Before I made this topic, I realized that Mark Tsai is a British-Chinese person. We're moving into the stage play-like development of the Windows 95 games "Lemmings and Oh No! More Lemmings" and "Lemmings Paintball".

Here is Lemmings for Windows 95's credits with vague stage play-like information (off several manuals and the help file).
Windows 95 production and design: Visual Sciences
Original game design: DMA Design
Screenplay: Russell Kay and David Lees
Costumes: Mark Ireland and Geoff Gunning
Animation: Geoff Gunning
Stunt dog: Ben (pet dog to unknown developer)
Original music: Tim Wright (Amiga), Tony Williams (IBM PC)
Music conversion: PC Music off Yamaha XG soundchip
Key grip (movie manager): David Cowan
Catering (foodmaking and foodplanning): Clark Brittas and Sheilla Brittas
Best boy (assistant to chief electrician): Richard Swinfen
Foley artist (sound importer): Brian Marshall
Producers: Bill Allen and Richard Baxter
Product managers: David Dyett and Laura McLeod
Windows .hlp help file authoring: Michael J. Farren, Bill Allen, and Richard Baxter
Trained assassins (Lemmings professionals): Paul Charlesly, Craig Duddle, Paul Evason, Chris Rowley, and Lol Scragg
Public relations: Dana Oertell and Mark Day
Quality assurance: Stuart Allen, Paul Evason, Nevin Gaston, Lee O'Connor, Pat Russell, John Walsh, and Jonathon Wild
General dogsbody (junior with slow work that others avoid): Andrew Parsons
Windows 95 manual author: Damon Fairclough (Remixed from Mark Tsai's and Alexander Aranyosi's version)
Packaging design: Anthony Roberts
Boom operator (long boom mic without shadows): Booming Jack McBoom
In house dancers: Wobbly Albert and his Axnious People, Duncan Charles and his Mellow Boys, Ian A Grieve, and Kirstie Beamish

This concludes the credits. This is a fake notice of computer lemmings being euthanized:
"Psygnosis would like to clarify that this product has not
been tested on live animals in anyway, although we did
massacre thousands of computer Lemmings in the
process, in the course of which several hundred Lemmings
actually survived, but ended up suffering ruptured spleans
and other miscellaneouse medical catastrophes.
The appropriate authorities have been informed but have
ruled that maltreatment of computer animals, even
Lemmings, do not come under their jurisdiction."

More information will come tommorrow.

Quote from: roltemurto on April 08, 2026, 11:09:50 PMThe settings reader ReadSettingsFromFile() should suppress checkbox event handlers while loading, to prevent UI events from firing before the form is ready. Standard WinForms pattern:

Code Select Expand

chk_Lvl_AutoStart...


Your investigation helped pin down the cause. ReadSettingsFromFile() shouldn't touch form controls (checkboxes or otherwise), but this particular setting (UseAutoStart) was being directly written to / read from the checkbox state rather than an actual Setting object, hence the null object reference (my bad, it was one of the first things I did when I began work on the Editor and I didn't have the experience to realise that this might be an issue).

I've now fixed this!

Fixed in SLXEditor commit 6106fd8.

Quote from: hrb264 on April 08, 2026, 07:57:23 AMI'm playing through this now and finding 16 very difficult, I think because of the basher checks meaning it always hits the one way arrow really early

Send me a replay, I'll take a look at it.

EDIT: Eric has now uploaded a fixed version of this level. Re-download the pack from the OP and that should sort the problem out.

Hello again WillLem,

BAD NEWS: I can confirm the "Could not read editor options" error has returned, even with RC version that I'm using right now.
GOOD NEWS: I think I found what causes it and may have a possible solution.

I believe it may be related to crashed exits and it is most probably connected to the monitor-off crash I reported in the other topic (BUG: Editor crashes when monitor turned off).

Here is my new error log entry, translated to English:

System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
  at SLXEditor.SLXEditForm.ReadLevelInfoFromForm(Boolean allowWriteBack)
  at SLXEditor.SLXEditForm.CommitLevelChanges()
  at SLXEditor.SLXEditForm.textbox_Leave(Object sender, EventArgs e)
  at SLXEditor.SLXEditForm.chk_Lvl_AutoStart_Leave(Object sender, EventArgs e)
  at System.Windows.Forms.CheckBox.OnCheckedChanged(EventArgs e)
  at System.Windows.Forms.CheckBox.set_CheckState(CheckState value)
  at System.Windows.Forms.CheckBox.set_Checked(Boolean value)
  at SLXEditor.Settings.ReadSettingsFromFile()

The previous crash (Bitmap region already locked / form resize on monitor wake-up) was an abnormal termination. The editor was killed mid-operation without going through its normal shutdown sequence, which means the settings file was almost certainly either left incomplete or not updated at all with the session's final state.

When I launched the editor first time since that crash, ReadSettingsFromFile() attempted to load that potentially corrupt or incomplete SLXEditorSettings.ini. I suspect that when it hits the UseAutostart = True line, it sets chk_Lvl_AutoStart.Checked = true, which fires the OnCheckedChanged > chk_Lvl_AutoStart_Leave > textbox_Leave > ReadLevelInfoFromForm event chain at a point where the form is not yet fully initialized, causing the NullReferenceException.

While the origin of the initial error may still have ties to the "İ" problem, the error seems intermittent because it manifested again after an abnormal shutdown leaves the settings file in a bad state.
So far, under normal operation (clean close and reopen), the settings load fine.

You already solved the other topic by implementing a proper lock guard so the editor does not die mid-operation and leave files in an inconsistent state.
But any future abnormal termination (power cut, OS crash, etc.) can still trigger the same settings-read failure.

So perhaps you may wanna take a look at this;

• The settings reader ReadSettingsFromFile() should suppress checkbox event handlers while loading, to prevent UI events from firing before the form is ready. Standard WinForms pattern:

chk_Lvl_AutoStart.CheckedChanged -= chk_Lvl_AutoStart_Leave;
chk_Lvl_AutoStart.Checked = value;
chk_Lvl_AutoStart.CheckedChanged += chk_Lvl_AutoStart_Leave;

Hope this helps narrow it down. Happy to provide any further info.

I'm playing through this now and finding 16 very difficult, I think because of the basher checks meaning it always hits the one way arrow really early

Level images of the Cheapo Copycat Lemmings extracted which you might find use for while remaking the levels for NL for the project

edit April 10, 2026 - Reattached with better level images which show all objects, including OWAs! Therefore removed small images from the zip files.

A tiebreaker will not be needed. As I said, the poll isn't binding, it's just to gauge where community opinion lies. If opinions are split, that just means I can follow my own judgement.

if a tie breaker is needed I could change my vote...

As I look over the levels I went through back then I'm reminded of how many good and how many not so good levels there were... as I mentioned before I initially was going to include levels that were present in other large packs but people at the time were against it. I feel like the pack should represent the best of the community, not sure it always does that based on some of the decisions I made; for example I wanted to get as many authors in the pack as possible. Which again seems a bad decision in hindsight, if some of those levels weren't quite as good as ones that got removed.

And as another example; Clam specifically made his 5th pack for this project [not this iteration of it but back in around 2008]. Of course I tried fitting those levels into the early rank of the first version and a lot of people said they felt wonky/too difficult for the first rank.

Here's a dictionary of RegEx commands / expressions which you might find useful if you do a lot of level editing using Notepad++ or similar.

1. Look for "maxReleaseRate = n" where "n" is anything other than 99
maxReleaseRate\s*=\s*(?!99\b)\d+

I'll add to this as necessary. If you wish to contribute anything, please do!

DoveLems for RetroLemmini is now available!

Get the latest version of DoveLems here.