The Perfect Blend...

[Mindless]

The lack of input from some of the veterans here (a group which I don't yet consider myself to be among) is quite telling. Or maybe everyone's been too busy to post for the last month - that can't possibly be the case, can it :huh:

I think the veterans have all become lurkers or have lost interest as the community hopped from server to server.

[Clam]

Is this our cue to start another one of those "Wow, this forum is kinda dead" threads? The numbers say it all - page views are down 80%. And this place was booming not so long ago... forum downtime is costly indeed.

At least there is still one lemmings project in the pipeline... last I heard, anyways.

[Dullstar]

Some people just don't check their email, do they...

[Dullstar]

Sorry to double post, but I was just thinking about my idea for a fangame project, and...
uh, shouldn't this go in the Level development board?  I'll check to see what most others are doing...

[The Doctor]

Ah well, general agreement with past post by Clam Spammer, the community seems to be elsewhere. The constant forum changes are of course to blame, but can not be helped. Shuff happens, we just gotta fuffen' deal with it. :-)

A brand new Lemmings game with all the gameplay of every Lemmings game ever made in history, clones inclusive, would be fun. At the moment, however, it occurs to me that ... well ... quite a few of the level pack submissions on the LFA are either MUCH too hard or poorly designed. So until such a time as we have that legendary amalgam of Lemmings 2, Lemmings 3, Pingus, and Super Mario Bros, I appeal to everyone to work on a side project to improve their design skills.

Create levels that would suit Fun/Tame difficulty, then add decorations, and make sure they make sense. So far the worst levels I've seen have lava floating in mid air, random giant crystals in strange places for no reason at all, the tops of the exits miles away from the actual exit area, and flags in bizarre locations.

If any of you know what level packs I'm referring to, you'll know exactly what I mean.

It occurs to me, and this goes equally well in importance with Dullstar, that globally our level designing skills could be improved. They're either Mayhem/Havoc difficulty, or look like something a Lemming upchucked.

Don't take offence to this if you think you're a level making pro, you probably are, and are not who I'm referring to. Keep up the good work.

[Clam]

it occurs to me that ... well ... quite a few of the level pack submissions on the LFA are either MUCH too hard or poorly designed.

My levels (and those of a few other designers) are tailored to an audience that knows the game inside and out. Anything less than insane difficulty just doesn't present a challenge to some people

I appeal to everyone to work on a side project to improve their design skills.

Waaaaay ahead of ya. I must admit, making a Lemmings Chronicles tribe opened my eyes to the value of aesthetic design. For some reason, Chronicles designs look awful if you don't put in some effort to make them look decent - much more so than original Lemmings levels. If you don't fill the space available, it just looks wrong. Must be the blue background... it stands out much more than black

Don't take offence to this if you think you're a level making pro, you probably are, and are not who I'm referring to.

I don't know who else you might be referring to - the people who made most of those "floating lava" levels disappeared a long time ago. Heck, some didn't join the forum at all... (If you're out there, *please* come back and read this)


And by the way - despite what some of this post may suggest, I agree with you.

[Dullstar]

That would be great for my fangame.  We could always use some help with the insane levels.

[The Doctor]

Hehe, DullStar. I hope that project comes to fruition. Haven't seen a complete pack in a long while.

ClamSpammer, I agree, your levels are tailored to an audience who wouldn't even find Lemmings 2 hard. But of course, in a brand new game, there'd have to be some sort of learner levels. Sure they can be boring but they need to exist. By the way, I love your levels, and I even did PSP versions of 'em so I could play 'em on the road. Kinda defeated the purpose, since I mapped them myself, but who cares. Lol.

[Clam]

:shocked: Wow... I'm glad someone appreciates my work. Thank you


About "Fun" levels - most of these in the original game were just copies of harder levels, but with more skills (usually 20 of each) and time. Tutorial levels for the skills (and possibly other game elements too) would certainly be a good thing, but beyond that, I don't see a need for any more than 10 or so Fun/Tame levels. Yes, they need to be there, but maybe we don't need quite as many as the original games had. Especially if we implement "revolution-style" unlocking, we want to start ramping up the difficulty before too long.

[The Doctor]

Except that if the game was really good, we wouldn't have to just restrict it to our community.

[Dullstar]

Hehe, DullStar. I hope that project comes to fruition. Haven't seen a complete pack in a long while.

It's a highly volunteer project (publicly submitted levels, modifications to the game interface to make it the same game with more features), so it's more likely to follow through than this or the Multiplayer Online Lemmings Project or whatever it was.

By the way, this may require opinions for deciding what levels to include and what to exclude.  Also, I recommend, since we plan on changing some aspects of the game, we could make it so the tutorial levels are a separated from the main levels in their own section.  I HATE tutorial levels.  And as for example of opinions on levels, there's one that I will only let out if people really want it.  It's called Chaos:  Gravity's Reign, and it was meant to be hard.  However, it came out too hard, I think, because the timing was extreme (you had to know the keyboard shortcuts for picking skills or you'd lose lemmings).  It probably won't be included in the final game for obvious reasons (for anyone who plays it, at least).

[Clam]

It's a highly volunteer project (publicly submitted levels, modifications to the game interface to make it the same game with more features), so it's more likely to follow through than this or the Multiplayer Online Lemmings Project or whatever it was.

We still don't know if that's going ahead or not. Eric hasn't signed in since we last posted in that thread.

By the way, this may require opinions for deciding what levels to include and what to exclude.  Also, I recommend, since we plan on changing some aspects of the game, we could make it so the tutorial levels are a separated from the main levels in their own section.  I HATE tutorial levels.

I dunno... If we don't make players do the tutorials, they might skip them get stuck because they missed something important. If we do make them do the tutorials, they might get bored before they open up the "real" levels. The first few levels in the original Lemmings game weren't really thorough tutorials - they were just easy levels that focused on one or two skills at a time. Maybe we could do something similar, or have a system where each level builds on the previous ones. For example, you could have a builder level and a basher level available at the start, and when you complete one, you unlock a level that uses both (as per the Revolution system).

Following on from this, we could arrange the levels on the level select screen (there's a screenshot of this a few pages back) so that they are grouped together according to the types of skills you need to use to complete the level - you could have climber and floater levels at the top, builder levels in the middle, and digger levels at the bottom. Do you like this idea, or would you prefer that the order was random in this regard? (Of course the difficulty would increase from left to right.)

[Dullstar]

It's a highly volunteer project (publicly submitted levels, modifications to the game interface to make it the same game with more features), so it's more likely to follow through than this or the Multiplayer Online Lemmings Project or whatever it was.

We still don't know if that's going ahead or not. Eric hasn't signed in since we last posted in that thread.

By the way, this may require opinions for deciding what levels to include and what to exclude.  Also, I recommend, since we plan on changing some aspects of the game, we could make it so the tutorial levels are a separated from the main levels in their own section.  I HATE tutorial levels.

I dunno... If we don't make players do the tutorials, they might skip them get stuck because they missed something important. If we do make them do the tutorials, they might get bored before they open up the "real" levels. The first few levels in the original Lemmings game weren't really thorough tutorials - they were just easy levels that focused on one or two skills at a time. Maybe we could do something similar, or have a system where each level builds on the previous ones. For example, you could have a builder level and a basher level available at the start, and when you complete one, you unlock a level that uses both (as per the Revolution system).

Following on from this, we could arrange the levels on the level select screen (there's a screenshot of this a few pages back) so that they are grouped together according to the types of skills you need to use to complete the level - you could have climber and floater levels at the top, builder levels in the middle, and digger levels at the bottom. Do you like this idea, or would you prefer that the order was random in this regard? (Of course the difficulty would increase from left to right.)

Contact Eric, or find someone else.
We could include a readme that says that if you don't understand something, they can play the tutorial levels.  Your idea, however is good.

[Clam]

If people won't play the tutorials, they're not likely to look at the readme either

[Dullstar]

Good point...
Let's move this discussion to the actual thread for it, though...