Author Topic: Lemmings Quartet [Finished] (Read 3739 times)

Apjjm · « **on:** August 06, 2021, 06:51:42 PM »

Update: This is now released

I've been working on a short pack featuring 16 levels & 4 lemmings

The pack uses the original & sega tilesets (+ some from the L2 & L3 sets as decoration) + the original 8 skills.

Difficulty
Difficulty is looking to be fairly hard, but not extreme - if you have completed the original game and maybe had a play through another custom level pack it should be approachable!
In terms of comparisons to other packs, the latter half of the pack is probably not too far away in difficulty to last rank of Lemmings Plus 1 one way or another?

Progress
- Level completion (Done - 18 + 6 bonus)
- Initial level polish pass (Done)
- Playtesting & Backroute fixing & responding to feedback (Nearly there - more playtests always welcome - even last minute ones!)
- Various bits of artwork & packaging things up (Done)
- Music (Done)

As this is a shorter pack with a much narrower focus, It should be a lot easier for me to complete than my previous WIP pack.

NieSch · « **Reply #1 on:** August 06, 2021, 07:43:52 PM »

Cool idea to have only levels with 4 lemmings!

jkapp76 · « **Reply #2 on:** August 07, 2021, 03:38:31 AM »

I'm interested.

I always thought it would be cool to have every level begin with lemmings trapped in an area. Then you'd have to rescue these lemmings to have enough total to win each level.

I wanted to learn level-making and do such a pack, but never got that far. "Lemmings to the rescue."

I play guitar and record music. I'd love to record a psychedelic rock themed lemmings soundtrack. A colorful mind tingling pack. But I'm weird like that.

The four lemmings is cool. Something similar to expect for each level that in unlike other packs.

kaywhyn · « **Reply #3 on:** August 07, 2021, 05:21:13 PM »

Awesome to see that you've returned, Apjjm. This seems like a cool concept for a level pack, so I'm definitely looking forward to this when it's released.

Apjjm · « **Reply #4 on:** August 07, 2021, 07:26:38 PM »

Thanks for the comments

I was initially only going to have 10 levels but then scope creep happened a few times to get to 16. I'll probably do a bonus rank with some interesting levels / variants that I played around with during development. Below is a screenshot of a level I am working on currently that has two variants I'm playing around with at the moment - this will probably look a bit different in the released pack!

Also, the grouping feature is very useful and can create some nice effects that you can't do anywhere near as easily otherwise - I wish I had found out about this sooner!

Armani · « **Reply #5 on:** August 10, 2021, 03:14:07 AM »

Wow these levels look beautiful!
They are probably the most artistic lemmings levels I've seen so far.

Apjjm · « **Reply #6 on:** August 26, 2021, 09:06:22 PM »

So I took a bit of break to play through the new monster hunter stories game (which took way longer than expected), and then spent far too much time working out how to do the idea in the above level in a 'reasonable' number of pieces. I guess given the limited number of levels I probably shouldn't post too many more pictures as I want to save some as a surprise!

On the plus side, I have one level left to terrain pass on, another to add some detailing to and then a couple more to create still. I have quite a few ideas I'd like to experiment with but it turns out having such a limited number of lemmings often leads to the original plan going out the window as soon as I start testing things out.

Apjjm · « **Reply #7 on:** September 05, 2021, 07:10:08 PM »

So an end of week update: after reaching a point where I'm happy with the puzzle in what I think will be the end level I now only have 1 puzzle left to make

.

Other than that, I spent quite a bit of time tweaking and updating all the other levels throughout the pack to try and rule out some backroutes & unintended solutions + streamline the intended solutions a little bit where it made sense to. For playtesting I'm in a bit of two minds about that at the moment - part of me just wants to release the pack when it's ready and fix anything the first players find, another would like to release a more polished set of levels. I'm sort of leaning towards option 1 at the moment - though happy to be guided by recommendations on this really!

WillLem · « **Reply #8 on:** September 06, 2021, 12:50:35 AM »

I would definitely recommend playtesting, as I'm sure many people on the forum would. Happy to volunteer if you want someone of about mid-range solving ability to assess your levels

namida · « **Reply #9 on:** September 06, 2021, 06:01:44 PM »

One thing I've come to learn - a lot of people (myself included, actually, back when I tended to play packs much in general) would play through a pack once, and not touch it again even if it's updated, after that. Therefore, while you can never have it perfect, it's good to have the pack in a fairly polished state by the time most people play it.

(This shouldn't be taken as a discouragement of updating the pack post-release - because many people's "one time" will be after you've updated it. It's just good to at least get the worst backroutes / other issues out of the way ahead of public release.)

Apjjm · « **Reply #10 on:** September 06, 2021, 09:03:55 PM »

Thanks for the advice I will do the playtesting approach

! I do want to have a complete pack before I give it to a playtester, as I would very much like them to be able to play through the whole thing with the levels in the right order etc rather than it being a more disorganised collection of levels - I appreciate this might might make the process of getting the pack out a bit slower though!

WillLem - If you are happy to volunteer then that would be a great help! Thanks

. I will drop you a PM when the remaining level is completed.

Pieuw · « **Reply #11 on:** September 07, 2021, 11:41:21 AM »

I'm blown away by the look of your levels

I also remember an older topic of yours featuring great-looking levels.
This is a promising project!

WillLem · « **Reply #12 on:** September 07, 2021, 07:25:52 PM »

Quote from: Apjjm on September 06, 2021, 09:03:55 PM

WillLem - If you are happy to volunteer then that would be a great help! Thanks . I will drop you a PM when the remaining level is completed.

You're welcome, I'm looking forward to it. I'd be honoured to give this pack a look-through before release

Apjjm · « **Reply #13 on:** September 13, 2021, 10:43:06 PM »

Weekly update: all levels have a first pass completed

. I have put together some of the levels that didn't make the main rank or (or are an appropriate aqualems level) into a bonus rank of 5 extra levels. The bonus rank may very well expand later - there are a few levels I didn't include mainly because the solution hasn't changed much even if the terrain looks different - If people would be interested in seeing these (in particular, the snail level has quite a humble start) anyway I can include them!

There is one level that is from aqualems that I am not currently including the bonus pack, mainly because I revisited the puzzle on that level and I'm now much happier with the intended solution for it (and it only really shares a terrain element, the puzzle and overall level shape is very different).

I also had a go at doing a logo - spent far too long trying out different filters before finding one that looked kinda nice:

GigaLem · « **Reply #14 on:** September 14, 2021, 08:43:59 PM »

Quote from: Apjjm on September 13, 2021, 10:43:06 PM

Weekly update: all levels have a first pass completed . I have put together some of the levels that didn't make the main rank or (or are an appropriate aqualems level) into a bonus rank of 5 extra levels. The bonus rank may very well expand later - there are a few levels I didn't include mainly because the solution hasn't changed much even if the terrain looks different - If people would be interested in seeing these (in particular, the snail level has quite a humble start) anyway I can include them!

There is one level that is from aqualems that I am not currently including the bonus pack, mainly because I revisited the puzzle on that level and I'm now much happier with the intended solution for it (and it only really shares a terrain element, the puzzle and overall level shape is very different).

I also had a go at doing a logo - spent far too long trying out different filters before finding one that looked kinda nice:

Now that's what I call a Logo, this pack gets better and better. Looking forward to the release

Apjjm · « **Reply #15 on:** September 16, 2021, 03:02:22 PM »

So I'm currently doing a round of fix-ups and improvements following some playtesting, massive thanks to WillLem for taking the time to go through the pack

!

If anyone else is up for doing a playtest pass (I will provide a complete & updated pack when it is ready so it would be much like a first experience - just early

) please let me know as an additional set of eyes for spotting issues, helping to balance out the difficulty and just general feedback is always welcome!

Apjjm · « **Reply #16 on:** September 19, 2021, 04:41:09 PM »

Weekly update: I have added an extra level with a quite open solution (but a rather interesting talisman for avoiding using a certain skill type) & done some adjusting of difficulty of the first few levels, bringing the total number of levels to 17 + 5 bonus levels. This is a bit of weird number of levels, but I'm starting to feel like I'm just looking at the levels over and over now and not really improving anything with tweaks which is a bit of a bump to the momentum I had making this pack. I'm thinking rather than overcook things I should probably just release the pack soon.

Apjjm · « **Reply #17 on:** September 25, 2021, 04:20:50 PM »

Weekly update:

The level count is now at 18. I'm definitely stopping adding levels now - the pack was originally only supposed to have 10!
I've been fortunate to get another round of playtesting (thanks Proxima!) and am working on fixing up various problems & backroutes as a result of that. I've also picked out a partial selection of music for some of the levels where I think the music fits. This is probably what I'll release with rather than having every level specify some custom music.

Finally, if anybody else is up for playtesting do let me know fairly soon - I would like to release over the next few weeks ideally (though it depends how much fixing i need to do

).

"Broken warpgate" - One last preview image before the release hopefully!

Apjjm · « **Reply #18 on:** October 06, 2021, 09:26:05 PM »

Weekly update:

Unless something major comes up, my plan is to release within the next week after a final round of playtesting

I've ended up reworking one of the later levels at the last minute after finding a rather funny (and very unfixable) alternative solution whilst I was adding some extra decoration to the level. The new version of this level has a much nicer solution than before but I've kept the old level in the bonus rank with a talisman as the solution(s) are pretty different to the new puzzle - finding the 'simple' solution is surprisingly tricky too (or at least it was for me, clearly

).

I have also reworked the music selection to 8 tracks and assigned one to every level now too

NieSch · « **Reply #19 on:** October 07, 2021, 08:38:26 AM »

I'm looking forward to it. You have a unique level building style and the concept of only 4 Lemmings each level sounds like fun. It will make for interesting levels I'm sure.