(Could also just place a 'mod' folder inside the desired style folder and not rename)
This may be a better way to approach this, especially if the engine should always "prefer" one image over another. The engine could check for the "mod" folder first, and use default sprites/images in its absence.
This styles could be tweaked further to only use the additional numbered graphics if indicated by a key-press or addition to the level file.
Are you suggesting that this be done designer-end or user-end? If designer, how would they know that the end-user has the correct mod available? If user, does this mean they would have to mod the level file?
Or, if you're suggesting that the user be able to overwrite the default sprites in a particular style, I'd generally be against this particular idea since it's overwriting designer content.
Could you give a bit more detail as to what you're asking for here, in particular?
It would allow different-themed lemmings on the screen at the same time too.
How so?
If you mean that the walker sprites would look different to, say, the faller sprites, then this could look quite jarring, I'm not sure why anyone would want that.
Or, if you mean that the engine should also add the possibility of multiple lemming types active in a level (e.g. lemmings and lemminas at the same time), then this is already on the wish list: I'd like to be able to have different lem-types, each with their own specific exit. But, the likelihood is that the implementation of a "multi-lem" system would be based on the current system of sprites-per-style (as opposed to mods-per-spriteset), to avoid unnecessary complication.
Doing this for the styles would let people add their own stuff without overwriting default styles. This would allow updating the styles without over-writing their changed parts too.
Yes, I can see the benefit here. If I ever get the styles manager up and running again, it would certainly be beneficial to allow users to customise the default sets without the updater overwriting their customisations.
What I imagine might be best here is allowing the "default" style (with the default lemmings) to contain a "lemming mods" folder which contains folders for "lemmings" and "lemmings-hr". Then, the default set (and
only the default set) can be user-customised.
Then, in the event of an update, the default sprites/info can be overwritten whilst preserving the user mod. If the update contains something that the mod doesn't have, rollback to default will occur, alerting the user that they need to manually update their mod.
It's all pie in the sky at the moment, because I don't have a way to host the styles for the online updater, and even if I did I'm not familiar with the behind-the-scenes process. This would take some time to get working again, and may potentially mean web-hosting costs, so it might never happen.
Furthermore, if the aforementioned "multi-lem" capability is implemented, I'd almost certainly want the default sprites to appear as defaults again, to keep things clear and simple. At that point, I'll be reaching out to the community for new sprites/themes to add to the game anyway, so maybe it's best overall to wait until this feature is being added?
Don't take this as a refusal or anything, just a "we need thinking time around this one", and the outcome could go one of several ways.
Let's keep the discussion open and see if anyone adds to it.
