your cake and eat it Excellent and great looking level! The unalterable terrain gimmick did take me by surprise, especially with how builders don't leave any of the bricks behind.

15 - Mirror, mirror Another excellent level that I struggled with for a time.

16 - Vengeful rebirth I'm guessing the intention was to lead the lemmings to the vine swamp. If so, this is a backroute!

18 - Hive mind Wow, I really like this level! It's a really good puzzle with a really good solution. I did struggle with getting around the assign all gimmick, especially with being able to get the lemmings up at the beginning, but once I saw how to do it it was an easy level.

19 - Lem Norris I have killed the lemming god. I liked this puzzle too! I do have some bombers leftover, though.

21 - Thousand shadows Yet another great 1 of everything puzzle!

22 - Split Seconds Ok, I admit that initially I raged at this level and thought it was unfair. I did try platforming and stacking across the lava several times, but due to the lazy lemmings and superlemming gimmicks, along with frenzy, it made it impossible to tell if I had stretched the platformers as far as possible. Not to mention I had to keep on rewinding due to missing on clicking the lemming. Even then, I should had been able to tell that it won't work no matter how hard you try. I even played the level by having the frenzy and superlemming gimmicks disabled, where it was much easier to stretch out the platformers, and sure enough it is indeed impossible. After confirming that and still haven't yet solved the level, I then played with the gimmicks that are active for this level again. After a few more minutes of thinking and looking at the lemmings from each entrance, I happened to mouse over some of the lemmings from the left entrance by chance and noticed that right above the skill panel it said swimmer. Once I realized the entire left entrance were swimmers to begin with, the solution came to me very easily. So, even with the frenzy and superlemming gimmicks, nothing unfair about this level at all and is a very easy level once it hits you that all the lemmings from the left hatch are pre-assigned swimmers, which is very easy to miss here since I thought it was simply a pickup that gets collected almost right away at the start.

See, I had a similar thing happen on a level in one of Giga's packs, where there is a huge water gap and with the amount of builders/platformers given that it's impossible to save the left entrance with a lemming from the right entrance. I then realized that it must be the case that all the lemmings on the left entrance must be a pre-assigned swimmer entrance. Indeed, I tested it by having a lemming from that entrance drop into the water, and sure enough they were indeed all pre-assigned swimmers. I think the entrance was also labeled with a swimmer pick-up.

Here, you're absolutely correct in the post-level text that it's crucial to label the hatches carefully, as otherwise you would think the level is impossible. I'm certain this level will definitely throw many people off like it did with me here for a good 20 or so minutes.

24 - Changing Tides Great puzzle that I had to think for a time. In the first few tries where I finally got the solution, I time skipped when I bashed the castle, only to find to my surprise that I didn't pass. Indeed, they unfortunately failed due to the rising water gimmick where it drowned two of my lemmings just as they were so close to exiting. I think all I needed to do was to adjust the positioning of the stack. Here, there was no reason for me to assign a disarmer because I didn't even disarm the trap. So, I do have a disarmer leftover, and even if you intended for it to be used, I think the level will be failed no matter what due to the rising water. I'm not sure, though.

26 - Claustrophobia Yet another easy and great level! I even killed one more than the kill requirement.

27 - Immortal Valor Yet another great and easy level!

28 - Prison break I have a feeling this is not intended. I have a miner and stacker leftover.

29 - The dead shall serve Ah yes, I take you must be a Warcraft 3 fan? Anyway, I think this might be a backroute as well. Nice puzzle, though!

30 - We all fall down as one 3rd unintended backroute in a row? I have so many skills leftover. However, great puzzle as well!

31 - Lem of Steel Hmm, first level to have 5 gimmicks active at once I believe: frenzy, superlemming, invincibility, hardworker, and instant pick-up, although like you said the fact that the lemmings are immortal is useless, so I guess technically 4 gimmicks active at once.

33 - Do I have to tell you twice? Great introduction level to the disobedience gimmick with an excellent puzzle. Solution came to me after a few minutes. Now that I came back to this level, I just realized the hint is in the title itself.

34 - These stairs of mine I already gave you feedback on this level, so I'll just repeat what I said here. I like the concept used in the level. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to set up correctly. Out of all the levels in the pack, this level had me rage the most. It's a great level, as the solution is easy. The execution, though The builder and miner both need to be assigned at a position so that they meet at exactly the right time. A few seconds too early or too late and either the miner will fall into the water or the builder might stop due to hitting his head. I had to rewind so much to get the timing right. There were a few times I did succeed, but the builder would stop because I started the miner inside the tiny hole and so the builder would run into the terrain. Another time, I got the trick to work, but the miner wasn't able to get the crowd to ascend the wall, even with a stacker next to the wall. That right there made me rage at how very precise the miner and builder assignments have to be to get both the miner and builder to continue, as well as successfully mine the crowd out.

35 - So much to do, so little time Same as Bedlam 34, I'll just repeat the feedback I already gave for this level. This was actually really easy! Just like ADHD, it only took me 1-2 minutes to see the solution. However, I do have a lot of skills leftover, so it might be a backroute.

36 - Break a leg I have so many skills leftover, so I probably backrouted this level badly.

37 - Extreme circumstances This was an excellent puzzle! Another favorite of mine.

38 - Ultimate incompatibility I also liked this level! Thank goodness the fall heights weren't inverted either. I do have plenty of skills leftover, though, but the bashers for the most part are useless anyway. I'm not sure if the worker lemming is supposed to climb over the stack after building it. Then again, I don't think stacker lemmings are right up against the stack. I think they actually have to walk up to it in a frame. I might be wrong, though.

39 - Descent into insanity Wow, this was actually a difficult level. Definitely the analogue to Mayhem 29 Save Me where it's the second to last level of the main pack (not counting the Nostalgic rank here) in terms of difficulty. You have 20 of every skill, but it's not really a true X of everything level since all skill counts decrease by 1 except for the one just assigned. I kept struggling due to thinking I had to platform from the other side for the bottom hatch. However, this created all sorts of problems as I would keep running out of destructive skills to get the lemmings out later. I later realized that I could simply mine the bottom hatch uot and then build up to the top entrance. Same with the entrance above and to the right of the bottom one. All in all, this was still a great level. Oh, and thank you for not enabling frenzy here! The level's already hard and chaotic enough with all that's going on in the level with all the other gimmicks active and all.

40 - Cerebral Hemorrhage The ultimate level that puts together everything you learned in the previous ranks for one final test of your skills. Even with all the previous introduced gimmicks active, I didn't find this level hard. As a matter of fact, I thought this was a great puzzle and level for the rank finisher. I didn't have to collect the bomber pick-up, though. I think it's a red herring?

Nostalgic

1 - Culling frenzy I didn't use any floaters or gliders in my solution, but I'm guessing this is ok. It does look weird with a still half covered exit, but at least the lemmings can still exit from either side.

3 - Nuclear waste disposal This was a great level. However, the stacker assignment is very precise. I guess the bombers to prevent the lemmings from exiting is kind of precise too.

4 - Reach for the Stars This was a really good slowfreeze puzzle! Not too difficult.

6 - elbisreverrI At first, I thought the title was a foreign language word, but nope, it's just "irreversible" spelled backwards. By far the hardest level of the rank, especially since upon letting the level play out for a few seconds it's not at all clear where you'll supposed to lead the lemmings to since it's already confusing seeing lemmings come out of the exit. Bizarre level where lemmings come out of the exit and need to reach the entrance hatch. This used to be such a thing in Neolemmix? The trickiest part is building from the bottom of the level to the platform above and to the right below the other two platforms where the hatch is. It's not clear how many builders it's supposed to take while ensuring you'll still have enough to reach the hatch.

7 - Stop steeling my features! I'm not sure what the pre-text means here. Also, I don't think I ever figured out if there's any indication to tell where the hidden steel areas are, and so this was a complete trial-and-error level for me. Granted, it's not a difficult level, it's just made so due to not knowing where the steel areas are. There were times that I thought I had the level solved, only to be taken by surprised that what I was bashing or mining through got stopped due to terrain that actually has steel that you can't see.

8 - Don't feed the Lem Nothing too hard about this level. Why was this graphic set unconverted?

9 - Give up the ghost Nice ghost puzzle!

10 - That's all you're left with An easy 10 of everything level to finish up the level pack where it's just akin to a Basic level with no gimmicks active.   

Indeed, it's been a couple of years, but now you're officially the first person to have completed Lemmicks! Congratulations!

Thank you so much, Strato. This means a lot I apparently overestimated the age of this pack when I said 4-5 years. I think what was going through my mind at the time was that because this pack is for v1.43, I thought Lemmicks would be old, especially since Giga's packs I've played through are around 4-5 years old themselves and are only compatible with v1.43. However, all I had to do to see that Lemmicks is only about 2 years old was check your first post in this thread and see that it's dated 2018. Because Lemmicks is now around 2 years old, did you ever give up hope that someone out there would ever finish your pack to the end? I'm glad that the v1.43 player is still around in case people ever want to take up the task of beating this pack, like I just did.

With this, great job on a very well-done high quality pack! For all the others, if you haven't done so yet, I highly recommend giving this pack a go! It doesn't disappoint at all. Rest assured that after having played through and beaten all the levels there's absolutely nothing unfair about this pack. There are a few levels with very pixel precise assignments, but these levels were simply challenging puzzles that were very enjoyable for me. Same thing with most of the other levels that don't have very precise assignments. Finally, there was pretty much only about 1 or 2 difficult levels per rank, but even then they're not over-the-top hard. The biggest exception is Bedlam, which has several hard ones and many that I would definitely place at ONML difficulty, but they're not too overly difficult. Just need to have knowledge of how the mechanics work when several gimmicks are active. You're welcome, Strato

[Strato Incendus]

Thank you very much, kaywhyn! For playing, for your high praise of the pack, and for taking the time to write such an extensive feedback to almost each of the remaining levels!

Somehow I can't open your replay folders. I do have win.rar, not just win.zip, but it tells me the archive is damaged / corrupted, or used an unknown file format. Maybe you can try putting them into a zip-file instead?

Regarding your questions:

1) Stoertebeker was a German pirate who, as legend has it, was sentenced to death by beheading, but tried to free his crew by running past them while they were standing in line. Every crewmember he could run past before collapsing would be liberated, that was the deal. Supposedly he made it past 11 pirates before the cutioner tripped him. Yet, these 11 were executed together with everyone else. A pretty pointless legend, somehow.
In the level, in contrast, some lemmings will inevitably make it into the teleporters that lead them to the exit, i.e. be saved, even though you are in the cutioner's position due to the Karoshi gimmick being active, so you wouldn't want them to.

2) On pre-assigned Swimmers: Haha, looks like this is the second half to the "Skies aflame" story : My first pack, Paralems, had a level called "Skies aflame" (re-appearing on the Groupie rank of Lemmings World Tour) which several forum members deemed impossible, due to them not being able to tell that the lemmings were pre-assigned Swimmers. They tried to solve the level in their minds before the hatch even opened, so they couldn't tell.

This was when I first heard about the NeoLemmix custom of labelling hatches that have pre-assigned skills with pickup skills. Back in Old Formats, hatches didn't gain these labels automatically, as they do in New Formats. I was somewhat resistant to accepting this custom, because I thought precisely what you did: That the labelling pickup skill could be confused for one you could actually collect. Now I can say: q.e.d.!

This issue is of course smaller with regular pickup skills, because usually, when you have e.g. pre-assigned Swimmers, there's no need to place Swimmer pickups in the level because they wouldn't be of any incremental use. In NeoLemmix 1.43 however, where you can also have instant pickup skills, the fact that a skill doesn't appear on your skill panel is not necessarily indicative of a pickup skill in a level being useless.

To prevent players from trying to collect the pickup skill that was just intended to label a hatch, Old Formats had the option of making objects fake. This is also the trick I used to reverse hatch and exit on one of the levels you mentioned. This option has been removed from New Formats for its trolling potential, which is why it appears on the Nostalgic rank, alongside everything else that has been removed.

Meanwhile, two levels from Nostalgic are technically no longer warranted, because both the VGA specs (like the troll graphic from "Don't feed the Lem") and anti-splat pads have been re-added to New-Formats. (VGA specs is a tileset of its own in New Formats that also includes e.g. the Awesome, Menacing, and the two Beast levels as complete landscapes).


3) I had totally forgotten about Climbers not being able to use the ceilings of Miner tunnels to go down with the No-Gravity gimmick being active. By that I mean "forgotten in the meantime"; I'm pretty sure I knew it back when designing the pack. This might have made for some interesting Bedlam puzzles where both No Gravity from the Cosmic rank and the Non-Permanent Skills gimmick from the Ephemeral rank could have been active. This would have allowed a Climber to go up somewhere and then still use a Miner tunnel to go down later.

I only used the "forget you were a Climber" trick on one Ephemeral level to enable the double-Miner turnaround, i.e. one Miner cancelling a Miner in the opposite direction. Climbers have a hard time doing this trick, because they spend the crucial moment "hugging" the end of the mine shaft, as nin10doadict called it while let's-playing Pit Lems, after I had told him. Later on I found out that Climbers can actually still perform this trick, it's just even harder to time correctly.


4) I do have Warcraft 3 and the expansion on my games shelf right here, but I never played it that much, so "The dead shall serve" wasn't an intentional reference. I had a friend at school who was playing a lot of World of Warcraft back in the day and kept telling me about in-game anecdotes non-stop, until at one point I understood most of the jokes. So maybe it's on a subconscious level ...

5) Thanks for your suggestion regarding the Basic rank! I think I'll have to see your replay for "Why did you doubt?" to know exactly what you mean, but as I said, so far the .rar folders don't seem to be working on my PC, for some reason.



Overall, while I'm glad you still found the Cosmic rank to contain some great puzzles, in total I hear you weren't much of a fan of this gimmick either, as it is true for most of the other players.

Thus, I think the majority vote is in on this, so that the second gimmick pack WillLem and I are contemplating should probably not include the No-Gravity gimmick. At least there shouldn't be a dedicated rank for it, like Cosmic in Lemmicks. I doubt anyone would have issues with it occasionally showing up on a mixed Bedlam-style rank.

[kaywhyn]

Somehow I can't open your replay folders. I do have win.rar, not just win.zip, but it tells me the archive is damaged / corrupted, or used an unknown file format. Maybe you can try putting them into a zip-file instead?

That is strange. They work perfectly fine on my end. Anyway, I removed the old rar attachment and reattached the rar file that's supposedly repaired, as well as a zip file (see post above this one). Let me know if either of them work. Regardless of whether the rar file works, I'll remove it once you confirm with me that it's either working or not but the zip file will remain.

[Strato Incendus]

Yep, the zip file works for me! Thank you, kaywhyn, looks like I've got quite a lot to watch now!

[kaywhyn]

Thanks for letting me know, Strato. I went ahead and removed the rar file. Did the new rar file work too, btw? Looking forward to the feedback on the replays. Next pack of yours I'll try will either be LWT or Pitlems/Paralems. For the former, I think I'll try it in both Old Formats and New Formats and see how well-done the radiation/slowfreeze levels were. In all likelihood, I'll probably start with the latter ones since they're much smaller packs than LWT, and even when combined is still only about half LWT's total number of levels.

[Strato Incendus]

I didn't try the new rar folders, but I think this is fine, since zip is more commonly used anyway, as far as I know.

I appreciate your continued interest in my other packs! Pit Lems and Paralems are older than Lemmicks, though, so the levels are of much lower quality.

Especially Paralems is really more of a collection of stupid references that aren't really challenging at all, and has a good deal of somewhat trolly levels.

Pit Lems was indeed designed to be more puzzle-focused and strictly fair. The levels don't have an overarching theme, though. The first version had quite a lot of backroutes (see nin10doadict's Let's Play), and some of the open-ended levels (X-of-everything ones) have so many degrees of freedom that they're quite easy.

I still consider the puzzles in Pit Lems good enough to be worthy of conversion to New Formats eventually, and I'll add some select levels from Paralems that I consider worthwhile to it as well, creating something I'm going to call Pit Lems Remastered in the process.

Pit Lems does have a lot of Radiation and Slowfreeze levels, though, including some that were nominated for Level of the Year, so it's definitely still worth giving a shot in Old Formats as well.

Paralems is really just more of a thing if you're interested in it for historic reasons. Since you said you already played GigaLems, which does contain some Troll elements as well, and you weren't as bothered by execution difficulty in Lemmicks as other players might have been, maybe you'll enjoy Paralems after all. But it would certainly be the last one of my packs I recommend to anyone - because it was the very first one I ever made.

Lemmings World Tour is my flagship pack, and most likely will remain that way even once I release Lemmings Open Air, Hall of Fame, and Drugs and Rock 'n Roll. Because those latter packs are going to be more difficult by nature.

Lemmings World Tour is, as far as I can tell, slightly easier than Lemmicks on average, while still having an overarching theme, fair puzzly-levels (unless they contain an octopus ), and offers lots of pretty landscape levels and custom self-recorded music to boot (you've already heard some of the tracks on the last levels of each rank while playing Lemmicks ).

[kaywhyn]

Ah, ok. Would had been nice to confirm if the new rar attachment worked, but it's fine, since the zip ones work for you. They both contained the same files anyway, so you got to take your pick. It was a quick, free easy conversion from rar to zip with a site I found online, so it's all good. That is very interesting indeed. I've checked other level pack topics and didn't realize that the replays that were sent were all zip files. Icho didn't report any problems with the rar replay files I sent to him for his Lemmings United pack, so it's probably the software you're using to extract them, since the rar replay files work fine on my end. I use Winrar, which does both zip and rar files. I guess I'm used to rar since I've been using it for at least 15 years or so without any problems whatsoever.

Thanks for the background on your smaller packs. I'll definitely give them a go regardless of the generally hated elements reported by the other forum members. Regarding Lemmicks, I unfortunately didn't hear any LWT tracks on the final levels of the ranks, as the only music that played were the Amiga tracks. The only time I did hear custom music was in the Nostalgic rank, but there was only 1 or 2 levels that did that IIRC. I think I tried putting the tracks in the music folder but it didn't work for me. Perhaps you can tell me how to get it to work.

[Strato Incendus]

I take it that you did in fact download the music for Lemmicks, so: Did you check the music folder again if there's another folder inside it? Sometimes this happens when you extract from a zip or rar file, it creates another sub-folder in "music", rather than just placing all the tracks in there loosely. And then NeoLemmix 1.43 won't be able to find them, as far as I know.

The intended music for Lemmicks are basically all Lemmings 3D tracks, plus one of my Lemmings World Tour tracks on each of the final levels. Occasionally, there might be an original Lemmings track in there on some of the levels, like Pachelbel's canon, but those are rare.

Speaking of it, I actually do use win-rar for both rars and zips... it's just that with these specific files, rar for some reason complained they were damaged, whereas zip didn't. Don't know why.

And one more note on one of the levels from the Nostalgic rank, one which you rightfully criticised - I had intended to respond to that, and then somehow forgot...

Regarding "Stop steeling my features"...

This is yet another reason, aside from fake objects and hidden hatches/exits, as they appear on "Irreversible", why NeoLemmix 1.43 had so much trolling potential: Manual steel + no true physics mode. As you will recall, this level flips the player a double bird, and pretty much the only parts of the level you can't remove with destructive skills are the two middle fingers.

I included a level on manual steel in the Nostalgic rank because I do have a personal Nostalgic attachment to it:

The very first levels I ever made were made on a Lemmings clone my brother introduced me to, WinLemms, which featured all the music as MIDI tracks... and also had manual steel. I made this level called "Hallowed Ground" back in the day, thinking this was a great in-game justification why random regular terrain could not be removed... it was a Dirt level, and thus also contained that retractable boulder trap that kind of counts as a hidden trap... in the beginning, every level designer believes these things are soooo funny... until they find out the joke has been done to death by literally everyone else already.

Some of these WinLemm levels I actually re-built by hand in NeoLemmix, though (since there was no option of converting them to NeoLemmix at that time, though I think namida created such an option at some point in the meantime - might no longer exist, though). One of them is "Journey to Emeria" from Paralems. That one is a strictly fair level, yet my brother struggled quite a bit with it in WinLemms... but WinLemms didn't have any of the NeoLemmix conveniences, such as skill shadows, rewinding, and frame stepping.

[kaywhyn]

Yup, no other folder inside the music folder. However, I solved it. I had to simply rename your Lemmicks music folder that I downloaded a few months ago to just "music." Whoever knew it was that simple? I think the strange thing was that I did that the last time but it didn't work for some reason. Or maybe the problem was for some packs for v10.13. Well, problem solved lol.

Hope you're enjoying the replays I sent you.

[Strato Incendus]

Ah, maybe your NeoLemmix 1.43 folder didn't have a music folder to begin with yet? If it only had the standard orig and ohno tracks, then those probably came as part of the game, so there was no dedicated folder called "music" yet.

[kaywhyn]

You are correct there. I just tested this by downloading another copy of v1.43 and when you exit after loading any pack compatible with this version, all there exists are Neolemmix.exe (the file you download from the Neolemmix website), along with a settings.ini and hotkey.ini files. Hence, it is necessary to create a music folder. I think in some packs the custom music worked fine, as the only way to play the packs on this version, as well as v10.13, is to load the .nxp file. The custom music should work automatically, but not always. The Gigalem packs come to mind here, where the custom music worked automatically. For packs that include custom music as a download, such as your pack Lemmicks, then as mentioned before it is necessary to create a music folder since there is none. Once I renamed your Lemmicks music folder to just "music," then it worked. Thanks for the help!

[jkapp76]

I'd love to see some edition of this in the new format.

[Proxima]

That is impossible, because this pack was designed to showcase the "gimmicks" that existed in older versions of NeoLemmix. They have not been supported for some years now.

[WillLem]

I'd love to see some edition of this in the new format.

That is impossible, because this pack was designed to showcase the "gimmicks" that existed in older versions of NeoLemmix. They have not been supported for some years now.

If Strato is happy with the idea, it might be interesting to see how the maps play out with new skills and no gimmicks.

[jkapp76]

Something like that is exactly what I had in mind. 

[Strato Incendus]

Yeah... that's not going to happen.

A lot of the landscapes in these levels don't even work without the gimmicks. For example, all the No-Gravity levels from the Cosmic rank normally have the lemmings walk in the air because they can't ever fall down. If you turn such a level into a normal level, you often don't even have enough terrain to make it through the level, unless you turn the thing into a massive Builder fest (potentiall requiring a Stoner at the start to even have some terrain to land on).

On a related note, the wrap levels from the Circular rank could only be replicated by spamming teleporters (or future "portals") all over the place; the Moist levels repeatedly require the water areas as a "lift" for the crowd, i.e. would turn into Builder fests, too if you wanted to gain height using just regular skills; and the Karoshi-gimmick levels on the Suicidal rank could only be replicated by using fake objects in "interim Old Formats" (10.13), i.e. by swapping traps and exits around.

I did some of these things on select Lemmicks levels that made it into Lemmings World Tour (which was first designed for NeoLemmix 10.13), but it wouldn't work on every level, and some of these Lemmings World Tour levels already don't work the originally intended way in New Formats.

"Exploring landscapes" only works if the level was actually designed as a landscape - like in Lemmings World Tour. There the landscapes were dictated by the real world, i.e. existed first, and then I had to come up with a creative solution to get to the exit within the confines of that pre-existing landscape.

The levels in Lemmicks, in contrast, much like those in Pit Lems and Lemmings Open Air, had their terrain designed around the initial intended solution. The "maps" don't stand on their own.

I generally refer to "landscape first, solution second" as "bottom-up" level design, and to "solution first, landscape second" as "top-down" level design.

[kaywhyn]

Hi Strato,

You might already be aware of this, but I have started a level solving commentary video series on another level pack of yours, this time for Lemmicks. Link here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbp2m4KlFpJt48ftqx0HE4TMj7UF3nAmA. Enjoy! Perhaps this will finally allow me to get comments/feedback on my solutions from well over a year ago?

Just like with Lemmings Open Air, the biggest reason for doing such a series is because I absolutely love this pack of yours and hence felt it deserve the video series treatment, but also because oral explanations will do a far better job of explaining the many gimmicks found throughout the pack instead of a silent playthrough recording. I've been revisiting old packs and uploading video solutions to them, particularly since there aren't any online to these old level packs. During the process, it made me realize how much I miss these gimmicks that aren't present in New Formats NL. I'm one of the few who didn't mind most of the gimmicks. Also, you'll be happy to hear this, but I didn't mind ghosts either! I've seen way too many excellent puzzles utilizing them, notably from Gigalem (you might had noticed the video series I did on his ghost pack), namida, and, of course, you. Honestly, I feel ghosts do deserve another chance, but if it was culled simply due to the coding complexity, then perhaps it was for the best. In any case, I'm glad that they can still be experimented on in very old versions of NL, as well as sharing levels using them in the thread you created. In my opinion, they're far less annoying than zombies, although I've seen a fair amount of great zombie puzzles too. Just personally zombies get more on my nerves than ghosts.

Along with this, I didn't mind radiation or slowfreeze either! Again, I've seen a lot of excellent puzzles utilizing them.

[Strato Incendus]

Oh, wow, what a pleasant surprise, thanks a lot, kaywhyn!

Yes, I am aware I haven't commented on your Lemmicks solutions yet. Indeed, when you did the LOA solving commentary, I found myself repeating a lot of the things I had already said about your replays during testing and writing them into YouTube comments again, too. So I guess now I will be able to do both in one.

[kaywhyn]

Well, seeing how the video series on LOA was such a huge hit with you, I know this one on Lemmicks will be as well Let's say this is also allowing your Lemmicks pack, and the many gimmicks within, more time to shine in the spotlight in video form, despite the pack being a few years old I'm very excited and looking forward to see what you think of the series I put together on another excellent pack of yours I always like it when the pack author enjoys any kind of video series I do on his or her pack, as that's pretty much the whole point. You're more than welcome to take your time on commenting on my solutions whenever you're able to get to them. No pressure at all My videos won't be going anywhere, they'll be right there on my YT channel whenever you're able to have the time to get to them to view for your entertainment.

Glad to hear you're doing well!

[Strato Incendus]

Level 08 from the Suicidal rank has finally been renamed (for the reasons explained under kaywhyn's level-solving commentary video).

Just in case anyone who downloads Lemmicks from now on is confused by that, because it still has a different title in kaywhyn's YouTube video.
Obviously, I can't change that in hindsight.