[Rejected][SUG][Player] Allow individual levels to be locked

[Colorful Arty]

I just know this is going to be controversial, but I would really like the ability to lock specific levels in custom level packs (i.e. prevent players from playing a specific level until one or more other levels are completed first). I know we've discussions in the past about packs having all levels available from the get go to avoid people getting stuck on one level and being unable to progress, etc. but I strongly believe pack designers should have a say in which levels are locked. This not only rewards players for solving levels, but would still support the non-linear nature of NeoLemmix packs, as only a small handful of levels would be unavailable to the player before they solve other levels.

Honestly, I just want this feature for my ArtLems pack to prevent users from playing the final level before solving the rest. I really believe this would be a worthwhile feature to have.

[IchoTolot]

And I am strongly against this!

Related topics:

[DISCUSSION] [PLAYER] Secret levels / level unlocking in general:   https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=2563.0
Codes vs Saves vs Unlock-All:  https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=2136.0

And I post again my main points here for the third time

You get stuck! (and sometimes over weeks and months)

It's is a puzzle game, so you need to think about a solution to a puzzle. Here the puzzle is to manipulate the terrain to get from A to B.
If you think about a solution and don't get it right away you are stucked at this point.
If you don't get stucked in a pack (getting all the solution after a few tries) the whole puzzle aspect of this pack falls short.
And remember: What are the levels which you will remember forever?
The ones you got stuck really hard and solved them finally after days, months or even years. And often they are the best ones! Example: The original games!
"No added colors or Lemmings" and  "There's madness in the method" are the levels where nearly everyone got stuck (I got stuck for a year back in the days and there are my favorites).

But there is one point that keeps pushing these type of puzzles down:

The levels from this point onward lay dead!

If you get stuck hard you often need to take breaks from this level. What do you do?
Play another rank or take a break from the game.
If you are stuck for a long time you maybe loose interest in the pack even if you played just a part of it, because you cannot access the rest! (which usually has a lot of levels where you won't get stuck)

And that's the point why unlock all is in my opinion the best option.
A big part of the game lays dead and some people might loose interest after some time. With unlock all they can explore the game further on and come back to the level they couldn't solve before. (And they will, because that level will haunt them in their dreams! I know it from myself!)
Now they can see the pack in all it's glory and save the frustraiting part for the end.
But don't leave out the frustraiting part, because as explained above it is often the best one when you have beaten it!

At the end of this post a little quote from me I said to Simon at our meet up as we spoke about this topic (translated):

"Frustraition at it's core is, if you are too dumb at this point in the pack to get the solution, but that is one of the main points of the game"


Addition: Testing and getting feedback will be much harder to do, too. If testers/users get stuck ----> no more feedback at all! They must be able to step and skip forward all the time! The high reward of beating levels is the "AHHHHH" feeling you get and not the ability to access new content.

Why do you even want to lock the final level? I see no advantage in that. Yes, the final level should feel special, but the position in itself gives it nobility. Why not simply let the user see the hard work you invested there? Otherwise a lot of users won't even see your work.
Most users play the levels in order regardless of unlock-all (seen in countless Youtube-Videos and also the order in which replay feedback is given) and only skip a few roadblocks ---> the final level will still come last for them anyway.

I still think this option would be nothing more than a big downgrade for NeoLemmix and reviving a huge missdesign of the original games.

[Proxima]

As I've said in the past discussions, the excitement of revealing previously unknown levels is one thing I really miss about the old games. But the proposed "author chooses which levels are locked" just doesn't work as a solution for this. For one thing, it would really annoy some players; for another, given the current culture, most authors would fully unlock their packs anyway, so it wouldn't be worth the effort of coding.

Instead, what I'd like to see is a player-side option to mark certain ranks as locked, but you can always play the first level of a locked rank, and completing that level unlocks the next, as on the original games. Then I could use that option for packs that I really want to play, while I'd leave other packs open so I could look at individual levels. However, I accept that -- again -- this wouldn't be worth the effort of coding, as I don't really need levels to be locked; I can just choose not to look at them.

As for ArtLems, you could have two versions of the pack, one with the final level and one without, and give the final level to anyone who posts a full set of demos

[Colorful Arty]

Icho, did you even read my post? I'm not proposing to bring all levelpacks back to the linear nature of original lemmings; I like having levels unlocked from the get go, and I like jumping around to different levels when playing casually.

But, the ability to lock one level (particularly the last level) would be beneficial for people wanting to reward players for their solving ability and for stopping people from jumping to the last level immediately. This would cause people to get stuck, since all other levels would be unlocked, and no levels beyond it would be dead, because there are no levels beyond the final one, which is the main one I want to be able to lock.

Also, as Proxima said, I will be locking the last level of ArtLems with or without this feature, but I doubt I'm alone in wanting this option.

[IchoTolot]

Icho, did you even read my post? I'm not proposing to bring all levelpacks back to the linear nature of original lemmings; I like having levels unlocked from the get go, and I like jumping around to different levels when playing casually.

But, the ability to lock one level (particularly the last level) would be beneficial for people wanting to reward players for their solving ability and for stopping people from jumping to the last level immediately. This would cause people to get stuck, since all other levels would be unlocked, and no levels beyond it would be dead, because there are no levels beyond the final one, which is the main one I want to be able to lock.

Also, as Proxima said, I will be locking the last level of ArtLems with or without this feature, but I doubt I'm alone in wanting this option.

Of course I understood you, but still the point is: You are not rewarding players with the last level, you are locking away content and make it exclusice.

The implementation would still come with the problem that the pack is delivered in single level files. Nothing keeps the player from accessing the single level file and play it.

If the last level is exclusive regardless I see additional problems there:

1.) What if 100 people send in replays simultaniously? Have fun sending away 100 level files.

2.) You need to constantly support the reward service. You need to take action if a player wants the full experience. Otherwise it's locked away forever.

3.) What keeps evil player A who got the last level to send it to player B C D regardless of his/her progress?

[Colorful Arty]

Addressing all three of those points at the end, you are right; it is not ideal to keep one .lvl file out of the pack and send it manually to people after they beat the others, which is why NeoLemmix supporting locking the final level is a good idea.

This eliminates points 1 and 2, but admittedly does not stop people from sending their .nxsv or replay files to other people, but then the fault lies with the senders, and not with the creators.

I think it's a wee bit ridiculous to say locking a single level does not reward players for their intelligence and hard work; it absolutely does. When you work your butt off and are given access to an awesome level for doing so, you feel accomplished (at least I do). It does not hinder players progress significantly at all, because it is only one level being locked, giving you (in ArtLems' case) over 100 other levels to play before the final one. This stops people from getting stuck and not having any levels to play until they beat it (unless they have 1 level left, in which case that is no different from the way NeoLemmix is now with people only having 1 level left and getting stuck).

Ultimately, we as levelpack designers should at least have the option to keep the final level as a reward for beating the others. Maybe not everyone likes this, but designers should have the option to make packs the way we want to.

[IchoTolot]

Addressing all three of those points at the end, you are right; it is not ideal to keep one .lvl file out of the pack and send it manually to people after they beat the others, which is why NeoLemmix supporting locking the final level is a good idea.

This eliminates points 1 and 2, but admittedly does not stop people from sending their .nxsv or replay files to other people, but then the fault lies with the senders, and not with the creators.

I think it's a wee bit ridiculous to say locking a single level does not reward players for their intelligence and hard work; it absolutely does. When you work your butt off and are given access to an awesome level for doing so, you feel accomplished (at least I do). It does not hinder players progress significantly at all, because it is only one level being locked, giving you (in ArtLems' case) over 100 other levels to play before the final one. This stops people from getting stuck and not having any levels to play until they beat it (unless they have 1 level left, in which case that is no different from the way NeoLemmix is now with people only having 1 level left and getting stuck).

Ultimately, we as levelpack designers should at least have the option to keep the final level as a reward for beating the others. Maybe not everyone likes this, but designers should have the option to make packs the way we want to.

If NL supports this you run into more problems:

1.) Nothing keeps the players from extracting the single level out of the pack and play it regardless.

2.) If there's a line locking the level for good it still can be manually deleted using a text editor.

3.) Still: The first solver can simply post all replays and make them accessible for everybody ---> the entire locking process becomes pointless like L1 where the unlock-codes are posted everywhere regardless. Yes, the fault is with the sender here, but it still results in locking being 100% pointless.
The ones respecting the lock will play the levels in order regardless of the lock and the ones not respecting it simply get the replays ---> lock serves no purpose.

Furthermore I think such a specific implementation would come with significantly high work load, which would be better used in other sections. Even just an option would still create another option and we are runing in danger having too many of these, especially ones with low usage (and I 100% would count this into the low usage section).

Also, I don't think it's rediculous to say it's not rewarding. You are dening me something I should have had access to in the first place. The reward of Lemmings is geting the solution to work and not accessing another level, that's a given. Even in the original the codes are everywhere and people access the levels they want regardless of the pointless lock.

[Nepster]

Regarding Colorful Arty's original suggestion:
No matter whether we actually want this or not: The main problem is that I simply don't know how to implement this. As all files in a pack are open text-based files and pngs, every player could simply open the file where a lock is stored and remove it. So the one and only way is to trust the player that they will respect the wish of the pack designer.

In version 10.13.18, locks would have been far easier to implement, as nxps are far harder to change for users. But unfortunately I will no longer add new features or even bug-fix the current stable version.

But, the ability to lock one level (particularly the last level) would be beneficial for people wanting to reward players for their solving ability and for stopping people from jumping to the last level immediately.

Is this really an actual problem? How many examples do you know of people jumping straight to the last level without at least trying most of the previous levels (at least of the last ranks), especially compared to people solving the pack in an essientally linear fashion? Yes, in a lot of packs I skipped a few selected levels myself, either because they have been too hard or too annoying or simply not my style and then reached and played the final level. Do you wish to prevent that, too? How about someone who just plays the second half of the pack, but not the first, because the first levels are not challenging enough for them?

Regarding Proxima's suggestion:
In some sense this is already implemented: If you open a rank in the level select menu, the game starts with the first unsolved level. Similarly if you open a whole pack in the level select menu, the game starts with the first rank containing an unsolved level and plays this first unsolved level. This should enable people to play a pack in a strictly linear fashion, which I guess would be the most common use-case of a player-side lock.

[Colorful Arty]

Thanks for the feedback. I did not realize extracting levels was that easy; I thought the designer had to specify in the Flexi Toolkit if they wanted level dumping to be possible or not.

Since this clearly isn't getting implemented, this puts me in a bit of a pickle then. I'll have to think how I want the final level to be presented...

[namida]

Thanks for the feedback. I did not realize extracting levels was that easy; I thought the designer had to specify in the Flexi Toolkit if they wanted level dumping to be possible or not.

Since this clearly isn't getting implemented, this puts me in a bit of a pickle then. I'll have to think how I want the final level to be presented...

You don't even need level dumping on the new-formats versions. The pack is stored as loose files, so someone could simply navigate into the folder where your level is, and edit the level in a text editor (since the new format is text-based) to remove the lock. If it's in the pack settings rather than the level file, they simply have to edit this instead.

While yes, ways to avoid this could probably be implemented, it's simply not worth the effort. Especially in a community like this one, there will be very few people who both (a) wouldn't be able to figure out how to get around a simple lock, and (b) would not respect it if you simply asked them to leave the final level until last.

[grams88]

Hi guys

That's an interesting point Colorful Arty made about locked levels. I've been playing some of the very old packs that used to be on the mindless website but I'm playing the ones that have been converted for Neolemmix. The pack I've been playing is fernito and the levels are quite nice and gets your lemmings brain thinking, in this one you are able to pick any level you want to do first and part of me likes this idea but the other part I can see Colorful Arty's point about locked levels. I feel that it does create an achievement thing as you finally tackle a certain level to unlock the next level, I quite like that idea. I wouldn't say I'm for or against it as such.

I only have two levels left to complete and one of those levels could possibly act as a boss level.

[GigaLem]

I do see both sides to this argument

while one could say they get annoyed at not having all the levels unlocked from the get go, and it get that.
At the same time I miss having to unlock things, it feels more rewarding and honestly the only compromise I can think of is this.
In the config, have the option to unlock the locked levels with a simple click of the check for those who don't want to wait, so if you want to unlock those levels you either play this one level or just click the check mark.

I just wish unlocking levels wasn't so disliked here....remember it could be worse...