Newbie with very basic questions

[ac4rd]

Greetings from a Lix neophyte, and thanks for making this website possible and keeping the Lemmings family alive.  I didn't know how deeply the Lemmings fanbase was!   Like most of you probably did, I loved the original Lemmings.   I'm an absolute Lix newbie and, looking at the Lix general postings, I feel like a first-grader listening to an algebra class.   

Quick intro: My name is Ken, I'm an old retired guy, playing "Lix" casually, mostly designing long paths without traps, and sending the little Lixes off marching.  The fiddling with designs is my favorite part.  I'm using Lix 0.10.30 on a Fedora laptop from the official (I think) repository.  Zero problems.

My questions will seem dumb to you tech folks, but I'm wondering if there's a patch or modification or update that might have any of this--advice welcome, thanks in advance!

A.) I'd like Lixes that could dig *upward* on an angle, that is, miners going up on an angle instead of down, if they exist.

B.)  Can "splat height" be adjusted somewhere, such that falling X onto steel kills the little Lix but falling the same X  height onto a tree or bush does not?  (this may exist but I don't find it)

C.)  Is there a way to control how many Lixies emerge from each entrance hatch?  Or control spawn speeds for individual entrances?  Or to give our Lixes different colored shirts or something for different entrance hatches?

I rarely add traps; I mostly make little pathways for my little Lix amigos, watch them marching around as I fix paths and think of new things, and then usually get tired of any one level and start a new one before finishing or refining the first.  I rarely get one level really finished.  If it's OK i'll include a link to screenshots; if not allowed, please delete and my apologies.  ("It's my first day!")
   
   https://kuzenski.org/lix_levels

Thanks!   --ken ac4rd

[WillLem]

Welcome to the Forums, Ken! No question is too dumb, we're glad to have you here and you're welcome to ask anything you like.

I'll let Simon field these questions as he's Lix dev.


EDIT: A workaround for hatch spawn order is to have multiple hatches overlap each other. So, you could have 5 hatches in the same place, and 1 in another place. Then, 5 Lix would spawn in succession from the overlapped hatches, then 1 would spawn from the single hatch, and then this cycle would repeat. A bit of a hack, but it does work

[Silken Healer]

A.) I'd like Lixes that could dig *upward* on an angle, that is, miners going up on an angle instead of down, if they exist.

Such a skill does not exist. Simon is open to suggestions for Lix however (Simon being open to suggestions also applies to pretty much all your points here).

B.)  Can "splat height" be adjusted somewhere, such that falling X onto steel kills the little Lix but falling the same X  height onto a tree or bush does not?  (this may exist but I don't find it)

No. You can use the transportation beam (edit: after reading Simon's reply I learnt also the white steam clouds have this effect) item to reset the Lix's fall height mid-way during a fall to get the same effect, but you'd have to put it the same height above every single tree and/or bush, and the item is not invisible so it might ruin the effect. There may? be a way for you to copy this item and make it invisible so you could give a seamless effect. If it is, I'm not sure if other people need to have the copy item downloaded and place in the ...\lix\images directory to play your level (which would be more of a problem for multi-player levels). I have to admit this one of the few aspects of Lix I'm unsure on. Simon will probably clarify this for me and you when he sees this post.

C.)  Is there a way to control how many Lixies emerge from each entrance hatch?  Or control spawn speeds for individual entrances?

You cannot adjust the ratio of total lix each hatch gets. The spawn interval is a per-level setting which is the same for all hatches and can't be adjusted during normal gameplay in Lix. This is unlike Lemmings where it could be adjusted during gameplay.

Or to give our Lixes different colored shirts or something for different entrance hatches?

Only in multi-player.

[Simon]

Welcome!

Happy to see Lix working well on Fedora, and that you aren't running into any problems even with your grand level designs.

None of A, B, C are possible in Lix 0.10. Silken has already explained it well while I was typing, but I'll post the full answer nonetheless.

A) I have no satisfactory explanation for why there is no upwards digging. The best argument is historical. I reimplemented the 8 skills from Lemmings 1 and then a few things from Lemmings 2, and that is it so far.

B) Splat height is fixed. Even a fixed height is hard to eyeball. It needs the splat ruler in play, and I still have an open bug report for how the editor lacks the splat ruler. It's the nastiest part of running physics mentally, and I'd prefer not to exacerbate.

What exactly do you want to do with adjustable splat height? Do you need falls survivable in specific places? You can catch lix at the bottom of a long fall with steam (the white steam clouds, or the blue transportation beam, both are in the traps dialog) and it resets the lix' fall distance.

C) More control over entrance hatches is interesting. I feel that the existing system is too simplistic: Round-robin across all hatches from the same initial count of lix. At the very least, it should become possible to place a single lix into a level outside of the existing round-robin.

You can already have different shirt colors by making multiplayer levels. You can run them in singleplayer, you control every team. You can't make puzzles in this way (multiplayer levels don't have a goal number of lix to save), but you can still make pretty paths.

-- Simon

[Silken Healer]

C) More control over entrance hatches is interesting. I feel that the existing system is too simplistic: Round-robin across all hatches from the same initial count of lix.

I definitely feel as if being able to adjust the ratio of initial Lix for each hatch would be a good, low-hanging fruit-type suggestion which could maybe be added within the next few updates . I'm surprised no one has thought of it already honestly.

[ac4rd]

Thanks, everybody!  I very much appreciate the input!  None of my questions were important; just newbie questions.  I'll keep enjoying my little Lix friends as they march around my desktop.  :-)  Thanks!  --ken

[ac4rd]

Hello, all, and thanks again for the helpful information!

To answer one question, I don't have a need about the splat height, it just seemed unfair that the little guys splat on a nice soft bush as quickly as they do on sandstone or steel.  I'm not even using things like that very often these days--it's like my childhood train set: setting up track layouts was more fun than really running the trains. 

I'm glad to see that everybody understood my initial questions as being "newbie asks if things are possible with existing code" and not "you must rewrite this immediately to include" nonsense.

I do have one further question which may well be possible but I've found only one crude way to do it.   I'd like to randomize a walking string of Lixies to go either up/down or left/right (and pseudorandomized is fine).   The one way I've found to do this is let a string of Lixes into a moderately wide pit.  They begin walking back and forth, moving either east or west depending on the last wall they bumped off.

One straight-down digger in the pit digs to drop the group down onto a lower level.   My little Lixes go either east or west on the lower level, to different routes, depending on the direction they were going in the pit.  This is not a very elegant solution, as you see.  Is there a better way?

Quick digression to note again, this a clueless Lix newbie, and perhaps at least reading my questions (and really, you need not reply) gives you Lix-Masters an idea of what newbies wonder about.    So another very vague sort of question:

Even if it limited me to one entrance hatch, is there a way to pre-assign skills?  So I could, for instance, set a level to start with 5 runner-floaters to build something before the rest arrived?  I have no need for this, obviously, it's just one of those vague ideas that come to me as I play with my little single-user nonwrapped levels.   (I'll attach a screenshot of my most recent diddling, HMS_Troutbridge.  Very preliminary but I do love having Lixes in streams crossing over each other in this way.)

Speaking of "what's on a newbie's mind," can I offer a few observations?   The level designer is IMO *really* good IMO.  It's exceedingly easy to pick up an existing level, play with mods, save as your own learning playground, and have fun.   And from there, new bespoke levels to suit one's mood are easy.  I never made levels with Lemmings or Cavemen, and found the Pingus level editor confusing.   Lix makes it very simple IMO.  This is a *big* bonus point to me; possibly to others.

The tilesets (if that's the right word? the scenery modules) in 0.10.30 flatpack are great--much fun to fiddle with.  More would be great, though I may be missing those because I don't have the newest version.   No problem with the skills, though most were already familiar-ish from other games.   A bit more in the way of background colors would be nice but it's unimportant.    And the presence of an active and helpful web community is a big positive--for which I thank you again.   

Regards!  --ken ac4rd

[IchoTolot]

I do have one further question which may well be possible but I've found only one crude way to do it.   I'd like to randomize a walking string of Lixies to go either up/down or left/right (and pseudorandomized is fine).   The one way I've found to do this is let a string of Lixes into a moderately wide pit.  They begin walking back and forth, moving either east or west depending on the last wall they bumped off.

The closet thing that comes to my mind in that reagard would be the splitter object in NeoLemmix (another game engine). These alternate between sending Lemmings left and right.

In Lix I think you would need to build custom contraptions, or maybe stack two entrances on top of each other with one spawning left and one right.

Even if it limited me to one entrance hatch, is there a way to pre-assign skills?

This would be a great thing to suggest as a feature! 

NeoLemmix has the ability to let hatches assign permanent skills to all Lemmings spawned from it.
This could be a good feature for Lix as well! ~wink at Simon~ 

[ac4rd]

... comes to my mind in that regard would be the splitter object in NeoLemmix (another game engine). These alternate between sending Lemmings left and right.

Thank you, IchoTolot!  (Does your username mean something?  Languages always interest me.)  I'm VERY pleased with Lix and I'd rather stay with it, learning slowly, than try a new game.  I really admire how very easy Lix is for a newbie to use and enjoy.  The growth since my ancient Lemmings game is amazing.


I seem to have messed up the multi-element quoting but another quick reply: I would never dream of "suggesting" anything to Simon.    In current American idiom, "suggesting" carries an implication that the person doing the suggesting, is relatively as smart and/or capable as the person to whom the suggestion is aimed.

I am, my helpful friend, MUCH less a person to "suggest" as to say "absolute newbie with a question."  ;-)

Again, I note that IMO a real strength of Lix is that there is such a helpful and welcoming online community.  I appreciate it!   --ken ac4rd

[Silken Healer]

I'm sure Simon will be happy to see all your positive comments about Lix when he sees this thread again.

If you don't want to officially suggest anything, that is okay. But, if you ever wanted to suggest a feature in the future, Simon has always been very open to suggestions for Lix. In fact, Simon has explicitly said that he doesn't want people to differentiate their bug reports and suggestions. Even if your not officially suggesting anything, Simon or other people who are okay with making suggestions might read what you say and think "Hm, that would be a good idea to add though" anyway e.g. now that you mentioned it I definitely think being able to adjust the ratio of initial lix per entrance hatch would be a good thing to add to Lix.