NeoLemmix New Feature Poll - Preparation Topic

[Nepster]

Does a list exist somewhere of what game mechanics features (skills and object types) already exist in NeoLemmix?

Sorry, but no.

negative skills

Will add them to the poll, but I am very sceptical that these turn out to be actually useful. Using at least one skill in order not to lose another skill seems pretty ineffective.

conversion between neutral and non-neutrals

Once neutral lemmings exist, we can talk about such additional objects for them. So this isn't something I will add to the poll, but can keep in mind for the future.

linked lemming

I have a lot of questions on this one. But the main one is: Assinging skills to linked lemmings makes only sense if both are at the correct position, which will usually be rather difficult to achieve. So how can we ensure that solutions using linked lemmings don't become very difficult to execute?

giant lemming
Probably too much work, [...]

Exactly.

limited entrance

Here I would like to hear first about some use-cases before adding this to the poll, because this seems pretty redundant to me:
- If only few lemmings should spawn on the limited entrance, why not use preplaced lemmings?
- If one hatch needs considerable more lemmings than the other to require freeing them, why not add multiple hatches there?
So basically limited entrances are only useful if multiple hatches should spawn a lot of lemmings, but one of them should stop much earlier than the other (for some reason). I don't think this situation appears very often.

[Player]Permanent Skill remover and converter

Will add to the poll. If this comes, it will probably be one object that does both functions, only differentiated by some sign on top of them.

[ccexplore]

Yeah, to be honest I was just farting out ideas either seen from other games or are based on variations of what already exists.

For linked lemmings, I think there are ways to address the precision concern from a combination of mechanics details and level designer cooperation.  But with all that said, it does feel like a feature that is probably tricky to use well for both level players as well as level designers, so perhaps not really worth the trouble.

Limited entrance is I believe technically redundant if you dedicate one entrance object per lemming to come out (ie. as many entrances are there are lemmings to come out).  But from a aesthetic perspective that obviously leaves much to be desired.  It's not exactly the same as pre-placed lemmings since pre-placed lemmings aren't affected by release-rate changes and do start out already in the level (versus until enough time passed for earlier lemmings to be released).  Similarly, the multiple-hatches substitute you mentioned, I think will work out differently in terms of the spacing of lemmings.

I'll freely admit that there probably aren't a lot of situations for which that feature is needed.  At least it is somewhat balanced by less work to implement?

Considering NeoLemmix already has many new features over Lemmings 1, I do feel like maybe we don't really need too much anymore in the way of new features.  It certainly seems better off avoid turning it into another Lemmings 2.

Want to re-mention suggestions of spear thrower, stone thrower and/or mortar/bazooka.  I'm definitely not crazy about the difficulty of trajectory predictions.  My main thought around those skills is maybe having skills that take effect more "remotely" relative to the lemming, might bring something new to the table.  At least a few years ago when I tried my hand at creating custom L2 levels, I found myself using projectile skills a bit more than I thought I would, though granted one single person's experience is just that.

[Nepster]

Considering NeoLemmix already has many new features over Lemmings 1, I do feel like maybe we don't really need too much anymore in the way of new features.  It certainly seems better off avoid turning it into another Lemmings 2.

I totally agree, and I don't plan to go on and implement every single idea mentioned here. But I would like to know the two or three most wanted features, so that I can focus my spare time (i.e. not used for bug-fixes) on them.

Want to re-mention suggestions of spear thrower, stone thrower and/or mortar/bazooka.  I'm definitely not crazy about the difficulty of trajectory predictions.  My main thought around those skills is maybe having skills that take effect more "remotely" relative to the lemming, might bring something new to the table.  At least a few years ago when I tried my hand at creating custom L2 levels, I found myself using projectile skills a bit more than I thought I would, though granted one single person's experience is just that.

Sorry, forgot to mention them in my previous reply. Will add them to the poll and see how it goes.

[kieranmillar]

A late addition!

While I know it's been discussed before and would be a considerable amount of work, I really think anti gravity pads that reverse a lemmings gravity have a lot of potential. While they may not have had a huge amount of potential before because nothing really interacted with ceilings, the addition of the shimmier, a skill which is essentially walking on the ceiling, suddenly expands the amount of potential quite considerably.

[Nepster]

Gravity!
I doubt this will get implemented but it's just so cool! Like the concept of ninja's. Who doesn't love ninjas? Sure it' much more effective killing people with guns and bombs but ninja's have that sexy appeal.

Sorry, but to implement gravity I will probably code half a year only on this with nothing else getting done. This is far too much work.

But on the other hand, I can add the L2 slider to the poll.

[kieranmillar]

Not sure how I missed that it was already mentioned in this very thread, sorry!

[kieranmillar]

Here's an editor user interface feature that I've just remembered. I've not tried the new editor yet so maybe it's already in there, but it's an idea stolen from DoomBuilder 2: relative coordinate adjustments.

In DB2, when ever you have stuff selected, either one or multiple things, when you go into its properties you can type something like "++4" or "--8" into the coordinate box and it will move everything selected by that number of coordinates in the appropriate direction. Really useful for grabbing a chunk of a level and making a minor shift.

[mobius]

another minor(?) suggestion:

parallax or static backgrounds

http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=3167.msg62932#msg62932

this will make backgrounds stand out from the terrain much easier.

Parallax meaning the background moves slower than the foreground or doesn't move at all. Static is probably easiest to implement and maybe easier on the eyes.