[NeoLemmix] NeoLemmix Introduction Pack

[IchoTolot]

Thanks for the replays.

Looks good so far! For the most part the skill combinations make sense, but there is one that I think could use a little reconsideration: walkers and cloners, in my opinion, didn't really demonstrate the behavior of either skill very well, which could result in the player having forgotten the information about each skill presented in the text by the time a level requests them to make use of it. Show, don't tell, after all.

Behaviors of cloners not demonstrated:
 - Skill continues after use.
Behaviors of walkers not demonstrated:
 - Cancels skill in use.
 - Can be assigned to blockers.

I've attached replays.

All of these will be covered in the rank that shows tricks and advanced uses. The level in the skill rank only covers the most basic behavior of the skill. Combinations with other skills will come later.

Releasing blockers will be a major theme and walkers is among the first options to show. Also canceling skills (basher staircases in particular) will be another big theme.

Cloning several active skills (miners,builders,stackers) is also a topic on it's own. Getting all of this into the Cloner introduction level would be overkill, you could even argue that I should not mention the extra uses until later on.

[Strato Incendus]

@Dullstar: I've made a level of exactly the same type in Lemmicks, "Go forth and multiply". I agree with IchoTolot that early levels should stress one idea and one idea only - in this case, it's all about directionality: Both walkers and cloners result in lemmings going into the opposite direction.

I don't know how many levels the first rank, "Skills", is supposed to have eventually, or whether these are all already. If so, 12 is a weird number for Lemmings packs - I'd suggest going up to at least 20, maybe even the standard 30, and show a little more of skill interactions.

For example, the fact that walkers can cancel skills, including blockers, that cloners copy skills, that gliders interact with updrafts, all this is technically still a signature behaviour of the skill itself. For gliders, I guess you could make the case that this belongs in the "Objects" rank, introducing updrafts in general. But the fact that cloners copy and walkers cancel are still inherent properties of the skills - some skills just are too complex to point out everything they do in one level, I guess.

Also, anti-splat pads will have to be added to your "Objects" rank now, since they're getting reintroduced.

[IchoTolot]

I don't know how many levels the first rank, "Skills", is supposed to have eventually, or whether these are all already. If so, 12 is a weird number for Lemmings packs - I'd suggest going up to at least 20, maybe even the standard 30, and show a little more of skill interactions.

The number itself does not matter here. It could be 7 and when the rank teaches everything it wants to achieve it's fine. I will stay at 12 out of the reason Proxima stated: Don't exhaust the new player right of the get go. Imagine that: You want to learn Lemmings and see a 30 level first rank of new skills...yeah pass that. Instead the first ranks will only introduce the most basic uses of skills and the most basic interactions with objects and they will try to be as short as possible while covering the nessesary stuff. Later when providing training levels and examples of tricks you can have a larger rank.

Also the skill rank will not include skill interactions. Again, this is advanced stuff that comes later. After learning the basic uses of skills we should probably teach the player about steel, OWWs, teleporters, frame-stepping and other elemental things first. After all that is done I promise that the core skill interactions will be taught!

To qoute your points one by one:

, that gliders interact with updrafts,

100% Object rank --> updraft introduction.

walkers can cancel skills

Advanced mechanic that can lead deep into the mechanics -> Training/Trick rank. Even if the blocker interaction is more basic, let's stay a bit more consistent and move the whole theme together.

that cloners copy skills

Again, this leads deep into the mechanics and is better taught later.

some skills just are too complex to point out everything they do in one level, I guess.

That's why I am not doing that.


During the last few posts I see that some fall into the trap of wanting to explain everything about a topic at once. That would be counterproductive. You need a short introduction about the basic components first where only the basic uses of them are explained. Anything beyond comes later.  It is only problematic if the basic use is not explained properly.
I will continue with the "Interactables and Functions" rank next where I will go over Steel, Objects and helpful NL functions.
After that is done I move to the "Tricks and Training" rank where first some basic training levels will come up where the user can play around with a bunch of skills. Then all your interactions and tricks will be slowly trickled in.

So, be patient and after the next level sets come out it all might get clearer.

[IchoTolot]

I hope to release the next rank soon after I come back from my trip to my hometown.

I plan to name the rank: Interactables & Functions   

For the rest I plan 2 more ranks: Basic Training & Advanced Training. This way basic tricks like "create a digger pit" are seperated from advanced stuff like "cloner+stacker step". Also this helps to keep the ranks smaller while still providing enough training. Still I 100% won't cover every single trick in the book in there and there will be stuff left out! There must be a line and covering the more common stuff is the priority.

[Proxima]

Okay, time to do this. I'm playing through the Skills rank again and as I go along, I'll write up suggestions for improving the pre-level texts. (I'll also note any other issues, though I don't think there are any.)

Most of my suggestions will be where I think the text is correct but could be written more effectively. I'll use italics where I note an actual grammar error.

Skills Rank (click to show/hide)

General

For the level titles, title case usually doesn't capitalise articles or prepositions ("a", "the", "at" etc.)

Level 1

First paragraph is way too long; we need to find a way to introduce a paragraph break.

Cut "overall" and "starting" from first sentence, then it fits on 3 lines, saving a line.

I would rewrite the next two sentences as something like: "Help the Lemmings by assigning them skills. Each level may have a different selection of skills and limit to the number of each you may assign." I think that should fit on 4 lines, allowing for breaks before and after this chunk.

Last paragraph: "The digger lets a Lemming dig straight down, creating a tunnel that other Lemmings will fall into." Note that "into" contains "in" already, so you can't use it with "in which".

Level 2

Paragraph break after "through the terrain".

"As the digger" should be "As with the digger" and have a comma after it.

Level 3

Prefer "two" over "2" when it refers to something that is counted (like skills) rather than measured (like pixels).

Level 4

Same thing with "2". Don't capitalise "Permanent".

"If they hit their head they fall down again" is unneeded (what else would they do?) and cutting it would allow splitting this daunting paragraph into two gentler chunks.

"2 or more pixel height difference in the ceiling": cut "in the ceiling" as the context makes this clear. Cut "then they fall down again" for the same reason as with climbers. Then the splat height info can get its own paragraph, making it more likely the player will notice this.

I mentioned this already, but say "too far" rather than "64 or more pixels", and talk about the exact height together with introducing the splat ruler, in a later level.

Level 5

Cut "if they are doing any tasks..."; save this for skill interactions in Basic & Advanced Training.

Change "their walking form" to "walking", saving another line.

Cut "which can help you remove terrain".

Perhaps use the space saved to mention the 64-pixel height and splat ruler?

Level 6

Cut "without dying", which is redundant with "survive".

Cut "instead of a standard straight fall".

Spelling: "immediately"

Level 7

Okay but again there's a lot of text here. Maybe cut the bit about platformers also having the clicking sound, as this is easy to infer?

Level 8

Change "a bit related to" to "like".

Again, everything here is okay but I personally don't like there being so much text and would hack away the least informative parts: the last two sentences on stackers, and "This can also be used to block Lemmings".

Level 9

Title: "Amphibic" should be "Amphibious".

Paragraph break after "for good". Comma after "As the Swimmer".

Last sentence: change to "The disarming process takes a few seconds, but the trap becomes inactive immediately."

Level 10

"2" again.

Another very long text, but I don't see any obvious cuts to make.

Level 11

Change "You've clearly noticed" to "You may have noticed". Let's not make the player feel bad if they didn't!

Change "The rate of which" to "The rate at which".

Spelling: "though" (in the last sentence)

Level 12

Change "At last" to "And last".

Change "one after the other" to "one after another" and "which timer" to "whose timer".

[IchoTolot]

Thanks for the feddback Proxima. I will go through this when I'm fully back next week and prepare adding the next rank.

[Dullstar]

In regards to the preview text, I'd suggest withholding any information that won't be relevant until later levels. For example, the Walker/Cloner level has some very wordy text, and Proxima correctly notes that there aren't any obvious cuts to make. I assume this is because all the behaviors mentioned are important to know for those skills. However, this level doesn't demonstrate that walkers cancel skills, and it doesn't demonstrate that cloners retain their current skills, and it seems there is a consensus that these behaviors should be withheld until later levels. Can this portion of the explanation also be withheld until that time? If it doesn't make sense to show the player those behaviors right away, I think it would be logically consistent to also not tell the player about this behavior right away.

[IchoTolot]

V 0.04 is out!

- Added the 2nd rank: Interactables & Functions 

- Included a lot of pre-level text changes according to user feedback (mostly the majority of things mentioned in Proxima's post).


The updraft, splat-pad, anti splat-pad level is obviously still missing the anti splat-pad. That one is currently replaced by another updraft.

The new rank 2 pre-level texts are more wordy than the rank 1 ones, but trying to explain framestepping + hotkeys in 1 screen is a challenge let's say.    Again if you have a shorter/better text with the same information value: Post it and I may change it.

For the level titles, title case usually doesn't capitalise articles or prepositions ("a", "the", "at" etc.)

This you can count towards my general style that i developed shortly after Reunion. I usually capitalise every word in a level title, because I think it looks better. And as everybody does it differently anyway I normally stick to my style in this case.

[namida]

For the level titles, title case usually doesn't capitalise articles or prepositions ("a", "the", "at" etc.)

This you can count towards my general style that i developed shortly after Reunion. I usually capitalise every word in a level title, because I think it looks better. And as everybody does it differently anyway I normally stick to my style in this case.

Yeah, I do the same actually.


Now, for feedback on the new rank:
General - Note that I wrote this after seeing the first level. I'm just going to kind of assume it's the same throughout the whole thing. Anyway: NeoLemmix by default pushes users towards the "Functional layout", but your texts reflect the Traditional layout. But instead of relying on this - it should be easy enough for me to introduce a feature where you can put, say, [HOTKEY:PAUSE] in the preview text, and it'll get replaced with the actual pause hotkey. The only question is how to handle cases where more than one key is assigned to the function - which Pause would indeed be an example of.

Level 1 "Up For A Walk?" - This level was a bit laggy for me even in fast-forward mode. There were also some lemmings that turned around during the last bash (or close to it), which even with fast forward takes ages. Suggestion - introduce the time skip here as well. Regarding the text, "Pressing the button with the two green arrows" - I would change this to "Clicking" (not "Pressing"). I'd also maybe stress "skill panel button" again here, or maybe even mention the panel buttons first, then later say "You can also use the hotkeys...".

Level 2 "Iron Anthill" - "Levels can also include verticality", this sounds really awkward to me. In general - "verticality" is not a word that generally gets used. "Levels can also scroll vertically", or "Levels can vary in height as well as width" might be better phrasing. Also, the feature has consistently been termed "clear physics mode", not "true physics mode". This is also another level that would benefit greatly from the time skips already being introduced. By tutorial level standards, this is a pretty fun level, though!

Level 3 "Time and Crime" - I don't see any problems with this one.

Level 4 "Trap Roulette" - It feels a bit awkward that the description immediately starts with "some traps only...", without first talking at all about what a trap is in and of itself. (A new-to-Lemmings player might wonder - does it kill, or does it just trap a lemming in one place until you do something to release him, for example.) On a side note, some of the Lemmings Plus traps aren't quite behaving as they should graphically, I need to look into that, but that's my problem - just that I noticed it on this level.

Level 5 "Set Your Priorities Right" - I suggest making the floater section a bit higher, because currently, floaters (whether the pre-assigned or the skill panel ones) aren't actually necessary here. Maybe this depends on exact positioning, but IMO it makes more sense for them to be always required.

Level 6 "Follow The Arrows" - Everything seems good here!

Level 7 "Pick Them Up And Push Them Down" - Again, all seems well with this one.

Level 8 "Split And Splat" - Here too.

Level 9 "Beam Them Over" - The middle section on the left, I would swap the two teleporters around. This makes it possible to recover from a mistake here, which doesn't really harm the level in any way.

Level 10 "Gravity Lab" - "Floaters get slowed down" - so do normal lemmings, it's just more noticable with floaters, but both fall 1px/frame slower than usual. Also - use the resizing on the updrafts instead of placing multiple where possible; on V12.6.0 onwards this looks much nicer.

Level 11 "Stop, Rewind and Go" - Minus doesn't have to be specifically numpad-minus. Also, you can right click or middle click on the skill panel buttons for different skip durations (1sec and 5sec, IIRC).

Level 12 "The Joy Of Sorting" - This one is quite tricky, I wonder if it needs to have every permanent skill involved? I think you could get the point across with a simpler setup - the climber, disarmer and no-permanent-skills entrances as-is, plus a second no-permanents entrance that spawns 2 lemmings. Place two additional limit-1 entrances exits (sorry, mistake), one just before each climbable wall. Remove the remaining entrances and their corresponding exits, and adjust the skillset accordingly.

Level 13 "Highlights With A Safety Net" - Typo in the text, "kepp" -> "keep". Aside from that, seems good.

Level 14 "Night Of The Living Lems" - All seems good here.

[Proxima]

it should be easy enough for me to introduce a feature where you can put, say, [HOTKEY:PAUSE] in the preview text, and it'll get replaced with the actual pause hotkey. The only question is how to handle cases where more than one key is assigned to the function - which Pause would indeed be an example of.

This is a good idea, because it would be frustrating for new users to have the intro texts teach them about hotkeys and then try them out and they don't work. However, there are two other problems to consider: the user may not have any hotkey for a given function (especially timeskips since you can choose your own lengths of timeskip to assign hotkeys to); and for functions like splat ruler where the default is an alphabetic key, the intro text writer may leave space for a single letter, but a particular user may have assigned something like Ctrl to it.

[IchoTolot]

@namida: Thanks for the feedback.

General - Note that I wrote this after seeing the first level. I'm just going to kind of assume it's the same throughout the whole thing. Anyway: NeoLemmix by default pushes users towards the "Functional layout", but your texts reflect the Traditional layout. But instead of relying on this - it should be easy enough for me to introduce a feature where you can put, say, [HOTKEY:PAUSE] in the preview text, and it'll get replaced with the actual pause hotkey. The only question is how to handle cases where more than one key is assigned to the function - which Pause would indeed be an example of.

Then I will wait for that function before any changes in that section. I have no idea what the "Functional layout" is and with your described function I would catch all cases.

Also, the feature has consistently been termed "clear physics mode", not "true physics mode".

That one is on me.

Level 1 and 2: Yes, those would benefit from the 10 sec skip, but I wanted to keep all framestepping actions together as a theme, so I aimed to introduce FF as fast as possible here as a temporal relief. Also the preview texts here are quite at the limit as the levels already introduce quite a bit. Especially the 1st level should be an example of suboptimal level desgin: Large landscape with not much going on so that FF feels better. I could turn down the decoration though to reduce lag.

Level 4: "Basic" traps were already introduced in rank 1 with the disarmer as that was unavoidable. This is more about single-use ones and also an opportunity to show more traps to the player.

Level 5: Well, the floater were more than an afterthought to show pre-placer can have permanent skills and the skill panel ones were just an emergency addition so that no situation can become very problematical. I could place the tunnel higher though.

Level 9: Seems reasonable.

Level 10/11: Ok, I should mention this. And I constantly forget that I can indeed resize!

Level 12: Yes, that could be an easier suitable variation and I could reuse this version in basic training as an expansion/returning level. I want to hear more oppinions first though.

Level 13: Quick fix.


Anyway the next update will not happen today in order to let more feedback trickle in.

[namida]

it should be easy enough for me to introduce a feature where you can put, say, [HOTKEY:PAUSE] in the preview text, and it'll get replaced with the actual pause hotkey. The only question is how to handle cases where more than one key is assigned to the function - which Pause would indeed be an example of.

This is a good idea, because it would be frustrating for new users to have the intro texts teach them about hotkeys and then try them out and they don't work. However, there are two other problems to consider: the user may not have any hotkey for a given function (especially timeskips since you can choose your own lengths of timeskip to assign hotkeys to); and for functions like splat ruler where the default is an alphabetic key, the intro text writer may leave space for a single letter, but a particular user may have assigned something like Ctrl to it.

Time skips may be a difficult one, yeah. Cases where no hotkey is assigned should be easy enough.

Perhaps a different approach will work better here - namely, going with the expectation that the hotkey text might take up an entire line. Then, we'd just have on its own line, for example: "Pause hotkey: P | F11 | Middle Click" (in the actual data files: "Pause hotkey: [HOTKEY:PAUSE]" or similar).

General - Note that I wrote this after seeing the first level. I'm just going to kind of assume it's the same throughout the whole thing. Anyway: NeoLemmix by default pushes users towards the "Functional layout", but your texts reflect the Traditional layout. But instead of relying on this - it should be easy enough for me to introduce a feature where you can put, say, [HOTKEY:PAUSE] in the preview text, and it'll get replaced with the actual pause hotkey. The only question is how to handle cases where more than one key is assigned to the function - which Pause would indeed be an example of.

Then I will wait for that function before any changes in that section. I have no idea what the "Functional layout" is and with your described function I would catch all cases.

When first starting NeoLemmix with no existing configuration (as in, no config at all, not just a missing hotkeys file) it prompts the user to select between "Functional layout" (formerly titled "Lix-like layout"), "Traditional layout" (the one you're used to), or "Minimal layout" (only assigns a very few keys: Esc to exit, mousewheel to zoom in and out, MMB pause, and RMB scroll; this is for people who want to create their own layout without having to clear the default first).

[Proxima]

Comments on everything other than the hotkey issue:

Comments (click to show/hide)

Rank 1: Greatly improved. All the main issues have been addressed, and I don't mind that you didn't agree with me on everything, because a lot of the things I said were subjective. The only thing I'd still suggest changing is in Level 1 -- the long first paragraph is a bit daunting for the very first text you ask the player to read, so I'd put a paragraph break after "assigning them skills".

By Rank 2, longer texts are a bit more acceptable since the player has (hopefully) gotten a taste for NeoLemmix and is more willing to spend time reading, knowing they get rewarded with cool levels. So I won't say too much about the length here, but I'll look out in case there are cuts I think you should make.

Rank title: It wouldn't be clear to a new player what you mean by "functions", and "interactables" is cumbersome (and the very first object introduced, background decoration, is not interactive). I would just call this rank "Objects" even though it also tutorialises some hotkeys; most of the focus is on objects, and the hotkeys are just introduced along the way when they become relevant.

Level 1: It's the "paws" button, not "paw". Hence the pun.

Level 2: "Steel can't be destroyed" is true but you could make the stronger statement "Steel can't be damaged". This would also avoid the repetition of destroyed/destructive.

Let's should be lets. "Let's" is short for "let us" and is used to make suggestions, as in "Let's go for a walk."

Level 3: No issues.

Level 4: Typo: "trun" for "turn" at the start of the second paragraph.

Level 5: Cut "to make sure he faces the correct direction".

Suggested rewrite for second paragraph: "Levels may begin with some pre-placed lemmings, which are active straight away. They may begin with permanent skills already assigned to them."

Level 6: "One-way walls" has only one hyphen. Fifth line should be "bashers, fencers or miners".

Second paragraph: "basher" should be "bashers".

Level 7: Comma after "though". Spelling: "necessary".

This level (and also Level 9) requires builders to be placed precisely. I can't remember, did the first rank talk about skill shadows at any point? Might be good to fit in a mention somewhere, and it will be tricky to do this in rank 2 which already has longer texts.

Level 8: Comma after "64-pixel fall".

Level 9: "They only can" should be "They can only".

Level 10: "Splat pads" are not hyphenated, and "anti-splat pads" have only one. "In contrast" should be "by contrast".

Level 11: The wall of text is extremely daunting. Fortunately, I think this one needs a full rewrite anyway, because it shouldn't mention specific hotkeys or time intervals since the player may have a different hotkey setup, and that should shorten it quite a bit anyway.

This was a fun level!

Level 12: Replace second sentence with "In this case they are marked with the icon of that skill."

Suggested rewrite for second paragraph: "Normally, lemmings are equally spread among all hatches, but some hatches can be limited to spawning a certain number of lemmings." [Keep the part about exits as-is.]

The level is pretty tricky as you can't make any mistakes in where lemmings go -- though by this point we have been introduced to rewinding, so it might be okay to leave it.

Level 13: Typo: "hightlight". Pretty neat level

Level 14: "Who shall nullify" should be "to nullify". Spelling: "incoming".

[Dullstar]

Might I suggest swapping levels 5 and 6 in the new rank?

Level 6 is the actual introduction level for OWW, though they are used in Level 5. However, the skills taught by Level 5 are not particularly important for Level 6.

[IchoTolot]

Will prepare a patch later. Thanks for all the feedback.

Might I suggest swapping levels 5 and 6 in the new rank?

Level 6 is the actual introduction level for OWW, though they are used in Level 5. However, the skills taught by Level 5 are not particularly important for Level 6.

Total screw up from my part!    Yes, those need to be swapped.