Artistic levels in Lemmings 3D

[Strato Incendus]

As you might know, I've come to fancy Colorful Arty's level-building style of "painting" with level tiles, and I've done so quite a lot on my pack Lemmings World Tour. Now that I'm working on, among others, a NeoLemmix pack trying to emulate Lemmings 3D, I'm thinking about to what extent these "artistic"-looking levels fit into the overarching theme of the pack. In other words: Can a pack still feel like Lemmings 3D (featuring the characteristic tilesets, such as Candy / Jelly-Belly), when it includes (too many) artistic levels?

I know there definitely are some artistic-looking levels in Lemmings 3D, where the DMA / Psychgnosis creators themselves "painted" with level tiles. The lines between the various tilesets are also much less strict than in classic Lemmings or ONML, as for example the level backgrounds are interchanged liberally between tilesets. For example, "Away Team" features a space background, but neither belongs to the Alien nor the Digital tileset, but is counted as a Lego level (the style from "Attack of the 50 Ft. Lemmings" or, most famously, "That's the name of the game").

That said, I have never managed to actually complete Lemmings 3D in its entirety, so I might be missing some levels. Here are the ones I am aware of that definitely use tilesets to create some sort of recognisable, "realistic" structure, rather than just an abstract level shape:

Spoiler

• That's right (Fun 02): a hook, as if to tick something, and an equals sign (=)
• It's a run around (Fun 04): a castle
• Lemmings inside (Fun 08): a computer with screen, mouse, and keyboard
• A shortcut through the forest (Fun 09): a forest with a paved path leading through it and a house at the end
• Castle Lemmalot (Fun 10): a castle
• Tower of Stone (Fun 13): a tower
• Down the middle we go! (Fun 16): two towers
• Attack of the 50 ft. Lemmings (Fun 19): a lemming
• Breakout (Tricky 25): a depiction of the Breakout game, with the lemmings walking diagonally to emulate the direction of the flying ball
• Lemmhanger (Tricky 26): aeroplanes
• All around the watchtower (Tricky 28): a giant tower
• Land Ahoy (Tricky 29): a ship on the shore
• Tooten Lemming (Tricky 30): pyramids
• A head above the rest (Tricky 31): just the head of a lemming
• Oh no! More pyramids! (Tricky 34): pyramids
• King Coder's Tomb (Tricky 40): a mausoleum
• It's the name of the game (Taxing 50): the letters of the game name, "Lemmings", become the level itself
• Motherboard (Taxing 53): a giant computer chip
• Away Team (Taxing 54): a spaceship from Star Trek
• Birthday cake (Taxing 55): a cake
• The arena (Taxing 56): an Egyptian arena
• T minus five and counting (Taxing 57): a space-rocket launch station
• Lemmtris (Taxing 59): a depiction of the Tetris game
• Ski jump (Mayhem 64): a ski slope and a rope slide to get up
• Family tree (Mayhem 66): another computer chip
• Five Towers (Mayhem 68): well... five castle towers, guess what
• Across the network (Mayhem 71): a network of computer chips
• Raiders of the Lost Lemming (Mayhem 72): an Egyptian palace
• Hole in one, two, three! (Mayhem 75): a golf course (the first one, Hole in Ten, looks more abstract)
• Fun Fair (Mayhem 76): a big wheel, like at a festival

That's 30 levels, so almost a third of all levels in total, including the practice levels!

I guess almost all of the Medieval levels count, because they almost always feature castles, rather than merely using the stone tiles for abstract level shapes.

Therefore, I'd figure that artistic levels are more than fitting in custom Lemmings 3D levels (or custom NeoLemmix levels alluding to Lemming 3D, like in my case) - but with the restrictions of sticking to certain stiles, like Medieval, Egyptian, or Digital. Wild tileset mixing to get as close as possible to an actual location in the world is probably not possible inside the L3D editor anyway, and hence, in NeoLemmix, it would step too far beyond the limits of Lemmings 3D to still evoke that feeling of playing Lemmings 3D.

[namida]

Breakout (Tricky 25): a depiction of the Breakout game, with the lemmings walking diagonally to emulate the direction of the flying ball

You could easily be forgiven for thinking this - I did too until I actually opened up the level in an editor - but the lemmings do not actually walk diagonally in that level. It's an illusion created by creating the level mostly out of deflector blocks and having the base land at a 45 degree angle.

Hole in one, two, three! (Mayhem 75): a golf course (the first one, Hole in Ten, looks more abstract)

Fun fact: These two levels were not even created by the same author ("Hole In Ten" was Martin Hall; "Hole In One, Two Three" was James Thomas). I'd entirely believe the similar name could even be a coincidence.

I'd also say including levels like Family Tree and Across The Network here is a stretch. They're pretty arbitrary designs made with things that look like computer chips. (On the other hand, "Motherboard", while far from perfect, definitely does at least attempt to specifically look like a motherboard.) Likewise, Tricky 30 and 34, a pyramid is a pretty standard shape, and they're more one element in the level than anything else - I feel this is almost like saying "I put in a pyramid-shaped terrain piece, so this is now an artistic level featuring pyramids" in NeoLemmix.

On the other hand, I'd argue that "Garden Maze" could be added to the list. Also, "Play Time" looks like a house with a tree near it from the right angle - it's a bit more abstract in that, rather than being something outright, it forms a 2D picture when looked at from the right angle in 3D.

In terms of what L3D is capable of - some further examples can be found in my pack (link in signature; from there, you can find a link to a Youtube playlist of solutions if you don't want to actually download and play the pack, although not all level solutions are up yet):

Spoiler

Fun 3 "Lemmings on a Train" - A train. A few of L3D's cosmetic options are even used to make the train look like it's moving.
Fun 4 "Performance Tower" - A "pushing it" case, but a tower.
Fun 11 "Device Upgrade" - A slightly newer PC. Note that this level is an edit of Fun 8 from the official levels.
Fun 12 "The Armageddon Machine" - The Omegamatic (sometimes known as the Armageddon Machine) from Commander Keen 5.
Fun 14 "Pac-Lems" - The "typical" PacMan layout.
Fun 15 "The Mansion - A mansion. Or at least, one face of it.
Fun 18 "Just Let It Bee" - A bee next to a flower.
Tricky 21 "Sputlem IV" - A satellite, or at least some weird space device.
Tricky 25 "The Moat" - A moat around a (small) castle.
Tricky 30 "Longboy" - haha long boy
Tricky 32 "Guard Wall" - A ridiculously oversized wall.
Tricky 34 "Mysterious Artifacts - This actually doesn't replicate anything specifically, but is designed to sort of look like it replicates something in general.
Tricky 40 "Data Corruption" - A bit of a stretch, but at least part of the levels (the odd shapes of land areas, the intentionally-glitchy sea, the random electric panels) are meant to give a "corrupt" appearance.
Taxing 49 "Big Green Birb" - A male eclectus parrot.
Taxing 50 "Longboy (Part 2)" - haha long boy, but actually standing up this time
Taxing 54 "The Claw" - A generic carnival-type ride; unlike "Fun Fair" from the official game, it's not trying to replicate any specific ride.
Taxing 55 "Walk The Plank!" - Title should say it all.
Taxing 56 "Ultimate Lemja Warrior" - A "Ninja Warrior" style course, inside a circus tent.
Mayhem 72 "Acrobatics" - A bunch of trapezes, mostly.

(Tricky 36 "Firewall" is not intended to replicate an "actual firewall", which in reality is usually not even something that has a physical form. It's just a computer-themed name. And while most of my Lemgo levels try to replicate something; Taxing 46 "Short 'n Simple" and Mayhem 78 "Activity Center" do not and are just abstract layouts.)

That's 19 out of 80, or roughly 1/4. Not quite as good as the official levels do, but I'd say this is probably much more than my NeoLemmix packs tend to have. I didn't conciously decide "I'm going to make a lot of artistic levels" (except in the Lemgo levels, where I usually did aim for some kind of artistic aspect). I also probably haven't been as lenient on the castle levels as you have; for example, you'd quite possibly consider Mayhem 73 "The Grand Arch" for inclusion on the list too.

But I feel this is definitely strong enough to say - it's not just level designer preference among L3D's creators; L3D really does lend itself more strongly to artistic style levels.

Wild tileset mixing to get as close as possible to an actual location in the world is probably not possible inside the L3D editor anyway

This is correct. You could mix a background from one style, block face graphics from another, signs from yet another, non-interactive objects from yet another again, interactive objects from again another style (although many of the objects aren't too tightly tied to a style in the first place, to be fair). You could then give the level a preview wallpaper and music from another style (although the preview wallpaper and music must be of the same style).

However, within any specific one of these categories, you can't mix, except by creating custom graphic files (and in the case of interactive objects, not even then - you're strictly limited to one type of interactive object per level, although some things that would count as interactive objects in NeoLemmix do not count as such in L3D, most notably entrances and exits). So you can't, for example, create a level half out of Lemgo blocks and half out of Space blocks (unless you made a custom TEXTURE.xxx file, that is).

For reference, the things that actually count as interactive objects in L3D are - teleporter, spring, rope slide, trampoline, and all 5 types of triggered traps. Anything else does not - so exits, entrances, splitters, water, one way arrows, steel, ice, antisplat pads* etc do not - these are usually properties of blocks; the "zap" effect on the sides and top of the level is instead a property of the level itself.

* Yes, these exist in L3D. No official level visibly uses them, though a few levels have invisible ones for technical reasons, and there's at least one case where a level randomly has one for no reason whatsoever in a location it's not even possible to land on from stun height, let alone splat height.

On this note, if you want to *really* go for authentic, some interactive objects have limits on how much they can be used. You can only have four spring/landing-pad pairs, or four rope slides. You can have eight teleporter pairs, although note that L3D's teleporters are bidirectional. All other objects can be used infinitely. And another concern - levels in L3D need to either be small, or sparse. If a level has too many blocks, L3D will start to glitch and not display all of them correctly, and destructive skills might start not working correctly. The levels "Walk The Plank!", "Breaking The Routine" and "Power Distribution" in my pack are all levels that push it very, very close with this limit.

EDIT: As a point of interest, L3D has a couple of block face graphic sets that seem to be made entirely for the purpose of a single level - relevant levels include "Corkscrew Digger", "Breakout", "Lemmhanger", "Land Ahoy", "Dot To Dot", "Lemmtris" and "Fun Fair", as well as the rope slide practice level. (There's probably at least one or two more I missed here.)

[namida]

On a side note - have you considered, if you're interested in L3D, making an actual L3D pack?

[Strato Incendus]

I know you're advertising your L3D Editor, and believe me, I appreciate all the work that you've put into it! Creating levels for Lemmings 3D is something it totally would have dreamed of as a kid!

As of now, however, I fear I may have been "spoilt" by all the convenient features NeoLemmix has to offer - not just the additional skills, but also rewinding, framestepping etc. For the same reason, I haven't really looked that much into kieranmillar's custom levels for Lemmings 2: The Tribes (I have the AMIGA version installed on my PC in parallel to the DOS version, with kieran's level replacing the original ones in the DOS folder while I can continue playing the original levels in the AMIGA version. Sadly, the AMIGA version doesn't even offer things like a quick restart with Escape or so, in contrast to the DOS version).

Lemmings 3D is of course a lot less execution-heavy than L2: The Tribes, due to its block structure and the delayed assignment (i.e. lemmings always walking to the end of the block before performing a skill, thus giving you more time to assign a skill for one specific position). I guess I'm also generally not that comfortable with the whole "replacing the original levels" thing, even when it's possible to easily backup them. Mainly due to my experience of quickly getting stuck on custom packs, and then I'd have to swap back the levels pretty quickly. Or, once several people have started creating packs for L2 or L3D, constantly backing up everything and replacing the levels in the folder when switching between packs.

Finally, coming up with good Lemmings 3D puzzles seems to be more or less equivalent to coming up with good classic-8-skills puzzles. I'm currently trying to get back into playing Nepster Lems, so maybe I can pickup some ideas there which I can put into practice later. Currently, all my more complex level ideas rely on at least one or two NeoLemmix skills, so that I fear anything I would create in Lemmings 3D, being restricted to just classic skills plus Turner, would be pretty "basic" in comparison.

[namida]

I guess I'm also generally not that comfortable with the whole "replacing the original levels" thing, even when it's possible to easily backup them. Mainly due to my experience of quickly getting stuck on custom packs, and then I'd have to swap back the levels pretty quickly. Or, once several people have started creating packs for L2 or L3D, constantly backing up everything and replacing the levels in the folder when switching between packs.

I just have two separate folders - one has LP3D, the other has the original levels. You could keep a "clean" folder or ZIP (maybe with music patch already applied and L3DUtils present and configured), then just create a copy of this for each new pack.

Finally, coming up with good Lemmings 3D puzzles seems to be more or less equivalent to coming up with good classic-8-skills puzzles.

The original levels very much underused the 3D aspect of the game, treating it almost just as a visual gimmick a lot of the time. This creates a misleading impression about L3D's puzzle potential overall - when creating my pack, I found that there's much more that can be done with the 3D aspect than the original game ever touches on.

I also find that, due to L3D's lack (for the most part) of any particularly precise manouevers, the lack of NL features isn't nearly as annoying as it would be in NL itself. The only time precision really becomes involved is when trying to set up fall-bombers. Even the bomber timing isn't too bad; it's a bit annoying when slippery blocks are also involved, but nothing like on L1. Probably my biggest complaint is the camera controls.

One thing to be aware of, is that "make a layout then find a solution" does not work very well for L3D. You don't necesserially need to plan out the entire level in advance, but you need to at least think about each part as you place it - "what does this actually do?"