Invisible Entrance

[Luis]

When I put the entrance on top of the level to the point where you couldn't see the top half of it and saved the level, the entrance was not there when I load the level. It's not really gone, it's still in the level, but not Lemmings comes out from it. The Lemmings will come out when I put a new entrance, but the first Lemming actually has to wait for the two invisible entrances to load it's release rate first, so the new entrance that is visible is considered as a third entrance and the invisible ones can't be deleted. Is there a way to deleted the two invisible entrance or do I have to start the level over and just avoid doing that? The reason I put it high up there is because I was making another remake of one the 36 levels from the PSP, and Lemmix has a smaller height. The entrance was working up there when playing the level, until I saved and loaded it.

[ccexplore]

I think the DOS file format itself does not have an accurate way to represent vertical positions far above the level area top boundary, so there's a good chance your entrance might not work as expected even if it were played in the actual DOS game program.  The behavior you see in Lemmix is arguably a bug (it's definitely a known issue as others have hit this before), the editor should not have let you move the entrance that far beyond the top boundary in the first place.  After saving and reloading, Lemmix actually set the vertical position of the affected entrances to some really high value, resulting in them positioned far beyond the level area bottom boundary.

There is a way to get rid of the now wildly off-positioned entrances within Lemmix editor, but it's a little tricky:

1) in Lemmix zoom out a lot, at least enough for the entire level area to fit within one screen without scrolling.
2) make sure to turn on rendering of terrain, objects AND steel.  That is, in the "View" menu, make sure "Terrain rendering", "object rendering" and "steel rendering" are all checkmarked.
3) Hold down Ctrl key, then use mouse to select a rectangular area (like how you select a rectangular area in a picture in, say, MS Paint) that covers the entire level area with margins to spare.  The idea is to select every element that is at least partially visible in the level area.
4) Go to Edit menu and select "Copy".
5) Now hit the "A" key.  It may not look like it did anything, but this is "select all" command, selecting every element in the level, including your "invisible" entrances.
6) Hit Delete key to basically remove everything in your level.
7) Go to Edit menu and select "Paste".  This puts back everything selected during step 3, which should be everything in the level except the unwanted entrances.

Alternatively if you have LemEdit set up (requires DOSBox to run on most computers), there are easier ways to hunt down, select, and delete just the unwanted entrance objects with that editor.

[EricLang]

As far as I know there is an easier way:
- go to the listview of the level (F9 I believe)
- select the offending object in de list
- press "space" (this selects the object, also in the graphic editor)
- click in the editor again (without touching another object or terrain)
- press delete

[Luis]

The entrance is deleted now.

Edit: That's weird, I noticed in Lemmix that when there are two entrance, after the first Lemming comes out, two Lemmings will come out from the other entrance and after that, two Lemmings comes out from the first entrance. How do you make them come out one by one on both entrance? It's impossible to save eleven Lemmings in the remake level, because the second and third Lemming will be too close to each other.

[ccexplore]

- press "space" (this selects the object, also in the graphic editor)
- click in the editor again (without touching another object or terrain)

Thanks for the tip! http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/cool.gif" alt="8)" title="Cool" class="smiley" /> I was always wondering whether there is a way to actually select stuff using that list but could never figure it out, didn't realize use of keyboard is needed.

Also to clarify "click in the editor again...": you can click on the title bar of the main editor window to accomplish what that statement says.

[ccexplore]

Edit: That's weird, I noticed in Lemmix that when there are two entrance, after the first Lemming comes out, two Lemmings will come out from the other entrance and after that, two Lemmings comes out from the first entrance. How do you make them come out one by one on both entrance? It's impossible to save ten Lemmings in the remake level, because the second and third Lemming will be too close to each other.

This is actually emulating a bug in DOS Lemming's 2-entrance ordering, in which the lemmings do come out like that for the 2-entrance case.  That bug was fixed in DOS ONML and beyond and AFAIK was not present on most other versions like Amiga etc.

There is a way in Lemmix editor to set the game mechanics to use for a level (eg. Lemmings vs ONML vs CustLemm etc.).  However, another way that can work independent of choice of game mechanics, is to create the level with 4 entrances, 2 of which are placed exactly in the same positions as the other two.  With 4 entrance objects, the ordering is natural, namely according to the order in the F9 level list window.  So making the 3rd entrance in the level list have the exact same (x,y) position as the 1st, and 4th the same as 2nd, will create the visual appearance of just 2 entrances, but accomplish the behavior of having the normal 1-2-1-2 ordering instead of the buggy one.

[EricLang]

Strange that people never noticed:
The press space trick is on my website: http://ericenzwaan.nl/eric/lemmings/lemmix.htm" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">http://ericenzwaan.nl/eric/lemmings/lemmix.htm

Floating windows
The floating windows are not perfect, but functional.

In the "List" window you can select items that you cannot select with the mouse. Objects, terrain and steel are displayed in this list. Selected items are colored.
Press Space to select the item (as the only one).
Press Shift Space to extend the selection (toggle).

In the "Statics" window you can enter the start values.

In the "Inspector" window you can edit the current object(s). If multiple objects are
selected all of them are changed. so watch out setting the x-position of a 100 objects.

[namida]

To be honest, while the Lemmix *player* is freaking brilliant, the Lemmix editor is, IMO, virtually unusuable for anything other than level pack operations. LemEdit FTW.

[Luis]

I don't get it. What does LemEdit has that Lemmix doesn't? Was there a way to speed up the orange cursor in LemEdit? I remember the slow cursor was almost unbearable, but I still managed to build my level. Did you know if you make a level on LemEdit, it will look different when you open it in Lemmix?

[namida]

I don't get it. What does LemEdit has that Lemmix doesn't? Was there a way to speed up the orange cursor in LemEdit? I remember the slow cursor was almost unbearable, but I still managed to build my level. Did you know if you make a level on LemEdit, it will look different when you open it in Lemmix?

It shouldn't do. LemEdit and Lemmix use the exact same formats (apart from LemEdit not supporting vgaspec).

I just find Lemmix editor horribly awkward to use, and LemEdit so much simpler. I remember picking terrain pieces being a HUGE pain in the ass on Lemmix.

[loftyD]

I disagree, Lemmix is a fantastic tool. It comes in handy when you're making a level with a custom tileset.

I may be biased, but I had several problems with LemEdit running on my machine. Even with DosBox it was a nightmare.