I'm no longer going to be having such an active role in the site.

[namida]

Hi everyone.

I've already mentioned this to the existing staff (and a select few other members due to their involvement with the site or in specific projects that may be affected), but recently I've not really had that much interest in Lemmings again, and have also been quite busy with other projects and real-life stuff, so I felt it was best that I hand control over to others. At the moment, the exact details of this is still under discussion, but most likely it will be passed to existing staff members anyway.

I'll continue to fund the site's hosting, so there's no worries about anything relating to hosting costs (although donations are always appreciated; see the "staff / donations / etc" topic by ccexplore for details on how to donate). Likewise, I'll still probably still pop by fairly often. I simply won't be so actively involved in running the site, as such.

For those who are worried about a repeat of what happened towards the end of the last site's lifespan - we have multiple means in place to avoid this, including that all other staff members (except board-specific moderators) have the details on multiple means of contacting me outside of the site, and all administrators have direct access to the site's files and database (and I have asked them to re-verify that they can still access it). We're also theoretically keeping far more regular backups (which are accessible not only by the administrators, but also the global moderators), though this does get a bit behind at times - we really do need to completely automate it (currently it's semi-automated, but still ultimately involves a fair bit of manual work). Basically, there is next to no chance of a repeat of what happened last time, even if I were to completely disappear like our previous admin did.

This will of course also affect NeoLemmix; at this point I am not sure what will happen there. If anyone with experience in Delphi (or just with OOP progamming in general and willing to try to learn Delphi - it isn't that tricky if you already know the general concepts of OOP) is interested in taking over NeoLemmix, let me know. (Of course it's open source so anyone could fork it if they like, but ideally I'd also like to have it officially passed on to someone.)

We'll give further details when any decisions are made. But the most important thing is - do not worry about the site disappearing. One way or another, it will survive, and chances are you won't notice any significant changes.



Update!

Simon will be considered the highest-authority admin for now; he may choose to pass this on to someone else at a later date. This includes that he gets the final say on any new admins or moderators. geoo and ccexplore, of course, remain as extra administrators.
Nepster will be maintaining NeoLemmix itself from now on, including decisions on who (if anyone) else is officially accepted as a contributor. He will also be the administrator of the NeoLemmix IRC channel. I'll continue to provide assistance with understanding NL code for as long as that's needed, but I won't be directly contributing.
Nessy will be taking over the NeoLemmix website; Nepster also has server and database access for it.

As mentioned above, I'll continue to be the primary funder of both websites (the forums and the NeoLemmix site); however, donations are always appreciated. More information on how to donate can be found in ccexplore's forum staff / donations topic. I will also continue to provide the monetary prizes for official forum level design contests.

[Nepster]

I will continue working of NeoLemmix, even though there are quite a few parts I have no clue about (at the moment) and namida was a lot more proficient in Delphi than I am. I will continue working on the new-formats version, for reasons I will explain the the Future Plan for NeoLemmix thread.

So my to-do list at the moment is the following:
1) Get the current exp-version to compile in the Delphi XE6 (instead of Delphi 7 which was used previously). namida was already able to do this, but at the moment I still have to teach the new IDE where my Graphics32 library is...
2) Change the pack and level format a bit, so that the level files themselves contain pre- and post-messages and the talisman infos. Currently each of them is stored in a separate test file, which contains these infos for all levels in the pack together.
This is the only part of the new file-format that I am not happy with at the moment.
3) Update the graphics converter and the nxp converter (that namida already coded) to these changes.
4) Create a new Flexi Toolkit. It will likely only have the basic features at first.
5) Check the existing new-formats styles that all pieces have proper names. Moreover collect all VGASpecs in one directory, instead of having one directory for them per pack.
After that we probably can start to convert all existing content and do lots of bug-fixing

Any help is greatly appreciated, be it helping coding NeoLemmix or otherwise.
Especially if anyone wants to maintain the NeoLemmix homepage, this would be a huge help. NeoLemmix will still need it for the auto-download feature of styles, which will become even more important when we move to the new-formats version. I myself am not really keen on doing this, because it simple means more work for me. Compared to working with NeoLemmix this has a few advantages for you:
- You don't have to learn Delphi, only some web-programming skills.
- You don't have to get used to a huge code-base like the NeoLemmix player.
- A lot of work like updating styles, tutorials, ... will require barely any programming skills.

[namida]

For the record, the NeoLemmix website is written on PHP. The code is almost 100% custom, and fairly simple, so there's no need to be familiar with any specific libraries. In fact, many things won't even require knowledge of that - at least until new-formats goes live, downloadable styles is literally just a matter of uploading the DAT file via FTP. Likewise, uploading new versions of NeoLemmix or other tools can be done simply via a web browser-based upload form. This should at least be good enough for now.

[Nessy]

Sorry for missing this post. Nepster has already reached out to me and I have accepted the position of maintaining the NeoLemmix homepage.

For the record, the NeoLemmix website is written on PHP. The code is almost 100% custom, and fairly simple, so there's no need to be familiar with any specific libraries.

Okay, so it's just custom PHP and I don't need to start getting familiar with any libraries beforehand. This means that I'll have to set up a directory in my local server and test out any changes there before making them live. Shouldn't be a problem at all. Because the website is one HTML page and PHP fills it in with content from the database depending on which link is clicked on, I can easily make one CSS (file for styles) file to control the styling of the page. As mentioned to Nepster I won't go super fancy with that, just something nice and simple without sacrificing functionality. This same file can also be used for the "level list" pages if applicable.

[Nepster]

Amazing! Huge thanks to you and looking forward to see your new styling!

[namida]

Update!

Simon will be considered the highest-authority admin for now; he may choose to pass this on to someone else at a later date. This includes that he gets the final say on any new admins or moderators. geoo and ccexplore, of course, remain as extra administrators.
Nepster will be maintaining NeoLemmix itself from now on, including decisions on who (if anyone) else is officially accepted as a contributor. He will also be the administrator of the NeoLemmix IRC channel. I'll continue to provide assistance with understanding NL code for as long as that's needed, but I won't be directly contributing.
Nessy will be taking over the NeoLemmix website; Nepster also has server and database access for it.

As mentioned above, I'll continue to be the primary funder of both websites (the forums and the NeoLemmix site); however, donations are always appreciated. More information on how to donate can be found in ccexplore's forum staff / donations topic. I will also continue to provide the monetary prizes for official forum level design contests.

[Simon]

Thanks for the trust. There is no urgent work, the site runs as smoothly as ever. I'll try my best to keep it that way.

It sounds like you've found a good haven for all projects. Enjoy your time off!

-- Simon