Lemmings Hall of Fame [120/120 levels completed; Test Phase Has Begun]

[Strato Incendus]

EDIT: In the attachment you find all levels which are currently available. The custom music hasn't been finished yet, so all level files refer to the standard Lemmings 2: The Tribes tracks instead.
They don't come with the standard NeoLemmix download, but you can get them here.

I'm opening up this topic now already, even though I haven't completed Lemmings Open Air yet. The reason is the way I am planning these packs to interact with each other.

All good things come in 3s, so they say, and since Lemmings Open Air is going to be the follow-up to Lemmings World Tour, Lemmings Hall of Fame will be the pack to conclude the trilogy of music-themed levels.

All three packs are supposed to work on their own, but still form a union as well:

Lemmings World Tour (LWT) had the Geography subtheme, containing not only songs as level titles, but specifically as many as possible that reference specific locations in the world, with the flags of the countries they're situated in, famous sights, and the skyline of the city. The focus was on the artistic quality of the levels. Heavy graphic-set mixing ensued as a necessity.

Lemmings Open Air (LOA) is supposed to feel as much like Classical Lemmings as possible: It features the standard graphic sets more than anything else, the level shapes are abstract rather than realistic, and thus, the focus is on cognitive challenge rather than aesthetics. Basically, it's Classical Lemmings, but with more skills (and without the annoying execution parts).

Lemmings Hall of Fame (LHF), finally, will try to do the same thing for Lemmings 2: The Tribes.

What does this mean?

• 120 levels, just like Lemmings Open Air (since both original and Lemmings 2 had 120 levels each)
• focus on the L2 graphic sets
• hand-made, real-instruments music again, but this time of the Lemmings 2 tracks instead of the original and ONML tracks from LWT / LOA
• no music rotation, instead each instrument track is tied to its respective tribe
• lots of vertical scrolling (which LOA will explicity not have)
• trying to make the best out of using as many skills as possible, without causing the redundance of skills present in Lemmings 2
• the focus will be on the skills that are shared "new" skills between NeoLemmix and Lemmings 2, meaning Swimmer, Stacker, Platformer, Fencer, Shimmier, (Hang) Glider, and (later) Jumper.
• The remaining NeoLemmix skills, i.e. Disarmer, Stoner, Cloner, and Walker, will also be used, but much less frequently.
• four ranks, and mixture of the graphic sets throughout (not 10 of the same graphic set in a row like in L2, because that gets boring pretty quickly, both visually and musically)
• in short: Make a Lemmings 2: The Tribes pack, but in NeoLemmix, so as to contain custom music, have those music tracks mixed-up, and avoid L2's execution-madness 

So far, I have only seen this done in form of Nepster's "Return of the Tribes". However, there are a couple of noteworthy differences:

• "Return of the Tribes" was created at a time when the variety of skills in NeoLemmix was still much lower, so it still feels closer to Classical Lemmings, simply because not many of the L2 skills were used yet.
• Nepster's pack also stuck to L2's original structure, urging you to play the levels of each tribe in a row rather than alternating between them.
• In L2, however, the difficulty increased within each tribe, so the first couple of levels of each tribe were very easy. With a Classical Lemmings rank structure, it makes more sense to have all the easy levels in the beginning and all the hard ones at the end, irrespective of which tribe they belong to.

Why am I planning this in parallel with Lemmings Open Air?
I want to preserve the feeling of original Lemmings in LOA as much as possible. However, I haven't managed yet to completely stick to original graphic sets in LOA (plus my own graphic sets Money and Autumn, which were deliberately designed to be stylistically similar to classic Lemmings tilesets), and thus, some levels featuring L2 graphic sets have snuck in there.
I'm not saying I'm going to remove all L2-graphic-set levels from LOA and put them into Lemmings Hall of Fame, but now I always have this as an option, if I think a particular level "breaks the Classical-Lemmings feeling" of LOA too much.

That begs some questions, I guess:

• Am I also going to do real-instruments versions of the Lemmings 3D tracks?
  Currently, this isn't planned, because the sounds used for L3D, even though still synthetic, were already much closer to realistic guitars, drums etc., so the "improvement" (depending on taste, of course) an overhaul with real instruments could provide would be much smaller than for the 8-bit- or MIDI-based instrumentation of Lemmings / ONML / Lemmings 2.
  Some of the Lemmings 2 tracks are a lot less memorable than the Classic Lemmings / ONML tunes, though, so if I really can't wrap my head around making a rock version of a specific track, I may end up replacing that tribe's track with a fitting one from Lemmings 3D.
  
• If namida's editor for Lemmings 3D becomes a thing, will I create a(nother) music-themed pack for Lemmings 3D?
  I would have loved to be able to create Lemmings 3D levels as a kid, so yes, this is definitely an option! Whether I'd create hand-made versions of L3D tracks in that case, or simply resort to the original L3D tracks, I'd have to see then. Currently, I'm mainly curious about to what extent namida might be able to add some of NeoLemmix's conveniences like rewinding, skill shadows etc. to Lemmings 3D, or whether this is "only" going to be an editor that allows you to replace the original levels, which you then access with the original game engine, just like with custom Lemmings 2 packs.
• Wouldn't the logical consequence be that there should also be a Lemmings 3 (All New World of Lemmings)-style pack based on the music theme?
  Yes, it would - however, in contrast to L1 and L2, I have never played L3 during my childhood (never even knew of its existence to begin with), and the concept of having to pick up almost every skill makes this very far from feeling like playing Lemmings to me. Basically, with a NeoLemmix adaptation, the entire pack would have to feature only the three L3 graphic sets (Shadow, Egyptian, and Biolab), and every level would have to be full of pickup skills. Pickup skills always make a level feel more like Super Mario than Lemmings to me, though .

All in all, it's good that Lemmings Open Air is in between, because this allows me to already experiment with the Shimmier, as well as getting more use out of all the tracks I recorded for Lemmings World Tour to create that actual Lemmings feeling. In LWT, it was more about the instrumentation matching the theme of the pack; in LOA, the actual melodies provide the Lemmings feeling more so than the instrumentation, because these melodies are what we've all come to associate with the game from playing it in our early days. At the same time, it's good that these are new recordings, because the original 8-bit- and MIDI-tracks that are the default in each pack are probably also the ones we're sick of listening to by now.

I hope that by the time Lemmings Open Air has been released and I can focus fully on working on Lemmings Hall of Fame, the Jumper as an additional skill will have been introduced or will at least be in the making. Then, the Jumper could become the signature new skill of Lemmings Hall of Fame, just like the Shimmier is the primary new feature for Lemmings Open Air compared to Lemmings World Tour.

And of course, it's pretty much impossible to create the feeling of playing Lemmings 2: The Tribes without the Jumper .

Consequently, if any further suggestions for useful skills from Lemmings 2 come up and can be developed for NeoLemmix in the meantime - I remember we had discussions about using the Roper as a downward Builder, or the Laser Blaster or Twister as an upward Digger, some people also thought about the Lix-like interactions of the Jumper with the Runner - then this would be helpful for the feeling of this pack. To me, the execution in Lemmings 2, especially everything relating to the fanning-tool, was much more annoying than the abundance of skills.

Still, I think we all agree that variety of skills is something that can be overdone easily, so I'd also be happy to just work with what we've got now plus the Jumper.

Thus, by having less skill confusion and no execution trouble, I hope Lemmings Hall of Fame will simply result in an improved, more enjoyable version of Lemmings 2: The Tribes.

[Strato Incendus]

Given the "each level title must be a song title"-rule, and knowing that I'm going to have exactly 10 levels of each tribe, I'm already going to reserve some level titles here so that I don't use them for Lemmings Open Air. I'm ordering them by expected difficulty within each tribe; however, as said before, the eventual order of these levels is going to be mixed between the tribes, and sorted by difficulty into four ranks of 30 levels each, just like in Classical Lemmings.

Beach

• Vamos a la playa (Righeira)
• Sippin' on Bacardi Rum (Groove Connection)
• Sailing (Rod Stewart)
• Fly on the wings of Lem (Olssen Brothers)
• Lembada (Kaoma)
• No Lemming, no cry (Bob Marley)
• Coco Jambo (Mr. President)
• Welcome to St. Tropez (DJ Antoine, Timati, Kalenna)
• Ai si eu te pego (Michel Teló)
• Despacito (Luis Fonsi / Daddy Yankee)

Outdoor

• Welcome to the jungle (Guns 'N Roses)
• Living on a stacks farm (Spinal Tap)
• Jungle drum (Emilíana Torrini)
• Heads, shoulders, bees, and toads (Children's song)
• These Lems are made for walking (Nancy Sinatra)
• Rolling on the river (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
• This land is your land (Woody Guthrie)
• Wild Frontier (Gary Moore)
• What a wonderful world (Louis Armstrong)
• Free bird (Lynyrd Skynyrd)

Egyptian

• Ramses, Pharaoh (Freedom Call)
• Go down, Moses (Louis Armstrong)
• In the name of Amun (Nile)
• Castles made of sand (Jimi Hendrix)
• Inside the pyramid of light (Ten)
• EDIT 2020: Cleopatra (Samira Efendi)
• Can you feel the Lems tonight? (Elton John)
• Sandstorm (Darude)
• Hakuna Matata (Lion King Musical)
• Valley of the Kings (Saxon)

Medieval

• A hard day's knight (The Beatles)
• Walpurgisnacht (Schandmaul)
• Besser du rennst (Subway to Sally)
• Ai Vis Lo Lop (In Extremo)
• Avalon (Nocturnal Rites)
• Lemplars of steel (Hammerfall)
• Heroes of our time (DragonForce)
• Keeper of the Seven Keys (Helloween)
• Dawn of victory (Rhapsody of Fire)
• The name of the rose (Ten)

Classic (=Pillar)

• Ode to Joy (Ludwig van Beethoven / Friedrich Schiller)
• The Lem-Catcher's song (Wolfgang A. Mozart)
• Thus spoke Zarathustra (Richard Strauss / Friedrich Nietzsche)
• Microcosm (Belá Bártok)
• Pictures at an exhibition (Modest Mussorgsky)
• The Well-Lempered Clavier (J. S. Bach)
• Ruins of Athens (Ludwig van Beethoven)
• The Creation (Joseph Haydn)
• Nessun dorma (Giacomo Puccini)
• Hell's vengeance is boiling in my heart (Wolfang A. Mozart)

Circus

• Circus (Britney Spears)
• Theater (Katja Ebstein)
• Super Trooper (ABBA)
• Maniac (Michael Sembello)
• Being for the benefit of Mr. Kite (The Beatles)
• Welcome to the freak show (Ten)
• Blue Monday (New Order)
• Tears of a clown (Smokey Robinson & The Miracles)
• The show must go on (Queen)
• Imaginaerum (Nightwish)

Highland

• Highland Lemmy (Traditional)
• Bonny Portmore (Loreena McKennitt)
• Road to the Isles (Andy Stewart)
• The Mad Piper (Civil War)
• Devil's dance floor (Flogging Molly)
• The gang's all here (Dropkick Murphys)
• Lemmings and mead (Alestorm)
• My spirit flies (Frankie Barranco)
• Isle of Skye (SuidAkRA)
• Flower of Scotland (Fish)

Polar

• Norrsken (Jon Henrik Fjällgren)
• Spirit in the sky (KEiiNO)
• Valley of the Damned (DragonForce)
• Footsteps in the snow (Gregorian)
• The wild Lem of winter (Ten)
• Bloodbound (Hammerfall)
• Black winter day (Amorphis)
• Last of the wilds (Nightwish)
• Inside the winter storm (DragonForce)
• Gliding home for Christmas (Chris Rea)

Space

• Anywhere in the galaxy (Gamma Ray)
• Amongst stars (Amorphis)
• At the back of beyond (Visions of Atlantis)
• Walking on the moon (The Police)
• Counting stars (One Republic)
• The dark side of the moon (Pink Floyd)
• Faith of the heart (Rod Stewart)
• Ziggy Stardust (David Bowie)
• Blackened Sun (Freedom Call)
• The last journey home (DragonForce)

Cavelem

• Back to the cave (Lita Ford)
• Wild thing (The Troggs)
• Bright eyes (Simon & Garfunkel)
• The monster is loose (Meat Loaf)
• Fade to grey (Visage)
• Sacrifice (Elton John)
• The Unforgiven (Metallica)
• A face in the crowd (Tom Petty)
• Go with the flow (Queens of the Stone Age)
• Where the wild roses grow (Nick Cave & Kylie Minogue)

Shadow

• In the air tonight (Phil Collins)
• When the night comes (Joe Cocker / Bryan Adams)
• Summer night city (ABBA)
• Howling at the moon (Milow)
• You shook me all night long (AC/DC)
• Atemlos durch die Nacht (Helene Fischer)
• Evening falls (Enya)
• Bad moon rising (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
• A night like this (Caro Emerald)
• Moonlight Shadow (Mike Oldfield)

Sports

• We can win the race (Modern Talking)
• Song 2 (Blur)
• Let's get it started (The Black Eyed Peas)
• Jump around (House of Pain)
• Wavin' Flag (K'naan)
• Start me up (The Rolling Stones)
• Dynamite (Taio Cruz)
• Can't hold us (Macklemore, Ryan Lewis, Ray Dalton)
• Another one bites the dust (Queen)
• Hall of Fame (The Script)

Well, looks like I've already found the title for the last level of this pack - apparently, Sports will have to be the most difficult tribe here as well, just like in Lemmings 2!

And yeah, I found it kind of funny to have the "Classic" tribe be the titles of actual classical music pieces - which isn't so easy, because most classical pieces don't have a proper title at all...

[Strato Incendus]

You know what, given the parallels between Lemmings 2: The Tribes and Lemmings 3D as far as graphic sets are concerned - which I started discussing in this thread - the question whether I should use the L2 or the L3D tracks becomes a lot less clear.

I used a lot of L3D tracks in my pack "Lemmicks", however I selected them on a level-by-level basis, rather than sticking them to certain tilesets (e.g. the L3D Medieval tracks always just in conjunction with L2 Medieval levels, the Alien tracks with L2 Space levels, etc.).

I'm definitely going to release batches of test levels for Lemmings Hall of Fame, much like I'm currently doing it for Lemmings Open Air. This will likely be before all the tracks have been recorded, so I can test what it's going to feel like with the L3D tracks compared to the L2 tracks.

If this actually leads to me recording versions of the L3D tracks, this would be a bigger challenge because there are 2 for each tileset (making it 20 tracks in total, because there are only 10 tilesets in L3D compared to 12 in L2).

This mainly comes down to how much people prefer which tracks from which game, and how easy it is to record real-instrument versions of them. I may even end up with a mix of L2- and L3D tracks.

If I had to pick my favourite music option for each L2 style, I think I'd spontaneously go with:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• Beach - L2
• Cavelem - L2
• Circus - L2
• Classic - original Lemmings "Pachelbel Canon"
• Egyptian - L3D "The Prisoner"
• Highland - L2
• Medieval - L2
• Outdoor - L2
• Polar - L3D "Alpine Assault Course"
• Shadow - L3D "Alilems"
• Space - L3D "Attack of the 50 ft Lemming"
• Sports - L3D "Fore!"

For Beach, Cavelem, and Highland, I pretty much have no other choice than going with the L2 songs anyway, but that's no problem, because I like them all, especially Highland and Cavelem.
The L2 Highland track is a medley of Scotland the Brave and Loch Lomond, I couldn't imagine anything more fitting than that.

The L2 Egyptian track doesn't really create oriental atmosphere to my ears, the other L3D track does it a little more, but "The Prisoner" seems the most fitting.

The L2 Circus track, in contrast, feels more like circus music to me with those marching drums, compared with both of those melancholic tunes from L3D.

The L2 Classic track is a medley of two songs from Lemmings 1 - but not a particularly well-done one, in my view. I'd rather simply have the iconic Pachelbel Canon here, which I already recorded for Lemmings World Tour. So that's definitely one track less I have to do!

For Medieval, it's a tough choice. I find the L3D track from "It's a Run-Around" a little annoying, the track from "Castle Lemalot" however was one of my favourites as a kid! I've recently come to like the L2 Medieval track very much, as well, though - and thus, this is the first one I've started to record.

It's similarly tough for Outdoor - I like both of the L3D tracks very much, but the L2 one is pretty groovy, too .

The L2 Polar track is simply Rudolph, the Red-Nose Reindeer again. If I had recorded the Holiday Lemmings tracks, I could re-use another one here. But since I haven't, I think a distinction should be made between Christmas levels and just "regular" snow / Polar levels. The L3D track sounds "cold" without sounding like Christmas.

The L2 Shadow track is basically Mission Impossible, which fits the theme - it's just that it can get on your nerves quickly, and the 5/8 measure, while I have no problem playing that, makes the music sound rather "hectic" in the long run. I know that "Alilems" is technically the music for the L3D Space levels, but it just sounds so nice and dark.

In contrast, the L2 Space music is full of happy, bubbly "beep-sounds". It's just pretty chaotic, changing the rhythm several times in the middle of the track. So maybe the "happier" L3D Classic track would be an appropriate replacement?

The L2 Sports track is also iconic - one I always associate with struggling with the hardest levels in the game . The L3D golf tracks feel more relaxed and melodic, so if my Sports levels become tough as well, maybe the L3D "Carribean" tracks would take a little bit of the edge off...

But I'm not sure about it, and as much as I'd like to, I probably won't get to record self-played versions of all of these tracks.

So please, let me know your preferences when it comes to choosing between a Lemmings 2: The Tribes and a Lemmings 3D track for the same graphic set!

[Strato Incendus]

Thinking about the rank names, something with four options that fits to the topic of "fame" would probably be to simply go with the "metals of medals":

Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum

Also, it just occured to me that the Classic tribe is pretty much independent of whether or not we have the Jumper at our disposal, so I could basically go ahead and create that rank already. Unless I also want to break out of yet another corset set by Lemmings 2 in this regard...

We don't have enough different skills in NeoLemmix anyway to give each tribe a separate fixed skillset. Then again, I think that isn't even how it works in Lemmings 2, because it's not like the player were restricted to just a fix set of eight skills per tribe, aside from the Classic tribe, that is. Classic is the only tribe which strictly sticks to the original 8 skills, whereas the other tribes are all over the place (for example, the Jet Pack can be found in Beach, Cavelem, Shadow...).

[Strato Incendus]

...and here's two example levels to showcase what this pack is going to look like !


In the air tonight


Vamos a la playa

[Strato Incendus]

Man, coming up with puzzles that don't involve Jumpers and still feel authentic to Lemmings 2: The Tribes is hard - but I just made this nice little platformer level, which I've kept on my mind the entire day.

As you will notice, I'm sticking to the original L2 backgrounds for this pack, rather than using my custom ones for Medieval and Sports.


Another one bites the dust

(PS: You need GigaLem's Metal Mod tileset for the laser traps, as well as Raymanni's Biolab tileset for the triggered trap; but I think both are part of the standard NeoLemmix styles download by now. )

EDIT: Fixed the level. Turns out Floaters were required instead of Gliders, because the latter were breaking the level.

[Strato Incendus]

Okay, I'll probably have to check back how many one-screeners there are in standard Lemmings 2: The Tribes...


Dynamite

...but to me, personally, this feels much more like Lemmings 2!


Go down, Moses

[ccexplore]

Okay, I'll probably have to check back how many one-screeners there are in standard Lemmings 2: The Tribes...

You got me curious, and here are the results:

Cavelem: 6
Classic: 1, 2
Egyptian: 1
Highland: 3, 4, 5
Outdoor: 1, 2, 4
Polar: 2
Shadow: 3, 4, 5
Sports: 2, 6

[remember you can go here to get a quick look at what each level looks like]

So 16 out of 120.  I have to say, a little more than I thought there are.  Also interesting that for the tribes that have more than 1 one-screeners, those levels tend to occur consecutively or very close to it.

Incidentally, is your Dynamite actually a one-screener in NeoLemmix?  Seems wider horizontally than the one-screeners in Lemmings 2.

It's striking how much more colorful and vibrant the Lemmings 2 graphics are.  Tastes may vary, but I feel like it's so much easier to make levels look good when you use the Lemmings 2 graphics compared to Lemmings 1 or ONML.   Keep up the good work!

[namida]

Incidentally, is your Dynamite actually a one-screener in NeoLemmix?  Seems wider horizontally than the one-screeners in Lemmings 2.

It would depend on the user's screen resolution (or what the resolution appears to be to a DPI-unaware app, to be more precise - NL has intentionally remained DPI-unaware for performance reasons), and NL zoom settings - there's no consistent measure of what's "one screen" for all users. For me - default NL settings, 4K display at 200% OS scaling (so, NL thinks the resolution is 1920x1080) - "one screen" is 384x184; Dynamite is 400x160, so it's slightly more than one screen wide and slightly less than one screen tall.

[Strato Incendus]

Ah yes, Dynamite is a one-screener on my PC - but it's larger than the official one-screen format 320 x 160. That's because I usually don't like grey space on the left and right side of my levels. I don't mind it that much at the top or bottom, because that's something I'm used to from widescreen movies and such. Grey space on the sides, in contrast, looks to me like a watching an old movie in 4:3 format on a modern widescreen TV.

I also probably should have clarified: I'm mainly thinking about levels involving vertical scrolling in Lemmings 2 vs. those that don't. As outlined in the starting post, I considered vertical scrolling one of the signature elements of Lemmings 2 distinguishing it from original Lemmings and ONML. It just seemed to me like most levels without vertical scrolling in Lemmings 2 were also one-screeners, i.e. not involving scrolling of any kind.

But that link to the overview of all the screenshots is just perfect for this, thanks a lot, ccexplore (also for the overview of actual one-screeners, of course)!

[Strato Incendus]

I had a creative run this weekend. Now that the Jumper is available for testing, that was precisely the kick-start this pack needed!

(Some of these are also a little older, but I hadn't shown them to you yet, so I'll simply put those up as well. )


Jump around


Let's get it started


Start me up


Can't hold us

Some levels will also be plays on original Lemmings 2: The Tribes levels. Can you recognise the following two?


Take a bow


Cleopatra

Here's the final level of the pack:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hall of Fame

...and some more in a couple of other tribes!


Ruins of Athens


Summer Night City


Walpurgisnacht


Besser du rennst


A hard day's knight


Bloodbound


Being for the benefit of Mr. Kite


Welcome to the freak show


The show must go on

[Strato Incendus]

...and yet a couple more! Once I have 30 levels together, I'll upload them as a first collection of test levels!


Amongst stars


Anywhere in the galaxy


Back to the cave

This next one is another one inspired by an original L2 level ("Successive division"):


Bright eyes


Ode to Joy

[Strato Incendus]

I've modified the menu and font to make it look more like Lemmings 2, as well.

Menu screen (click to show/hide)

Pre-level screen (click to show/hide)

[WillLem]

I've modified the menu and font to make it look more like Lemmings 2, as well.

Menu screen (click to show/hide)

Pre-level screen (click to show/hide)

That's cool! I'm guessing you put the background image in the levelpack's root folder?

[Strato Incendus]

Yes, simply name it "background.png". For anything you want to replace, you can always look what the respective file is called in the "default" folder, and then simply put something in the root folder of your pack that is called the same way. NeoLemmix will then use that file instead, without you having to overwrite the default file. (For example, as you can see, I also did this with the level font, which is normally blue, but since it's also just a .png file, I could easily repaint it to green.)

[Strato Incendus]

Yet. More. Stuff!


Welcome to the jungle


The Lem-catcher's song

Believe it or not, this level might actually be more difficult to figure out if that flame-thrower trap wasn't there... It forces you to do something that you wouldn't necessarily do at this spot otherwise. But since this level is supposed to go in the first rank, I thought this might be an adequate way to make it a little easier.


Counting stars

Those one-way fields on the right are certainly one way to simulate a Slider... This only works with a Floater though, which consequently requires a protruding piece of terrain at the bottom. Gliders get trapped between the wall and the one-way field and can't actually move anywhere, not even down.


Ziggy Stardust


Can you feel the Lems tonight?


Bad moon rising


Atemlos durch die Nacht

[Strato Incendus]

...and yet still some more! I tried several times tonight to create an easy Polar level. It never worked. I always ended up getting stupid ideas for obscure solutions halfway through...


Inside the winter storm


Footsteps in the snow


Black winter day

On to some Highland levels!


Highland Lemmy


Road to the isles


My spirit flies


Inside the pyramid of light

And finally, this Space level features a black hole! Beware the inevitable pull of gravity...


Blackened sun

[Strato Incendus]

Some more ideas. I noticed the Beach levels actually have a dark blue background in the original game. So I'm using the one from the L3 Egyptian tileset here. In contrast to L2 Shadow, where the background automatically adopts the correct colour, the same doesn't happen when selecting L2 Beach as a level's main theme.


Fly on the wings of Lem


Lembada


The gang's all here


Maniac


Sandstorm


The monster is loose

Another thing typical of L2, specifically of the Circus tileset, are levels that limit themselves to just 1 or 2 of the available colours. Hence, I've moved this song title, which was originally intended for the Shadow tribe (see page 1 of this thread), to the Circus tribe.


Blue Monday

[Strato Incendus]

Okay, I know I promised a first test version a while ago. Here's what I'm going to do:

The first rank, Bronze, is finished. The second rank is currently at 12 levels, the third and fourth at 10 each.

I will add 8 more levels to the second rank, so that it's 30 + 20 + 10 + 10. That's 70 of 120 levels in total. Those are going to form the first test version.

I don't want to progress too far on this pack too early, because with the final NeoLemmix skill having been narrowed down to either the Slider, the Laser Blaster, or two projectile skills, meaning (Spear) Thrower and Mortar / Bazooker, we already know the final skill is going to be another L2 skill (or at least one heavily inspired by L2 and most likely named after its L2 counterpart).

Thus, the final skill should definitely appear in this L2-style pack.

I certainly want to give those of you who are interested something to play already, and any feedback prior to release to the already existing levels is extremely valuable. So I hope this pack might get similar pre-release attention as Lemmings Open Air once I upload the test version.

But the final release I will delay accordingly, depending on how long it will take until we have decided upon and namida has implemented the final skill.

[Strato Incendus]

I have uploaded the first demo version! This includes all levels developed so far, which is 65 out of the total 120 at the moment.

I didn't go up to the 70 announced in my previous post, because I didn't have any new ideas for this particular pack recently, and I didn't want to force any. Especially not if I'm basically just waiting for confirmation of the four final skills, so that we can finally get to start designing actual levels with them! So I'm happy to keep five more level slots open to feature Laserers, Sliders, Spearers, and Grenaders later down the road.

The only problem with this is that the first rank is already completed, as it stands now - and not having the final skills show up at all for the first thirty levels is something I'd like to avoid in the official release. With just two new skills (Shimmier and Jumper), I was fine having this split between the first and the second half of Lemmings Open Air. But I don't want to casually introduce four new skills on the second rank.

So if you decide to take an early peak at the levels in the demo, feel free to tell me which ones on the first rank were the most difficult ones for you! Then I may consider moving them up in difficulty to make place for some Laserer/Slider/Spearer/Grenader introduction levels once they're available.



A couple of levels I had to fix since their initial creation:

- two levels featuring updrafts were affected by the Glider physics change ("Ruins of Athens" and "Blackened sun"). Lemmings Open Air and Lemmings World Tour were both already adapted to this change a while ago, so that tells you how long I've been working on Lemmings Hall of Fame!

- yesterday night, I found out I had to fix all Shadow levels that contained one-way arrows (with the exception of "In the air tonight", where it had already been done, though I don't remember doing it myself). Because apparently, at some point during this year the one-way arrows from the L2 Shadow tileset were deleted and the reference had to be pointed to the default ones instead (which are recoloured to match the old ones, although they have a slightly different texture). I assume this was when the "thicker" arrows with the outlines were introduced?

The problem about the latter fix was that once again, it could not be done in the editor, because the missing object instance would cause the editor to crash in such a way that it could only be closed again via the Task Manager. So I had to go into the level text files and manually rename every single instance of one-way arrows in all of the Shadow levels.

It would be nice if there would be a "warning" mechanism for this. Were the old Shadow arrows marked as deprecated pieces at some point, and I simply didn't notice?
I assume cleanse levels might have worked, because the player had no problem playing those levels even while they were still pointing to the no-longer-existent L2 one-way arrows. I assume the player just falls back to default one-way arrows in case of a missing object of that type?

Anyway, as far as I'm aware, this only affected the Shadow levels. Some of the other L2 tilesets actually do still have their own dedicated one-way arrows, because they looked sufficiently different for the style maintainers to keep them as separate objects.

Since the player didn't give me any error messages on this, even while the levels were still "broken" from the editor's point of view, I don't think it will come up while playing.
But if you experience any error messages of missing object instances on levels from any of the other tribes, please report them to me!

[kaywhyn]

Hi Strato,

I finished the first two ranks, so I just wanted to post my replays for them.

General Remarks

Wow, a lot of these levels look great, and the difficulty is certainly higher than LOA. However, I'm not sure if this is supposed to be the case, but there is just way too much precision for my taste on many of these levels. For example, the very first level requires two pixel precise assignments, and IMO this is not the way any level pack should start. The pack immediately rubbed off on me the wrong way as a result. After all, "first impressions matter," right? I don't mind pixel precision, but if there's too many then I eventually will mind and get annoyed. In the same way I don't mind hidden traps, but put too many in a row and then I will get annoyed. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there was some discussion about levels requiring pixel precision being bad design?

Also right out the gate 3 1-of-everything levels in a row. I generally like these levels, but by the third time this happened I was like, "Again? This entire rank/pack isn't going to be just levels of this type, is it?" Admittedly, I got annoyed by the third time, but don't worry, it's not you. I have myself to blame here for being irate, since I was playing through the pack at a time when I was grouchy from lack of sleep during the day. I really need to play at a time when I'm more well-rested

Bronze 7 - Back to the cave has a precise assignment,

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

the bomber, as there's only one possible position that will work. You might want to consider reducing the precision there.

Bronze 15 - Fly on the wings of Lem might had been self-inflicted, and if so that's the blame I put on myself. I have a very bad tendency to get sucked into very fiddly solutions. Then again, two of my contest levels have a lot of precision too but with a constructive skill. Hear me disparage those who make levels with too much precision However, I have to ask if

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The first updraft the worker lemming gets to being low to be able to glide upwards is intended. Also, I find it really interesting that the jumper hoisted on the edge of the red shovel like that.

Another huge offender on pixel precision is Bronze 17 - Bad Moon Rising

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At least in my solution, RR fiddling seems absolutely necessary and delaying any who get through with shimmiers to avoid any splatting. Not to mention there are 3 very precise digger assignments here. 

Bronze 17 - Walking on the moon is another with very precise assignments, though in this case it's understandable

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As setting up the route for a shimmier with builders is always quite precise. I myself made a contest level where I often got frustrated when the shimmier wouldn't keep going when I expected it to.

Bronze 23 - Lembada has 3 very precise assignments. 

Bronze 25 - Anywhere in the galaxy is yet another level with a very precise skill assignment.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There is only one possible position for the jumper to clear the gap when it pops out of the receiver. You might want to allow more leeway there.

Finally, both Silver 9 - Bloodhound and Silver 12 - Counting Stars have a very precise skill (same skill in both cases, interestingly enough) assignment, but in both cases, you're forgiven, since they are integral to the solution. In the latter case, I think I understand this is necessary, as the level wouldn't look as great with maybe the entrance a bit higher.

So yea, that's quite a list. Not necessarily a bad thing in terms of difficulty, as we all know there's a difference between puzzle difficulty vs execution difficulty. Those with pixel precision assignments aren't necessarily hard levels, for example.

Bronze Rank Feedback

I didn't find any of these too difficult for the first rank. I guess to you that's not surprising to hear this However, I believe I was a dummy on Bronze 20 - Blue Monday the longest, with maybe either Bronze 18 - The Lem-Catcher's Song and Bronze 30 - Summer Night City close seconds for longest before I solved them. I don't know if there's supposed to be a lot of precision needed for the final Bronze level, and even if it doesn't, it's still a level quite worthy of that position, as I certainly think it's the hardest level of the rank, but by hardest meaning comparatively speaking to the rest of the rank. I didn't find it overly hard, just annoying to execute only to see stuff fail by a pixel or two

My favorites in the rank are Bronze 4 - Jump around, Bronze 5 - Highland Lemmy, Bronze 16 - Bonny Portmore, and Bronze 18. Even though there is a precise skill assignment in the level, the main trick required in the last one is really neat, and I think you might be right about the level being harder without the fire trap.

I like Bronze 27 - A hard day's knight due to the title referencing a Beatles song. I absolutely love the band, and I even took a college course on The Beatles. Before I took the course, I had practically the entire catalogue of songs memorized. It's been a while since I've listened to any of their songs, though, and so I definitely have forgotten a lot of them. While this level doesn't fall in the realm of pixel precision, it is one of those types of levels that I'm not a fan of due to how you have to spam a lot of skills repeatedly to save enough lemmings while the path is being forged. The solution is cool, though.

Levels that I'm sure I backrouted so badly: Bronze 6 - Walpurgisnacht (didn't use the updrafts), Bronze 12 - Norrsken (many skills leftover), and Bronze 29 - Footsteps in the snow (several skills leftover).

Silver Rank Feedback

Although this rank is currently incomplete in the demo, I like these levels far more than the completed Bronze rank, probably because there wasn't as many levels with very precise skill assignments (only two so far compared to the many I listed for the Bronze rank above). I assume this will continue to hold when I eventually play the completed Silver rank when available.

My favorites of the rank were Silver 1 - Let's get it started, Silver 3 - Sippin' on Bacardi Rum (the level looks really good and I really love the solution, especially watching the glider use the updrafts on the far right), Silver 4 - Wild frontier (really love the design [green is my favorite color, so the Outdoors tribe is one of my favorites visually] and the puzzle is great too ), Silver 6 - Inside the pyramid of light (nice design and challenging puzzle which was satisfying to solve), Silver 8 - Being for the benefit of Mr. Kite (level title refers to the Beatles song of the same name and the solution is awesome), Silver 9 - Bloodhound, Silver 11 - The mad piper (really awesome puzzle/solution), and Silver 13 - Can you feel the Lems tonight? (I love the Elton John song it refers to and I like his songs a lot, it's a really awesome solution despite being repetitive in the skill assignments, not to mention I was stuck here the longest due to falling for a trap here ). See, this list of favorites is far longer than what I listed for the Bronze rank

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Re Silver 8 - That's an awesome trick with using a shimmier jump to bomb through the ceiling so that you can jump into the water

Re Silver 9 - That's so awesome with the shimmier being able to get past the terrain despite it being above it. This is something new I learned, as I didn't know they can do that.

Re Silver 13 - For a long time I kept thinking the entire bottom entrance had to be one group of climbers/shimmiers, while the remaining 15 had to be the swimmers. However, here I ran into the problem of using a lemming from the top entrance to bash through the OWW and as a result I wouldn't have enough swimmers for the rest of them (at least 1 short). I kept trying to make it work, until I realized it needed to be the other way around: The entire top entrance are the climbers/shimmiers and the rest swimmers. Really nice difficult puzzle and design which makes you think the solution should be this way, but in reality it's actually another

Levels which I backrouted/think I backrouted: Silver 5 - A night like this (despite having a few skills leftover, it felt hackish), Silver 7 - What a wonderful world (it only "feels" like I backrouted it, though at the same time this seems more or less intended), Silver 10 - When the night comes (severe backroute here), Silver 13 (I think it's a backroute, due to how I have a builder and some shimmiers left, but mostly the builder leftover is what I suspect makes my solution a backroute), Silver 14 - The gang's all here (biggest backroute I've ever seen, way too many skills leftover ), and Silver 15 - Atemlos durch die Nacht (slight backroute I think?)

Just to be clear, this is a great pack and has a lot of potential being a step up from your LOA pack, it's just made worse by how there's a lot of levels with unnecessary pixel precision. I think this is the first time I've seen this from you, actually, in any of your packs. Before playing this pack, all of Gigalem's packs I've played for older NL versions have a lot of pixel precision in the solutions, which definitely tipped me off because there was too much for my taste. His are similar to yours in that the levels are extremely artistic and very well-designed, but again due to the pixel precision needed that's what makes the quality of the levels suffer. Sure, some of your earlier packs had precision as well, just not to the extreme degree that I've seen so far with your HoF demo.

And of course, I'm sure patching up the backroutes for the levels I've listed will make this pack even better. Surely some of the levels shouldn't be THAT easy? 

I will continue with the final two ranks soon and come back with more replays/feedback for the rest later

[kaywhyn]

Back with the rest of the replays, and hence I have attached my entire HoF Demo replay collection, Bronze through Platinum 10. I already gave feedback on both the Bronze and Silver ranks, so this post is feedback for both the Gold and Platinum ranks.

Gold Rank Feedback

Not really any levels that required any precise skill assignments here, other than Gold 4 - Black Winter Day (at least in my solution there's some precise skill assignments) and Gold 6 - Castles of Sand (same as Gold 4, although one is absolutely precise and a bunch of other skill assignments in my solution as well). But wow, a lot of these levels were quite tough. The hardest ones for me in this rank were Gold 3 - Evening Falls and Gold 6. These took me some time, probably a good 20-25 mins for the former, a good half hour or so for the latter. The latter was also a really interesting puzzle where instead of the same number of lemmings come from each trapdoor, there's only 10 for the bottom one. This definitely really made it challenging and really required some thought as to how to get them up.

My favorites in this rank were Gold 2 - Take a bow (despite how it's repetitive and somewhat annoying to spam jumpers so that no one dies, I like how the level requires some thought on how to solve the level with the limited number of builders despite how they seem plentiful, plus it's nice design and my favorite color is green, so the Sports tribe is one of my favorites), Gold 5 - The freak show (nice puzzle and design), Gold 8 - Sandstorm (really great level and solution), and Gold 9 - Maniac (nice puzzle and somewhat great design). Along the same line as Gold 2, Gold 7 - Can't hold us and Gold 10 - Start me up I like for the design more than the puzzle, although I slightly like the former for the puzzle as well, although it does enter the annoying territory of spamming the same skill over and over, although luckily there's more than enough.

Levels that I think I backrouted: Gold 4 (maybe a slight backroute), Gold 7 (probably a slight backroute as well, although my solution might be more or less intended and it's probably an "anything goes" kind of level), and Gold 10 (this definitely seems like a bad backroute).

Platinum Rank Feedback

Wow, these levels are really a huge step up in difficulty compared to the other 3 ranks. Then again, it is the final rank of the pack. Definitely harder than the Hardcore rank of LOA, which I stated was easy despite being the final rank of that pack. Unfortunately, we also return to a mass of levels with a lot of precision. Platinum 1 - Ziggy Stardust, Platinum 2 - My spirit flies, and Platinum 7 - The show must go on all had quite precise skill assignments. Platinum 7 was especially very precise with the square blocks, although I understand that's how the terrain pieces are, as they're that size. Instead, readjusting the positions of them should allow more leeway, so it's easy to reduce precision there.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Re Platinum 1 - This one isn't too bad, although the spot where I mixed the platformers/builders where the really high updrafts are is somewhat precise

Re Platinum 2 - This one is quite precise with the platformer/builder at the very bottom.

Out the gate, Platinum 1 is quite a difficult level. For quite a while, I kept trying wrong ideas to get the crowd down safely. The clicking moment was

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

when I realized that the updrafts can be used for the splatforms and hence allow me to save platformers/builders that are needed elsewhere.

The hardest levels in this rank for me were Platinum 8 - Free bird and Platinum 10 - Hall of Fame. The former wasn't as bad, but it still took a while to figure out how to get the crowd down safely after successfully isolating a worker lemming to forge the platformers/builders. The latter took the longest and is absolutely deserving of its current position as the final level of the rank in this demo. Platinum 2 also took some time, although only because

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I thought the combination of platformer and builder wouldn't work for the gap at the very bottom and hence I kept trying to see if I could use two builders for it instead. So really, I was being a dummy there

My favorites in this rank were Platinum 3 - The monster is loose (I like how you have to do skills in a certain order or you're not going to be able to solve the level), Platinum 5 - Another one bites the dust (I really like the puzzle/solution here), Platinum 6 - Blackened sun (I really like how you made a black hole here), and Platinum 7 (really great puzzle/solution involving some tricky timing)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Re Platinum 3 - You have to build to the left at the beginning and NOT use a jumper, otherwise you won't have enough skills for solve it. Nicely done here

Platinum 9 - Lemmings was my first love was somewhat of a favorite, although it's just slightly a bit wide for my liking. I especially like how despite being nearly an X-of-everything except you have more builders than the other 9 skills, it requires some thought on how to navigate the level with a severely limited amount of builders despite looking plentiful

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That's quite genius to build a partial bridge to the left to catch the left-most entrance and then immediately dig after the builder brick is laid down, build into it turn around, and then jump. This must be done past the point where the athletes land and is the only way to ensure you will have enough builders to solve the level. Even then, this is still an open-ended level just from the skillset alone.

Levels that I backrouted: Platinum 4 - You shook me all night long (slight backroute?) and Platinum 6 (surely it's not supposed to be this easy?)

Overall, despite many levels having a lot of precision in the skill assignments, I enjoyed this demo and am looking forward to the rest of the pack. Once again, I emphasize that there's too much precision spread out many of the levels for my taste, but of course this is just my opinion. I don't mind it, but after a while when it keeps showing up I will. It just tends to be bad if it shows up in a very short amount of time repeatedly. That to me is annoying.

This pack is for sure a a huge step up in quality and difficulty from LOA based on the 65 levels I've played and solved. I can honestly say to others to expect to be on these levels for a while, especially the Platinum ones. I can't imagine how the remaining 20 levels of the rank will be if what I saw in this demo were quite difficult ones.

I hope you're doing well and look forward to seeing more content from you Thanks again for this demo!

[Strato Incendus]

Wow, thanks a lot for taking the time to play through all these, kaywhyn!

I'm glad to hear you found the levels more difficult than those in LOA. This should ideally result in a natural succession, a preferrable order in which a player could approach my music-themed packs (Lemmings World Tour first, then Lemmings Open Air, then Lemmings Hall of Fame). This would also go along nicely with the order in which they were made, but more importantly, in terms of new skills being added. If this pack were easier than LOA, for example, it would be weird to play LHF first and then "go back" to a pack without any Laserers and Sliders (which this pack is going to have).

This kind of begs the question how hard Lemmings, Drugs, and Rock 'n Roll is going to be. So far, some of the levels I made for it actually seem easier than those from Lemmings World Tour (and I'm already excluding the Practice levels here). But well, every pack needs its first ranks.

The main criticism I hear from you are repeated mentions of pixel precision. I'll take that on board, obviously - but of course, I'll have to put these points into the context of your replays first before I can further comment on them. I'm glad you already mentioned those levels for which you think the pixel precision might have been self-inflicted. Potentially, there might be more of those cases, i.e. levels for which you found a very pixel-precise solution, but that might actually not be the intended one. (I'll always remember how I criticised the pixel precision in the NepsterLems level "Jump in the Ring!", only to then find out what I had done wasn't the intended solution at all - even though it worked, and continues to do so, i.e. Nepster didn't block my alternative solution.)

I can definitely see it with "Bad moon rising", though I thought that would be more of a timing issue than a pixel-precision one. I don't remember fiddling with the release rate here, so maybe your solution is an alternative one.

If the Stoner assignment on "Vamos a la playa" is precise, that is unintended and might require reducing the overall level height a little. I'll have to check.

Conversely, I would have expected a level like "Blackened sun" to annoy you much more.

Finally, I'm happy to hear the final level was one of the hardest ones for you - that's how it should be!


More details later once I've watched your replays!

[kaywhyn]

If the Stoner assignment on "Vamos a la playa" is precise, that is unintended and might require reducing the overall level height a little. I'll have to check.

The stoner is fine, as there's multiple possible frames to assign it that will work in the solution. I just checked again and turns out only 1 skill is very precise rather than 2

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm referring to both the fencer and the builder near the exit. However, turns out the builder isn't very precise at all. There's 5 possible frame positions on the palm tree that make the fall safe, and so I incorrectly criticized that. That's what I get for not checking every possible position before incorrectly assuming the builder assignment is precise along with the fencer.

So, only the fencer skill assignment is very precise. You have to fence at the very last possible moment on the palm tree before he turns around. Fence anywhere else and you won't be able to save the crowd from splatting with the because he will be in a worse position to build, as the leaf will be in the way and therefore he will hit his head after a brick or so.

I still stand by reducing the precision needed with the fencer, although this might be justified due to that's how the palm tree is supposed to be as a terrain piece. 

Conversely, I would have expected a level like "Blackened sun" to annoy you much more.

Yea I think I unfortunately backrouted that one Still, I like how you made the black hole in that level and also showing the effect of gravity "sucking" them in via the updrafts leading into it

More details later once I've watched your replays!

Looking forward to reading your feedback

[Strato Incendus]

Alright, I've finished watching your replays for the Bronze rank! Now I can comment in greater detail.

Bronze 7 - Back to the cave has a precise assignment,

As I expected, this turned out not to be necessary, i.e. was self-inflicted on your part.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You can mine to the left to get to the bottom layer - the resulting height is not splat height, measuring from the bottom of the Miner tunnel - and then bomb through the plant regularly later, instead of bombing the Miner. It is possible to walk up that skull, as you yourself have indeed done in a later Cavelem level.

Bronze 15 - Fly on the wings of Lem might had been self-inflicted, and if so that's the blame I put on myself.

Indeed, this was self-inflicted, too.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You had a second Stoner that you didn't use, which allows to create an additional stepping or in this case jumping stone (thereby also avoiding that weird thing with hoisting through the grip of the shovel, which I agree is very weird, but also not intended).

Another huge offender on pixel precision is Bronze 17 - Bad Moon Rising

I saw you solved both "halves" of the level one after the other; the intended solution is to do both sides at once, with two worker lemmings. Maybe that caused some of the fiddling, because that Shimmier usage for merely delaying lemmings from the crowd is definitely not intended.

I thought the Diggers naturally removing the pillars and thereby opening a path to the traps would be enough to enforce this; maybe I need to slap a time limit on this level in addition?

Bronze 17 - Walking on the moon is another with very precise assignments, though in this case it's understandable

Thanks for your understanding - because I'm so glad you've exactly found the intended solution here! This one had a couple glaring but hard-to-prevent backroutes when I first made it and tried to backroute it myself.

Bronze 23 - Lembada has 3 very precise assignments.

Do you mean the staircases? I couldn't quite tell. This one looked largely as intended; you just chose to get past the suction trap via compression method instead of using the pioneer to bomb away the trigger. But since both seem to result in just 1 lemming lost, either is fine.

Bronze 25 - Anywhere in the galaxy is yet another level with a very precise skill assignment.

Yes, this one is supposed to teach that Jumpers will continue their trajectory when coming out of a teleporter (and not just use the width, but also the height gain of the Jumper in the process). I might not have as much leeway here as I would like, but I can try.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Digging through the ufo was not intended, btw; maybe this needs more steel. The Climber-Digger at the end is also not supposed to be cancelled with a Shimmier, but be cancelled naturally by losing ground under its feet. Meaning at this point, the crowd already needs to have escaped the little pit; the Climber can then climb out of it on his own. Thankfully, the crowd is fast enough to do that automatically, given that this same pit compresses them all. The reason you had Shimmiers left to cancel the Digger at the end is indeed because you didn't have to use them earlier, because of that shortcut through the ufo.

However, I believe I was a dummy on Bronze 20 - Blue Monday the longest

That one you solved almost as intended; you just chose to turn around the pioneer with a Builder within the Digger shaft, which I'd say is a little more advanced; the level gives you the option to turn the lemming around at the top first, by simply building against the terrain ceiling, and then start digging once he has turned around.

with maybe either Bronze 18 - The Lem-Catcher's Song and Bronze 30 - Summer Night City close seconds for longest before I solved them.

That's interesting to hear about Bronze 30, because your solution looked somewhat backroute-ish, given that you could simply build up to the exit. But if it took you that long to figure out, maybe I actually shouldn't disable this alternative solution. If a clever kind-of backroute is harder to find than the intended solution... it might actually provide for a more fun challenge whenever somebody chooses to go that route.

As for Bronze 18: Do you think the fire trap should remain? Since we both seem to agree the level would be harder without it.

For anyone interested in why that is the case... (click to show/hide)

The reason being that the fire trap forces the lemming to dig down the pillar; and digging in that spot is necessary to then later allow the Shimmier to continue all the way over to the exit, because if there's still terrain there, he will stop at the lowest point of the triangle.

I originally thought the level would naturally enforce digging down the pillar, simply to avoid splat height, but didn't realise the lemming already is a Floater at that point, so the player's natural reaction would be to just let him float down, because it's faster, and the player will want to save as much time as possible to get the lemming back to the hatch to build a splatform for the others before too many of them die.

Now I kind of think removing the fire trap would hide the solution a little better... but that might make it too tough for the first rank. But a solution well-hidden in plain sight is kind of a rare case of awesome, so when I clearly have the opportunity to make one here... maybe I should use it? If the level has to switch to a higher rank as a result, so be it. The levels in this pack can move around more freely than on LWT and LOA, because the ranks are not sorted by genre or "heaviness".

My favorites in the rank are Bronze 4 - Jump around, Bronze 5 - Highland Lemmy, Bronze 16 - Bonny Portmore, and Bronze 18. Even though there is a precise skill assignment in the level, the main trick required in the last one is really neat, and I think you might be right about the level being harder without the fire trap.

I like Bronze 27 - A hard day's knight due to the title referencing a Beatles song.

Good to know, thanks!
Bronze 4: Basically as intended.
Bronze 5: You skipped the entire upper section, but a little steel will prevent you from simply jumping over that little tower in the next update.
Bronze 16: Some parts as intended, but I actually used a Swimmer as a second worker lemming. I'll have to see what to do here.
Bronze 27: Well, some might think the title is the level's only redeeming feature ... as it does require a very high amount of skill assignments. You also managed to find a way to ignore the entire bottom section.

Levels that I'm sure I backrouted so badly: Bronze 6 - Walpurgisnacht (didn't use the updrafts), Bronze 12 - Norrsken (many skills leftover), and Bronze 29 - Footsteps in the snow (several skills leftover).

Yep, all true. Walpurgisnacht was an easy enough fix, just replacing some of the blocks at the top with steel blocks. I actually probably thought they were steel when making the level, because they look like they are made of metal. But I think I remember other people having run into the same confusion with the L2 Medieval tileset.

The two Polar levels seem harder to fix; Bronze 29 might just need a lot of steel, but on Bronze 12, you exploited a gap, so I might just have to resort to some ugly and weirdly-placed blue fire / lightning traps.

Also right out the gate 3 1-of-everything levels in a row. I generally like these levels, but by the third time this happened I was like, "Again? This entire rank/pack isn't going to be just levels of this type, is it?"

Oh, I love me some 1-of-everything levels! And they generally seem to be enjoyed by the majority of forum members, so they are a good way to get people into a positive mood about your pack. Sure, three in a row might be a little repetitive, but those are very different skills on each of those levels. That's the beauty of having as many at our disposal as in NeoLemmix. Three 1-of-everything levels with only the classic 8, for example, that would indeed also be a little too much for my liking.


In general, a lot of the backroutes I've seen among your solutions seem to involve Bombers. Meaning: The hardest type to prevent, because they ignore one-way arrows. I haven't really seen any glaring backroutes in terms of e.g. destructive skills cutting through large chunks of terrain not covered by steel so far. Which makes me optimistic I might have gotten better in spotting those. But Bombers can only be stopped by steel (which sometimes interferes with the intended solution, too), or by being turned into a correctly-placed pickup skill.

Thanks again for playing, kaywhyn! More feedback on your solutions to the other ranks soon!

[kaywhyn]

Another huge offender on pixel precision is Bronze 17 - Bad Moon Rising

I saw you solved both "halves" of the level one after the other; the intended solution is to do both sides at once, with two worker lemmings. Maybe that caused some of the fiddling, because that Shimmier usage for merely delaying lemmings from the crowd is definitely not intended.

I initially did both sides at the same time, but the problem for me was that when the diggers were low enough so that the crowd can step up on the pillars ASAP the fall is still fatal. Also, at least with the left crowd, at the current RR the lemmings stack behind one another so that essentially two lemmings will splat.

Bronze 23 - Lembada has 3 very precise assignments.

Do you mean the staircases? I couldn't quite tell. This one looked largely as intended; you just chose to get past the suction trap via compression method instead of using the pioneer to bomb away the trigger. But since both seem to result in just 1 lemming lost, either is fine.

Yup, pretty much the builder skill assignments are all very precise. The first one on the sand castle is extremely precise, as otherwise you cannot mine back down the castle, and there's only one position that allows you to do so. I also checked the other builder assignments again, and turns out the other two aren't as precise, although the one further to the right only looked like it at the time because of the order I was doing things. Because I didn't mine when the worker first turns back, there's only one position that allows him to turn back, and similarly only one position that allows the builder to keep on going instead of turn around. Although, yea I now see what the bomber assignment is for. Here, I simply avoided using it because I allowed the worker lemming to use the third builder in such a way that he turns back to the right.

As for Bronze 18: Do you think the fire trap should remain? Since we both seem to agree the level would be harder without it.

For anyone interested in why that is the case... (click to show/hide)

The reason being that the fire trap forces the lemming to dig down the pillar; and digging in that spot is necessary to then later allow the Shimmier to continue all the way over to the exit, because if there's still terrain there, he will stop at the lowest point of the triangle.

I originally thought the level would naturally enforce digging down the pillar, simply to avoid splat height, but didn't realise the lemming already is a Floater at that point, so the player's natural reaction would be to just let him float down, because it's faster, and the player will want to save as much time as possible to get the lemming back to the hatch to build a splatform for the others before too many of them die.

Now I kind of think removing the fire trap would hide the solution a little better... but that might make it too tough for the first rank. But a solution well-hidden in plain sight is kind of a rare case of awesome, so when I clearly have the opportunity to make one here... maybe I should use it? If the level has to switch to a higher rank as a result, so be it. The levels in this pack can move around more freely than on LWT and LOA, because the ranks are not sorted by genre or "heaviness".

Hmm, tough call. It might be fine to take it out, as even though I was stumped here for a time, I eventually stumbled upon the trick due to seeing how it takes way too much time to shimmy all the way to the right and by the time you finish mining and everything too many would had splatted already. Therefore, I think the player would eventually realize that the only way around this is with the trick you mentioned in the spoiler, especially since if the trap was removed, you can't afford to have the worker shimmy again without having already removed the terrain in the way, as then you'll be a skill short this way. In addition, all it takes is observing and realizing why the shimmier stops in the first place, although this connection might take a while, like it did with me. So, the level might be quite difficult without it. It's really hard to say.

Yep, all true. Walpurgisnacht was an easy enough fix, just replacing some of the blocks at the top with steel blocks. I actually probably thought they were steel when making the level, because they look like they are made of metal. But I think I remember other people having run into the same confusion with the L2 Medieval tileset.

Yea, I thought where I fenced was steel as well, so I was surprised to see that it wasn't. As you can tell, I intentionally avoided activating CPM to see whether it was steel or not.

Oh, I love me some 1-of-everything levels! And they generally seem to be enjoyed by the majority of forum members, so they are a good way to get people into a positive mood about your pack. Sure, three in a row might be a little repetitive, but those are very different skills on each of those levels. That's the beauty of having as many at our disposal as in NeoLemmix. Three 1-of-everything levels with only the classic 8, for example, that would indeed also be a little too much for my liking.

Again, not your fault. I was grouchy at the time I was playing the pack from lack of sleep. Don't get me wrong, all three of them were great levels, but I definitely quickly noticed how they were all 1-of-everything and I guess I kind of expected more diversity rather than the same type of level thrice in a row

[ericderkovits]

As much as I enjoyed Strato's Lemming Open Air pack, I wanted to solve this demo version of Lemmings Hall of Fame pack as well as it uses the L2 Tile sets.
Although the music was missing in the download. Luckily I have the Lemming2 the tribes music Amiga version in mod form so I used that and put them in the music folder so now I get to hear the
Lemmings 2 tribes music instead of the default ones. For a sample, I have my solutions posted on youtube with the tribes music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGAtmUM9rRU&list=PLZZlEJhdyoAPy6AXhN22Tpux5x_uRXRLx

Many difficult levels. Also got the Talisman for Gold 10(no jumpers used).

Also here are my replays

[Strato Incendus]

Well, that was a surprise - first of all, thanks a lot for playing, eric!

I actually just found out accidentally via YouTube, because your latest Hall of Fame video was suggested to me.

Let's say it caught me a little bit out of the blue to find somebody "Let's Playing" my pack on YouTube without me even having officially released it yet... especially considering there are still loads of known backroutes in here.

Of course, even demo uploads are open for the public, so everyone is free to do with them on their YouTube channel whatever they like - it just would have been nice to at least know this in advance, instead of finding my entire pack completely uploaded on YouTube without any prior knowledge on my part.

Sure, there is/was a similar thing going on with test levels for the new skills - some of which ended up not making it to the stable version - so now there are videos of "unofficial" NeoLemmix material on e.g. IchoTolot's channel, i.e. levels featuring the Spearer and Grenader. But that was for the explicit purpose of showcasing what these skills do to others.

Non-released (and still incomplete packs), in contrast, are not exactly "meant" to be showcased yet. I've uploaded them for pre-release testing.

This is important because currently, none of your videos feature any hint whatsoever (in the title and/or description) that this is an incomplete and yet unreleased pack. (Nor does it contain any mention that the pack was made by me.)
It might just as well be a pack you made, and it might be the final product, from the YouTube audience's perspective - either of which it is definitely not.
And so, without that added information that what you have played is a demo / alpha / test version of the pack, people can easily get the wrong impression of it.
(Especially with regards to any backroutes you may have found.)

But I guess the upside about you having already uploaded them all on YouTube is that I don't have to open the levels and run your replays manually, but can just watch the playlist and let the videos run by "passively".

Just be aware that a lot of what you've "showcased" on your channel thus far can easily change in the future:
There will be a bunch of backroute fixes, there will be additional levels added (featuring the Laser Blaster and Slider), levels might change ranks and/or positions within ranks.
Not because I want to invalidate your video series - this is simply what's bound to happen with a pack yet in development.

Although the music was missing in the download.

Yes, it was missing on purpose - instead I linked to it in the starting post (clearly at the very top, maybe you just overlooked it ), for anyone who doesn't have the original L2 tracks yet, so that those who already have them don't need to download them again if all they need is the pack itself.

The level files itself all refer to the respective tribe's music - otherwise, the fact that you put the L2 tracks into your music folder alone wouldn't have sufficed to make the tracks play on the levels. The fact that they started playing "automatically" after you merely dropped the tracks into the music folder shows you that the level files indeed refer to these tracks already, i.e. that playing this demo version with the original L2 tracks was precisely what I had intended.

[Strato Incendus]

Alright, I've watched kaywhyn's replays for the Silver rank now - to be more precise: The half of the Silver rank I already made - and I was repeatedly asking myself whether I was watching his replays or eric's, because they're surprisingly similar in many regards. So for the majority of the levels, I can just refer kaywhyn to my comments under eric's YouTube playlist, because what I said about eric's solutions largely also applies to kaywhyn's, at least as far as the Silver rank is concerned.

On kaywhyn's replays to the Silver rank (click to show/hide)

I think both of you have done pretty much the exact same thing on the first two sports levels.

"Let's get it started" was thus a minor backroute for both of them.

"Song 2" seems like a viable alternative solution.

"Sippin' on Bacardi rum" just featured some minor differences in the placement of one Basher between eric and kaywhyn, but apart from that, both found the intended solution.

"Wild frontier": Got the gist of the intended solution, used the Cloner in yet another spot than eric, neither of which are intended.

"A night like this": eric's solution used all the skills, yours saved quite a few. I think I can place the steel in such a way that it prevents kaywhyn's semi-backroute while still allowing for eric's alternative solution.

"Inside the pyramid of light": Fine alternative solution, I don't really have any justification to prevent any of this, the leftover skills were not that crucial.

"What a wonderful world": Similar backroute as eric's, yet yours uses even fewer skills.

"Being for the benefit of Mr. Kite": Got the gist of the intended solution, but this saves a couple too many skills for my liking.

"Bloodbound": Intended. Just like eric, you didn't need the Glider.

"When the night comes": Similar backroute as eric.

"The mad piper": Looks identical to eric's solution to me.

"Counting stars": Also the same as eric's solution.

"Can you feel the Lems tonight?": Here you bashed under the trap to free the crowd at the end. I'm not sure yet whether I want to allow this. You also showed me that you can simply let the pioneer drop, thanks to having a Floater, instead of having to shimmy over to the wall for a save drop. Looks like this level might benefit from having the Floater replaced with a Slider once it's possible.

"The gang's all here": A much more glaring backroute than what eric did, I hope a little more steel helps without blocking the intended path.

"Atemlos durch die Nacht": While eric found a clever way to save the one lemming that naturally falls into the pit under the Platformer, you prevented anyone from falling into the pit in the first place, which makes the last part of the level much easier. I'm not sure yet whether I can enforce this.

As I've written under several of eric's videos, on some of these levels a replacement of a Floater by a Slider might be in order. Which is one of the reasons why I haven't released any update with backroute fixes yet. It's not just about not making any new levels until the Slider and Laser Blaster are officially available: Some of the levels that already exist could also be improved by using Sliders instead of Floaters (e.g. "Counting stars", from among those listed in the spoiler tag here).

[Strato Incendus]

And now I've had the chance to look at the remaining 20 of kaywhyn's replays, i.e. for the Gold and Platinum rank.

On kaywhyn's replays to the Gold rank (click to show/hide)

"Ruins of Athens": Acceptable alternative solution; used the Blocker in a different spot but still required most of the skills.

"Take a bow": As long as you have to use some type of flow control, which you did, this is fine. This level is supposed to be a fairer version of the original L2 level "Take Up Archery" (hence the name). But it probably would have benefitted the most if the Spearer had actually been introduced, since that's the closest thing to the Archer we had in NeoLemmix.

"Evening falls": Same trick that eric used, bombing into the ceiling to make the next Shimmier drop and allow him to turn around. As I've said under eric's video, I think I'll have to make the ceiling into steel there so that you have to find a different way to turn the lemming around (hopefully the intended one ).

"Black winter day": The second half of the level was pretty much as intended (and the one part that wasn't exactly as intended there is something I can't enforce, I've already realised a while ago). The beginning however should have fewer degrees of freedom. Hopefully something I can accomplish with one-way arrows.

"Welcome to the freak show": A lot as intended here, but in the beginning the flexible placement of the Digger and the Platformers adds more liberties than I would like this level to have. I hope I won't have to narrow the Digger shaft down to 1 or 2 pixels...

"Castles made of sand": Vey similar to eric's solution, which slightly differs from the intended one at the beginning. I think I should keep allowing this, though. I also don't see a way of preventing it without blocking the intended solution, too.

"Can't hold us": Fine alternative solution; the main thing I'm looking for here is whether anybody actually does find a way to hold back the crowd after all. As long as that doesn't seem possible, I'm happy with the result. I can't say there won't be any modifications to this at all, but it's not necessarily likely.

"Sandstorm": Nice alternate route through the ceiling. This used almost all the skills, so it could be fine in principle. I haven't decided on it yet, though. I might end up blocking the path the Basher took at the end, I might not.

"Maniac": Awesome way of bashing the crowd out at the beginning to land on the stoning pioneer! This misses the main trick, though, and it also made the ending a little more straightforward than I would like it to be.

"Start me up": A little partial backroute; I think I should make that wall on the right into steel, at least in part, so that the bottom-right crowd has to take a slightly different route than just platforming over one gap and waiting for a Miner from above.

On kaywhyn's replays to the Platinum rank (click to show/hide)

"Ziggy Stardust": Many things are as intended here, but that second one-way wall is not supposed to have that small dent that allowed the Climber to turn around. That wall will be straight in the next update. Thanks for showing me this loophole!

"My spirit flies": This would be a nice alternative solution in and of itself, saving only one Fencer. However, it misses the main trick, by allowing you to assign the Shimmier too easily. I think if I make the terrain lower where you jumped off, the distance to the ceiling should be too far to simply jump / reach up there.

"The monster is loose": Intended.

"You shook me all night long": Yeah, this feels a little backroute-ish, I'll have to see where exactly you went for a shortcut.

"Another one bites the dust": Very close to intended. You platformed slightly higher than I did, which shortened the distance, allowing you to save 1 Platformer.

"Blackened sun": eric already showed me you can just bomb through the walls with the Gliders themselves, instead of giving them aid from above as it is intended to be. I might just have to resort to pickup skills here.

"The show must go on": Very similar to eric's solution, i.e. similarly close to the intended one and missing just one minor detail: I want one worker lemming to walk on top of the platform leading to the exit, and the other to shimmy underneath the Platformer bridge. The lemming digging at the exit from the top then also cancels the Shimmier below. The level already features a bunch of pickup skills anyway, so I might just have to turn another vital skill into a pickup and place it somewhere where only a Shimmier can reach it.

"Free bird": This is an awesome alternative solution by itself, you essentially solved the level backwards! It misses all the main tricks, most critically the one that gives the level its name. However, since you said how difficult it was to find this alternative solution, even though it looks a little more straightforward from just watching the replay alone, that gives me more of a reason to keep allowing it. Not just because I "don't want to ruin your hard work in solving the level this way" - that's something that is always a possibility when playing a pack still in its development phase. But more importantly, if this alternate solution is still enough of a challenge for the Platinum rank, I don't see a reason why I should treat it like a "backroute" that requires fixing if it's actually no bit easier than the intended solution. And even if this one misses the namesake trick, at the end of the day, the title might just refer to the level's difficulty. Because it tends to be one of the hardest songs in a bunch of guitar-based videogames.

"Lemmings was my first love": This one is open-ended, as you guessed. Thus, none of the tricks you did are required, but I won't block any of them either. In certain parts of the level, I could restrict the landscape a little more with one-way arrows if I feel it has too many degrees of freedom. But currently, I don't really see the need to.

"Hall of fame": Again, a level you solved very differently than intended - especially the beginning made me fear this would involve a Stoner backroute of some sort. Stoning under the narrow gap right in front of the exit and sending a lemming up through the shaft was intended - in fact, you can't do it any other way, because it's impossible to climb over the one-way wall from the other side without going beyond the ceiling. Despite the parts you did differently, you still ended up having to perform a bunch of obscure tricks, and none of the few skills you had leftover at the end seemed like "essential skills".

That's a concept you just made me come up with and probably something worth discussing in the level design forum: Generally speaking, terrain-modifying skills are more essential than athletic or movement skills, because the latter only create paths for single lemmings, whereas the former are needed to create a path for the crowd. So having e.g. a Shimmier or a Climber leftover feels less "backroute-ish" than having remaining destructive skills or, usually worse, remaining constructive skills, with the Builder as one of the most powerful skills probably being the one your rarely want to see a player having excess of. Just a rule of thumb, of course.

[Strato Incendus]

Almost a year later, a little update at last on how things are going!

Though I haven't updated the ZIP file yet with these additional levels; I may or may not do so - the question is how useful a second "interim round" would be, or whether I should try to finish the whole pack first, and then send it around to testers. There are about 40 levels left to go now, so around 80 are completed.

As you can see, I've also changed some of the level titles, compared to the list I had originally compiled on page 1 of this thread. I'm trying to have a few more well-known songs in here, while still picking such that fit with the respective theme. In Lemmings, Drugs, & Rock 'n Roll, meanwhile, I have more freedom with regards to the titles I choose.



CIRCUS


Tears of a clown

CLASSIC


The Well-Lempered Clavier

HIGHLAND

"Sing me a song of a Lem that is gone..."


Skye float song

MEDIEVAL


Heroes of our time

OUTDOOR

Who says stupid bee puns are reserved for the Honeycomb tileset?


Let it bee

POLAR


Last of the wilds

Slider levels really make my pre-placed Builder staircases (from strato_generalmd) come in handy... ^^


Trapped under ice

SPACE


Faith of the heart


The dark side of the moon

SPORTS


Let's get physical

[Strato Incendus]

The first two ranks are completed now, with both having 30 levels each. The Gold rank is still at 15 levels (i.e., half-complete), Platinum is at 12. Haven't updated the demo yet with these additional levels, though; I assume at this point, it's probably best to simply complete the entire pack first, and then send around test versions of the full thing.

That said, of course the remaining levels on the two most difficult ranks are probably going to take a lot longer to make.

BEACH

This one definitely still has one shortcut that I don't know how to get rid of yet.


Sailing


CAVELEM


Go with the flow


CIRCUS


Theater


EGYPTIAN


Ramses, Pharaoh


In the name of Amun


HIGHLAND


Lemmings and mead

This one here is supposed to go on the Platinum rank (though as usual with complex levels, I assume there are still several backroutes in there ^^):


Devil's dance floor


POLAR


Valley of the damned

[Strato Incendus]

Question to @Will: With the last post in this thread having been one year ago, I guess there’s a good chance that all of these levels would be compatible with SuperLemmix? Meaning, given the time at which the SuperLemmix fork was created, it should be possible to open them in the level editor and run them with the SuperLemmix engine.

Luckily, this pack only uses the L2 tilesets, not the original L1 tilesets. So the replacements of the water objects that Will mentioned probably shouldn’t be necessary. The only L1 tileset that is featured at all is orig_pillar, and it only appears on some of the classic levels, until I started using L2_classic instead.

Of course, that doesn’t mean this pack will become a SuperLemmix pack. Having the Grenader and Spearer at my proposal would of course be tempting — in turn, I’d have to check how many of these levels rely on the Stoner, and whether they would still work if replaced with the Freezer. Alternatively, the Stoner could be cut on some levels, since it’s not an original Lemmings 2: The Tribes-Skill to begin with.

That said, when the Spearer and Grenader were removed / decided not to be added to a stable version of NeoLemmix, I modified the solutions of Hall-of-Fame levels that featured them, so that they would explicitly no longer need them. I don’t know if I still have the original solutions as replays somewhere, if I could simply add these two skills back in.

Creating two versions (one for NeoLemmix and one for SuperLemmix) is likely not something I’m going to do — it already resulted in enough of a hassle with Lemmings World Tour, with maintaining the Old-Formats and New-Formats version in parallel.

In principle, it would of course be nice to have all music packs (World Tour, Open Air, Hall of Fame, Drugs & Rock ‘n Roll) in the same Format (NeoLemmix, New Formats). This would be another argument against making Hall of Fame a SuperLemmix pack. Then again, this only works in part with Lemmings World Tour, because the Old-Formats version is the one with all the intended solutions, whereas some of the New-Formats versions had to be adapted, without Radiation and Slowfreeze.

[Strato Incendus]

The years keep flying by, and progress on this pack is slow. But every now and then, there's a little update to be shared.

Some of the level titles did change, after all. Also, upon discovering that I already had more than ten Sports levels, I moved the level "Take a bow" (which was a remake of "Take up archery", and really just used too many Builders) to a separate folder for a potential SuperLemmix pack. Already, I can tell that the level is a lot more interesting when using Spearers and Builders in combination.

Lemmings: Hall of Fame, meanwhile, will first and foremost still be for NeoLemmix. It's likely that there will be a SuperLemmix version at a later point.
However, with the exception of a few levels that were originally made for the Spearer and Grenader, I doubt many of the remaining ones will be modified, just to include them.
There will already be enough work in changing all the Stoners to Freezers again.

On to the new levels!

BEACH

Sunshine Superlem


Welcome to St. Tropez


Ai si eu te pego (Nossa)

OUTDOOR
I made all the bees move on this one; however, I've checked and compared them to Lemmings 2 again, and noticed that there, all the bees hover in place.
So I might remove the movement again. It tends to distract from trying to solve the level anyway.

Bzzz


Jungle drum

MEDIEVAL

Lemplars of steel

CLASSIC

Nessun dorma

HIGHLAND

Flower of Scotland

SPACE
For this one, I took some inspiration from a certain other level - except the skills are all NeoLemmix skills (i.e., none of the classic eight). That means a complete absence of downward destructive skills, which is fairly restrictive.

The last journey home

SHADOW

Howling at the moon


Moonlight shadow

SPORTS

Sweet Carolem

[Strato Incendus]

Only 20 more levels to go! Here's the first three of them.

BEACH

Despacito

OUTDOOR

This land is your land

EGYPTIAN

My Egyptian lover

The last one has quite a few Blockers, despite the requirement to save everyone. I've learned some things from NepsterLems in this regard; hopefully, that will serve to make these levels challenging enough for the last rank! ("This land is your land" is from the third rank, though.)

[Strato Incendus]

Here's the next batch of ten; only 7 more levels left to go!

OUTDOOR

These Lems are made for walking


Heads, shoulders, bees, and toads

MEDIEVAL

Avalon


Ai vis lo lop


The name of the rose

POLAR

Lem from the North Country


A winter's tale

CAVELEM

Sacrifice


Fade to grey


A face in the crowd

I find it somewhat hard to work with the irregular terrain shapes of the Cavelem tileset. Especially because most of the other L2 tilesets are so "blocky". The only thing that comes in perfect squares in Cavelem are the steel pieces, and for perfect rectangles, there only exist 1 or 2 pieces at max. Simultaneously, there are no huge clumps of terrain, like in other tilesets with lots of irregular shapes (e.g., orig_dirt). This makes a lot of the Cavelem levels somewhat "skeletal" in their appearance. Which I guess fits the stone-age theme, to some extent - but it also makes it tough to create pretty and mechanically interesting Cavelem levels.


Finally, I've also made two changes to existing levels. Both of them benefitted massively from having the Slider added:


Theater

This one used to require a Climber leaping off the wall on the right and transition into a Shimmier. Before that, he would obviously have to float down. I've shifted this trick to a later level, when the player is already familiar with the Slider, so that the player might actually end up missing the Slider at that point, if I don't provide it on that level.

"Theater" meanwhile seemed tailor-made to become the Slider-introduction level (it's on the second rank). I've added a few more chunks of terrain at the top, to enforce wall-jumping from the Slider state (since the lemming would bump his head against the ceiling if he tries to jump directly from the top of each block to the next climbable wall).




Can't hold us

This flow-control level is much more interesting with the Slider! Before that, it featured an excess amount of Jumpers (many of which were substitutes for the L2 Runner). Here, the Slider can actually save time, by turning corners earlier than the crowd does.

Also, I had to fill that tennis racket up with tennis balls, so that you can't merely fence or bash into it partially (=using one of the gaps to cancel the skill and thereby turn around the entire crowd). Now, it's one solid chunk of terrain, so any destructive skill you assign will pass all the way through it. I think this should fix some of the backroutes that the early testers had already found.



I've also been making progress on the music front: 7 out of 12 tracks are done, at least in their rough form.
I can still edit them for details and minor fixes while the pack undergoes testing. The ones that I still have to do are Classic, Shadow, Polar, Space, and Circus.

Classic merely requires me to combine the tracks 2 and 4 from the Lemmings World Tour rotation (the Pachelbel canon and the "Now use miners and climbers" tune), by putting 2 behind 4.
I still want to remix track 4 a little, though, before combining it with 2 for the Classic track. Many of the World Tour tracks have some unpleasant spikes in the upper mids, guitar fret noises, overly punchy kick drums, etc. I didn't have as much experience with mixing five years ago, compared to now, so I may also release an updated version of the World Tour tracks eventually.

The Shadow and Polar tracks are pretty straightforward (despite the 5/8 time on Shadow). The main challenge with several of the L2 tracks is the increased use of chromatic notes, compared to the original and ONML tunes. So I have to listen more closely to identify correctly what I need to play in the first place. The fun part, in exchange, is adding a little more atmosphere to them, with various soundscape pads in the background. So far, I've done that on Egyptian and Cavelem.

The most challenging ones are Space (The Blue Danube) and Circus (Entry of the Gladiators / Over the Waves).
For these two, I've downloaded free MIDI files for The Blue Danube and Entry of the Gladiators. So I'll pick matching software instruments for those, and then add guitars, drums, and bass "manually" on top of that, as usual.

Therefore, the Space and Circus tracks may end up sounding closer to the original classical music pieces. Much like, on the World Tour tracks, I also ended up playing the real Rondo Alla Turca on guitar, rather than the Lemmings track that combines it with some other melodies halfway through. I do want Circus to eventually transition into Over the Waves, though. And that would be challenging to do only by ear and recording on the fly, because of the shift in tempo that goes along with it. Such sudden tempo changes should be programmed into the recording software before recording, so that the metronome considers them.

The problem is that the Lemmings tracks (for original Lemmings, ONML, and The Tribes) don't seem to have been recorded to a metronome. Therefore, recording the drums by just playing along with the original tracks always results in a huge timing hassle afterwards.

[jkapp76]

I really like the use of all the Lemmings 2 styles everywhere. They look great!

I can't wait to play it. I've always been a fan of Strato-packs.

[Strato Incendus]

Well, if you really "can't wait", you're of course invited to participate in pre-release testing - if you don't mind finding backroutes .
If you'd rather enjoy a more patched version of the pack, you'll have to wait until pre-release testing is over.

Meanwhile, let's cut that number of remaining levels down to five:

EGYPTIAN

Valley of the Kings

SPACE

At the back of beyond

Junajo's Galaxy tileset (where the planets and nebulae are from) is really useful for adding some decoration. I've just discovered it also features further space-like traps (an alien, a ufo that can abduct lemmings etc.), and the terrain would also go along well with L2 Space. I didn't want to go overboard with that in a Tribes-themed pack, but I might get back to using this tileset more in Lemmings, Drugs, & Rock 'n Roll!

The limiting factor there is of course that the "Space" tileset in Lemmings 3D, the Alien tileset, is a lot darker, with more black, orange, and green - which is why so far, I've been using completely different tilesets than any of the space-themed ones to emulate the Alien tileset.

[Strato Incendus]

Only one more level to go! But it's a Cavelem level, so I can't be bothered with it tonight.
I'm glad I came up with the one I'm showing off here, since I expect it to be the hardest one of the Cavelem ones.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's actually one of the last five in the pack.
And it's all thanks to me having randomly encountered a certain video by Swerdis today.
Except my level involves Zombies!

CAVELEM

The Unforgiven

BEACH

Coco Jambo

MEDIEVAL

Omnos


Dawn of victory

Regarding the music tracks, 10 out of 12 are finished (again, at least in a rough form - I'll probably edit them for details later on).
I only have Space and Circus left to do - which, as mentioned before, are the hardest ones to record.

Also, my recording software sometimes refuses to properly convert the files to MP3 while exporting, as of yesterday (the files end up being too short in duration, even though I've set the markers for beginning and ending correctly). I've had a similar experience with my video editing software on the same Mac recently. So far, a simple restart of the computer has always solved those problems, for the time being, at least. But I still don't know what causes them.

My only guess is that it might be after having recorded a bunch of stuff, so that the hard drive might be packed with temporary files that take up space, but which might get deleted when shutting down the computer.

[Strato Incendus]

...and with that, the final level has been completed!

CAVELEM

Push the sky away

So, who is up for some testing?

It's been a while since I uploaded the first demo of 65 levels. I'll remove that one from the starting post now, since the levels contained in it are long outdated (quite a few of them have of course also received backroute fixes.)

Given the long time gap, I'm not sure if those who were early testers of the demo version are still interested in testing the final version of the pack now.
Or if anyone else wants to join in the testing, who didn't have the opportunity the first time.

In short, anyone interested can sign up, be it here in this thread or via PM.

[kaywhyn]

Given the long time gap, I'm not sure if those who were early testers of the demo version are still interested in testing the final version of the pack now.

I'm still interested, so sure, I be down to pre-test the full completed pack!

[Strato Incendus]

Thanks a lot, kaywhyn! I wasn't sure if you were still taking a break from Lemmings to focus on some other games. I'll send you the pack via PM.

Anyone else interested?


PS: I've changed the title of the Space level "Blackened sun" to "Black hole sun". For one, I assume Soundgarden are a more famous band than Freedom Call; and two, actually having the word "black hole" in the title will make it a lot more transparent to the player why the level is designed the way it is.

[Floyd Brannon]

This pack looks super!

[Strato Incendus]

Thanks! I haven’t received any feedback yet from kaywhyn, who is the only tester so far.
So if anyone else wants to test, just say so.

[Strato Incendus]

Just a little update: I’ve revised the first half of the pack (ranks 1 and 2), based on kaywhyn’s feedback from testing, and sent him the new version.

After the second half has been vetted, too, I think the pack should be ready for release. But I can’t put a date on that yet. Even if kaywhyn plays through the remaining levels quickly, I don’t know how fast I’ll be in fixing them.

[Strato Incendus]

I'm making progress in fixing the first batch of backroutes for the Gold and Platinum rank - only a few more Platinum levels left to go before I can send another version to kaywhyn.

So far, the levels didn't turn out as backroute-prone as I feared - and for the few glaring ones I left open, the fixes were usually the easiest (just some extra steel / one-way arrows). For one particular level, a trap did the trick by blocking off a route. Since this was a Shadow level, I didn't want to use one of the standard L2 Shadow stompers here (the ones with the red exclamation marks), since the top part always looks like a walkable steel square. Normally, these traps go on top of terrain - having one just by itself, without actual steel under the red exclamation mark, would be confusing. Hence, I went with the red-eyes trap from L2 Cavelem instead, which does seem to go along with the L2 Shadow tileset quite nicely.