Lemmings Stampede V1-10 - Converted to New Formats NL

[kaywhyn]

The Lemmings Stampede conversion to New Formats NL is finally here! Lemmings Stampede is a level pack by bulletride which originally started off as an Old Formats pack for NL. I figured the best way for me to make the foray into level pack making is to start with taking an Old Formats NL level pack and converting it to New Formats NL. So, I took the liberty of trying my hand at converting Lemmings Stampede to New Formats NL, as I saw around the Forums that this can easily be done without any major reworking being required.

So why my interest in converting the level pack to New Formats NL? It pretty much came about because in the past month or so, I recently remembered and played through some old packs on Lemmini/Superlemmini, most notably RotL and ssam1221 Dos/Lemmix packs. Lemmings Stampede also happens to be a pack that I remembered being really good. Even though I got stuck hard quite often with Lemmings Stampede and it's not an easy pack at all, it's still one of my favorite level packs of all time. Bulletride really has a knack for making very deceivingly tough levels, which are definitely my type of levels I love playing and solving. There are a lot of favorite levels of mine in this pack!

Another is that I came long after bulletride is no longer active here on the Forums. Since I really like this pack a lot, his pack, work, and legacy definitely deserves to be preserved. I think there was talk of converting the pack to New Formats, but surprisingly it hasn't been done yet, until now. Also, going through RotL, I apparently have played some other levels of bulletride's outside of Lemmings Stampede. I definitely remember how difficult but really good his levels are. His levels kind of remind me of both Clam Spammer's and Nepster's level styles in a way of being difficult ones.

The conversion went completely well without a hitch! It was a simple process of using namida's nxp extractor and using an older version of a v12 NL player to cleanse the .lvl files so that they are in up-to-date nxlv file format. Originally, I tried using Nepster's conversion tool for level packs, but it always kept throwing an error at Tame 9 due to not finding the OWAs for the marble tileset. After some sleuthing around, I found a post where namida talks about putting the .lvl files into a subfolder in the levels folder of a v12 NL player and simply cleansing the levels, so I did that and it worked without any problems.

The only thing that didn't carry over were the backgrounds, so I had to open each level in the editor and put in the backgrounds wherever one was present in the Old Formats version. Also, I matched the music track to each level that plays on the Old Formats version as well.

As for compiling the level pack itself, I simply imitated the file structure of a level pack. Once I saw that everything loaded correctly in the NL player, I realized how very easy it is to put together a level pack for New Formats NL! It's not that hard at all, and definitely far easier than putting one together for Old Formats NL

The level pack can be downloaded in the attachments. Extract to your NL directory. Everything should fall into place.

Music pack download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/t49zau78a15bit1/Lemmings%20Stampede%20music.rar?dl=1. Extract to your NL directory. Everything should fall into place.

The pack only uses the OL and ONML tilesets, as well as the Christmas tilesets, hence why the conversion was quite easy. Any styles that are missing, you can either download them from the NL website or use the in-game style manager, but I think all the levels should load fine for anyone.

Lemmings Stampede was a level pack that I played through whenever I got stuck hard on Lemmings United (I generally played through other level packs in the meantime whenever that happened), and I got to say this is one of my favorite level packs of all time. It starts off easy but then gets very difficult really fast. I would even say that Lemmings Stampede is pretty much on par with Nepsterlem's difficulty! The Moon and Comet ranks of the latter are pretty much of similar difficulty to the Tame and Crazy ranks of Stampede, while the Wild rank of the former is pretty much Planet/Sun difficulty of the latter, etc.

The Tame and Crazy ranks weren't too much of a problem, but once you get to the Wild rating then the difficulty picks up considerably. Immediately right out of the gate Wild 1 stumped me very hard. From that point on, it was very slow going through the remaining 30 levels of the pack. Eventually, I hit another major roadblock with Wicked 5 and didn't come back to the pack for about a month or so, when I got stuck hard on United. I still struggled with the level, but eventually I was able to solve it. The solution I came up with is extremely messy and almost fails had skill assignment at the bottom not worked out. The rest of the Wicked rank wasn't too bad, but they were still very challenging! Finally, the entire Havoc rank was just a very long struggle to the end, as I pretty much struggled with every level in that rank, save for Havoc 4, which I felt was easier than Part 1, which is the Wild rank finisher. Needless to say, I eventually solved the entire pack after much struggling and without any help and was very satisfied having gotten through it all.

As for my Old Formats replays, when I ran the mass replay check, I had it refresh the replays, and out of the 50 replays, I only needed to fix 3 of my replays: Tame 7, Crazy 4, and Wild 4. All my Old Formats replays for these 3 levels broke because I used the ceiling in my solution, whereas it's deadly in New Formats. Also, the only level that was impossible in New Formats NL is Wild 4 due to the solution requiring interacting with the deadly ceiling, and so I added a small piece of terrain in the places where that occurs to prevent dying to the ceiling so that the level becomes possible.

Have fun with this mind-boggling pack!

Thanks to

-  bulletride for the level pack
-  namida/Nepster for the nxp extractor and for NL
-  Lemmings Forums community for all their support and for just being very awesome people   

[NieSch]

Great work kaywhyn! This sure is a cool pack I really enjoyed playing.

[kaywhyn]

I've added instructions for the extraction, as well as repacked the .rar file, as I want to make the extraction as easy as possible. I meant to include the level pack folder inside the "levels" folder inside the .rar file so that all one needs to do is extract it and the music download to the NL directory. I have fixed that. So, to the 4 who already downloaded the pack, you can redownload the pack if you want to, or you might have figured out to extract the level pack to the "levels" folder of your NL directory and hence you figured out how to get it to work.

Great work kaywhyn! This sure is a cool pack I really enjoyed playing.

Thanks for the kind words, NieSch! I will get to your Long Live Lemmings pack in the coming weeks, after I finish my planned LPs of some level packs. I'll link you to my LP once I've started on yours

[Armani]

I've heard that this is indeed a great pack and I've wanted to play it.
But I'm a big fan of all the convenient features of new NL.. so thanks for all your effort.

Just played first 3 ranks before go to bed, and I've enjoyed a lot so far.
It's an old pack and played by many people, so I think I haven't found any backroutes yet.

[kaywhyn]

@Armani Glad to hear that you're enjoying the pack! AFAIK, the controls of the Old Formats NL player was fine, especially since they're practically identical, although there's still plenty of physics/mechanics differences that levels might play out differently or even render a level impossible when switching to New Formats NL. For example, since you have played the first three ranks, you have already played the only level that, in its unaltered form, was impossible on New Formats NL. That level is Wild 4. I have fixed it by adding some pieces of terrain so that it now becomes possible again.

Instead, it was the very Old Formats NL, aka v1.43 NL, that had super clunky controls. Not to mention no CPM or, I think, no splat ruler. Yet, I think I managed to play and complete all very Old Formats level packs from sometime ago

As for backroutes, I don't have any intended solutions by bulletride, so any solution that solves the levels is fine. The purpose of the conversion is so people who want to play the pack in New Formats NL now can, whereas before this the only way to play Lemmings Stampede was to get v10.13.18 of the NL player, since it's originally for Old Formats NL. Also, the last version bulletride released for the pack is V1-10, and he hasn't updated or fixed up the pack since. I don't really recall ever finding any backroutes on the levels myself, as they pretty much all seem to be solid themselves.

In any case, I have started a level solving commentary video series on the pack, where I show off the Old Formats solutions I found to the levels, and you're more than free to compare your solutions to mine as the videos go up. Perhaps what I'll do is post my replay collection after I finish the series, even though it kind of goes against my own practice of posting my own replays to my level pack topics a few months after release, but since the goal here is to simply make the pack playable on New Formats NL rather than fixing up the levels, I might just go ahead and post them anyway shortly after release. 

[mobius]

BulletRide was one of my favorite level creators of old; glad to see this pack updated. It was a project idea of mine but I'm very glad somebody else more qualified stepped up to the task.

[kaywhyn]

BulletRide was one of my favorite level creators of old; glad to see this pack updated. It was a project idea of mine but I'm very glad somebody else more qualified stepped up to the task.

Thanks for the kind words! I don't think I'm more qualified than you are in converting level packs to New Formats NL, though. You did, after all, convert both Clammings and Insane Steve World's pack, with some help from Wafflem for both, I believe? Not to mention that I'm still very new to level making, as so far I have only made 6 levels, all of which are contest levels. I still have a lot to learn myself in regards to both level making and editing/converting packs. Technically, Lemmings Stampede is the first level pack I have ever converted to New Formats NL, although it's not the only level pack I have converted. In the last few months, I have also done two level pack conversions to Superlemmini (converted from Old Formats NL/Lemmix to Superlemmini), Deceit's Lemmings and Oskar's PSP HD pack (converted from Lemmini to Superlemmini by me).

I'm just really surprised that Lemmings Stampede hasn't been converted in the last few years, as this absolutely needs to be converted because I really like this pack a lot. Well, it's finally been done, so at least that's one more level pack converted to New Formats NL. Now that I know that I can do level pack conversions, I'll be more than happy to help out this community on the front with further conversions of level packs to New Formats NL, after either getting permission from the pack author if still active or if no longer active but still needs to be converted if the author hasn't explicitly prohibit it.

For example, I definitely would love to convert Lemmingbytes to New Formats, as this is yet another pack that I really like. However, I believe I read somewhere on the Forums that he doesn't wish that anyone convert any of his packs despite having been absent from this site for a few years now. Therefore, I and everyone else here unfortunately will need to respect his decision on that. Even if he does make a sudden reappearance in the future, I would need to ask him for permission, even if he has explicitly stated that he doesn't want his packs converted.

[Armani]

Played rest of the levels.
This pack gave me some nepsterlem vibes: original styles, minimal skillset, requires no complex trickery etc.

[kaywhyn]

This pack gave me some nepsterlem vibes: original styles, minimal skillset, requires no complex trickery etc.

Aha, glad someone agrees with me that Lemmings Stampede is very similar to Nepsterlems in many ways In addition to the stuff you stated above, I have mentioned in the OP that IMO the difficulty of Stampede is on par with Nepsterlems. Like Nepsterlems, Stampede is not an easy pack at all! For example, I think Tame and Crazy are equal to the difficulty of the Comet and Moon ranks of Nepsterlems, Wild is like Planet/Sun difficulty, and Wicked/Havoc are Neutron Star/Black Hole difficulty. I remember upon entering the Wild rating I was immediately stumped on Wild 1. The Wild rank is where the difficulty picks up considerably. It's from that point on the pack is quite high on the difficulty. The next roadblock for me after Wild 1 was Wicked 5. After that, practically the entire Havoc rank was very difficult for me. Havoc 4 was really the only easy level for me in the rank. Truthfully, I consider Part 2 easier than Part 1, which is Wild 10. It's still not completely trivial, though.

Anyway, thanks for playing! Based on your posts, it seems like there's no further issues in any of the levels, such as kinks/gaps in the terrain that shouldn't be present when they're not supposed to be there. This further supports that the conversion went without a hitch. That's good to know. I'm only updating the pack to fix such problems, not really on fixing backroutes, as I don't have any intended solutions from bulletride anyway. He's been inactive long before I started posting on this site, and hence I personally haven't gotten to know him at all.

[kaywhyn]

I have attached my replay collection for the pack to the OP. Also, I did a level solving commentary video series for this pack, as I thought it was a great idea to do one on one of my own level pack conversion projects.

Here is the link to it: Kaywhyn's Lemmings Stampede Level Solving Commentary on bulletride's level pack for New Formats NL

The short version of this is that I show off the solutions (the ones in the replay collection in the OP are the exact same ones you'll see in the Youtube videos) I found to the levels of the pack, as well as explain my thought processes while I was solving the levels, and gave whatever background info I know about the pack to the best of my ability. In general, I do this kind of video series for packs I really like. I've already done 3 such video series before Lemmings Stampede: Lemmings United and Lemmings Reunion (Icho's packs), and Lemmings Open Air (Strato's pack). These were such a huge hit with the pack authors, so good to know that they've enjoyed seeing a video series like this on their packs

So really, if bulletride was still around or happens upon these videos by chance, I'm sure he'll like the series I put together for his level pack a lot. I'm sure he would be proud of the fact that his level pack has been brought into an up-to-date format and that to know that his work is still praised very highly and that many people are still playing the pack a lot to this day, even managing to inspire several other level designers in their future work.

At the same time, feel free to compare your solutions to the ones I've found. I really don't mind, as again I'm not going to worry about fixing up levels due to backroutes, as I don't have any intended solutions from bulletride. Watching my solutions again to these levels after so long, they more or less seem to be quite solid, even in the ones I do have leftover skills on.

Thanks again to those who have posted and have praised me for my work in converting the level pack to New Formats NL! Really, the pleasure was all mine to bring the pack to a more up-to-date format and make it playable with the newest versions of the NL player, instead of needing to hunt down an old version in order to be able to play the pack. Now, one can decide whether to play it on Old Formats NL, New Formats NL, or both.