All rightie, something that I meant to do earlier in the year but haven't gone around to doing so until now, but I've now done a level solving commentary video series on this pack

Link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbp2m4KlFpJsU_8wPm-YNPQPAxKfS0xKC

For those who haven't seen this kind of video series of mine, it's basically a series where I run my replays on the levels and explain my thought processes that I had while I was solving the levels. So pretty much a commentary video series from my perspective as a player solving the levels

Enjoy and merry Christmas!  

Added shrug.

... and I would prefer the number of smileys cut in half, and both of you should instead discuss what to cut. With every new smiley, two old smileys should be moved away, until the number in the main post form is under 30-40. Who needs 30 even.

Why do I bring this up? I'm reminded of the last such political stuckage. I was annoyed that was too hard to see, and offered as a replacement. Proxima didn't like the and as a result we kept the and added both -- the worst possible outcome. Proxima is forced to see other people post the and I am forced to load all three on the post form. What bloat. To this day, I'm still considering to just cut two of them from the post page, and put them in "more" or hide them altogether. But which to cut ...

See the issue? Either I or Silken or WillLem will not get what he wants.

Silken has reasoned what he wants and compared it with the yellow Twemojis. And he has offered his own interpretation with the orange glasses (that I rejected because the glasses were too small/would blend in). This is considerable preceding work and it's impossible to ignore, and gives substance to his own rejection (that the geek4/5 will not fit in).

I have the power to add/remove smileys, and that makes me biased. But nobody else will word the issuse similar to how I want to word it. Therefore I will argue:

Are the glasses too big? You must exaggerate in cartoons. Don't like how the glasses now line up with the face outline? Make the glasses even bigger. Or thicken the frame. With 3 pixels of frame thickness, you can even color the inside and keep the black outline.

Or are the old smileys too similar to each other? To make geek fit in, mix/exaggerate the haircuts/mouths/... of the existing smileys? That would be my preferred solution even.

It's hard. See attached geek6, a mishap with even bigger glasses, with a haircut that looks like a sitting rabbit, and with the buckteeth. I don't expect either feature to be better than 2/3/4/5, and I'd choose geek4 over geek6. But I hope it nudges somebody to say something useful.

-- Simon

Just realized I never got around to making a proper post to this topic of what my turn-offs are. Well, I'm pretty much like Armani here in that I don't really have any, as I pretty much play all levels There are, however, some designs and level elements I'm not a fan of. In particular, levels where you have to repeatedly spam the same skill, especially in a very short amount of time. Similarly, levels where the solution is obvious but is so fiddly and difficult to execute or require so much trial and error before finding the right solution tend to not be enjoyable for me

---

@geoo

Stroke at Retirement Age is also the final level for the New Formats NL version of Revenge of the Lemmings 4.0. I got stumped there for 4 months before I finally figured it out, so its position as the final level of the community pack is well-justified!

More information here: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=5963.0

And oh wow, I too never caught on with the hint in the level title It makes perfect sense, though! Like probably many others, I simply thought it was just a random level title that you picked and therefore it had absolutely no connection to the level whatsoever Then again, I myself am really bad with coming up with level titles to my own stuff, so I'm not any better there

@JawaJuice

Nepster is very well-known for really hard levels, among others that are often associated with such, such as Icho, Armani, and Crane. That's not really surprising, considering Nepster was one of the NL maintainers alongside namida back in the days. Not only that, his level solving skills are legendary, even if he came really close on some packs, such as Lemmings Plus Omega 2! I don't know about my stuff, since I constantly keep thinking my levels aren't that hard, but hey, I'll let you be the judge of that when you eventually get to my other stuff in the LDC Compilation Pack As a heads up, you'll find my stuff starting at LDC #22 That reminds me, there's a few levels of mine in there that I would like to submit an updated version for, mostly to fix and tidy up the aesthetics and visuals. I honestly can't look at some of my earliest levels now without cringing at least once Like seriously, I can't believe I made some atrocious looking levels back then! In my defense, those were my earliest ones, and in general I'm not artist, and still am not  

Indeed, NepsterLems was pretty much the last really old, really hard level pack I managed to complete, after some others which are much harder, including Lemmings United, Lemmings Uncharted, and Lemmings Plus Omega 2. It truly blows me away at how very hard NepsterLems manages to be despite sticking to just the classic 8 skills! In fairness, I often switched back and forth between Lemmings United and NepsterLems back when I first started playing NL, back when I wasn't as experienced as I am now, when roadblocks came up very often for me. For example, the first major roadblock for me was Planet 13, followed by Sun 7, culminating in Black Hole 1, which went unsolved for nearly 3 years! I finally had success with the level shortly after I had just beaten LPO2 and RotL, with the latter only a few weeks after I finally figured out Stroke at Retirement Age. Because of all the experience I gained from all the custom level packs I've played and solved in between the nearly 3 years Black Hole 1 was unsolved, I proceeded to smash through the rest of the Black Hole rank in very short order At the same time, several levels in the earlier ranks IMO are much harder than most of the levels in the Black Hole rank, and I had way more roadblocks in the Planet, Sun, and Neutron Star ranks. Again, keep in mind NepsterLems was one of the earliest NL custom level packs I played, back when I wasn't as experienced as I am now.

Lemmings Stampede was another pack I rotated between Lemmings United and NepsterLems back then as well. Indeed, Wicked 5 had me stumped for a really long time, only to not surprisingly come up with a really overcomplicated solution      

Quote from: geoo on December 25, 2025, 08:42:25 PMWhile technically it is possible to play (older) custom levels in WinLemm, I'd recommend installing NeoLemmix and/or Lix. More details in this post: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=1618.0

Most modern content is designed for NeoLemmix and Lix. WinLemm uses the .lvl format from the original game, which limits it to the feature set from the original game. You can find a lot of level packs compatible with the original game in the Lemmings level database: https://lldb.camanis.net/ But if you want to play those, you might as well just play them directly in the player that's part of the level database Otherwise, you have to download the packs, and either play them in Lemmix, or unpack the .dat files into .lvl and overwrite some original levels in WinLemm (which then has different physics so some level may not be solvable).

thanks very much, some of the level ideas look very cool and not something that you can get in the original game so I'm going to download it as soon as I've done 'oh no'!

Oh man, I wish I'd realized that I'm not the best at getting clues from titles, as @Guigui would attest (thinking of his Save One pack where I missed all the hints and insisted on doing things the hard way ). With Stroke at Retirement Age, I just brute forced the correct miner placement with a ton of trial and error lol - way more than 5 minutes, just on that bit! IIRC though, I found the hardest part was probably timing the basher correctly towards the end. I've played through all of the Early Contest levels now and for me, that was the hardest in that particular contest, although there were some other strong contenders: Pooty's A Sea of Purest Green, Proxima's Brute Fours and Insane Steve's Hole in the Head Gang spring to mind. That said, they were all toughies; I don't think I realized that making them hard was the aim of the game but it makes sense now! Perhaps by modern standards they're not so bad, although older packs can still pose a real test: I still haven't gotten beyond half way through the Sun rank of NepsterLems, for instance, despite several cracks at it! Nepster's levels are some of the hardest I've ever played - he's the author I struggle most with in all of the early contests.

Are you purely focused on Lix now, @geeo? I haven't seen your levels crop up for a while in NL LDCs (although to be fair, aside from #33, I've only played up to about 15 - got side-tracked playtesting various packs).

While technically it is possible to play (older) custom levels in WinLemm, I'd recommend installing NeoLemmix and/or Lix. More details in this post: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=1618.0

Most modern content is designed for NeoLemmix and Lix. WinLemm uses the .lvl format from the original game, which limits it to the feature set from the original game. You can find a lot of level packs compatible with the original game in the Lemmings level database: https://lldb.camanis.net/ But if you want to play those, you might as well just play them directly in the player that's part of the level database Otherwise, you have to download the packs, and either play them in Lemmix, or unpack the .dat files into .lvl and overwrite some original levels in WinLemm (which then has different physics so some level may not be solvable).

Quote from: WillLem on November 03, 2021, 12:57:08 AM

Ever had the feeling you've been somewhere before...?

[glow=green,2,300]Download DéjàLems[/glow]

DéjàLems features 32 levels that have already been solved! The goal here is for the lemmings to... solve them again!

Fun 1 - Just... Erm, Never Mind!

Fun 6 - Smile If You Love Deja Vu

Fun 8 - We All Fall Down

Featuring a modded style which allows Digger/Basher/Miner paths, Bomber craters and Builder bridges (not to mention pre-placed forgotten Blockers!) to be inserted into the levels, this pack asks the question: what if more lemmings came through the trap door after the level had already been completed, but with a different set of skills and level stats? Hopefully, you can find the answer!

As with most of my remix packs, the focus here is on exploring the concept, so these levels shouldn't be too difficult for most players. However, there are of course some challenges in here to keep the puzzle-fiends entertained

So go ahead and enjoy playing through the levels that have already been played through the levels that have already been played through the levels that have already been played through the levels that have already been played through the levels that have already been played through... (vous avez eu l'idée!)

What's in the attachment:

Level pack
Full set of solution replays
willlem_special style with custom tiles required for all of the levels
Custom menu graphics
Custom skill panel graphics
Amiga Lemmings music

To install, simply unzip the folder directly to your NeoLemmix directory.

that looks so cool. I had no idea you could do that. As soon as I've done the Oh No levels I'm going to download it.

To give a bit of a backstory, in the early level design contents the goal was to make hard levels (rather than popular levels). The main aim was to solve as many levels as possible, so getting a hard level in gives you the edge over other players. I designed Stroke at Retirement Age with the aim that nobody could solve it, and while execution difficulty wasn't the goal it was a necessary evil I was willing to accept (especially after a few backroutes forced me to make the timing tighter). I didn't fully succeed as ccexplore managed to solve the level, but if I remember correctly it was still the level with the fewest solves in the content. Here's the old contest thread (as you can see it scored pretty low on the fun scale).

So congrats to you two for solving this one! I've always wondered how hard to figure out the level really is if you take away the execution difficulty. I feel like a lot of placements are forced, and the key novelty is the flow control which is complex but falls into place once you know when to place the key skill. Would be curious to hear your opinion.

The title was meant to be a clue to help with execution:

Spoiler

You assign the miner when there are 66 lemmings out of the hatch -- this is one of the statistics displayed in the original game and early Lemmix, I'm not sure if NeoLemmix still displays it.

In the Lix version, I could ease things up a bit by setting a fixed spawn interval to make the chain of lemmings longer, which should disadvantage the backroutes and thus allow me to give more wiggle room to the intended solution. Knowing the timing hint from the title I managed to execute the solution within 5 minutes, but I wonder how bad it is if you don't realize what it means.

The level design culture (and also my philosophy) certainly has evolved since then...

Quote from: WillLem on December 22, 2025, 10:50:10 PM

Quote from: hrb264 on December 22, 2025, 04:22:44 PMHow do you use the arrow keys? ... I never knew you could choose the exact lemming

When you hover over a group of lemmings with the cursor, you can use the left and right arrow keys to select a lemming facing in that direction. Great for isolating a left/right-facing lemming from within a crowd, but also useful for any situation when you need to make sure that the lemming you assign a skill to is facing a certain way.

Quote from: hrb264 on December 22, 2025, 10:04:48 PMI've just done it with 100%! Finally

Well done! Keep going

I've just seen that you all create custom levels? Can I run these on Windows Lemmings or do I have to install another programme for it?

Stroke at Retirement Age is geeo's levels are never a cakewalk, but that was one of the hardest I've come across so far in my ongoing playthrough of the LDC pack! Certainly the hardest of the Early Contests; I've rarely come across such a precision/timing-heavy level. Wasn't a fan, if I'm honest!

If we're talking immediate turn-offs, I'm not keen on 99 RR and levels where your immediate task is making sure too many lemmings don't die before you can even think about the big picture. Frenetic, fiddly, execution-heavy levels where the difficulty stems from the precision required rather than raw problem-solving are a turn-off for me. For my money, with the best designed levels, you're not under any particular pressure and yet it's still very hard to see a path to safety. Another thing I don't particularly like is when a level relies on one or more really obscure tricks to be able to finish them - I feel this becomes more like 'do you know this trick?', rather than a test of one's problem-solving ability and logical reasoning. This is even more true when said trick could almost be described as a bug or glitch. Also: very tight time limits (time limits in general tbh), completely unintuitive/borderline illogical solutions, anything involving sliders and/or masses of teleporters Not massively keen on levels with neutrals or zombies either, but that's probably just me!