Lemmix Level Pack Topic

[Luis]

- I'm not interested in playing the unrated levelpacks in the near future, they look... well, builder heavy and such. (Except PSP levels, I'm definitely going to play those when Luis will get his packs in a permanent state and won't update those all the time! )

I updated the 1-10 one and this is the last update. In "Pillar Talking" The small pillar after the biggest one was suppose to be reachable with one builder, if you start building near the edge of the slope. I thought it was no big deal to leave it the way it was, because back then I was trying to make the pillars to be on the same spot where the ceiling is suppose to be, but now I said forget the ceiling and just move the pillar to match the solution. I'm done with updating 11-26 too, so 27 will be in a new pack. Rating these levels is the same as rating the ones from the real Lemmings games, because these were made by the developers and I'm just putting them in Lemmix. I don't mind people rating it, but that's what it looks like, when you do.

[geoo]

Akseli, thanks for your work!
I think your rating scheme is sensible, and I think I agree with most rating of the levels I've played myself.
Looks like I've played almost all of the packs you rated 4 and 5 stars.

I see why you're hesitant rating levelpacks by enjoyability. Sometimes it's also just a matter of taste, and advanced players might not enjoy very easy levels too much even if they're perfectly well designed for beginners.
But I think at least rating one's favourites definitely can give other players an indication which levels to go at, I think I rated two or three of my favourites at some point.

I got two weeks off now, one week I'm visiting a friend, and some time I'll probably spend with lemmings, not sure yet what exactly though as there's so much to catch up with for me.

[mobius]

I'll have some time for lemmings too; so what I decided is to have you guys recommend me a pack and I'll play that one (barring I can successfully). To give you more incentive I'll record myself playing, for amusement. 
Just tell me a pack to play and I'll give it a try.

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I downloaded cheapo awhile ago and gave up on it. I couldn't figure out how to make it not-fullscreen and the resolution was terrible. Plus I'm just used to the other numerous programs we already have.

[Minim]

OK. How about this level pack. This is a set of 32 levels which I created last year which is what I call the "Holiday Lemmings 95" pack, as it is a Christmas-based set. I don't know why I forgot about releasing this pack last year, but anyway, this should be a nice Christmas present for all lemmings fans. Enjoy!

[mobius]

well here you go. [my Christmas present  ] I played through a few of them. So far they are pretty good. They’re easy but I only played 4 or 5 so far.  (...I should've put Christmas music to it... naw (i don't like most Christmas music))

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsjNNpz_fVc&feature=youtu.be

[Akseli]

I see why you're hesitant rating levelpacks by enjoyability. Sometimes it's also just a matter of taste, and advanced players might not enjoy very easy levels too much even if they're perfectly well designed for beginners.

Yeah, I guess that's how it is for most experienced players. However, I personally think that difficulty or easiness isn't related to how "good" a level is. There are difficult levels which I dislike and easy levels I enjoy, for example, due to issues like aesthetics, creative details or methods etc. In the case of rating enjoyability in the Lemmings Level Database, I'd think that it's possible that one star pack by difficulty can earn a high amount of stars for fun rating, if the levels are excellently designed and this levelpack is superior in comparison to other 1 star difficulty levelpacks, for instance. So, what I mean, a player can look both fun and difficulty ratings at the database and see, that there are, for example, an awesome levelpack for beginners, or a super difficult but boring levelpack or an average fun pack for intermediate players. The reason why I'm not so willing to rate all packs by their enjoyability is that I don't want to insult anybody by rating their packs with only few stars. :-/ I respect all people who have uploaded their levels there for other people's amusement.

I'll have some time for lemmings too; so what I decided is to have you guys recommend me a pack and I'll play that one (barring I can successfully). To give you more incentive I'll record myself playing, for amusement. 

That sounds super fun! I started to think suitable packs for this before minimac attached his one, but it wasn't too easy to decide any pack, because it wouldn't work well if the pack would be too hard and you would just get stuck for levels too long and all that, and too easy packs would also probably be too boring to watch from your video. I was thinking at least ClamSpam05 (but you might have played those levels in Lix perhaps?). Fortunately minimac has got a nice 32-levels pack which I already played through, Christmas theme certainly fits for this time of the year and the levels start from very easy and become tougher when proceeding. I found that pack to be as difficult as the original Xmas levels, and for me, there was one cunning level which managed to hide the solution at first - level 28. I played this pack in EricLang's LemmixPlayer for Holiday Lemmings '93 with the "LookForLVLFiles=1" thing, so there were sounds, title screens and winning screens etc.

I started to watch möbius' YouTube video and I find this amusing. I thought that you might even comment out loud all stuff while playing but this is nice, too. I laughed at those texts. :-D  Are you going to do similar videos for other levelpacks perhaps, also?

[mobius]

thanx for the comments
Unfortunately I probably won’t be talking in my videos. I tried that a while ago and found 1, I suck at it and 2, it’s a lot more difficult than I thought and would take a lot of practice and/or fiddling around.

I'll try to play the rest I guess... sometime soon. Despite it being holidays I'm busy anyway. 

[Luis]

Four levels left. The next one has a backroute. What a shame.

[Minim]

Well, that's a little disappointing if someone's found a backroute to one of my levels, but which level in particular are you talking about? I also wonder if you can show me a replay of the backrouted method as well.

[Luis]

The one from the PSP special levels, that is called "Gather round break away". This level has multiple routes to beat it, but there's a flamethrower that is close to the exit that is suppose to block you from beating the level quick, but you can build under the flamethrower and reach the exit fast. I don't know if I should put the backroute in the Lemmix version or not.

[Minim]

Oh. I thought you were playing one of my winter levels and noticed a backroute. OK then, thanks for clarifying.

[Luis]

It looks like it's impossible to make the flamethrower stop the backroute, unless you use steel. If you lower the flamethrower, it will burn all the Lemmings and you can blow up the edge of the terrain to build under it, so I'll leave the backroute there. There's another backroute in this level too, making it five ways to beat it. I'll start playing other people's levels when I'm done with this. It's a good thing I don't have to build "Born a blocker, die a blocker". That level looks big and finlay already made that a year ago.

[Luis]

Finally all 36 levels finished. Some of them are not 100% the same as the original, due to the many difference on the terrains and how the Lemmings work between DOS and the PSP, but their close enough.

By the way, I was wondering about these Sega packs: http://lemmings-db.camanis.net/levelpack/ag1zfmxlbW1pbmdzLWRicg8LEglMZXZlbFBhY2sYAQw/

Are all the terrains there were placed at the same exact spot as the ones from the real Sega Lemmings? If so, that must have been a lot of work and with over 100 levels.

[ccexplore]

By the way, I was wondering about these Sega packs: http://lemmings-db.camanis.net/levelpack/ag1zfmxlbW1pbmdzLWRicg8LEglMZXZlbFBhY2sYAQw/

Are all the terrains there were placed at the same exact spot as the ones from the real Sega Lemmings? If so, that must have been a lot of work and with over 100 levels.

The answer is yes, basically they were all placed at the exact same spots as in the original Sega version, but thankfully it wasn't all manual work.

What happened is that I wrote a computer program to mass-convert directly from the level data in the Sega Lemmings ROM to the PC Lemmings/Lemmix LVL format.  However, a good number levels are then further edited slightly to account for the fact that on Sega, the level area's width is only like one third that of the PC version's.  For example, some terrain outside the Sega level boundaries that are clipped on the Sega would become exposed and visible on PC Lemmings after the raw conversion, and would look terrible without further editing (and merely erasing them can also look very unnatural as well, so it can take some thought and creativity to make it right).  Or a water object that is clipped on the Sega version would not have terrain adjacent to it (since that part of the water is outside the Sega level boundaries and thus hidden), and then this "bare water with no adjacent terrain" would be exposed in the raw conversion and look bad.

One person (not me) on the old old forums did most of that sort of hand-editing after I finished the raw conversions, after I explain the need for such editing and my lack of time to do so myself.  It was the same person who originally requested for a PC conversion of the Sega lemmings levels.  I forgot who exactly, it might be Fleech based on the levelpak description in the level database.

It would indeed be quite a chore if the levels have to be hand-converted one by one.  Indeed it wasn't even clear at the time whether it would be possible or not, since some levels' terrain almost look like they require terrain pieces that are not available on the PC version.  One of the surprise we learn when I used my computer program is that the Sega version actually uses the same terrain pieces as the PC version, it was just a lot of intricate editing in the cases where the terrain doesn't look like it was built solely from pieces available on PC version.

[mobius]

well here is my long-awaited and anticipated third levelpack. And as a bonus; this one has half as many levels yay! I hope you enjoy anyway, and please tell me of any backroutes!!

attached is a folder with the levels and a hint file