kaywhyn's and Icho's Advice for Level/Pack Creators - Always Make a Solving Replay!

[WillLem]

Including replays or not has nothing to do with whether we trust players or not.

Yea, I know. I was joking, hence the lemoji. I can completely understand your reasons for not wanting to share solution replays up front, just to be very clear about that.

what if ... we created a dedicated website where users could voluntarily upload all sorts of assets related to each level, including styles, solutions, music, previous versions of the levels and so on so that players could download as much or as little as they want.

How would this differ from the platform we already have (i.e the Forum)?

[WillLem]

I'll add to that by saying we should also advise players to indicate which platform their level is intended for, particularly since SuperLemmix and NeoLemmix currently share a level file format.

To help with this, the SLX Editor now marks levels as "NeoLemmix Level" when in NL mode, and "SuperLemmix Level" when in SLX mode (see topic). The Editor auto-detects the platform to set the mode by default; so, even if authors don't actually select the mode themselves, in the vast majority of cases the level should be marked correctly.

(In SLX and CE, we could even ask the engine to check the level file for the correct format marker, and warn the player if it's incorrect).

Some things to note:

1) .nxlv files are identical in both NL and SLX. Any differences in how the level plays will be down to physics, and nothing to do with the Editor (or the file format) itself.

2) Authors could still make a level for SuperLemmix, mark it "NeoLemmix Level", and release it for NeoLemmix (and vice versa). And, this could (in theory) be done accidentally - the author could have the SLX Editor in their NL directory, and build an SLX level from there. So, it's not a completely foolproof system, but it should help fewer levels to slip through the net.

(The logical next step is simply to create the .sxlv format, to which .nxlv must be converted in order to be played on SLX. Since the text formatting is identical, this should be a doddle to get sorted.)

[Armani]

How would this differ from the platform we already have (i.e the Forum)?

The idea I had in mind was something like this: for the NeoLemmix Levels board(and a few similar boards whose purpose is specifically to publish levels), the post form itself could have a dedicated section for uploading the level pack file(+ other elements). A repository would then store the uploaded level pack and automatically link it with the thread title + authors could optionally upload other elements such as pack-exclusive styles, replays, custom music etc. These optional files would be managed together with the level pack they belong to.

Ideally players who have online features enabled could access level-pack data in a way similar to the style manager: they'd be able to browse available packs and download whichever packs and whichever optional extras they want.

Personally, I like organizing things so that everything is easy to access. Keeping all previous contest levels together in a single pack(LDC Compilation Pack), or maintaining a list of all level packs that have been published so far(List of all NeoLemmix Level Packs) is part of that same effort. (And you just reminded me that I still need to add a couple of newly released packs to the list! )

[WillLem]

Ideally players who have online features enabled could access level-pack data in a way similar to the style manager: they'd be able to browse available packs and download whichever packs and whichever optional extras they want.

I had the same idea a few years ago. I've always thought a dedicated downloader (which hosts all packs) would be a good idea. You'd just select the ones you want, hit "download", and get the latest versions of each. The same system can also then be used to keep all of your packs up to date (in a similar way to the style manager).

Even more ideally, engine updates would be handled via online downloads as well. The only issue with this is that players like to modify the gfx in their own copies, and there may be times when it would be necessary for a graphic to be updated, thus overwriting the user's copy. We'd need some way of detecting whether the target graphic is a mod. But anyways, that's for another topic.