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Giving topic: Future of NeoLemmix Development some thought today.

Since it's been mentioned a few times (including by namida) that a "NeoLemmix Community Edition" might be a good idea following the release of the final version of NeoLemmix, it might be worth thinking about what features we might want to include.

I've prepared a list with some ideas; all of these have been implemented and tested in SuperLemmix, but their implementation in NeoLemmix might end up being slightly different. So if, for some reason, you don't like the SuperLemmix version of an idea, bear in mind that it can be always be redesigned/reformatted for inclusion in NeoLemmix.

It's probably worth mentioning now that none of the following features will be added without community approval; the whole point of this is to be a continuation of NL's development with community input as the principal guiding force*. The ideas are being presented here to start discussion and get an idea of which ones people would/wouldn't like to see included in the Community Edition. At this point, it's probably most helpful to list items that you definitely would and definitely wouldn't want to see in a reply, ignoring anything you feel neutral about.

*I'm currently thinking that 75% should be the absolute minimum in a poll result for a feature to be implemented.

New Skills/Lemming States

Sleeper - this state is entered when time runs out and the lemming reaches the exit. This is mostly aesthetic, but also simulates exit behaviour as these lemmings cannot be assigned to

Options Menu

Add option to deactivate helper overlays

Add option to deactivate skill queueing

Add more auto-naming options for Replay files and widen the dropdowns for easier reading

Re-word 'Don't Replay After Backwards Frameskips' as 'Replay After Backwards Frameskips' and uncheck it by default (current user option will be unaffected)

Add option to Replay after Restart (or not)

Hotkey Config - Add Reset, Cancel and Save & Close buttons

Hotkey Config - Add in-dialog text (rather than a popup) to let users know when it's listening for a keypress

Add option to load either the Next Unsolved Level, or the Last Active Level (current behaviour)

Level Select Menu

Upgrade keyboard compatibility; allow arrow-key-browsing to load each level preview, load the selected level into the player by pressing [Enter]

Add "Reset Talismans" button, so players can reset their talisman progress on a per-level basis. Very handy for level testing, and when replaying an already-completed pack!

Allow Level Info icons to be customised per-style and per-levelpack

Add button to Show/Hide Advanced Options (rather than it being a config option)

Increase width of, and text size in, Level Select treeview

Zombies

Add Zombie Walkers - a dedicated sprite for walking zombies, which also applies when the Zombie is falling

Add a "Z-" prefix to the skill panel string for all activities being performed by a Zombie

Add Zombie-specific sounds for level intro, exiting, splatting, falling offscreen and ohnoing

Updated Game Controls

Add Playback Mode - this can auto-play an entire folder of replays for a selected levelpack, with various playback options

Update Replay Renamer (now known as Replay Manager in SLX) to include additional replay renaming options (including the ability to append the pass/fail result of each replay) when performing a Mass Replay Check

Add Infinite Skills Hotkey - this sets all skill counts on the current panel to infinity, allowing the player to experiment with different solutions, get a better feel for the various skill actions, or just have fun with the level without having to worry about the skill count. Also useful for level creation purposes

Add option to assign hotkeys to individual panel buttons, regardless of which skill happens to be on that button for the current level - for example, if "Numpad 5" is assigned the 5th button, the 5th button will be selected when pressing that key, no matter which skill is currently assigned to that button

No longer overwrite previous assignments when playing in Replay Insert mode (in SLX, the Assign Fail sound plays, and the most-recent assignment is not recorded, preserving the original assignment at that frame)

Add .nxrp Windows-File-Association; when associated, clicking a replay file will open NeoLemmix and load the level & replay, ready to be played back immediately!

Skill Panel

Make panel hi-res only (regardless of game setting)

Widen panel to allow more skill types per-level

Add Rewind button

Add Turbo Fast-forward functionality (no button required, this would be hotkey-only)

Animate Replay "R" icon and make it clickable to cancel the replay (including during Replay Insert mode)

Make negative save count optional; the alternative would be to count upwards from 0 with the number in yellow until it reaches the save requirement, at which point it would become green

Add (optional) mouseover hints to all skill panel buttons

Cap Lemming counts at '999' ('-99' for negative numbers) across the panel to avoid visual bugs when the lem count exceeds this number

Add option to show/hide minimap (panel & window resize accordingly)

Sounds

Add an "Assign Fail" sound; this plays whenever a skill assignment is attempted, and fails

Add sounds for Jumpers and Laserers

Add (optional) menu sounds - L2's "OK" when choosing something, and an original sound "Bye" when exiting

Add pitch-shifted sound to RR/SI -/+ buttons (modelled on Amiga/Lemmini) - this can be toggled off in options if players prefer silent RR buttons

Add pitch-shifted sound to Skill buttons (modelled on Amiga/Lemmini)

Add option to choose between "Yippee!" and "Boing" as the Exit sound

Other Updates

Allow pressing Up/Down on the Group sign in the Main Menu to stop at the highest and lowest rank respectively, rather than cycling infinitely (this makes it easier to know which order the ranks are in when the names are ambiguous)

Add previously abandoned Kill All Zombies talisman

Add Mouseover tooltip hints to the dialog-based features (Level Select, Config, Replay Manager, Playback Mode) to assist players with navigating these menus

Display level title and save requirement info in Window Caption (also display "Mass Replay Check" when in MRC mode)

Fade In Menu screens (in addition to Fade Out) to make between-screen transitions smoother

Upgrade keyboard compatibility of all menus/dialogs; they'll respond to [Esc] by closing, etc

Make Lemmings shrug and play "OK" sound when a level is cheated (this is just for fun!)

Add brand new Menu graphics & layout to differentiate NeoLemmix "CE" from regular NeoLemmix

Enlarge scroller graphics

Recolour Preview and Postview screen text per-line (modelled on Amiga). The text can also be custom recoloured per-line by adding textcolours.nxmi to the data folder (applies game-wide) or the level pack's root folder (applies to the current level pack)

Add level's RR value to Preview, and a "Fewest Total Skills" line to Postview

Update welcome screen with pictures, etc

No longer display Pickup skill numbers once the pickup has been collected

Add customizable lemming names (so that e.g. "Millas" or "Lemminas" appears in place of "Lemmings" wherever it is printed on menu screens, etc)

Included Packs

Include full DMA Compilation (alongside Redux and NL Introduction Pack)

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Editor Updates

Draw skill helpers to Hatches, Pre-placed Lems and Exits

Increase maximum lemmings to 999

Increase maximum level width to 3200

No longer check Auto-start checkbox by default (but remember its state when closing and re-loading the Editor, to suit user preference)

Allow Alt + Arrow keys to move selected pieces by a custom amount (specified in the F10 settings menu - the default is 64px)

Allow pressing Ctrl + Alt to activate Horizontal-only movement, allowing the selected pieces to be moved only along the X-axis (Ctrl + RMB also works for this)

Similarly, allow Ctrl + Shift to activate Vertical-only movement, allowing the selected pieces to be moved only along the Y-axis (Shift/Alt + RMB also works for this)

Allow Ctrl + Wheel to scroll the level horizontally, and Shift/Alt + Wheel to scroll the level vertically (when zoomed in)

Obviously, add support for any relevant features (skills, etc) that may be added

Widen Theme/Style dropdowns for easier reading

Enlarge scrollbars for easier access when fine-editing a level

Update all menu dropdrowns to display the hotkey to the right (as per normal convention)

Condense "Tools" and "Options" to a single menu

Move "Play Level" and "Validate Level (which can also have a Ctrl+F12 hotkey)" to the File menu

Make Hotkey dialog text easier to read and interpret

Remove "Display Tabs" option so that tab display is the default and only option; this may be necessary due to other various UI updates

Display all dialogs (Hotkeys, Options, About, Validate Level, etc) centre-screen

Move "Clear Backgrounds" button to above the piece scroller for better access

For 2.9, I'll be looking at adding NeoLemmix's 12.13 objects as well as updating some existing ones. Here's a fresh list:

• Portals
• (De)Neutralizers - 2 opposing objects
• Permaskill (De)Assigners - 2 opposing objects
• Splitters
• Paint objects
• One-shot/continuous animations

So far, here's what's proposed for each of the above:

Portals

Portals will either be added as-is, or (if at all possible) integrated into existing Teleporter logic to essentially make these one single object type. "PORTAL" would then be a property of a teleporter/receiver combination which would make them behave exactly like 12.13 Portals.

(De)Neutralizers

These will be added, most likely as-is. The only things that might be different are the default graphics/sounds.

Permaskill (De)Assigners

Currently not sure about either of these; they seem too close to gimmicks that were previously removed from NeoLemmix (and for good reason). At present, it's most likely that neither will be included (at least for now).

For the sake of discussion, it would be possible to add the Assigner as an object which can assign any skill except Timebomber and Freezer (for those, we have Slowfreeze and Radiation). The assignment would take place immediately (so, no countdown - this would get far too messy), and there is also the possibility of these being one-shot objects if assigned this property in the .nxmo.

For De-Assigners, the possibility here is that they could cancel a skill action as well as remove permaskills from the lemming.

Splitters

It was previously decided that Splitters should be kept when the idea of culling them was put forward.

I'm now thinking that they could be improved further, whilst maintaining current functionality.

The idea is to make these Traffic Lights instead; green would let the lemming(s) walk past, red would turn the lemming(s). A third property, yellow, would halt the lemmings temporarily, and they would remain facing the same direction. All of these states would be controlled either by time or number of lemmings (the choice being up to the level designer). So, single-lemming red/green (no yellow) would essentially function like a regular splitter.

One-shot/continuous animations

The proposal with these is still to merge them with traps; any trap would then be an "animation" which is then either deadly, or not. Existing animation objects would then be parsed as traps (or vice versa) by the player, so no need to mass-update all of the exiting animations.

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In addition to the above, as of 2.9 onwards, the proposal is that every object will be accounted for in the "default" style folder with an agreed-upon generic, so that each object type is accessible from any style.

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Thoughts?

Quote from: littbarski on November 09, 2024, 10:52:08 AMthis is certainly an important UI issue, because everybody using Neolemmix or Superlemmix probably sees the level selection and statistics ... as one of the most interesting tools of a "reloaded" lemmings game. As said before I don't know anything about developing, but for me as a non-expert it seems an easy thing to have a selection tree like that with functioning arrows / symbols to open and choose 

I agree that the current treeview isn't ideal.

I've considered adding third party trees in the past but realised how much work it would be to overhaul everything whilst maintaining current functionality. At this point, it would almost be easier to re-build the level select screen completely from scratch.

I might get around to making further improvements to the level select screen in due course, but I'm not going to make any specific promises about it at the moment.

Quote from: littbarski on November 19, 2024, 08:37:45 PMwhen is it better to just copy the exe, and when not, and which files do I need then and so on . Of course it would be best to only copy the exe and some needed files perhaps. After all, for me it works now really well.

This is managed on an update-by-update basis.

If you're looking for a general rule, it's nearly always best to install a fresh directory and then move any levels/replays/custom gfx/etc over from your old directory to the new one.

Sometimes though, only the .exe needs to be updated. If this is the case, I'll attach the updated .exe to the update post and then all you need to do is drop it into your existing directory. N.B: if the .exe hasn't been attached to the update post, that's because it's best to download the full directory (and, I'll usually state this clearly in the update post).

I certainly wouldn't recommend downloading a fresh directory and then moving the .exe from the new one to the old one. Doing so might seem to work at first, but you'll probably run into problems (most likely with missing .png files) sooner or later.

White koans:
  BEFT       BUJ
  BLEFT      BUY
  BUCKLE     LEFT
  BUCKLES    RIGHT
  BUH        UPWARD
  BUI

Black koans:
  BELT        BUCKS    DOWN
* BLELT       BUD    * FEMMING
* BLEMMING    BUE    * FLEMMING
  BUA       * BUF      LELT
  BUB         BUO      LEMMING
  BUBBLE      BUU      LEMMINGS
  BUC         BUX      UP
  BUCK        BUZ

BLELT
BLEMMING
BUF
FEMMING
FLEMMING

White koans:
  BEFT     * BUJ
  BLEFT      BUY
  BUCKLE     LEFT
  BUCKLES    RIGHT
* BUH        UPWARD
  BUI

Black koans:
  BELT      BUO
  BUA       BUU
  BUB     * BUX
  BUBBLE  * BUZ
  BUC       DOWN
  BUCK      LELT
  BUCKS     LEMMING
  BUD       LEMMINGS
  BUE       UP

BUH
BUJ
BUX
BUZ

Quote from: Simon on November 21, 2024, 10:46:18 PMKory Heath, designer of Zendo, has taken his own life.

Very sad news. Sending kind thoughts to his friends and family.

He's left behind a wonderful legacy of a unique and original game that I'm sure many people will enjoy playing for many years to come.

Thank you for sharing, Simon.