[SUGGESTION] [CONTENT] Overhaul what's included in the offical game NXPs?

[namida]

So, I'm thinking - generally, in cases where games have officially been ported to a different platform, they've often had some adjustments - for example, Win95 Lemmings doesn't support VGASPECs or SuperLemming, so the relevant levels were removed.

Some precedent also exists for this in NeoLemmix - for example, most levels have had unused (or purely decorative) space on the sides removed; blockers that are used solely to time bombers have been removed from the skillsets, and so on. But I see room for further improvement here. So I have a few propositions, some more radical than others. This is not a case of "pick one, ignore others", but rather, several relevant suggestions which we may eventually decide to use some but not others.

Most of these suggestions would only affect Orig and maybe Extra. The first one would affect all games, while one relates exclusively to ONML.



1. Removing most of the time limits.
It is generally a convention in NeoLemmix to not have a time limit unless it's preventing backroutes or a major part of the challenge. Should we go through and apply this to the NeoLemmix conversions of the official games too? Obviously levels like "It's Hero Time" (backroute prevention) or "Heaven Can Wait (We Hope!)" (major part of the challenge) would retain them. Levels where the time limit is barely a factor, such as pretty much all of Fun, on the other hand, would change to having no time limit.

Some levels are a bit borderline. These are levels where the time limit isn't clearly the main factor, but does to some extent contribute to the difficulty. Levels that come to mind here include, for example, the later iterations of "We All Fall Down" (and in this case, with the time limit being identical across all iterations, we should probably keep it even on the early ones if keeping it at all). If this proposal goes ahead, we would also have to decide how to treat these cases.



2. Rename "Introducing SUPERLEMMING"?
Although it hasn't been removed yet, the next (major) update will be removing the Superlemming mode. As such, should this level be renamed? Or, could it be thought of as that it still fits due to being a large, single-lemming level?

Decision: No, leave the name as is.



3. Move the 2-player maps into the Extra Levels pack.
The vanilla Lemmix players already have the 2-player maps in the Extra Levels pack, rather than the official game they're attached to. I feel that this makes a lot more sense, the more I think about it. So should we perhaps move those?

Decision: Yes, move them to the Extra Levels pack.



4. Remove redundant repeats?
Due to instant bombers in NeoLemmix, some repeat levels are completely redundant, or very close to it. The four levels in particular that come to mind (there may be more among the Genesis levels too), with the middle two in particular being redundant, are:

Tricky 15 "Ozone Friendly Lemmings"
Tricky 17 "Diet Lemmingaid"
Taxing 19 "Bomboozal"
Mayhem 19 "Time To Get Up"

Assuming the 5th proposal below gets a "No" response, we'd then need something to replace these levels with. I would think that unless we decide against it altogether, the middle two will go for sure. So we may need anywhere from two to four levels to replace them with.

In the event of needing two, my proposal would be to use the two Amiga Bookclub version levels ("Through The Graveyard" and "Something Weighing On Your Mind?"). In the case of three, perhaps "Going Their Seperate Ways" could be added to the list. In the case of all four, I'd ditch those suggestions and instead propose using the Budget Amiga levels (ie: "Go For It", "Lemming Lament", "It's not over 'til it's over" and "Don't make the wrong choice!"). I also considered the possibility of extra repeats / earlier versions. The levels that I thought may be suitable for repeats are Tricky 27 and Tricky 29, while those that may be suitable for easier versions are Taxing 13 and Taxing 24. (Maybe also a repeat of Fun 3.)

It may be the case that there's also a level in Oh No! More Lemmings! that is purely bomber timing and nothing else. A problem here is that without introducing an entirely new level (which I would feel uncomfortable with going that far), the only spare ONML style level we have available is "Vacation in Gemland" (remember that NeoLemmix conversions are based off the Amiga version, so this level is not used in the H94 conversion).



5. Integrate other version levels into the main games.
This is probably the most radical proposal here. Should we integrate the levels that come from other versions into the main game? This is of course only really relevant to Orig. I would not propose moving the PSP levels in, but certianly the Genesis levels, the Amiga Budget / Bookclub version levels, the alternate Tricky 21s, etc. I'm undecided about the SEGA levels from the Master System version (and would say no to the alternate Tricky 12 repeat and "Sixes Not!"). The alternate special graphics levels from Genesis would most likely also not be integrated. Of course, these levels (as well as any removed under the above proposal) would remain in the Extra Levels pack!

The next question would then be how. Except perhaps in cases to replace the levels removed in proposal 4, I would think the tidiest way (to minimize inconsistency of what level a position refers to) is to only add levels at the end of ranks. This may result in a somewhat erratic difficulty curve, but it's hard to say that Lemmings doesn't to some extent have such in the first place. In the case of Present and Sunsoft, these tend to span the entire range of difficulties; so should they be kept as seperate ranks, or should these too be integrated into Fun / Tricky / Taxing / Mayhem as appropriate? And if so, how do we decide which level goes where? We would probably want to keep a consistent amount of levels per rank, which may somewhat influence the decisions.



Personally, I quite like all of these proposals, although I'm a little bit unsure about #3 and #5. What's everyone else's thoughts on these?

[Wafflem]

1. Removing most of the time limits.
It is generally a convention in NeoLemmix to not have a time limit unless it's preventing backroutes or a major part of the challenge. Should we go through and apply this to the NeoLemmix conversions of the official games too? Obviously levels like "It's Hero Time" (backroute prevention) or "Heaven Can Wait (We Hope!)" (major part of the challenge) would retain them. Levels where the time limit is barely a factor, such as pretty much all of Fun, on the other hand, would change to having no time limit.

Some levels are a bit borderline. These are levels where the time limit isn't clearly the main factor, but does to some extent contribute to the difficulty. Levels that come to mind here include, for example, the later iterations of "We All Fall Down" (and in this case, with the time limit being identical across all iterations, we should probably keep it even on the early ones if keeping it at all). If this proposal goes ahead, we would also have to decide how to treat these cases.

Yes, it makes sense to remove levels where the time limit serves little to no purpose other than to annoy the player. We should all have a discussion on which levels should be removed.

2. Rename "Introducing SUPERLEMMING"?
Although it hasn't been removed yet, the next (major) update will be removing the Superlemming mode. As such, should this level be renamed? Or, could it be thought of as that it still fits due to being a large, single-lemming level?

Hmmmm...that's a good question. You've changed "SUPERLEMMING II: Desert Quest" of Lemmings Plus II to just "Desert Quest". Yeah, maybe the title of this should be changed, to avoid confusion. The problem is, what the title should be changed to..

3. Move the 2-player maps into the Extra Levels pack.
The vanilla Lemmix players already have the 2-player maps in the Extra Levels pack, rather than the official game they're attached to. I feel that this makes a lot more sense, the more I think about it. So should we perhaps move those?

Yes, I would go ahead and do that. The 2-player maps don't really serve much of a purpose except for completeness purposes. Even some of the levels like Lemmings 2P 19 "Island in the Sky" just solve themselves without the need to do anything.

4. Remove redundant repeats?
Due to instant bombers in NeoLemmix, some repeat levels are completely redundant, or very close to it. The four levels in particular that come to mind (there may be more among the Genesis levels too), with the middle two in particular being redundant, are:

Tricky 15 "Ozone Friendly Lemmings"
Tricky 17 "Diet Lemmingaid"
Taxing 19 "Bomboozal"
Mayhem 19 "Time To Get Up"

Assuming the 5th proposal below gets a "No" response, we'd then need something to replace these levels with. I would think that unless we decide against it altogether, the middle two will go for sure. So we may need anywhere from two to four levels to replace them with.

In the event of needing two, my proposal would be to use the two Amiga Bookclub version levels ("Through The Graveyard" and "Something Weighing On Your Mind?"). In the case of three, perhaps "Going Their Seperate Ways" could be added to the list. In the case of all four, I'd ditch those suggestions and instead propose using the Budget Amiga levels (ie: "Go For It", "Lemming Lament", "It's not over 'til it's over" and "Don't make the wrong choice!"). I also considered the possibility of extra repeats / earlier versions. The levels that I thought may be suitable for repeats are Tricky 27 and Tricky 29, while those that may be suitable for easier versions are Taxing 13 and Taxing 24. (Maybe also a repeat of Fun 3.)

It may be the case that there's also a level in Oh No! More Lemmings! that is purely bomber timing and nothing else. A problem here is that without introducing an entirely new level (which I would feel uncomfortable with going that far), the only spare ONML style level we have available is "Vacation in Gemland" (remember that NeoLemmix conversions are based off the Amiga version, so this level is not used in the H94 conversion).

Regarding the ONML level, which level is it exactly? Also, I would rather "Vacation in Gemland" stay where it is currently, as it is seen more as a Holiday Lemmings level than an ONML level.

I don't think we should do the extra repeats idea; I'd rather stick to what Psygnosis/etc. has created for us. We already have people like Ben Conway, Clam, DragonsLover, BulletRide, Proxima, möbius and Colorful Arty making challenging or easier modifications of Orig / Oh No levels.

There are two other levels which are redundant: Mayhem 24 "All Or Nothing", due to that we have directional select and therefore strongly defeats the purpose of this level, which is basher timing, and Mayhem 25 "Have a nice day!" because the solution is the exact same as Tricky 13 "Lemming Drops". So assuming we take these six levels out, we could then add the four Budget Amiga levels, and the two Amiga Bookclub levels. But that leaves out the levels Other 1 "One Way to Freedom", Other 2 "The Apple Computer Level" (if we even need to include that at all), Other 6 "Going their Separate Ways" and Other 7 "Ohayo Lemming-San". Perhaps we can include those four levels in the main difficulties (Other 2 in Fun, Other 7 in Tricky, Other 6 in Taxing, Other 1 in Mayhem), which brings them to 31 levels each (and still consistent). Or we could also consider Proposal #5, which really needs a hefty amount of discussion.

5. Integrate other version levels into the main games.
This is probably the most radical proposal here. Should we integrate the levels that come from other versions into the main game? This is of course only really relevant to Orig. I would not propose moving the PSP levels in, but certianly the Genesis levels, the Amiga Budget / Bookclub version levels, the alternate Tricky 21s, etc. I'm undecided about the SEGA levels from the Master System version (and would say no to the alternate Tricky 12 repeat and "Sixes Not!"). The alternate special graphics levels from Genesis would most likely also not be integrated. Of course, these levels (as well as any removed under the above proposal) would remain in the Extra Levels pack!

The next question would then be how. Except perhaps in cases to replace the levels removed in proposal 4, I would think the tidiest way (to minimize inconsistency of what level a position refers to) is to only add levels at the end of ranks. This may result in a somewhat erratic difficulty curve, but it's hard to say that Lemmings doesn't to some extent have such in the first place. In the case of Present and Sunsoft, these tend to span the entire range of difficulties; so should they be kept as seperate ranks, or should these too be integrated into Fun / Tricky / Taxing / Mayhem as appropriate? And if so, how do we decide which level goes where? We would probably want to keep a consistent amount of levels per rank, which may somewhat influence the decisions.

I like the idea of keeping Present and Sunsoft in their separate ranks, and just putting the Genesis levels with Fun-Mayhem after the end of their ranks. I'll think about this one more, because this one really needs discussion.

Looking through the Extra Player, if we don't count the alternative special graphics, the two test maps (though I wouldn't mind including the test maps) and the remakes of the ONML levels, since that would also count as redundant, here's how many levels we have (I may have miscounted):
7 Fun Levels
9 Tricky Levels
9 Taxing Levels
10 Mayhem Levels

This would bring the number of levels to 37 Fun levels, 39 Tricky levels, 39 Taxing Levels and 40 Mayhem levels. If we keep the number of Present and Sunsoft levels (but again, exclude the ONML levels), we get 29 levels for each. SUNSOFT Special should definitely be kept, since that is a unique VGASPEC level.

But yes, we have a very unbalanced number of levels for each rank if we go ahead with #5. So it could work to move integrate the Present and SUNSOFT levels to the main ranks, but even some of these levels, are much harder than Mayhem. I also wouldn't mind integrating the Sega levels into the main ranks, but seeing as Mayhem has the repeats of all five Sega levels, this can cause even more imbalance. Therefore, we gotta think this through...

Alternatively, since #4 and #5 can potentially overcomplicate things, I would say we should just leave the levels the way they are. Proposals 1-3 could work, though.

[Gronkling]

1. No, they're part of the original level design. There's no reason to remove them and we would have to draw a line on what constitutes a 'useless' time limit, which is quite subjective and is very dependant on skill. Basically it would require a lot of discussion despite not being worth it.

2. The level name should stay as the 'superlemming mode' name is (if I assume correctly) based on that level's title and not the other way around.

3. As Neolemmix doesn't support 2-player mode, and many ports didn't have it I don't think many people will expect these to be included in the main original pack. It's probably safe to move them to the Extra Official or even their own separate pack however it's just as fine to leave them as is. I don't really have an opinion on this.

4. They should stay, the original packs should keep the original levels that people expect even if they are made a bit redundant. The original pack already has redundant repeats anyway, e.g. Have a Nice Day / The Fast Food Kitchen

5. I don't think any levels should be removed or replaced.

[Proxima]

I'll post my thoughts on all five questions in a moment. Just wanted to reply to a couple of points....

Regarding the ONML level, which level is it exactly?

namida was speaking hypothetically. In fact there is no bombers-only level in ONML. There are two where bomber timing is the main point of the level (Crazy 3, Havoc 20), but both have other skills as well, and they are not repeats. Bomboozal with instant bombers is functionally identical to a previous level, but removing Crazy 3 or Havoc 20 would be removing a puzzle so that it no longer appears at all.

(Wild 1 and Wicked 6 are of course also meant to be bomber-timing fests, but both give enough other destructive skills for the levels to be passed without using bombers at all!)

There are two other levels which are redundant: Mayhem 24 "All Or Nothing", due to that we have directional select and therefore strongly defeats the purpose of this level, which is basher timing, and Mayhem 25 "Have a nice day!" because the solution is the exact same as Tricky 13 "Lemming Drops".

Agreed on Mayhem 24. Strong disagree on Mayhem 25 -- it has fewer skills than Tricky 13. It's true that Tricky 13 is easy enough (especially in the waterless DOS version) that many players will pass it the first time with a solution that also works on Mayhem 25, but there are a wider variety of possible solutions, and many players will find a more complex solution originally. The variety of possible challenges is different on the two levels, and Mayhem 25 currently has a talisman.

As for Gronkling's suggestion of Mayhem 15, namida said that NeoLemmix conversions are based on the original Amiga levels, so that level is not redundant as it is in the watered-down DOS version.

[Proxima]

Now, my opinions on the five questions, and a suggestion.

1. Removing most of the time limits.

No (but see #5 below). NL is too new to say with certainty that anything "is generally a convention". You prefer not to use time limits (except the two types you mentioned), you've updated your old packs to remove time limits, and you've included "don't use time limits" in your advice to new architects -- which is fine. But it's up to architects to decide whether they want to follow that advice. In the case of original Lemmings, the data structure enforces that every level has a time limit -- but the levels were made by the same people who created the game, so that was their choice.

(I still don't entirely agree that the time limit on It's Hero Time was chosen for backroute prevention. I think you're right about the particular solution you described probably being the intended solution, but there are other ways to do it, even within the time limit -- and in any case, the clock varies from one version to another. It looks like the designers just didn't think much about the range of possible solutions, weren't interested in enforcing a particular solution, and just wanted the level to be a hard challenge, with the time limit being one aspect of that.)

2. Rename "Introducing SUPERLEMMING"?

Perhaps we should make "inroduce" a neologism for "to introduce a feature that is later abandoned" 

3. Move the 2-player maps into the Extra Levels pack.

Yes, good idea. They aren't playable as intended without a 2-player mode, but it's nice to have the level data in case designers want to use it for building repeat levels. But it shouldn't be in the main game.

4. Remove redundant repeats?

Yes, remove Tricky 17, Taxing 19 and Mayhem 24. This may seem inconsistent with what I said earlier, since it's going against the designers' choice -- but we've made the decision that all levels have untimed bombers and directional select, and keeping these three levels is inconsistent with that.

5. Integrate other version levels into the main games.

No. The Genesis levels were designed to be played in order interleaved among the Amiga levels that were retained on the Genesis version. Mashing the two together is inauthentic.

Instead, I have a new suggestion. We should make a Lemmings Redux -- an NXP using the original (and ONML, Genesis and Extra) levels, but allowing any changes that improve the playing experience. In this pack, we could throw out time limits; de-backroute levels like Taxing 1; move the levels around as much as we like; remove less interesting levels like much of Tame; remove some of the less interesting repeats; add new repeats; make single-player versions of 2-player levels; remake some Brick levels in other tilesets; move trapdoors and exits to new places; anything we want, except for the overriding stipulation that we only use the original levels as a base, and don't design any from scratch.

It would be a community project, but it should have one person as a team leader who makes the final decisions -- otherwise there will be too many minor disagreements (should we keep or remove the decorative terrain on Taxing 27, for example) and it would slow the project down far too much if we had to vote on every little thing. I'm going to propose namida as team leader, since NeoLemmix is his thing, but it would be a lot of work, so if namida doesn't want to do it then I'm happy to give it a go. That's if the community agrees that it would be worth doing this at all.

What does everyone think?

[Wafflem]

Instead, I have a new suggestion. We should make a Lemmings Redux -- an NXP using the original (and ONML, Genesis and Extra) levels, but allowing any changes that improve the playing experience. In this pack, we could throw out time limits; de-backroute levels like Taxing 1; move the levels around as much as we like; remove less interesting levels like much of Tame; remove some of the less interesting repeats; add new repeats; make single-player versions of 2-player levels; remake some Brick levels in other tilesets; move trapdoors and exits to new places; anything we want, except for the overriding stipulation that we only use the original levels as a base, and don't design any from scratch.

It would be a community project, but it should have one person as a team leader who makes the final decisions -- otherwise there will be too many minor disagreements (should we keep or remove the decorative terrain on Taxing 27, for example) and it would slow the project down far too much if we had to vote on every little thing. I'm going to propose namida as team leader, since NeoLemmix is his thing, but it would be a lot of work, so if namida doesn't want to do it then I'm happy to give it a go. That's if the community agrees that it would be worth doing this at all.

What does everyone think?

I strongly support this idea! This will be a major improvement of the original lemmings games we love! It would be very nice to move levels such as Tricky 26 "I have a cunning plan" and Taxing 26 "Triple Trouble" to the difficulties that they truly belong to, and it would also be very nice to take out backroutes and remove unnecessary levels. In fact, this was something that möbius was working on more than a year ago! We haven't gotten any progress on that since.

[namida]

We should make a Lemmings Redux -- an NXP using the original (and ONML, Genesis and Extra) levels, but allowing any changes that improve the playing experience. In this pack, we could throw out time limits; de-backroute levels like Taxing 1; move the levels around as much as we like; remove less interesting levels like much of Tame; remove some of the less interesting repeats; add new repeats; make single-player versions of 2-player levels; remake some Brick levels in other tilesets; move trapdoors and exits to new places; anything we want, except for the overriding stipulation that we only use the original levels as a base, and don't design any from scratch.

This could be an interesting proposal. I would say that if we were to do this, we should not go ahead with any of the ideas here (except moving the 2P levels to the Extras pack, and maybe the renaming of Wicked 2 (precedent: Fun 6 has been renamed "A task for bombers" in NeoLemmix)); and possibly even revert some of the changes that have been made (such as the removal of blockers in Fun 6 - which would then nullify the name change, and destroy the precedent that would otherwise exist for Wicked 2.. hmm...).

I'd be happy to coordinate such a project; while I do already have a lot of Lemmings-related tasks, I suspect this one would be relatively little effort, and might be an interesting change of pace from the others. I'm not sure about how I feel about all your specific suggestions for it (don't get me wrong, I like most of them), but perhaps at this point we should see what the general opinion is on this idea as a whole before discussing finer details. Unless there seems to be no interest in it, I might put up some of my thoughts for it later. (I'm also not really sure how I feel about the name, but we have a long time to decide on that.)

[Simon]

Lemmings Redux: Who would want to play that?

New people who haven't beaten L1 yet? They want the game "true to the original" in some weird way they make up. Playing on an emulator is true. Framestepping isn't true already for some. Changing the levels makes it untrue.

Experienced players want good user packs. So make good levels instead. L1 has horrible average level quality, why commit your new pack prematurely to that?

-- Simon

[Proxima]

I would, for one -- there are plenty of times when I feel in the mood for relaxing by playing some levels that aren't "stare at it for a few hours and you might solve it if you're very lucky". Unfortunately, the number of annoying levels in L1, like We All Fall Down and Hunt the Nessy, spoils it to some extent, as does having the overall better Genesis levels tucked away in their own pack.

The assertion that new players want the game "true to the original" is baseless. I know some players have that kind of attitude -- for instance my friend Jonathan who is strongly attached to the original Repton games and prefers to edit the PC versions to delete anything new that wasn't in the originals. Honestly, though, I think that attitude is uncommon. If I were showing the series to a friend who hadn't played Lemmings before, there's no reason to think he/she would have a particular attachment to the original game. A well-done Redux pack would be a smoother introduction and a more enjoyable experience for new players.

[Simon]

Re: easier pack: Yes, we lack those. The Genesis pack is good. But if there shall be another easier pack, why limit yourself from the beginning to L1-like levels?

Re: true attitude: I have found the true-to-something attitude extremely common. Lemmings was a smash hit in 1991, the levels were largely identical across the major L1 ports. So there are "true" levels, unlike Sokoban, or Tetris mechanics.

We have many new users asking about L1 in Dosbox or running L1 natively. On the 2010-2014 forums, the most-read thread was "Lemmings on Windows 7", and it explained how to set up Dosbox. Winlemm, Lemmini, and Lemmix have all been around at that time.

I accept how this argument isn't 100 % solid, because people search://lemmings Windows 7/ and generate views for that thread, even when they don't care about true.

-- Simon

[Proxima]

But there's a selection bias: you're talking about people who come to the forum specifically to ask about setting up original Lemmings. I'm talking about sharing the game with friends whose only previous experience of Lemmings is that they've heard it exists.

[namida]

For now, I'm going to make the adjustments in regards to moving the two player levels, and probably leave the title of Wicked 2 unchanged. We'll see where things go as to the other proposals.

On one hand, I do really like Proxima's idea. On the other, while I don't nessecerially agree with Simon's point about that it isn't useful to everyone, I would think that people are most likely to either play the authentic DOS games (or at most, Lemmix, which attempts to reproduce DOS as accurately as possible) if they want authenticity, or if they're unconcerned enough about that to use NeoLemmix in the first place - which I imagine many would be - they probably aren't going to be too worried about the fact that there's been some alteration to the content and combining from various packs.

Perhaps the "Redux" version should be made, and promoted as the "main" means of having the official games on NeoLemmix, while the more-direct conversions remain available for those who want them to base levels off, or for some reason define their "acceptable level of authenticity" point as being where those conversions lie.

[Simon]

I'm talking about sharing the game with friends whose only previous experience of Lemmings is that they've heard it exists.

That calls for good easier packs. It doesn't call specifically for de-sucking L1 levels. Removing most of Tame would be bad for this purpose.

Agree how I'm biased to who has searched for Lemmings. Spreading the culture by hand is different.

-- Simon

[namida]

Given that there seems to be enough interest in the Redux project, and the changes unrelated to it have all been made or rejected, I'm going to close this topic now.