Plom's Custom Graphic Sets

[Plom510]

Thanks to GigaLem getting me into Neolemmix and with a bit of encouragement from him, I've went out of my way to create custom made graphic sets for NeoLemmix. All of these sets have been made from the ground up, with only visual references being used for the sets based on an existing theme.

Note: All graphic sets have been assembled with the assistance of GigaLem.

Studiopolis (plom_studio)

Spoiler

A graphic set based on Studiopolis from Sonic Mania with additional theatre influences.

plom_studio.dat

Press Garden (plom_garden)

Spoiler

A graphic set based on Press Garden from Sonic Mania. This has an oriental feel with some of the original pieces that were made to compliment the theme.

plom_garden.dat

Metropolis (plom_metro)

Spoiler

A graphic set based on Metropolis from Sonic Forces. This style is suited for a futuristic city setting.

plom_metro.dat

[Colorful Arty]

These look really nice, especially Studiopolis! Glad to finally have you on the forums Plom!

[Flopsy]

Awesome tilesets Plom, these look a lot more inspired and personal than my straight over ported Sonic tilesets from the Mega Drive ports.

I will definitely make use of the Studiopolis and Press Garden ones at least in my next project, it will go well with my other 7 Sonic tilesets, SEGA tileset and City tileset.

[Flopsy]

Me and Wafflem are going to be upgrading these tilesets to the new format over the next few weeks hopefully and they will be submitted for the next NeoLemmix styles update.

Thanks to Plom for giving us the opportunity and his permission to work with these tilesets and be able to use them on our future projects

[Strato Incendus]

So, looks like these are also graphic sets for which the translation tables are missing? I only have one for plom_studio, but not for plom_garden and plom_metro.

That's the main issue with only updating the styles for New Formats releases: If there are styles among them that also existed in Old Formats, but maybe weren't converted yet at the time of the last complete ZIP-Download of NeoLemmix, then there's no way to get them as single files.

Maybe these translation tables are included with the latest download of NeoLemmix; however, I don't want to use a complete Installer File, because currently there are versions with and without the Shimmier floating around, and I don't want to accidentally install a new version with secondary animations but without the Shimmier.

So it would be great if one of you two could share the translation tables for plom_garden and plom_metro here .

After having converted the last three Gronkling styles, re-edited the translation tables for several of GigaLem's Lemmings Plus mods, and nin10doadict's Cat Trap tileset, I hope once I have the translation tables for Plom's styles, I will finally be able to convert Lemmings World Tour...

[Strato Incendus]

Okay, I've recreated the translation tables myself by converting plom_garden and plom_metro again for myself, then replacing the newly created folders with the old, original ones.

However, it seems like I better would have stuck to my conversions, because once again, pieces have been removed.

plom_psychmd is missing its teleporter and receiver, which I already knew, hence I switched to the matching objects from namida's circuit tileset.

I don't see why they've been removed, though? Contrary to namida's original Psychedelic tileset where the teleporter and receiver were just a re-shading of the circuit equivalents, plom's version of Psychedelic actually featured completely custom teleporter- and receiver sprites of their own.

As I said, I replaced these in the translation table now with something else, but I hope you guys can re-add these pieces as quickly as possible!

[IchoTolot]

A little word of general advice as I see the ever growing trail of you hunting for lost tilesets and pieces:

Using most tilesets and most pieces that ever existed is very dangerous from a maintenance point of view. There is always a tileset core that is well maintained and stable, but there are quite a few tilesets that were made once and then forgotten.

Not every person cares about maintenance and at some point the content is outdated and left behind, especially if an update is required at some point. Content loss is inevitable over the years, there are always some cases that will get forgotten over time and you can't be certain that a creator maintains every piece of content they made.

We can't be asked to search through the whole forum ourselves and convert everything that ever existed. That's why we also maintain a standard tileset library now, that a stable core exists.

If you really want or need something from the forgotten content: Do it yourself from scratch. Because of that L2 and the L3 biolab tilesets exist and maintained NL versions of PimoLems and Dovelems. I wanted something and so I did it.

For removed pieces I would simply say: Use an alternative. We have enough tiles that can fulfill the same effect, especially in the teleporter case.

For not converted tilesets: Make a new format version from scratch and rebuild certain levels if it's critical to have, maybe even use a different stable tileset, or compromise and replace removed pieces with an alternative. I myself did that back when I removed my Lemmini conversion for a bunch of tilesets and rebuild the affected levels from scratch using an alternative NL native version of the tilesets. The work helped in reducing the tileset redundancy by quite a bit.

In the end, I think it is impossible to ensure everything is well maintained if the content is made by many people. Loss will always be there. If no one cares and maintains a certain part of content than a death clock hangs over it and at some point it runs out.

Maintenance is hard and in modern software-life-cyles can be responsible for up to 70% of the overall costs. Creating something is not the challenge, maintaining it is where the real challenge lies.

If you don't convince a person to maintain it and does't want to maintain it yourself the golden rule is:

[Strato Incendus]

If you really want or need something from the forgotten content: Do it yourself from scratch.

Don't know if you've noticed, but that's precisely what I have done for grnk6_electric, grnk7_ancient, grnk8_digital, nin10doadict's cat trap, and several of GigaLem's Lemmings Plus mods .

Just to clarify: I have no problem doing the legwork here - it's just that we were recently explicity asked by namida not to add anything to other people's graphic sets.

It would be easy for me to simply export the teleporter and receiver from the Old Formats version of plom_md and add them to the New Formats version.

If I did the conversion completely by myself, like in the case of nin10doadict's cat trap, that's no problem.

However, problems arise when there are halfway-converted tilesets: Graphic sets split up into two newly named graphic sets, like in Gronkling's case, or missing translation tables and missing single pieces, like in GigaLem's and plom's case.

People announced they already had converted these graphic sets, but it seems like some of those jobs were done in a half-a**ed way - mainly by omitting the translation table.

In these cases, somebody else has already officially taken up the task of converting, updating and maintaing these tilesets - as can be seen in the posts above.

So I can't simply make a change (addition) to this tileset if I don't receive any response from the tileset creator(s) / its current manager(s) officially permitting me to do so .

Otherwise, we end up having different versions of the same tileset floating around, with people randomly reporting error messages whenever the try to play a pack that uses some of these less frequent pieces.

That is precisely the scenario namida wanted to prevent, I guess .

Anyways, in the attachments I'm sharing my translation tables of these tilesets for anyone who has old levels in these graphic sets to convert.

[IchoTolot]

Yeah, you're right. 2 versions is a thing to be avoided. Sorry for not seeing the whole thing in the case that conversions were "half-assed"  and most of the legwork came from you. Only having the translation table I wouldn't even call a conversion. Another case of:

Creating something is not the challenge, maintaining it is where the real challenge lies.

In terms of the problems you're having. I think we need an adjustment for these cases where the creator is abscent. I would suggest:

If a creator is unavailable for a certain time period and not responding to change requests. It will be assumed that they are inactive and tileset changes can be made as long as they are reasonable and other people are noticed in advance (+ no one speaks out against it).

If namida and the others are fine with this, that rule could be helpful to avoid content loss due to inactivity.

[Strato Incendus]

Sorry for not seeing the whole thing in the case that conversions were "half-assed"  and most of the legwork came from you.

No problem; thanks for your understanding!

Only having the translation table I wouldn't even call a conversion.

It was the other way round: The terrain and objects etc. already had a folder in New Formats, but there was no translation table, so levels from Old Formats couldn't be assigned their matching pieces from New Formats.

A completely not-converted graphic set is easier, because then I know I can simply drag the old graphic set on the conversion tool, creating both the pieces and the translation table in the process.

The annoying part was that there were conversions, but changes had been made to the converted version that weren't reflected in the translation table (e.g. the translation table still referring to the old exit of desert_md when that exit isn't part of the collection anymore), or, worse, the translation table wasn't available at all.

This problem likely doesn't occur to graphic set creators, because if they were the ones who did the conversion, they themselves obviously have the tables on their PC, so they personally don't experience any issues in converting such levels. Thus, they forget to share the translation tables with everyone else, or send them to Nepster / Nessy so that they can include them in the next update, etc.

The issues arose from the fact that we had frequent updates to just the styles folder, but without the matching updates of the data --> translation folder.

Hence, we should probably make it a habit that every zip-download that includes an update to the style folder also includes the translation folder.

Of course, we need to make sure we have a complete translation folder at one point in time in the first place, so we can simply add any updates to that. Otherwise, we would always provide the translation folder together with the styles update, but the translation folder would still be missing some translation tables.

Apart from that, I wholly support your suggestion of graphic sets being "public domain" for forum users if the creator / manager of that tileset has been inactive for a while. "Public" in the sense of "the Lemmings public needs to agree on any changes made", not "free for individual modification" .

At the same time, if it isn't fine for individuals to single-handedly add pieces to a tileset, then it shouldn't be fine either for graphic set creators to single-handedly remove pieces. Because that's basically just like a non-agreed-upon culling of a feature:

It messes up every level created in that tileset so far, and with a single "delete" click, causes everyone else a bunch of unnecessary work. Missing teleporters / receivers, exits, terrain, removal of rotated pieces, and then, even if you adapt the translation table, the replacements for the missing pieces are misplaced in the level because they're different in size, etc.

[Strato Incendus]

Sorry, the plom_garden translation table was incorrect - similarly to Sandopolis, the numbering scheme had been changed from Piecename1 to Piecename_01, so I had to adapt the translation table to find those pieces.

The new version of the garden translation table works now!

For psych_md and metro, no such changes were necessary, strangely enough .