NeoLemmix Update: V10.011.XXX [Player hotfix D; Flexi hotfix B]

[namida]

Current Versions
Player: V10.011.011-D
Editor: V10.010.010
Flexi: V10.011.011-B
GSTool: V10.010.011

As of yet there is no new version of the editor or GSTool as updates to these are not needed; the old ones remain completely compatible. However, the editor download has been updated to include a copy of the new version of the player and the Lemmings Plus IV graphic sets.



NeoLemmix Player

Quick compatibility note: Virtually any content that is compatible with V1.48(-B) or V10.010.XXX, should also be compatible with V10.011.XXX. Nonetheless, because this isn't 100% guaranteed, NeoLemmix V10.011.XXX will give a compatibility warning the first time you attempt to run any pack that isn't built for V10.011.XXX.

On the core side, Vxx.011.xxx brings a few fixes to physics bugs. The impact of these is extremely minor - across all of my released packs (623 levels, some of which also have talisman replays) a total of four replays broke - two in Lemmings Plus Omega and two in Doomsday Lemmings - none of which required changes to the levels themself, just new replays.

The Lemmings Plus IV graphic sets have been updated to add backgrounds to them. Wasteland has two backgrounds (one which is general-purpose and the other is only suitable for non-vertical-scrolling levels), the others have one each.

On the features side, the most significant feature is the added ability to insert and delete actions in a replay, rather than having to completely redo the replay from the point where you want to change something. You can press the Replay Insert Mode hotkey (default key: W) to toggle insert mode on and off; when it's on, the red R icon will change to blue, and any new actions will be inserted into the replay without deleting later actions. If you want to remove actions, press E to bring up a list of all actions in the replay, where you can select any action and delete it. Be careful with these - although they don't delete later entries from the file, the presence of a different action at an earlier time can still affect how well these later actions work.

Skill assignments can now also be queued for a short time (about half a second game-time). If you attempt to assign a skill when it can't be assigned, the attempt will be remembered for a few frames and if it becomes possible, it will be assigned as soon as it is. For example, suppose you attempt to assign a builder to a faller who's about to hit the ground; he'll remember this and start building as soon as he hits the ground (assuming it's within the half-second allowance).

Clear Physics mode has a couple of minor improvements. If you mouseover a blocker while Clear Physics Mode is active, the direction he is facing will be indicated. (Note to self / Nepster: Shouldn't this be added for diggers too?). An object type indicator for water has also been added.

The mass replay test, in prior versions, to save time it would terminate testing any given replay as soon as the save requirement was met (and thus the replay could be confirmed to pass the level). There was one issue with this - it would mean the tester couldn't be used to properly test some types of talisman replays. This update somewhat improves this. Although it still won't report whether a talisman was achieved or not, if there are any unobtained talismans on the level being tested, this termination will not occur and the replay testing will continue until all lemmings die, time runs out, or a significant amount of time (5 minutes game time, IIRC) passes without any actions being taken. So - you can test talisman replays by deleting the save file (or just the talismans obtained part of it), then running the mass replay test on the talisman replays, and seeing which ones have been unlocked.

Full changelog

Core (Vxx.011.xxx) Changes
- Includes latest versions of Lemmings Plus IV graphic sets (background images have been added)
- Fixed the bug that allowed for situations where lemmings splat immediately after leaving a teleporter
- Fixed the bugs with disarmers that encounter a trap while in the Jumper state
- Fixed the bug with window ordering on levels that have a number of preplaced lemmings not divisible by the number of window ordering entries
- Fixed the bugs with teleporters that lack a corresponding receiver
- Fixed the infinite loop when a level's custom window ordering does not contain any valid entries
- Fixed the bug where if all regular lemmings have died but some zombies haven't yet spawned, the game will not exit until they all have

Features (Vxx.xxx.011) Changes
- Added a Replay Insert Mode that allows new skill assignments / release rate changes to be inserted mid-replay without deleting all later actions (default key to toggle this on or off is W)
- Added a Replay Editor popup (default key to open is E), currently this only allows viewing a list of actions and deleting specific ones
- The compatibility warning for older content is now only displayed once per pack instead of every time
- Clear Physics Mode now indicates blocker direction when the blocker is moused over
- Clear Physics Mode now has an object type indicator for water
- NeoLemmix lags less during pause
- If an attempt is made to assign a skill at a time when it cannot be assigned, the assignment will be remembered for a short time in case it becomes possible soon afterwards
- The "Disable Backgrounds" option now includes moving backgrounds as well as static ones
- The mass replay tester will not terminate testing a replay as soon as the goal is reached if there are any unobtained talismans available on the level, allowing the mass replay tester to now verify talisman replays as well as standard ones
- Replay loading for NXRP files is more crash-resistant
- Fixed the bug that caused disarmed (or otherwise disabled) traps to be treated as live traps when rendering shadows
- Fixed the crash when mouseovering non-functional teleporters or receivers in Clear Physics Mode
- Fixed the bug that caused the pack-wide options for regular or xmas sprites to be ignored
- Fixed the bug that caused the fall distance guide to not work

-B Hotfix: Fixes a bug where NeoLemmix crashes (except in mass replay test mode) at the start of any level containing preplaced blockers.
-C Hotfix: Fixes a bug where NeoLemmix generates an error message (not crash-causing but extremely annoying) when the level area is clicked in, on a level which has no skills in the skillset.
-D Hotfix: Fixes a bug where NeoLemmix may crash after using a bomber (and quite likely a stoner, too). This bug is very rare, it's only been noted to happen for one user on one specific pack but theoretically it should have always happened when using them. At any rate, the -D hotfix fixes it.

Download links:
Standard version: http://www.neolemmix.com/old/NeoLemmix.exe
Alt version: http://www.neolemmix.com/old/NeoLemmixAlt.exe

(In most cases you should use the Standard version. In some cases, issues with certain recording software or with Linux+WINE may be resolved by using the Alt version, but the Alt version does not support windowed mode.)



NeoLemmix Editor

There is no editor update as of yet.

You can download the existing version (V10.010.010) here. The full download has been updated to include Player V10.011.011; and both the full and upgrade downloads have been updated to include the updated versions of the Lemmings Plus
Full download: http://www.neolemmix.com/old/neolemmixeditor.zip
Upgrade from V1.47n ~ V1.48-B: http://www.neolemmix.com/old/neolemmixeditor_upgrade.zip (Please redownload the full download if updating from V1.43n-C or earlier)

If you already have V10.010.010 of the editor, you can get the updated versions of the Lemmings Plus IV styles here:
Lemmings Plus IV styles updates: http://www.neolemmix.com/old/lpiv_styles_updates.zip



Flexi Toolkit

The Flexi Toolkit update has removed support for music packs (NeoLemmix itself still supports them for now but they are considered deprecated). It also marks packs as compatible with NeoLemmix V10.011.XXX. Aside from these, there are no changes.

-B Hotfix: Fixes the error when trying to delete or extract music files.

Download: http://www.neolemmix.com/old/FlexiTool.zip



Graphic Set Tool

There is no Graphic Set Tool update to V10.011.XXX, the existing version V10.010.XXX remains fully compatible with the new version of NeoLemmix. There has been a recent V10.010.011 update that adds a feature to mass-rename the pieces in the graphic set.

Download: http://www.neolemmix.com/old/gstool.zip

[namida]

Uploaded a V10.011.011-B hotfix update for the player.

This hotfix update is considered critical if you have V10.011.011. It is no more important than the V10.011.011 update itself if you're still on V10.010.010 (so highly recommended, but not critical), as the older version does not have the bug that this hotfix addresses.

[namida]

Uploaded GSTool V10.010.011. This adds a Mass Rename dialog (found under "Tools" on the menu bar), which can be used to quickly give names to all pieces. It is strongly recommended you give pieces names; even though current NL versions do not use them, it will make things much simpler to convert when new formats come into use.

EDIT: If you have multiple related terrain pieces (eg: "block_01", "block_02" etc), instead of numbering them manually, just put a # at the end (eg: call them all "block_#"). The conversion tool for new formats will recognize this and number them appropriately. (And in the current version, the names don't matter - assigning them is a futureproofing thing.)

[namida]

The next update, excluding any possible hotfixes that may become nessecary, should finally be the new-formats one!

It's already very close to the point where I'd feel comfortable releasing a public experimental; I've already sent private ones on a few occasions. An actual stable release will probably still be a fair bit away, though.

In terms of preparing for it, while obviously conversions of content will be nessecary (the only files that will remain directly compatible will be music files, replays, and level files; and in the case of level files, while the old formats will work, continued use of them will not be recommended), a very high amount of the work can be automated. Some things I strongly suggest doing now, rather than leaving until the last minute:
- If you have content that hasn't been updated in a while, test it against V10.011.011. There is very little (if any) physics changes between that and the upcoming new-formats version, so if it works here, it'll almost certianly work there once converted. Even better, make replays for every level while doing this testing. Then when any new version comes out (this part is not exclusive to this new version), you can simply run a mass replay test rather than having to try and solve every level again - even in updates that have broken a lot of things, often it's the case that a significant number of replays still work and thus reduce how many levels you must replay to properly test.
- If any of your levels are still using VGASPECs, update them to use tileset mixing instead! Stable versions already deprecated VGASPECs a while ago but still have partial support; support is going to be dropped altogether in the new-formats version.
- If you've made any custom graphic sets, be sure that the pieces have names. If you have a lot of related pieces that you'd like to name eg "block_01" "block_02" etc, you can instead just name them all "block_#" and the conversion tool will be able to automatically set the numbers when converting.


Since the new version will no longer be a "pick one pack each time you run" structure, but rather have level selection more akin to that of Lemmini or Lix, I'm also wanting to bundle a few level packs together with it. The NeoLemmix Introduction Pack is an obvious choice. Aside from that, I'm thinking I'd like to have one pack that sticks more to traditional Lemmings gameplay, and one pack that's very NeoLemmix-y. Currently, I'm thinking the best choice for the former would be Lemmings Redux (which means I'll probably start putting more attention on that project in the near future). The latter is a bit of a harder question - NeoLemmix Community Pack would be great, but I doubt it'll be ready in time. Currently, I'm thinking Lemmings Plus Omega is probably the best choice here (uses a lot of NeoLemmix features, and isn't too hard but not extremely easy either), but I'm open to other suggestions.

[zanzindorf]

Since the new version will no longer be a "pick one pack each time you run" structure, but rather have level selection more akin to that of Lemmini or Lix,

Yay! This is one of my favorite features of Lemmini and Lix. Glad to hear it's coming to NeoLemmix.

[namida]

Uploaded another player hotfix. This fixes some issues when clicking on the game area in levels that have no skills in the skillset. Probably not as major as the blocker one (especially because this doesn't cause a crash; just an error popup that can be clicked away and gameplay will resume as normal) but it's still kinda annoying.

[namida]

Yet another player hotfix.

This fixes a crash that theoretically should occur whenever a bomber is used. It theoretically should also occur whenever a stoner is used. At least, based on the code. In practice, it only occurred for one user, on one specific NXP; so for most people this update won't matter. But if you are getting crashes when using bombers (or stoners), even if only on certain packs, this hotfix should fix it.

(I didn't mention this but probably should have - with all of the hotfixes, including this one, the -alt version was updated too.)

[namida]

I was planning to wait until the new formats version was ready to release another update, but there's been enough improvements (and a few things that are probably better to deal with sooner rather than later) that I'm going to release yet another old-formats update at some point.

I mentioned with the current version that VGASPEC support is being deprecated but some degree of backwards compatibility would be retained. The next non-hotfix update will drop VGASPEC support completely, so be sure to switch your levels over to use tileset mixing instead if you haven't already.