Player V1.34n-C, LemMain V10.0, Talisman Tool Beta Released

[namida]

Alright so, the main update here is obviously the new Talismans feature. It hasn't been added to the official games yet - further discussion on these is needed. Nor has it been added to Copycat Lemmings yet; I'm mostly waiting to hear Essman's ideas on this one. They're being added to the Lemmings Plus series, and official updates being made for such. However, they can be used in custom Flexi-based packs!

Please note that these cannot be added to NeoCustLemmix level packs. I do not plan to support this.

V1.34n
------
* Added a "Talismans" option (basically just achievements with a Lemmings-themed name).
  So far, these have not been added to the official games, but can be used in custom
  packs on the Flexi player and are in the process of being added to the Lemmings Plus
  games.
* Copycat Lemmings now uses new-format graphic sets, and levels are adjusted accordingly.
* Fixed the bug where pickup skill cloners were not taken into account for Cloner-adjusted
  percentages.
* Mayhem 26 in Orig has had its blockers re-added.

V1.34n-B
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* The Mechanic skill has been renamed to Disarmer
* The Shift key can be held while selecting a lemming to ensure that only a lemming with no
  previous skills assigned to it will be selected
* The Alt key can be held while selecting a lemming to replace the normal action display
  (eg. walker, builder, climber, etc) with one which shows which permanent skills it has.
  The display will show six dashes, which will be replaced with letters if the lemming has
  certain permanent skills:
    - "C" for a Climber (1st dash)
    - "S" for a Swimmer (2nd dash)
    - "F" for a Floater (3rd dash)
    - "G" for a Glider (3rd dash) - shares Floater's space since they're mutually exclusive
    - "D" for a Disarmer (4th dash)
    - "Z" for a Zombie (5th dash)
* Holding Ctrl while clicking a skill panel button has the same effect as right-clicking it.
  This can be used when selecting the buttons via keyboard shortcuts, too; so for example,
  you can press Ctrl+F2 for an instant release rate 99, or Ctrl+F3 to assign a climber to
  the highlit lemming.
* Supports loading some extended header information from levels; it does not currently write
  this extended information when dumping levels, nor does the editor save it. (The reason for
  this is to have player support for it well before any levels using it exist.)
* When auto-save replays is enabled, the automatic filenames will now include the seconds
  in the timestamp as well as the hour and minute; this virtually eliminates the chance of
  one auto-save replay overwriting another one.
* Fixes the following bugs:
  > Locked exits may unlock prematurely and/or fail to work if multiple lemmings hit a single
    unlock button in the same frame
  > Replays from the first rank can be loaded on the same level number in any rank, while replays
    from the first level of a rank can be loaded on any level in that rank (with the first level
    of the first rank being loadable in any level in the same pack)
  > The LPIV Candy graphic set has a minor graphical glitch on the one-way-down arrows
  > If a lemming is highlit, it becomes un-highlit when a backwards frame jump, load state, etc
    is performed, even if the lemming still exists at the point jumped to
  > The game crashes when a level starts if the level uses an entrance which only has a single
    animation frame

V1.34n-C
--------
* VGASPEC files can now have defined autosteel and one-way areas. To do this, they should
  be in the new format (ie: graphic sets without objects); the first terrain piece should be
  the level image (including the steel / one way areas!), the second piece should be only the
  steel areas, and the third piece should be only the one-way areas.
* NeoCustLemmix and Flexi now include the LPIV Clockwork graphic set.
* Fixed the following bugs:
  > A lemming that falls a fatal distance onto terrain, where that terrain is also the top
    pixel of a water trigger area, while assigned the swimmer skill, will become stuck in
    that position while doing nothing
  > A moving background object placed far outside the level's boundaries may suddenly appear
    out of nowhere after enough time has passed during play
  > Oddtabled levels weren't working at all in V1.34n-B.

Downloads:
DropBox
NeoLemmix Website: Players | Cust | Flexi



The LemMain update adds support for the Talisman graphics. When extracting a NeoLemmix V1.29n+ MAIN.DAT that doesn't contain talisman images, they'll just be blank. The included MAIN.DAT file does contain them, so you can extract that to get a copy of them. (Remember, you can use the override images + the "extract and rebuild" features to easily add them to an existing MAIN.DAT). Sorry, there isn't a new and more user-friendly MAIN.DAT tool yet; it's still on the todo list.

Downloads:
DropBox
NeoLemmix Website



There's also a BETA version of the Talisman Editor available, so that you can add talismans to your custom packs. The generated TALISMAN.DAT file should be included in the same way as any other DAT file. When creating talismans using this, be sure to use the "Import LVL" button (or manually copy the level's normal save requirement, time limit, skill limits etc - but that's the much harder way to do it); this will copy the level's regular save requirement and so on into the talismans' requirements. This is important because forced skillset, challenge mode and timer mode do not prevent talismans from being received - this is by design; although I don't plan on doing so for my own packs, it's to allow people to make talismans that go outside the normal skillset / time limit and have the player use these modes to get them. When you import a level, it does not have to be in the LookForLVLFiles-style filename, but if it is, the level's rank and number will also be automatically set.

For reference, a "Hidden" talisman won't show up in-game; the purpose of it is that you can still use these to unlock secret levels.

I'll explain better how to use this tool at a later point, but for now, if you have any questions feel free to ask.

EDIT: I should probably explain the "Signature" field. This is just a unique reference number for each talisman, used so that they can be kept track of even if the ordering and/or parameters change. It's a hexidecimal value, and can be anywhere between x00000001 and xFFFFFFFF; all that matters is that it's unique for each talisman. Zero is not a valid value, so any that are set to zero will be assigned one automatically when you save the file. Thus, you pretty much can ignore this field; but it's there just in case.

Download:
DropBox
(For now, I haven't uploaded it to the NeoLemmix website.)



There is no editor update, as there is no new V1.34n feature that requires an editor update. Thus, if any further bugfix / feature improvement updates do occur, at this point they'd be labelled V1.33n-D and so on rather than V1.34n-A (This is in keeping with the main version number being the lowest player version that fully supports the level and graphic set formats and features it uses; not nessecerially the most recent player version.)

[namida]

Discovered a talisman-related issue, relating to talismans that are supposed to use the level's time limit (rather than having one explicitly specified) in combination with levels that have unlimited time; this combination would make the talisman impossible to unlock. The only player that would be affected by this is Flexi (Cust doesn't support talismans, LPI / LPII / LPIIB don't have levels with infinite time, everything else doesn't have talismans yet) so I reuploaded that one with the bug fixed.

[namida]

Player V1.34n-B update is here. A handful of bug fixes, the name change from "Mechanic" to "Disarmer", some futureproofing on the level loading, and a couple of new useful features. See the first post for full info and download links.

(As a side note, all Lemmings Plus games that had an official V1.34n release already, have also been updated to V1.34n-B.)

[namida]

Here's an editor update. It's labelled V1.33n-D (rather than V1.34n-A or something like that) as it doesn't add anything that requires V1.34n+ player to use.

The reason for this update is that, Cheapo levels made with the old-format versions of the Cheapo styles, when loaded with the new-format versions, any horizontally-flipped pieces (terrains or objects) will be placed incorrectly. Thus, this update adds a way to automatically fix them.

To apply the fix, follow these steps:

Spoiler

1. First, make sure you do not still have old-format copies of the graphic sets. Check your "styles/Cheapo" folder, and delete any files with names that begin with "g_" or "v_".
2. Start the editor and open the Mass Convert feature (under "Tools" menu).
3. Click "Clear List", then press F5, then Shift+F4, then F5 again. If you're doing this right, a "1" will appear in the bottom-right corner after the first F5, which then changes to 2 after Shift+F4 and 3 after the second F5.
4. Enable the "Cheapo Horizontal Flip Patch". (If you can't see this option, refer to Step 3.)
5. Add any levels that need fixing (by clicking "Add" then selecting them). Be sure to select "Cheapo Styles" when prompted for the levels' style.
6. Choose "Cheapo Styles" as the output format.
7. Click "Convert".

Note - I am warning you here that you should NOT use this feature in ANY case except to fix levels that have this issue. The editor will warn you of this again when you complete Step 3 of the instructions above. If you ignore both these warnings and mess up your levels, I am not going to do anything to try and help you, as you have been given plenty of warning. (Of course, if you've followed these instructions, on levels that are affected by this issue, and it's messed those up, then I'll be happy to look into that.) Even on levels that do have this issue, I advise making a backup copy just in case.

Updated editor download:
http://www.neolemmix.com/old/neolemmixeditor.zip

[namida]

V1.34n-C update here. This fixes a critical issue with oddtabling that appeared in V1.34n-B, as well as a few other less-significant things. It mostly matters for Orig, Extra, Cust and Flexi; the others don't critically need to be upgraded if you have V1.34n-B. Links in first post.

Aside from that, Cust / Flexi now include the LPIV Clockwork graphic set so no need to manually add it; there's also two other relatively minor bugfixes (one is purely graphical, and the other only occurs in very specific setups; it relates to the Swimmer skill and has most likely been there since that skill was first introduced yet was undiscovered until very recently).

In terms of new features, VGASPECs (in the new format, which is basically just a new-format graphic set with an "x_" at the start of the filename, and no objects) can now make use of autosteel and one-way-capable terrain, instead of requiring manual steel areas and defining the whole terrain as one-way-capable. As you probably know if VGASPECs are of interest to you, the first terrain piece is treated as the level's layout. Now, the second and third piece are used for these other functions - any pixel that's solid in the second piece will become steel (if the level has autosteel enabled, of course), and only pixels that are solid in the third piece can have one-way areas on them (or, can't, if the level uses One-Way Invert); the defaults for if these extra pieces aren't present (or for old-format VGASPECs) are for none of the image's pixels to be autosteel, and all of them to be one-way capable.