Author Topic: NOTICE: Please do NOT add to official / other people's styles.  (Read 7244 times)

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Offline namida

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With great power comes great responsibility, and it looks like that's been abused a bit. Unlike the old-formats where it'd quickly lead to huge mess, nothing in new-formats really prevents people adding to other people's styles - but you still shouldn't do it.

It's understandable that you might want to create extra pieces that go with an official style or someone else's style. However, if doing so, please put these pieces in your own separate style. NeoLemmix allows mixing tilesets in a single level. Yes, it can be a bit annoying to switch tilesets (maybe the editor could use a feature to display multiple sets at once in the selection area? - but you'd have to convince Nepster that's worthwhile), but by adding them to someone else's set, you're creating the impression that they're responsible for that piece - and indeed, they might feel compelled to maintain it in the future, so their style doesn't look like it has a broken piece. In the case of official styles, this is essentially pushing that same thing on the maintainers of NeoLemmix itself. Some creators might also feel the quality isn't up to standard (or conversely, that it's too high, if they're going for a deliberate lower-quality aesthetic), or that the new piece doesn't have the right feel they were going for with the set, etc - and it's being pushed into their style anyway.

If you're creating pieces for use in a single level, consider having a "(your name)_special" style, and include the relevant pieces with the pack the level appears in. For examples of this, see Lemmings Plus III, IV or VI.

From now on, all additions / modifications to graphic sets must be submitted by the graphic set's author (or one of them, in the case of a set with multiple authors). For the purposes of this rule, NeoLemmix's creators are considered to be the authors of the official graphic sets and any abandoned graphic sets - we will, of course, take community discussions into account when deciding what we will or won't accept, but we have the final say; and of course, you are welcome to submit your proposed changes to a graphic set's author, but it's their call whether it gets included or not and they must be the one to submit it.

We'll be reasonable here - eg. if Alice decides that she's no longer going to maintain her graphic set and agrees for Bob to take over maintaining it, we won't require Bob to send all changes via Alice anyway; Bob can submit them himself. But Bob can't randomly decide to add to a set that Alice is still maintaining, unless that set is a collaborative effort between both of them in the first place. Likewise, in the case of abandoned sets, we're happy to let known forum members take over maintaining them - as long as this is a genuine taking over of the set, and not just claiming such short-term to slip in one or two new pieces.

My initial intention here was to preserve the already-added ones, however, many of these go as far as being deceptive, and should not be left in the official styles in any capacity. As such, I'll be deciding on a per-piece basis.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2019, 02:47:34 AM by namida »
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Offline namida

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Re: NOTICE: Please do NOT add to official / other people's styles.
« Reply #1 on: May 03, 2019, 03:19:48 AM »
After some reconsideration (and some closer looking at these pieces), I have decided that I'm going to make some immediate changes.

Most of the extra pieces in the Marble style will be removed. The locked exit will remain, but I've redone the graphic so that it's more typical of locked exits (and in particular is not invisible while in the locked state), and adjusted the trigger area so that it matches the normal exit. The terrain piece brick_small_06 will remain, without changes. All other terrain / objects that were slipped in have been removed. My decision here is based on that many of these were deceptive, and didn't really fit with the marble style - they appeared to have been created for the use of a single level, or at most, a single pack. If the person using these needs help adjusting their level(s) to use these pieces as part of a custom, separate tileset (without manually replacing everything), they're welcome to contact me - publicly or via private message - for help.

The two extra objects (blue recolors of the flame objects) in the Fire style, and the extra object (rain) in the Sky style, are not affected - these will remain. As far as I can tell, these are the only cases of stuff that's slipped in that shouldn't have - but please let me know if you're aware of any others.

The NeoLemmix styles download has been reuploaded, with the extra pieces in marble removed (except the locked exit, which has had adjustments). Please redownload it, and delete your existing copy of orig_marble before extracting (otherwise you'll still have the removed pieces).

(Yes, I know, the new locked exit in Marble lacks flames, and there's no exit top object to add them. I didn't bother since we'll have the secondary animations feature soon anyway - I have indeed made a proper secondary animation to go with this locked exit for the next NL update.)
« Last Edit: May 03, 2019, 03:24:52 AM by namida »
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Offline IchoTolot

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Re: NOTICE: Please do NOT add to official / other people's styles.
« Reply #2 on: May 03, 2019, 08:24:13 AM »
Exactly which tiles/objects have been removed?

I would request a full detailed list or else the chance of chaos is here. Example: I and lots of others have used the marble teleporter/receiver and I would consider that as an extra object. It is still in the styles download though, so you did not considered that an extra.

So a list like this would make things clear:

orig_marble

Object A
Terrain A

TilesetB

....


Offline Flopsy

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Re: NOTICE: Please do NOT add to official / other people's styles.
« Reply #3 on: May 03, 2019, 10:47:45 AM »
Back around when SEB Lems was released, there were additions to the LPV Honeycomb tileset, specifically Blue, White and Yellow hexagons and the 26 letters of the alphabet. These haven't been mentioned but I believe Nepster was the one who merged these with the Honeycomb tileset originally back then.

Just bringing these up because they haven't been mentioned but I guess because they were so long ago now that it doesn't really matter?

Offline Proxima

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Re: NOTICE: Please do NOT add to official / other people's styles.
« Reply #4 on: May 03, 2019, 01:17:09 PM »
This topic is a useful starting-point for listing which tiles are usermade additions to the official styles:

pillar/wood_25
fire/bars_diag_01
brick/teleporter and receiver
marble/block_10
marble/block_11
fire/bricks_10

(I believe my tiles for Brick were never added.)

I agree with Icho that we need an official statement with a full list of which pieces are being removed and which can stay.

EDIT: I've downloaded NL into a new folder and compared the current marble terrain folder with my previous installation. The addition of brick_small_06 is the only difference, so I guess I will never get to see these now-deprecated new pieces :P
« Last Edit: May 03, 2019, 01:34:48 PM by Proxima »

Offline Nepster

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Re: NOTICE: Please do NOT add to official / other people's styles.
« Reply #5 on: May 03, 2019, 03:57:15 PM »
For sake of completeness: During the early days of the new formats, there have been several additions to the orig_pillar coming from the L2 classic tileset. IIRC these were mainly diagonal/triangular wood pieces. They have been created by möbius, added by myself and should stay as they extend this style nicely and fit pretty well.

The six pieces Proxima listed were proposed by möbius and added by myself, too (except for the marble teleporter, for which namida Proxima is responsible). I still deem them useful and fitting additions to the styles, so they should stay as well (unless someone can think of good reasons otherwise).

PS: I am curious about a list of the removed pieces, too.

Edit: Attributed marble teleporter correctly now.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2019, 04:11:49 PM by Nepster »

Offline Proxima

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Re: NOTICE: Please do NOT add to official / other people's styles.
« Reply #6 on: May 03, 2019, 04:07:03 PM »
the marble teleporter, for which namida is responsible

That's mine, actually. It's adapated from a trap I made and added to the marble tileset back in the Cheapo days (which is also the origin of Lix's factory trap).

Offline namida

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Re: NOTICE: Please do NOT add to official / other people's styles.
« Reply #7 on: May 03, 2019, 07:27:31 PM »
All the pieces I've removed were very recent additions, all in the Marble style. Even if they're out of place, I'd be reluctant to remove pieces that have been around for a long time. However, these were recently enough added that my local copy of NeoLemmix - where I last updated the styles maybe a month and a half ago - did not have them.

Objects removed:
- button
- exit_02
- flame_deco_01 and _02
- glider_start and glider_end
- laser
- unlock_laser
- water_fountain
- water_yellow
- waterfall

Objects modified:
- locked_exit, the trigger area has been modified so it matches the standard exit and the graphic has been modified (but remains the same size and frame count)

Terrain:
- candelabra_xx
- castle_01
- circle_03 through _06
- fountain
- platform_xx

A user who knows about these (not sure if they want to be named) has contacted me via Discord and explained the origins of these pieces. They were created by a Youtube user who is not yet working on new-formats, and converted by the user who contacted me. As such, damage is likely to be minimal. Should that Youtuber join the forums, we can help them convert their level / addons without messing up the main styles.
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Offline nin10doadict

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Re: NOTICE: Please do NOT add to official / other people's styles.
« Reply #8 on: May 03, 2019, 10:10:36 PM »
So from the sound of it I've been doing the right thing with my nin10_misc set; it currently contains some pieces designed to fit with other tilesets. I can see why doing this is a good idea, it reduces the chaos and can be changed if both parties mutually decide to add new pieces like this to the original tileset.

Offline namida

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Re: NOTICE: Please do NOT add to official / other people's styles.
« Reply #9 on: May 04, 2019, 01:04:20 AM »
Here's the removed pieces. They could perhaps be added to a "davidz_marble_extra" style, that's fine by me - just as long as they're clearly separate from the actual marble style.
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Offline Strato Incendus

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Re: NOTICE: Please do NOT add to official / other people's styles.
« Reply #10 on: May 11, 2019, 02:23:58 PM »
There's one issue with this: Back when the original tilesets were free for contribution, there were the following two pieces of terrain added to the ohno_brick tileset (see attachment). This happened along with additions to Pillar, Marble, and Fire.

While the changes to the latter three tilesets have been kept, i.e. they still contain all these pieces, even more, actually, the Brick tileset doesn't have these two anymore. Maybe they've never been added to Brick in the first place, despite the user having uploaded them around the same time as the additions for Pillar, Marble, and Fire?

I've used them in my levels, though, and added them to the translation table so that they also appear in New Formats. So I copied the two png-files over into my New Formats Brick folder so that these levels can be opened, but this "custom edits to original tilesets on each user's PC" is precisely what we don't want.

So would you mind adding blocks_03 and create_small (back) to Brick officially? ;) Just like the horizontal blue brick from Fire, the smaller bricks from Marble added to the original ones, or the diagonal pieces added to Fire and Pillar, these two pieces were originally meant to be added to Brick together with the Brick Teleporter and Receiver, which are indeed part of the official New Formats version of Brick.
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Offline namida

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Re: NOTICE: Please do NOT add to official / other people's styles.
« Reply #11 on: May 11, 2019, 08:51:36 PM »
It doesn't sound like those were ever officially accepted if they exist in old formats but weren't included in the default translation table - the translation tables for the official styles were generated by exactly the same graphic set conversion tool as we've released for people to convert their own styles, which would have caught these too.

Nonetheless, they fit well enough with the style and are well-designed, so I'm happy to add them in next time the styles download gets updated.
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Offline Strato Incendus

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Re: NOTICE: Please do NOT add to official / other people's styles.
« Reply #12 on: May 12, 2019, 01:41:55 PM »
Thanks, namida! ;) :thumbsup:

It's the other way round, btw: They never existed in Old Formats, they were New Formats-exclusive additions to the Brick tileset... or so I thought. That's why I added them to my version of Old Formats Brick (which I shared together with Lemmings World Tour), thinking I could easily convert those levels to New Formats later on.

Once those two pieces have been added to Brick, I can adapt by translation table for Brick to match those pieces when converting levels.
My packs so far:
Lemmings World Tour (New & Old Formats), my music-themed flagship pack, 320 levels - Let's Played by Colorful Arty
Lemmings Open Air, my newest release and follow-up to World Tour, 120 levels
Paralems (Old Formats), a more flavour-driven one, 150 levels
Pit Lems (Old Formats), a more puzzly one, 100 levels - Let's Played by nin10doadict
Lemmicks, a pack for (very old) NeoLemmix 1.43 full of gimmicks, 170 levels