[SUG][PLAYER] NeoLemmix Achievements/Talismans for the whole game

[Silken Healer]

I suggest there should be achievements/talismans for the entire game (such as: Save 1,000,000 total lems, Complete Lemmings Redux ect.). They could be easily cheated with custom levels but I think they will be a fun thing for the people who play legitimately

[Proxima]

I think large-scale achievements could be fun, but I have a train of thought that leads to the conclusion that they are not a good fit for NL.

Firstly, it would be weird that some packs have an achievement for completing the whole pack while others don't, at the whim of the pack's creator. If anything like this is added, I would expect all packs to be treated equally.

But this would be problematic, because you might solve a level with a backroute that then gets patched out -- would it be fair to lose the achievement in that case?

Then, we already have the ticks on the level select menu that show when you've finished a whole rank or pack. What would an achievement actually add that the tick doesn't?

Achievements only really work with systems like Steam that have online leaderboards or some kind of profile so you can show off your progress. For NeoLemmix, solving levels / full ranks / packs is the natural metric of progress, and the way the game already tracks it is good enough.

[namida]

FYI: I will stick to the NeoLemmix term "talisman" for this post. The name "talisman" arose specifically because I was implementing a feature that I felt was achievements, but wanted to give a Lemmings-y name to it. So, if this were to be added, it would just be additional types of talismans, from a cosmetic point of view.

Firstly, it would be weird that some packs have an achievement for completing the whole pack while others don't, at the whim of the pack's creator. If anything like this is added, I would expect all packs to be treated equally.

I don't particularly see this as being any worse than "some packs have talismans, some don't. Some give you a free one for completing the final level, some don't". Talismans have always been up to pack authors (or in more recent versions, level authors, though this is often one and the same) to decide on exactly how they'll use; beyond things like "don't create impossible talismans" there's no particular expectations.

However, I'm really not convinced the overall effort here would be worth it. First, I'd have to outright add a means of defining, loading and tracking talismans that are not connected to levels. Currently, of course, talismans are part of the level, which also means they're stored (both in files and in memory) alongside the level; progress is saved together with the level's progress / records; etc. So doing this would essentially be adding an entirely new thing altogether; on a technical level it would reuse some talisman-related code in the UI and can re-use talisman graphics where needed, but the actual logic behind it would pretty much be a completely new feature. It would indeed be correct to point out that saving / loading could be averted altogether by instead just checking the actual condition, if it's something like "beat X number of levels from the pack" or "beat every level in so-and-so rank", but the saving / loading is one of the less-messy parts anyway even if not "nothing".

There's also very limited scope to actually do anything interesting here. Pretty much anything that goes beyond "complete <quantity> levels" or "complete a few specific levels", and maybe at a stretch the pack-total or rank-total for lemmings saved, time taken or total skills used, is likely not going to see widespread use. (Note that "complete a certain rank" or "complete the entire pack" are just specific cases of the first two examples given here.) This is all on top of talismans already being something that many players ignore.

So overall - while I do see where you're coming from, I just don't believe the benefits of this would justify the effort needed to implement it. Therefore, I'm going to reject this suggestion.