[PLAYER][SUGGESTION] Option to force default lemming sprites

[Dullstar]

Some custom content exists featuring custom lemmings sprites and recolors. While many of these are fair and well-designed, there are a few that lack colors for neutrals, athletes, and zombies.

Ultimately, it might be difficult to prevent such content from being created. Even if you were to require unique colors, someone could always try to make one with the minimum allowed differences.

I think a good solution to this on the player's end of things would be to include an option to force the player to use the default sprites, even if custom sprites or recolors have been provided.

[WillLem]

I agree that custom sprites need to be presented fairly and conform to expected recolouring behaviour. That said, I'm strongly against the idea of anything that bypasses or overrides something a content creator has spent a lot of time working on - particularly the sprites.

A better solution might be to automatically vet custom spritesets, and only allow those that provide recolourings to be playable in the Player. A simple error message such as "No specified sprite recolourings" would make it so that content creators couldn't even playtest the spriteset until the necessary recolourings had been specified.

At present, it's possible to recolour HAIR, CLOTHES and SKIN from within the Scheme file: I'd suggest that as long as a recolouring for one of these is specified for each of ATHLETES, NEUTRALS, SELECTED and ZOMBIES, this is sufficient. For example, if a content creator chooses to only recolour the hair - that's fine. It shouldn't be necessary to change everything.

NeoLemmix recognises and understands Hex values, and can deal with Shades, so another solution might be to simply automate recolourings for spritesets that don't specify at least one recolouring value per state.

[ccexplore]

That said, I'm strongly against the idea of anything that bypasses or overrides something a content creator has spent a lot of time working on - particularly the sprites.

And I'm generally reflexively against the idea of limiting user choices.  First of all, it was the content creator's problem that led to this in the first place.  I think it's fair that the player has a way around the problem in the meantime, after all it can take time to fix sprites.  The other alternative is, the player simply doesn't play the affected levels at all!  Talk about bypassing something the content creator spent a lot of time working on!

Keep in mind that once the sprites are fixed, the player is likely to go back to the intended sprites again.

Also, I can't rule out in other cases. maybe the player has personal objections about the sprites and cannot fully enjoy the levels while using them.  It may not be what the content creator intended, but neither is the content creator's intent (hopefully?) to annoy the user or to cause the user to not play the level at all altogether.  In the same way that a player may mute sound and music, I think the content creator needs to be respectful of the user's wishes.

A better solution might be to automatically vet custom spritesets, and only allow those that provide recolourings to be playable in the Player. A simple error message such as "No specified sprite recolourings" would make it so that content creators couldn't even playtest the spriteset until the necessary recolourings had been specified.

That might work assuming we require recoloring support versus fully custom sprites.  It might greatly reduce the need for the proposed option, although there may be other cases where the option is wanted for non-recoloring-related reasons.  In theory there could be recoloring enabled, but the color choices involved are still bad such that you can't really see the effects of recoloring.  So I can still see doing both rather than just one of the two.

[WillLem]

And I'm generally reflexively against the idea of limiting user choices.

Me too: I'm always going on about giving players more options! Skill Shadows is my latest quest, not sure what's happening regarding that...

I think it's fair that the player has a way around the problem in the meantime, after all it can take time to fix sprites.

I agree, totally. That's precisely the reason I suggested implementing a system that doesn't allow a non-recoloured sprite set to be playable: that way, creators can't even release the pack until this has been sorted, and players aren't waiting around for this to be fixed.

That might work assuming we require recoloring support versus fully custom sprites.

Please can you rephrase this, I'm not sure what you mean.

maybe the player has personal objections about the sprites and cannot fully enjoy the levels while using them.
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In theory there could be recoloring enabled, but the color choices involved are still bad such that you can't really see the effects of recoloring.  So I can still see doing both rather than just one of the two.

Yeah, I guess there's not really any way around this other than requiring a certain part of the Hex value to be different, which could lead to unnecessary frustration and complications.

I'd tentatively agree that implementing both seems like the best of all worlds at this stage: players are unlikely to force default sprites just because the creator hasn't implemented recolouring (because the creator would have to have implemented recolouring for the sprite set to be playable before release), and yet players who have other objections to a particular custom set would be able to force the defaults.

That said, though: there's no way to force the levels themselves to look different according to player preferences, so why should it be any different for the sprites (for reasons other than recolouring, I mean)?

EDIT: Also... all a player needs to do to force the default sprites is to open the theme.nxtm file and change LEMMINGS from "whoever_whatever" to "default." So, it currently is possible via this workaround anyway.

[ccexplore]

That might work assuming we require recoloring support versus fully custom sprites.

Please can you rephrase this, I'm not sure what you mean.

Doesn't NeoLemmix still support the option of explicitly providing different sprites graphics for the different states like athletes and neutrals, instead of only specifying a recoloring scheme?  Or is recoloring the only supported way now to handle athletes and neutrals now?  It's been a while so I no longer remember.

That said, though: there's no way to force the levels themselves to look different according to player preferences

Actually there kind of is one, and you asked for it--the ability to select high resolution vs low resolution graphics.

Terrain affects how the lemmings walk and move, and therefore is very limited in how it can be changed.  Objects have somewhat more flexibility, but are still impacted by the fact that different objects of the same type still often have differently sized trigger areas, and for triggered traps even the number of frames matter as to how exactly they interact with a bunch of lemmings passing by.  The lemmings sprites on the other hand are completely interchangeable without affecting how the level plays out, in that way it's a lot more like music and sound.

EDIT: Also... all a player needs to do to force the default sprites is to open the theme.nxtm file and change LEMMINGS from "whoever_whatever" to "default." So, it currently is possible via this workaround anyway.

That's a fair point and might be good enough solution for the occasional times when this is needed, although it takes a little work to find out which style is being used.  It also means having to repeat this if multiple styles reference the same lemmings sprites.  Perhaps a better way is to overwrite the sprite graphics files themselves with the default ones, fixing it for all styles that refer to the same sprites.

This workaround also makes the defaulting of sprites style- or graphics-specific, which I think is how the proposed option would likely be used--not to force every style to all use the default, but just the few ones that are problematic.  Indeed, if we were to implement an option I would've strongly suggested also making it toggle via hotkey so that you can easily turn it on and off on the fly, so that you only use it when it's needed.

Anyway, considering namida's previous stances on similar options, I anticipate him favoring the workaround than implementing an option.  The disallowing of missing recoloring still sounds good though.

[Dullstar]

Part of the reason I'm not convinced that the workaround is the best solution is the fact that there was recently a pack that came out where every level had a unique style with athlete/neutral/zombie recoloring non-compliant lemming sprites. I don't mean to call out the creator, so I won't say what pack was, but I would have had to do that 10 times to bring the entire pack into compliance.

As for WillLem's suggestion of automatic vetting, the problem is that the checks would require us to make some calls. Specifically, if I don't wish to produce recolors of the sprites, but NeoLemmix says I must include the recolors, I could merely increment all of the RGB values by 1, and now when you check if athlete color == regular color then complain, NeoLemmix sees, hey, athlete color != regular color, so it's all good, but you can't actually tell the difference unless maybe if you squint at it really hard. You could make the comparison a little fuzzy and return true for "close enough" matches, but then you have to decide how close is too close - that's what I meant by "Even if you were to require unique colors, someone could always try to make one with the minimum allowed differences." Thus, the best solution as things currently stand destroys the custom art even more: simply play the entire level in CPM which gives lemmings meaningful solid colors.

Of course, then again, content creators who disregard these sorts of things are also probably more likely to make the sorts of levels that need to be played in CPM because who needs to be able to tell the difference between steel, destructable terrain, and the background?


For reference: CPM mode athlete/zombie/neutral colorings. Each square contains a walker and a climber of the same type. The left square contains regular lemmings, the middle contains neutrals, and the right contains zombies.

[namida]

Doesn't NeoLemmix still support the option of explicitly providing different sprites graphics for the different states like athletes and neutrals, instead of only specifying a recoloring scheme?  Or is recoloring the only supported way now to handle athletes and neutrals now?  It's been a while so I no longer remember.

NeoLemmix has never supported this.

NeoLemmix has, and still does, support entirely custom lemming spritesets; and as of fairly recently, also supports a "use an existing spriteset but recolor it" setup (provided the spriteset is set up for this - in practice, as far as I know only the default and Xmas sprites actually are fully set up for it, though GigaLem's Milla sprites also have partial support) for the whole spriteset. But for different states, it's only ever been recoloring.

[Dullstar]

If recoloring is required for these states, I wonder if the perceived complexity of configuring it might be why some custom sets don't have proper support.

[mantha16]

hey everyone hes talking about Telelems

Dullstar your inference that I made a deliberate choice in the sprites rather than not realising or being told that I would need to change things on the athletes is obnoxious.   

I won't be changing the aesthetics of my levels just because you don't like them.  I'm not interested in maintaining the status quo or doing things purely because something is frowned upon.

I'm really not interested in the opinion of someone who just wants to bash someones work instead of constructively trying to help. 

[IchoTolot]

I think an option for this would be a good idea.

If a person is not very found of some sprites, or some sprites are currently in a incomplete/broken state this would be an easy way to improve the player's experience.

The option is just generally a good idea in my opinion.

[Dullstar]

I still haven't identified the offending pack. I probably left enough information that someone could have figured out what pack it was if they'd seen the pack, but I went ahead and removed any information that wasn't directly relevant nonetheless. I could have identified it by name here, but I didn't want to call out the pack or its author in this suggestion, because this suggestion isn't meant to pick a fight.

I brought up the possibility that intentionally-non-recolored sprites could be made because I needed to explain why I thought this particular solution was better than an alternative solution (specifically, WillLem's suggestion to have the player require that the recolors exist). I did not accuse anyone of actually having done this.

[mantha16]

you havent made constructive suggestions youve just demanded things are done the way you like it.

As far as picking a fight I'm not fighting I'm just not bowing down to how you say things should be

[WillLem]

As for WillLem's suggestion of automatic vetting, the problem is that the checks would require us to make some calls... I could merely increment all of the RGB values by 1

Yeah, to be fair I already did understand that's what you meant. I think that's the only real problem with the idea of automatic vetting.

That's why I suggested that maybe such a system could require that a specific part of the Hex value be changed, or a certain number of digits. This is more likely to yield different results, although I can see it's by no means perfect and could actually cause problems for creators and players.

I won't be changing the aesthetics of my levels just because you don't like them.  I'm not interested in maintaining the status quo or doing things purely because something is frowned upon.

This is how I feel pretty much every time I get feedback that's anything other than "everything you've done is perfect, and couldn't possibly be improved!" It's good to feel connected with your creative output that way, and I totally understand how it feels when others don't share your views on something you've spent time and energy creating.

That said, what I've learned is that with something like Lemmings levels, it's important to remember that it isn't just a piece of art that can be objectively discussed in a "no-one's-right/no-one's-wrong" kind of way - it's a game, with certain rules, expectations, and mechanics which dictate how others will experience it.

This is a vital difference, and one which makes it particularly important to be able to take other people's views into consideration. There's lots about NeoLemmix philosophy that I don't agree with, but I do understand that it's important for everyone to be on the same page about certain things.

Keep going with what you're doing, Mantha - as harsh as it can sometimes be, this is a great place to learn how to co-operate with others when you're naturally a creative rebel!

[GigaLem]

I apologize if what im suggesting might be off topic, but if such a feature did become a thing, why not a similar feature in the editor to force a specific type of lemming in the level and the set's default is what the $LEMMINGS line of text calls for what lemming to use in the set? and a drop down menu gives you the choice of what custom lemming sprite sheet you can use?

[namida]

I apologize if what im suggesting might be off topic, but if such a feature did become a thing, why not a similar feature in the editor to force a specific type of lemming in the level and the set's default is what the $LEMMINGS line of text calls for what lemming to use in the set? and a drop down menu gives you the choice of what custom lemming sprite sheet you can use?

One of these is "add a checkbox to the options menu, that controls another "yes or no" setting - something that there's already many of, so it's written so it's easy to add / remove them. Then, if this option is on, ignore any lemming spritesets specified in the theme file, and just use the default lemmings instead". (EDIT: And ignore any recoloring data in the theme file, except maybe "MASK".)

The other is "add a new configuration item to the editor, which in turn needs to figure out a full list of which styles have lemming sprites and which don't; it additionally needs to support a "use the theme's specified set" option. If we're allowing equivalents to the theme-based recoloring, I then further need to implement an entire UI for this, which is also one of those "very easy to abuse" features - and then enter into the discussion (and add support, if decided) for overriding the other theme colors too, which the fact that all this exists would be seen as a strong argument towards "why not allow the rest". Or if recoloring the sprites is not allowed, I have to deal with the whole inevitable debate about why not. Then, I need to figure out how to best represent this in a level file's format, and add that to loading and saving on both the editor and player side. Then, I need to implement actually applying this in the player, where currently, level data and lemming sprite data are more or less the programming equivalent of "entirely unaware that each other even exist". Then, on top of all that, I have to go and update the level format topic to reflect these new additions, and describe it in a way that's easy to understand." And all of this is for an option that will very rarely see use, and a significant proportion of the use cases for it are either "do it just because I can" or "do it for trolling purposes".

So yeah - basically, one of these is a quick 5 minute option, the other is a huge major feature. That's "why not", or more accurately, why "if we have the former, why can't we have the latter" is not really a meaningful point. As a suggestion in and of itself - I don't think it's very likely to happen, simply because it provides zero benefit to puzzles and isn't likely to see frequent use (plus, the abuse potential), but my biggest point here is that it's not comparable to this topic's request in scale, so there's no logic by which having one raises a "why not?" about the other.

[WillLem]

Coming back to this topic for a moment (since it's a possible feature of future NL), I've read the OP again and it's worth keeping in mind that this is stemming from {content creators not providing zombie/neutral recolourings for their sprites}.

Forcing a default spriteset seems way too heavy-handed a way of dealing with this, when it's something that could easily be dealt with by simply communicating with the content creator and asking them to, hey, include recolourings for their sprites!

When I created the Lemminas sprites, I made sure to include recolourings for zombie, athlete, and selected lemminas. It seems unfair to punish someone who has taken the time to make sure they've done it right for the sake of resolving an issue caused by less careful content creators.

Perhaps a better way of dealing with this would be to build some sort of "spriteset recolouring tool", which allows users to create their own custom recolourings, whilst also making sure that they also apply recolourings to the various states. For example, it could be that it spits the resulting PNGs out with certain code allowing them to be used by NeoLemmix; if someone doesn't run their sprites through the tool, then they won't work in-game.

If this seems equally drastic/too much work, another idea would be to have the option to force a default recolouring, rather than an outright default sprite set. This could simply apply a set of colours (green/brown for zombies, white/grey for neutrals, for example) no matter what the initial colour of the custom sprite is.

Meanwhile, regarding another related issue (completely blank lemming sprites which don't even show up in CPM), I wondered whether the lemming's position could be indicated in CPM (via the pink dot) which would be a way to get around that particular problem, should it ever arise. And, by extension, could the dot itself be recoloured to indicate zombies, neutrals and athletes? This would also help towards resolving the OP's issue.

[Proxima]

Coming back to this topic for a moment (since it's a possible feature of future NL), I've read the OP again and it's worth keeping in mind that this is stemming from {content creators not providing zombie/neutral recolourings for their sprites}.

While that was what prompted one person to care enough to start a discussion about it, that is not the only reason for the feature to exist, as ccexplore pointed out:

Also, I can't rule out in other cases. maybe the player has personal objections about the sprites and cannot fully enjoy the levels while using them.  It may not be what the content creator intended, but neither is the content creator's intent (hopefully?) to annoy the user or to cause the user to not play the level at all altogether.  In the same way that a player may mute sound and music, I think the content creator needs to be respectful of the user's wishes.

In the end, NL is a single-player game. The content creator doesn't know whether the user is playing with their sprites, any more than they know whether the user is listening to their intended music. The user can even edit the levels to make them all auto-solves if they want! Calling it "punishment" for the content creator is going a bit far.

That said, I'm not sure such a feature needs to exist, because it's fairly easy for the end user to force default lemmings anyway (a one-line edit to the style's theme.nxtm). But for the benefit of users who may not know about that, or may be afraid of messing with behind-the-scenes stuff in case their NL installation breaks, overall I'm in favour of adding it as a simple checkbox in the settings.

[Gronkling]

Seems like a harmless addition, I'd support it personally, nothing wrong with letting users choose what they want.

[WillLem]

Of course I agree that users should have the choice to enjoy the content however they wish; I fully support and encourage this, and if the option has to be implemented then so be it.

However, I'm just wondering if there may be a less heavy-handed way to deal with this particular issue (i.e. custom sprite sets not being provided with recolouring data), and now's the time to discuss it whilst it's on the "maybe happening" list, that's all.

[Strato Incendus]

Yes, if it's an option for the user, I'd fully support having that choice! I might actually switch back and forth between sprite types myself if this gets implemented.

In particular, my packs Lemmings World Tour (as well as the upcoming Lemmings, Drugs, and Rock 'n Roll) use a bunch of different sprites to simulate lemmings stemming from different parts of the world. At the same time, though, I also like a classical lemmings feel sometimes, which can be better replicated by default sprites. On top of that, Lemmings, Drugs, and Rock 'n Roll is also inspired by Lemmings 3D, and that game only has "default" sprites. So in order to increase the L3D feel of that pack, default sprites would be the way to go.

Having the option of defining the sprites on a per-level basis (as it is now), but then spontaneously switching them back in the player for an entire pack / playing session, would allow me to do both without having to choose.

In short: This is something I would never have proposed myself, but I certainly see how I would personally benefit from it. So I'm not merely supporting it out of solidarity with those who'd want this feature; I would indeed have a personal application of such a feature, too .

[namida]

If this seems equally drastic/too much work, another idea would be to have the option to force a default recolouring, rather than an outright default sprite set. This could simply apply a set of colours (green/brown for zombies, white/grey for neutrals, for example) no matter what the initial colour of the custom sprite is.

Unless it's just an across the board "change EVERY color via a hue shift or similar", there is no way NL can know which pixels to recolor. It could theoretically try to identify sprites that are slight modifications of the standard ones and guess from that (though this would not be 100% reliable), but this would be a lot of work to implement. Not a bad idea if it were possible, but yeah, not practical to actually make it happen.

What could be more practical is to outright require at least one source-dest pair of recoloring for each possible category (zombie, neutral, athlete, selected), and treat any spritesets that lack this as invalid. Creators who are intentionally trying to mislead would still be able to find ways, that's not really preventable through realistic technical measures, but it would at least draw attention in cases where the creator is unaware of the need to do so.

[WillLem]

What could be more practical is to outright require at least one source-dest pair of recoloring for each possible category (zombie, neutral, athlete, selected), and treat any spritesets that lack this as invalid

It's great that you're willing to consider this idea, but I think consensus seems to be that a player-side option for forcing the defaults is a desirable feature anyway, regardless of what is done about custom recolouring. So, the two features may need to exist alongside one another, rather than instead of one another.

Custom sprites are relatively uncommon at the moment but I expect to see more and more since the arrival of Lemminas and Millas, which are out-and-out reshapes rather than simple recolourings. So, it may still be worth implementing the recolouring feature for that reason (i.e. so that those who create custom sprites are required to provide recolourings), and this will hopefully encourage players who do use the "force default" option to give the spritesets a try, knowing that the various recolourings are a guarantee.

I personally would never use a "force default" option, since I'm more interested in enjoying the work that someone has put into a custom set of sprites. However, I can support the option on the grounds that the player ought to have as much control over the UI as possible (I myself insist on using my own panel and helper graphics, as well as one or two minor tweaks to the default sprites themselves!), so I retract my previous opposition to this idea.

[Dullstar]

As the person who originally suggested this, my main usage case for this would be for sets where certain used recolors are missing. In most cases I would not use the option - think clear physics mode for lemming sprites without being the full graphics nuke that actual clear physics mode is.

Requiring the recolors to exist isn't necessarily a bad idea, but it does impose extra work on creators making styles for use with their own levels (particularly vgaspec type levels), such as the pack that originally sparked this suggestion. While styles providing custom lemmings for the style downloader should be expected to have a complete set of recolors, I think for neutrals and zombies, the recolors should only be required to exist if these types are actually used (whether this should cause an automatic fallback or be an error might be debatable), but if zombies and neutrals aren't used by a particular style, it's fine to omit them. Athletes are common enough that it might be a good idea to require that particular recoloring outright. There are many packs that don't use neutrals and zombies, but few that don't make use of athletes.

I think when this was originally suggested, I might have thought a fallback in the case of missing recolors wasn't sufficient because of the possibility of someone deliberately making the recolors similar enough, but let's be honest, no one's probably going to do that, and if they do, then at least we know they did it deliberately and can leave bad reviews on their pack without feeling bad about it. Contrast this with the pack that originally caused me to come up with this suggestion, where the creator probably just didn't know they needed to create the recolorings. Default lemming sprite fallback in the event of missing recolors would probably be sufficient for that - although I'd like to emphasize I don't think we should be falling back for missing neutrals/zombies unless neutrals/zombies are used in the level. However, an option to force the default sprites may still be useful as an accessibility feature. It's fairly likely we have at least one colorblind individual in the community, and it's only a matter of time before someone makes a set of recolored lemmings without realizing their recolors are difficult for some people to tell apart.

[namida]

From V12.11, a set of custom lemming sprites will be required to have:
- A recoloring for "selected lemming"
- A recoloring for athletes

Additionally, only when being used on a level that contains the respective type of lemming, they will be required to have:
- A recoloring for zombies
- A recoloring for neutrals

If any required recolor is absent (in the case of zombie/neutral, only "if absent on a level that contains the respective lemming type"), the spriteset will be treated as invalid and the fallback to default will occur.

Everything up to this point is implemented in commit 9a944bd.

On top of this, a "force default sprites" option will also be implemented. It will of course, be off by default. This is implemented in commit 5260483.