[NeoLemmix] Paralems

[Strato Incendus]

I was unsure whether a pack where not everything about the levels is set in stone should still be considered "in development". But as I've seen in a neighbouring thread, Nessy has also released a pack yesterday and might still do some changes to fix backroutes. Therefore, since all five ranks in my pack are completed, I consider it "finished" for a first version.

So let me hereby introduce you to PARALEMS.






I decided to go with this name because the pack strays from the mainstream NeoLemmix philosophy of being a puzzle game. It should therefore be noted right from the start that mechanically, this may be a NeoLemmix pack, featuring lots of the new objects, skills, and zombies; philosophically however, it is more of a Lemmix pack. Don't expect puzzles only when you download this, because that is not what PARALEMS is going for!



A quick overview of what you're getting yourself into here:

General
- Paralems has 150 levels distributed equally among five ranks: Harmless, Disturbing, Disgusting, Abhorrent, and Demented
- some levels are re-runs of original Lemmings levels, but this time they have to be solved with different (NeoLemmix-) skills
- quite a few levels contain zombies, however they don't appear prior to the Abhorrent rank
- Paralems tries to go along with the original Lemmings philosophy of "different cognitive demands from different levels". While some levels may be "puzzly", others will "measure" different cognitive skills, such as multitasking, creative (ab-)use of gameplay mechanics, or just pure reaction speed.
- There are time limits on most of the levels, again going along with original Lemmings.
- Occasionally, there will be hidden traps or exits, like in the original Lemmings. This is mostly done for aesthetic reasons, or to create the impression of the Lemmings actually entering into a building, a spaceship, or similar. Therefore, for exits it is usually fairly logical where they are going to be. As it is also said in the pack itself, looking behind doors, windows or inside buildings / vessels might be a good idea in general. You obviously can always use true physics mode, but I doubt it will even be necessary: On a macro scale, the position of the exit should be quite obvious, and on a micro scale, the skill blueprint of a digger or basher stopping at the trigger is a clear hint something is going to happen there .
- Beware of animals . Most of them are not friendly, even if they may be in other packs...

Spoiler

Friend or foe?


Does this look familiar?


A more puzzly one

For the "reaction time" levels, you obviously could run them with the pause button switched on. I can't stop you from doing that, but you will probably notice pretty quickly that you're fooling yourself , because these levels are specifically designed to measure speed.
For the multi-tasking levels, I recommend zooming out by using the scrolling button of your mouse. It's really helpful for keeping track of all that's going on simultaneously at opposite ends of the screen.

Spoiler

Multitasking!

The extremes
While most of these levels are pretty "normal", I've also made some to deliberately take things to their extremes. There is:
- a level without any terrain
- a level without any skills (that doesn't mean you can't do anything, though... )
- a level situated entirely under water
- a level that will fail before the "Let's Go!" sound if you aren't fast enough
- an ultimate trolling level where all the normal rules of Lemmings are turned on their head...

I can however assure that all of these levels are solvable, and I will gladly upload replays of any particular level as a proof .

Flavour and music
Many levels in this pack are definitely more driven by flavour than by mechanics. Their titles will refer to movies, books, music, politics... or just the current state of the world.
There might be some stuff in here that could theoretically "offend" some people; to me, no concept or idea is above scrutiny or mockery - like original Lemmings sparked some controversy with "All the 6's".

Spoiler

Mmh... where might the exit be in a pirate level?

The allusions to the mentioned topics are usually more than obvious, so especially for "movie levels", it would make sense to run them with the original scores as soundtrack. Obviously, these are copyrighted, so I can't upload them. But in case you own any of the tracks yourself, since they are quite popular, I encourage you to put them into your NeoLemmix music folder under the following names, so that the levels where they belong to automatically recognise them. As long as you only do this for private use, it will certainly improve the atmosphere of playing this pack .

I obviously wouldn't suggest doing this though if you're a Let's Player, like Flopsy, namida, IchoTolot etc.

Spoiler

Movie scores:
Apocalypse Now / Richard Wagner "Ride of the Valkyries" - RW_ride
Bionicle movie soundtrack - Bionicle_main
Game of Thrones main theme - GOT_main
Harry Potter main theme - HP_main
Pirates of the Carribean "The Black Pearl" - PC_blackpearl
Pirates of the Carribean "He's a Pirate" - PC_pirate
Pirates of the Carribean "What Shall We Die For?" - PC_wswdf
Orphan Black main theme - OB_main
Raumpatrouille Orion main theme - orion_main
Star Wars main theme - SW_main
Star Wars imperial march - SW_march
Star Trek main theme - Star_Trek_main
The Walking Dead main theme - WD_main
The X-Files main theme - X_files_main
Twilight / YIRUMA "River Flows in You" - YIRUMA_river

Lastly, there is a level called "Srpski level" . If you get what that refers to, the soundtrack for that one should be named serbian_main.

National anthems (instrumental):
American national anthem - US_anthem
French national anthem - France_anthem
"Kekistani" anthem "Shadilay" - KEK_anthem

Video game music:
Lemmings 3D soundtrack (I name these according to the first level they appear in)
"Take a Dive" - 3D_turkarmy
"That's right" - 3D_piano
"A shortcut through the forest" - 3D_woodwaltz
(the other song from the forest levels) - 3D_forestparty
"Alpine Assault Course" - 3D_alp
"Alilems" - 3D_alien
"Hole in Ten" - 3D_golf
"Hole in One, Two, Three" - 3D_carribean
"Dot to Dot" / Haunted Moonbase - 3D_moonbase
"The prisoner" - 3D_egypt_prison
"King Coder's tomb" - 3D_egypt_king

Hype: The Time Quest soundtrack main theme - HYPE_main
Hype: The Time Quest soundtrack tower ascension - HYPE_ascend
Hype: The Time Quest soundtrack race - HYPE_race
Divinity 2: The Dragon Knight Saga soundtrack, Sentinel Island theme - DIV_sentinel
Worms World Party main theme - Worms_main

Songs by bands:
Nightwish "Imaginaerum" - NW_imag
Nightwish "Last of the Wilds" - NW_lastwild
Nocturnal Rites "Fool's Parade" - NR_foolsp
Schandmaul "Sturmnacht" - SM_sturm
Schandmaul "Waldgeflüster" - SM_wald
TEN "March of the Argonauts" - TEN_argo
TEN "Remembrance for the Brave" - TEN_remem
Sugababes "Push the Button" (instrumental) - SUGA_push
Günther "Ding Dong Song" - dingdong
Blink182... well, they made a little song that has something to do with a dog - Blink182_dog

Those last two are the only two pieces with sung vocals.

This is my first attempt at creating a level pack, so bear with me . Thanks to the NeoLemmix engine, you can play these levels in whatever order you like, so I hope there's something in here for everyone.

Some levels may be too easy or have backroutes; some may be too mean; some just redundant or not in the right rank for their difficulty. Hopefully we will be able to identify those together.

If I've sparked your interest and you're ready to take a look, I always appreciate your feedback .

Download link, Paralems Version 2, since this file seems to be too large to attach:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r005kodylk2o33z/Paralems.nxp?dl=1

[Ryemanni]

150 levels!

I will give it a shot soon! Can't wait to play the "ultimate trolling level"..

[Strato Incendus]

Thanks! As you can probably imagine, that level comes quite late in the game.

I've just noticed however that you will probably be the only one on this forum who understands the 15th level of Harmless... I doubt the title is grammatically correct though .

[Colorful Arty]

Just finished the first rank, and I love it! Great intro levels, and I really felt like these had a similar feel to the Fun levels in original Lemmings. I cannot wait to play the other ranks!

My replays are attached, here are some general comments about the levels:

Spoiler

I like hidden exits as long as either it's obvious where the exit is, or you have tons of skills and the level is an exploration level rather than a puzzle level with a hidden exit. Dungeons and Lemmings and Treasure Island did an excellent job with this, while Twilems, Praise Kek, and The Phantom Lemace I felt were not obvious enough. I also know that lots of forum members dislike hidden exits of any kind even if they are blatantly obvious where they are hidden, so that's just something to keep in mind.

Despite The Phantom Lemace having an unobvious hidden exit with fairly restrictive skills, the UFO the exit is hidden in is an amazing piece of architecture!

I feel like Three Waves of Leminism should be further up the rank, as it was quite a bit trickier than the ones after it.

Death Titan is my favorite level in the rank; it is very similar to the boss fight levels I put in my SubLems pack!

[Strato Incendus]

Hey Colorful Arty, thanks for your feedback! I guess we're going to have a lot of "inside spoiler-conversations" now ^^, but it's certainly better this way than doing everything via PM, in case others who have finished the rank want to read it as well.

So spoiler warning for the Harmless rank:

Spoiler

Twilems - Yeah, that's one I've been considering to remove for a while now, and I'm glad you confirmed my suspicions . I don't even know what I was thinking with that one, I only remember it was one of the first levels I build. The two platformers don't make sense at all, because they aren't enough to make it across the water, nor do you have enough swimmers to save everyone. I guess back then I thought the platformer could be used in NeoLemmix just the same as in Lemmings 2, where the platformer's bricks are thicker so they can cover up trap triggers. That would have been an alternative way to pass the stomper on the right... but there's a disarmer for that anyway, so it's really misleading. I really only kept that level for atmospheric and aesthetic reasons. Perhaps I can thoroughly rehaul it into something interesting, like replacing the door of that house on the right with a (visible) exit and forcing the way down there with one-way-down arrows?

Praise Kek - I honestly completely forgot about the hidden exit there! ^^ Well, I guess I could just remove a couple of bricks inside the pyramid on the right, and it wouldn't make a change to the level mechanically whatsoever. Especially since there's another much larger pyramid in the level that is probably a huge "bait" for the player to guess the exit was there. Thanks for pointing this out!

The Phantom Lemace - Here we have the dilemma, and I'm glad you recognised that as well : This is what I meant in my starting post by "hiding the exit for aesthetic reasons": It certainly LOOKS cooler with the exit being hidden inside the UFO, but since it's not a building or has a door, it's not that obvious where to look and makes the level more annoying mechanically. My hope was the level structure from left to right would imply "get to the UFO", but that's easy enough to say for me as the creator. It could just as easily be in that little triangular thing.
So perhaps I should just borrow that "EXIT" logo from the LPIII-Sky-tileset and slam it right on top of that UFO?

Three Waves of Lemminism - Well, your solution was not quite the obvious one ^^. You picked the team behind the one-way blocks as the "salvation team" by bombing against the direction. The intended way to solve this was simply to build up to the ceiling with the team on the right, and then bomb through it. Free the guys on the left by bashing through the one-way block, and mine down to those on the bottom left while they build up to meet the others there.
But now that you say it, I remember that "Call in the bomb squad" from original lemmings, where the same strategy of bombing through the ceiling has to be used, doesn't appear until all the way up to the end of Taxing! So in its current form, this level definitely has to go higher. This was one of the levels I created on WinLems first, so I didn't have a Fencer.
Adding one or two would obviously make this much easier and pull it back to Fun difficulty, I guess... but it's probably better to keep the level this way and exchange its position with some level from a higher rank, one that might turn out to be too easy? There certainly will be a couple , and it's good to know we have another difficult one up our sleeves to replace one of those easier ones with.

The Death Titan - Haha, that's surprising to hear, because that's precisely one of those aforementioned levels which I thought would be too easy! Well, if you liked that one, I can promise you will see that beast again ^^...
But yeah, it's also one of these pure-flavour levels, kinda like original Menacing, which wasn't really mechanically challenging either.

Loch Lemmond - Thanks for showing me that gap in the terrain right before the exit! ^^ That will be fixed in the next version. Originally I wanted the lemmings to go all the way over the flag... then I did some solutions with going through the pole of the flag, but never underneath it. I might add some steel though in the next version and thereby enforce the way over the top of the flag.

Taming the Beast - The way you solved this level, by stalling the other lemmings with builders and having the disarmer walk across the snail while the others bash through it, that was definitely worthy of a higher ranking! In fact, you solved several of these Harmless levels the way their re-runs will have to be solved, for example "Treasure Island" and "Zig-Zag" (my brother gave me that idea, but I kinda expected a seasoned player like you to know that trick as well, and I wasn't disappointed ).

By the way, I haven't created any talismans yet, but try to solve "Tailor-made for stackers" with saving 100% ^^ - it is possible, and you're going to need that trick for a later level...

[Nepster]

I played the first two-and-a-half ranks. They indeed resemble much more the original game, than many of the newer custom packs. Even though some levels were clearly not intended to be played with all the framestepping and other help, I made use of the liberally. Replays are attached.

Some general remarks

1) You have some amazing designs, like "The Death Titan", "The Menagerie", "Face the Hydra" or "The Phantom Lemace" (though I took the trap to be the exit, there)
2) From the puzzling perspective, I liked "A staircase of skulls" most, at least so far.
3) Do you have a working replay for "Skies aflame" (Disgusting 10)? As far as I can tell the hatch and the exit are completely separated by the steel wall and the fire trigger areas on the top.
4) If a hatch has preassigned skills, we usually place pick-up skills with the corresponding skill on top of the hatch, to inform the player about that.
5) Some levels have a huge amount of builders or platformers, e.g. "Suomalainen Lemminkainen". This makes the level much less interesting, because one can just build over all the obstacles.
6) In several levels, you give us lots of lemmings, who will still spawn when the road to the exit is finished. This is a matter of personal taste, but I prefer to reduce the number of lemmings in such cases.
7) I noticed that on some of the levels, you filled in the author field, while it is missing on others. It's only a minor detail, but you might want to make this uniform.

[Strato Incendus]

Thanks for playing and uploading your replays, Nepster! I will return to your pack soon, too, I just took a pause to look at Nessy's new offering, after other users had said the level building style of the two of you was very similar .

Judging from your replays, you solved a lot of these levels the way my brother solved them, so I will encourage him to try your pack next - apparently you and him seem to think in similar patterns ^^. Except that you seem to like builders a lot, even when other skills would provide a faster route ...

That takes me to your remarks, I'm going to answer in spoiler form again.

Spoiler for Harmless rank

Spoiler

1) You have some amazing designs, like "The Death Titan", "The Menagerie", "Face the Hydra" or "The Phantom Lemace" (though I took the trap to be the exit, there)

Thanks a lot! I guess Death Titan has a safe spot in the pack now... to think I almost considered removing these two levels ^^!

And that airlock on Phantom Lemace is totally an exit! Just probably not to where you want your lemmings to go to . But yeah, putting the "EXIT" sign from the Sky tileset on the UFO as an overwrite object will hopefully help.

Nice trick on "Taming the Beast" / "The Menagerie" to trap the crowd behind the dog! I was impressed with Colorful Arty's solution already, his way of solving it was all about timing - kinda like you did it in "Torture Pit".

And I see on the next level, your lemmings didn't all have to rise up, because you had a "cunning plan" ...

I also liked your take on "Three waves of Lemminism". There seem to be so many different solutions for this level, there might be potential for a re-run in there. That's the nice part about Fun-difficulty levels, giving the player enough extra skills to toy around, and see what they come up with.

Congratulations on finding the 100% solution for Tailor-made for stackers! As I promised, that knowledge will be useful, in fact vital to you on a later level .

Btw, I appreciate your ambition to solve levels without using the disarmer whenever possible! ^^

And thanks for going over the top of the flag on Loch Lemmond! You're the first one to solve this the intended way! ^^ --> needs more steel

Spoiler for Disturbing rank

Spoiler

2) From the puzzling perspective, I liked "A staircase of skulls" most, at least so far.

Your solution has shown me that apparently, 10 stoners are enough for this one. 11 is an odd number to go with anyway. I'm just not sure whether the level would become too difficult for the second rank if I removed that one stoner.

You kinda backrouted the other staircase level, "Staircase to Armageddon". However, it was not an obvious background for me, so I might just leave the level this way. However, I might be primed / biased towards the bombing solution due to this being an adaptation of a Worms World Party level.
The solution to remove the backroute would be to cut the single blocker; that would require the player to make a trap pit at the bottom using bombers, like on "Turn around young lemmings" in the original game. That's a Tricky level, so it would probably still be justifiable to do that on a second rank. Might push the level a little higher within the rank, though.

I've also been considering to cut two bashers on "It's not always what it seems", because I had also found the 1 miner, 1 basher-solution and I believe that would just be a nice thing on top to make it a little more deserving of the second rank.

You've also saved yourself some platformers on "Across the seven seas" by digging in a different position than I always did, so I can probably reduce their number as well.

Spoiler for Disgusting rank (up to level 10)

Spoiler

3) Do you have a working replay for "Skies aflame" (Disgusting 10)? As far as I can tell the hatch and the exit are completely separated by the steel wall and the fire trigger areas on the top.

Are you sure all of those are fire areas?

4) If a hatch has preassigned skills, we usually place pick-up skills with the corresponding skill on top of the hatch, to inform the player about that.

Mmh... I hadn't thought about that . May be worth considering. I'm just going through all the levels in my head and wonder whether I might break some levels by doing that - because these pickup skills would be legitimate objects in the level. Some players might try collecting them ^^. This obviously wouldn't be of any use for the lemmings coming out of that specific hatch, because they already have that particular skill. On levels with several hatches with different preassigned skills however, like "Volunteers first!", this might give skills to certain lemmings who shouldn't have them. Since this hatch labeling would have to be done consistently for all 150 levels, I'm a little hesitant.

Furthermore, there are also a lot of zombies that have skills. Some of them come out of hatches, but others are pre-placed, so those couldn't be labeled, either. For the pre-placed ones, the player has no choice but to identify their skills by reading the letter code. That's why I've included an info screen about the abbreviations before the first skilled zombies-level; I hope that will suffice .

5) Some levels have a huge amount of builders or platformers, e.g. "Suomalainen Lemminkainen". This makes the level much less interesting, because one can just build over all the obstacles.

I answer to this here in the Disgusting spoiler, because "The Pit and the PenduLem" is certainly the level most guilty of that. I was way too generous with builders back when I build this one for WinLems. "Suomalainen Lemminkainen" is a perfect example of where I could enforce the way down through the trees by just cutting some builders, indeed. Unless the player bashes at exactly the right place for the first tree, however, going through all of them will require a bomber. That in turn will require to turn loose the crowd at that stage in time already, so I wanted to provide some extra builders for "security staircases" that prevent the crowd from splatting while a single lemming is building.

6) In several levels, you give us lots of lemmings, who will still spawn when the road to the exit is finished. This is a matter of personal taste, but I prefer to reduce the number of lemmings in such cases.

Okay, neat idea... I just guess this is heavily dependant on how fast someone creates the road to the exit, and how early they turn up the release rate ^^? You as a seasoned player are obviously faster at that than a more casual player.
I might look into that, it seems to be a comparatively minor issue, though. Plus, the number of lemmings coming out is actually slightly more relevant with time limits. I did deliberately reduce the number of lemmings on a level from the Demented rank, because there the number in combination with a destructive skill that had to be used at the end could really make or break the level.

7) I noticed that on some of the levels, you filled in the author field, while it is missing on others. It's only a minor detail, but you might want to make this uniform.

Yep, I feared that would be the case ^^. Will remove the author names for the next iteration, because it gives me a reason to look at every single level file again, anyway .

PS: A note to Raymanni: The "ultimate trolling level" (it's not named that way, though ) will probably be ruined instantly if you use true physics mode. So if you enjoy getting trolled, resist that temptation - you can't un-see things, after all .
PPS:

Even though some levels were clearly not intended to be played with all the framestepping and other help, I made use of the liberally.

I just wanted to state at this point that I really miss the Frenzy gimmick ^^. Lemmings Revolution made excellent use of that!

[Nepster]

Some comments to your reply

Except that you seem to like builders a lot, even when other skills would provide a faster route ...

Well, I have a frame-stepping hotkey, that advances a little bot more than 10 seconds and so takes to exactly to the time when the builder finishes. This way I can build long bridges extremely fast, much faster than using lots of different skills that would otherwise yield to a solution that is shorter in game-time.

You kinda backrouted the other staircase level, "Staircase to Armageddon". However, it was not an obvious background for me, so I might just leave the level this way. However, I might be primed / biased towards the bombing solution due to this being an adaptation of a Worms World Party level.
The solution to remove the backroute would be to cut the single blocker; that would require the player to make a trap pit at the bottom using bombers, like on "Turn around young lemmings" in the original game. That's a Tricky level, so it would probably still be justifiable to do that on a second rank. Might push the level a little higher within the rank, though.

Well, this level has an obvious solution without the blocker: Just bomb at the beginning and then turn 40 lemmings into climbers and let the others die. As the save requirement is only 40/80 lemmings, that's sufficient. I just felt bad for killing so many lemmings, and thus used the more elaborate 79/80 solution.

Are you sure all of those are fire areas? [in Skies aflame]

Ok, this is a perfect example why markes above exits with preassigned skills are so useful. I paused before the first lemming appeared and then decided the level is impossible due to the missing swimmers.

On levels with several hatches with different preassigned skills however, like "Volunteers first!", this might give skills to certain lemmings who shouldn't have them.

There are usually two ways around this: The preferred way is to put a small steel block near the exit and the pick-up skill in the middle of this steel block. A second way is to mark the pick-up skills as a fake object. As players won't know this until they try picking it up, this is usually very frowned upon and should only be used as the very last option.

Attached are only a few replays this time, because "Tower of Babylem" (Disgusting 22) gives me an error "List index out of bounds (17)". Without having actually debugged this, it very much sounds as if you have an old version of a style, which still has more objects than my up-to-date one. Probably some backgrounds are still contained as proper objects in your version.
So please redownload the styles from the NeoLemmix homepage, either via the editor (Tools->Download Graphics Sets) or via the player (Options->Check for Style Updates Now), and then try to open the level in the editor and see whether this gives you any warnings.

Moreover I noticed that your pack is created with an outdated Flexi Toolkit for version 10.12. While this shouldn't create any problems, I would advise downloading the most recent version of the Flexi Toolkit.

[nin10doadict]

I've started playing through this and jumping around the difficulty ratings. It's been pretty fun so far, though the difficulty does fluctuate quite a bit.
Troll levels just don't work in NeoLemmix, as I learned the hard way. Pretty much anyone is going to press the clear physics button and then all of the trolling is revealed.
I do like how you put the traps behind the creatures. It just looks neat, even though there are some who I know will hate this. "The Black Widow" was pretty fun to see how the traps were stacked up like that.
I do believe I've found some backroutes though. "Painful Parkour" seemed a bit too easy because I found a way to basically ignore the bottom half of the level, and "Luring Lemmings into mousetraps" can be done by just using a digger near the start and cranking the release rate. I also feel like "Lemming epigenetics" and "Shock absorber" aren't different enough. The reduction in skills for the harder level doesn't really change anything.
These are just some things I've noticed up to this point. Overall it's looking good though!

[Strato Incendus]

Attached are only a few replays this time, because "Tower of Babylem" (Disgusting 22) gives me an error "List index out of bounds (17)". Without having actually debugged this, it very much sounds as if you have an old version of a style, which still has more objects than my up-to-date one. Probably some backgrounds are still contained as proper objects in your version.
So please redownload the styles from the NeoLemmix homepage, either via the editor (Tools->Download Graphics Sets) or via the player (Options->Check for Style Updates Now), and then try to open the level in the editor and see whether this gives you any warnings.

Thanks for the advice, I've updated all these styles now, it seems like there were indeed updates available that I didn't have yet. However, opening and playing "Tower of Babylem" in the editor works the same as usual. I'll take a look at your replays now and see whether any errors occur while doing that.

EDIT: Nope, everything works in my version!

Sometimes, the game crashes indeed, but when this occurs seems kinda random. I've had this happen to me for example on "The Wall (Part II)", restarted the game and everything worked fine. So there doesn't seem to be any particular level that is damaged. I've only noticed that "Throw me a lifeline" takes quite long to load on the preview screen; perhaps that's due to a higher resolution of the gigalem_dragon tileset?

Spoilers for nin10doadict

Spoiler

It's been pretty fun so far, though the difficulty does fluctuate quite a bit.

That's what we're here for: To determine the best sequence of the levels to create a more or less linear increase of difficulty . So if you have any specific examples of levels that should be higher up or lower down in your opinion, I'd be glad to hear them!

I do like how you put the traps behind the creatures. It just looks neat, even though there are some who I know will hate this.

Yeah, this goes along with the flavour-based nature of the pack. Some people may complain that Nessy is a trap on pretty much all of the levels (the only exception being "Gaze of the Basilisk", but that one is just different in that Nessy petrifies your lemmings rather than eating them). Since I've made clear right from the start what this pack is going for, I'd advise those players to use flavour-based logic rather than pure game-mechanical logic: It's a giant snake beast. Of course it's going to be dangerous for lemmings!

I also feel like "Lemming epigenetics" and "Shock absorber" aren't different enough. The reduction in skills for the harder level doesn't really change anything.

Perhaps that's another case of solving the first iteration of the level the way the re-run is supposed to be solved? If you've figured out the more complicated solution required in the re-run already on the first try, obviously the re-run won't feel any different. In order to judge this, I'd have to see your replays of those two levels.
A possible way to make them more distinguishable would be to remove the cloners from the first iteration and either raise the number of lemmings spawning or lower the saving requirement.

"Painful Parkour" seemed a bit too easy because I found a way to basically ignore the bottom half of the level,

There are two routes through this level, an upper one and a lower one. Whichever you pick, the other half of the level will be ignored. To judge whether you still actually backrouted the level (which in my book would mean e.g. "I only needed to use a fraction of the provided skills"), I'd have to see your replay. Otherwise, I've seen several unexpected solutions to some levels thus far, but as long as they still require all or almost all of the provided skills, I would just consider them an alternative solution rather than a backroute. If someone can do clever tricks with skills that the average player doesn't know, I want to reward the player for that to some extent. A backroute for me would only be if someone takes massive shortcuts in relation to the entire size of the level.

One exception being "Snakes and Ladders": Anyone who ever played this as a board game as a child will know that this game in its original form is in fact all about backroutes and traps itself (hit a ladder and you take a shortcut to the goal; hit a snake and you fall down again). That's why there are pre-placed ladders in the level. As long as any route a player takes goes roughly along the lines of one of these wooden staircases, I consider it a fair and fine solution.

Troll levels just don't work in NeoLemmix, as I learned the hard way. Pretty much anyone is going to press the clear physics button and then all of the trolling is revealed.

I know, that's why I've warned Raymanni and other players who apparently seem to enjoy getting trolled . This is really just an offer the pack makes. If a player doesn't want to bother with that, more power to them, just "push da button" and advance to the next level right away. But I will leave the level in there for other target audiences to enjoy... or rage over .

Though I would hope the solution to that trolling level is hopefully not quite so obvious even when all the gimmicks are known. It certainly requires several lemmings to pull off, not a classic "pioneer does all the work" thing .

Spoilers for Nepster

Spoiler

Well, this level has an obvious solution without the blocker: Just bomb at the beginning and then turn 40 lemmings into climbers and let the others die. As the save requirement is only 40/80 lemmings, that's sufficient. I just felt bad for killing so many lemmings, and thus used the more elaborate 79/80 solution.

Great observation! So the problem was specifically the 50% requirement. Reducing the climbers to 20 or 30 and raising the absolute number of those that have to be saved to 50 or 60, in combination with removing the blocker will hopefully solve this . Thanks!

Ok, this is a perfect example why markes above exits with preassigned skills are so useful. I paused before the first lemming appeared and then decided the level is impossible due to the missing swimmers.

1) The lemmings have green pants, so it's clear they have a preassigned skill.
2) The player can see the preassigned skill any time he orders a lemming to do something, because it's visible in the bar when hovering the mouse over it.
3) There's also some lava in the pit between the two huge pieces of blue terrain. A lemming will easily fall into that by accident while the other one is building, or while doing the stoner part, and if not earlier, that's the latest point someone will find out they are swimmers. Also, if you go to true physics mode, you will see that thing at the bottom is water, not fire. Even though this label can't be seen for the lava at the top, it's clear that both are the same object.

As I've said before, I'll look into each single level again anyway, and see whether there's any particular one that might be broken by pickup skills being placed over them. If not, I don't see a problem in adding them. If so, we'll have to reconsider. I hadn't thought about making them fake objects, but I agree that would be inconsistent because they wouldn't be visually distinguishable from actual pickup skills.
However, if I do place them as normal objects, some players, at least those familiar with Neo Lemmix etiquette, will understand them as labels; whereas others will feel specifically encouraged to try and collect them, even if they wouldn't have searched for such a skill otherwise. Those players would actually be confused about the route to take by bonus pickup skills, rather than having an easier time solving the level. It's kinda a "damned if you do and damned if you don't".

That "placing the pickup skill inside a block of steel" might actually work best! In that case, I will have to check whether adding that steel pieces interferes with the terrain somewhere, rather than the pickup skill interfering with the solution itself.

There are still exceptions, though: For example, there is one level later on in Demented with a pre-placed X-athlete lemming. Hovering the mouse over it will only tell you "X-athlete", not e.g. whether it's a floater or a glider. There's no way to signify this without placing pickup skills in the landscape that other lemmings could easily reach.

Also, some levels have hatches placed above each other with the lemmings coming out left and right. There's no way to signify that either, is it? A player will have to wait for the first two lemmings to come out in order to know this. In order to find out they have a preassigned skill, they will only have to wait for the first lemming.

So I think I can expect that much "patience" from the player. Since I've made clear this isn't primarily a puzzle pack, I guess it can only do so much for the ambition to solve the level by thinking it through even before the hatch opens.

If that's what you want, I am currently working on some further level ideas that I might compile into a more puzzly pack later on. Would likely call it "Pit Lems", as it would be more in line with Pit Droids philosophy. Yet, even in Pit Droids some hatches spit out several different types of droids. So even there, it's not always possible to judge what type of creatures will be coming out of a hatch before the first attempt of playing the level.

Moreover I noticed that your pack is created with an outdated Flexi Toolkit for version 10.12. While this shouldn't create any problems, I would advise downloading the most recent version of the Flexi Toolkit.

Thanks for informing me! I will simply do that when I do the overhaul, after having looked at each individual level in the editor again .



To your level solutions:
Skies aflame was not intended that way, but that's one good example of an alternative solution! Digging down at the edge spared you from having to stone in between building, but then you had to dig down to get the other lemmings on track (though I guess you also could have used a stoner at the edge to break their fall). I could add steel at the edges to prevent that from happening, however there still wouldn't be anything to stop a player from stoning low, just slightly above the lava pit, and build a continuous staircase starting from down there. I like to force the player to do "Stepping Stones" solutions, i.e. building on top of stoners' heads, but I guess it would be quite a hassle to enforce that all the time .
The collapsing tomb might need some steel down there to prevent the basher from bypassing all the traps. My brother did it the same way; the high numer of miners, each intended to erase a single trap trigger, obviously makes it too easy to get through the pyramid and dig to the exit when used in reverse. That said, as long as there's terrain left to mine into, this also means the terrain can be bashed through, thereby erasing all the triggers in one swoop.
No, actually the solution must be to remove the basher alltogether . I thought it were necessary to get from the ramp-staircase on the right to the exit, but two more miners would be just enough  (one for the pyramid, and one for the sand heap).
The docks have been solved slightly differently by everyone I've seen so far. But I don't see the necessity to enforce any specific solution here.
Mary had a little lem. Very nice solution! Probably the best way to save the most lemmings while making use of all the skills. Just the fact that a disarmer is there obviously doesn't mean all the traps have to be disarmed. I might actually raise the saving requirement so the player has to find specifically your solution !
In memory of Steve Irwin. Again one everyone has solved differently so far, don't feel the need to enforce anything specific.
Filling the gaps. Well, you saved yourself the hassle with the first couple of gaps and thereby created the hassle of having to build a stoner staircase ^^. But you still had to use almost all the stoners, so this is just another viable solution. The intended way was to send a glider on the right "pillar of Hercules", have him build towards the terrain at the top (the platformer is there to make sure he doesn't bump his head), then bash through, and by virtue of being a glider he will land on the platform with the exit. From there he can dig down to enable a straight path to the top for the climbers you assign then. Obviously, you can only do that do lemmings facing to the right, because otherwise they will climb across the remaining pillar of Hercules on the left and fall to their death.
Encased in concrete. Another level you solved the same way as my brother. Perhaps I should place the hatch a little more to the right to avoid that shortcut? The intended way was having the lemmings land on the platform at the bottom, build up to the square with the exit and fence your way up through it.

[Nepster]

Finally solved the remaining level!

Regarding the bug I encountered: Once I deleted my tancastle.dat file, it worked perfectly fine. I don't know whether my version or the in-built one is the more recent one, but likely the cause was on my side.

Sometimes, the game crashes indeed, but when this occurs seems kinda random.

This is very likely due to several consecutive levels using too many different graphic styles. The game then has problems creating all the bitmaps. Fixing this bug is one main reason why there will be a new-formats version of NeoLemmix.

Comments on single levels

Skies aflame: You are absolutely correct, but I have the tendency to pause even before the first lemmings appears and to plan my route...
Diggy Liggy Lo: Very good level!
The Prison Cells: Excellent level! I just would let the outer traps start a little bit farther away,  to make it clear that lemmings may fall down there.
Tidal Wave: The same 100%-solution as for the original Cascade works here, too.
Underwater Hangar: Amazing level idea and design! But why is the air full of updrafts when there is no visual sign of that? That's not really fair to the player!
Apocalems Now: Very nice level. The final fencer, stoner and builder are rather precise (and unnecessarily so), though.
Journey to Emeria: Sorry, but I am not a fan of this level. No overarching idea and some arbitrarily placed crystals.
Don't lock me in!: This on the other hand, is an excellent level again.
Sneak past the guards: This was very annoying, because without changing the release rate, only the last lemming is about one second short. Please either reduce the time or the number of lemmings, or both.
Pull the plug: I usually don't like zombie levels, but this was surprisingly much fun to play.
Push da button: My solution might not be completely intended, but it was a great level anyway.
The bee's knees: Sorry, but this idea has been done to death already.
We are not invited: I would strongly encourage you to remove my solution...
Help! Get the Ratcatcher! Good level, but these are supposed to be squirrels, not rats
Mafia Methods: Very nice level!
Buried Knowledge: I never noticed the zombies until I looked now at the levels to write the feedback
Beam me up, Lemmy: Although I cannot think of another solution, this one seems very backrouty.
Diggas in Paris: Very nice terrain layout!
Lems going their own way: ...into the same hatch
Synchronized performence: Although my solution might not be 100% intended, this was the hardest level in the pack. Excellent solution!
Divided we fall: Fortunately one has to assign only four diggers. The same goes for its repeat.
Aerial bombardement: Another excellent level, though it uses zombies.
Rest for the Wicked: Nice level!
Alemhu akbar! Sometimes I am really happy, that you didn't have timed bombers available
Make yourself useful: Again a surprisingly good zombie level.
Can you get it for me in time? Excellent level!
Let down your Lems: Didn't we already have this stoner-staircase in a previous level?
Maze of Omnipotence: This looks like it could become an amazing level, but currently one can just bash at the bottom towards the exit...
The Lempire strikes back: Why are there zombies, if they don't do anything threatening?
The ultra-trolling level: ...gets the ultra-trolling backroute
You can't even...: Very nice idea, but there is one main problem with this level: One only sees after twenty seconds whether the RR-changes at the beginning worked or not. So the level requires lots of blind tries with no way to easily see what's going to work or not. This is rather frustrating. It would be a lot better, if both hatches were a lot nearer to the teleporter.
Dark fate of Atlantis: Nice idea, but that hidden trap is horrible!
Winter is here: Is it really intended that one can just wait until all zombies died and then play a zombie-free level?

[Strato Incendus]

Congratulations, Nepster, you've been faster than my brother on this one and are thereby officially the first one to complete PARALEMS!

Similarly to before though, you did in fact use a lot of the same solutions as my brother once again ^^. Details see below.

Spoilers from Disgusting to Demented

Spoiler

The prison cells. Unfortunately I don't quite understand what you mean here by "make it clear that lemmings may fall down there". Could you elaborate on that?

Tidal Wave. My brother simply used the Cascade solution, I'm glad you just told me about it again and then proceeded to find a solution with a higher saving rate. I will most certainly increase the requirement on this one. I could either enforce your solution as the only correct one by setting the bar quite high, or I might allow a couple of different ones, too - but just saving 10 like on Cascade is most definitely too easy.

Underwater Hangar. Well, that's just what the updraft on Colorful Arty's underwater tileset looks like - a dark blue background. Originally, I wanted the lemmings to glide through the exit trigger, but I don't know whether it responds to that. It certainly works for swimmers (see "Splish Splash)". Currently, one can simply build to the exit, so the updraft was a nice little trick to slightly increase the difficulty, making it necessary to cut the staircase behind the builder. Otherwise, the lemmings could just keep walking over the bridge while it is being build, because regular swimmers dropping into water can survive any fall. Being a glider therefore is actually a disadvantage here .

Apocalems Now. I didn't even know it was possible to make the lemmings walk through a bit of grass on the dirt tileset; I just fenced through the entire thing, used the stoner to turn the crowd around, and then sealed the fencer tunnel again with the builder. Any remaining piece of terrain the lemmings will usually be able to jump over. So it's not actually that precise since it's not necessary to solve the level specifically as you did it .

Journey to Emeria. For some reason, my brother kept struggling with this level, that's why I left it in. This is one of the WinLems remnants: He struggled with it in its original form, and did so again this time. However, in the end he worked out a pretty nice solution to almost save everyone (replay is attached). With the current saving requirement, you can just let a major portion of the crowd die while building, as both you and I have done (though we took different paths across the landscape). But it is possible to trap the crowd on this level, and I might actually enforce that solution by raising the requirement. Not so boring anymore, is it?
By the way, this is another flavour / allusion level, so the terrain choice wasn't as arbitrary as you might think...

Sneak past the guards. Before you ask me to change anything on this level, you might want to consider what the stackers can be used for . This idea was also featured in the NeoLemmix introductory pack, so if that's not fair, I don't know what would be . Both you and my brother used timing / release rate to solve this level, but that is not actually required until Demented 27 ("You can't even"). There's a much easier solution, you just made it harder for yourself .

Push da button. That was an advanced way of solving it, pushing both buttons with the same lemming! I was generous enough to give the player two climbers, so the upper one can mine in order to allow the one who dropped down to get back up again. If I enforced your solution by only providing a single climber, that would certainly make this level worthy of Demented difficulty. Apart from that, your solution was actually pretty close to the intended one.

The bee's knees. Well, not everyone has played through as many packs as you have . Remember that this pack also features introductory levels for the new skills in the Harmless rank; a seasoned NeoLemmix player won't need those either, nor will they need a level like "I got a little trick in mined", because they already know the concept of using destructive skills to trap or turn around crowds. I want to use this pack to teach some general tricks to players; the original game kinda just started demanding these things from the player starting at around late Tricky. If a player couldn't figure it out, later levels were pretty much impossible to solve, as well, because digger traps etc. just became self-evident from then on. People who knew about this idea, in contrast, will have had a much easier time solving the remaining levels, too.

We are not invited?. Yep, same backroute my brother used. The walker was intended to turn around the pioneer lemming sent across the rooftop as a glider - but in combination with pre-placed blockers, the walker of course was precisely the wrong choice for that job , because it's clearly overpowered here. Now, since I don't want to kill the scout lemming, in order to replace the walker, I have the choice between a stacker and a cloner. I'll probably use the cloner, because it's less obvious. Actually, the original scout lemming does die in that scenario by walking off the screen, while the clone continues the job .

Help! Get the Ratcatcher! Mmh... they look quite grey for squirrels... Though I could come up with a different title, squirrels seem less dangerous than rats (again, Magic players might disagree ^^, but otherwise...). What would be feasable way to communicate "lemmings vs. squirrels" - perhaps "Gnaw Wars"?

Buried knowledge. Ok, this one clearly needs more steel . And while I'm at it, I will add a fifth trap up there next to the exit. Because there's another backroute where the zombies don't have to be used either. So far, no player has used it, I just found it myself by calculating through the skills again: Rather than just fencing towards the exit, as you did it, one could build up on the right, as if to create a path for the zombies, and then there would still be exactly four builders left to build across each of the four traps. A fifth one, in combination with some horizontal steel beneath the traps, should shut down both of these unintended solutions .

Beam me up, Lemmy! Great! If you couldn't think of a different solution thus far, this means me adding some steel on the left will force you to come up with something completely new at least for this level .

Diggas in Paris. Good thing the exit is so large that it lies partly outside the Louvre , so I guess this one doesn't count as "hidden"?

Lems going their own way. Another one my brother solved the same way, the release rate just seems to be too low. I hope it works if I just bump it up all the way to 99.

Synchronized performance. The main difficulty of this level actually wasn't intended; however, oftentimes it occurs that when the fencers come from both sides and the crowd is released, the first lemmings to fall down are lumped together too closely, so no matter who gets to be the blocker, some will always slip by, too many to meet the saving requirement. It seems like you've found a systematic way to get around this; with my solution, this was always more of a trial-and-error thing.

Let down your Lems. This one is a little different: "A staircase of skulls" had a stoner staircase from below, and a rather simple one. On "Filling the gaps", you brought the stoner staircase on yourself, it is not actually part of the intended solution . In this one, the lemmings on the right are supposed to climb over the pillar (the bombers are required to create a hole for them to go through), and then create the staircase for the crowd below from above - hence the title .

Maze of Omnipotence. Again: Needs more steel. Thanks for pointing it out to me!

The Lempire strikes back. Looks like I need some kind of trap(s) on the left in order to force the lemmings to go up through the updraft on the right, rather than just building to the top. If you do that, the zombies do actually become dangerous shortly before the end of the level, as soon as the slowfreeze pit (a.k.a the carbonite chamber ) has been entirely filled up. Then they will come towards the remaining crowd and infect them, thereby causing the level to fail if the player has already started to go into fast-forward mode without taking into account that the slowfreeze pit can't hold an infinite number of zombies .

No idea what you're thinking of! A fine solution, although it seemed rather... painful considering the level terrain . I guess you can imagine what the intended route looks like...

The ultra-trolling level. Not the intended solution, but certainly one that qualifies for "thinking outside the box". Even I am not nasty enough to make that exit on the left a fake exit, I just wanted to make it nigh impossible to get to. The intended solution is to go across the water (which is actually fire, so the swimmers, which the lemmings on this level naturally are, will die). In order to do that, a combination of builders, stoners, and platformers has to be used. Then the lemmings can get into the exit on the bottom right, because that piece of steel covering the trigger is not actually steel, but just normal terrain.

You can't even. There is actually a more sophisticated approach to this one than trial and error, since it is a rerun : You can simply go back to the first iteration, "Resistance is futile", you will notice that the release rate on that one is set to a very unusual 18 from the start. That's to make sure it can't be lowered to a point where this level could be solved the same way as "You can't even" - by setting the release rate to 17. 18 is just enough for the zombie to slip by the teleporter while the first lemming gets through. So, starting the trials from the release rate of the first iteration of the level downward will get you to your goal a lot faster than slowly dialing up from 1 to 17. That's about as much complexity as I could add into a level without any skills. Remaking it would therefore be quite chaotic, 1) because it is a rerun, so it wouldn't make sense to change the physics as much as placing the trap doors elsewhere, and 2) because the distances between the single objects are truly crucial on this one. This level is indeed all about timing, in contrast to the aforementioned "Sneak past the guards" .

Dark Fate of Atlantis. You're welcome . Originally, I unticked "no overwrite" for the trap, so it would be visible on top of the stone. But that just looked silly. When I additionally found out that the trigger areas of all this water everywhere render the true physics mode useless for spotting traps, if only for this single level, I just had to exploit that! Write down the number of seconds it cost you to rewind and place the bomber correctly . This level is all about execution anyway, there's not much guesswork going on with regards to puzzling, because lemmings can only bomb and stone, i.e. do things that kill them, while they are swimming. So it's more about getting used to these unusual physics that original Lemmings never confronted us with, than planning a route, because the route is pretty much lined out for the player already.
In the original version, without the Disgusting rank, this level was completely unique, and therefore quite a perplexing surprise. Now, "Underwater Hangar" somewhat prepares for this level, but on that level the lemmings can just be allowed to swim around freely. Here, stoners have to be used to press them down. "Shallow water. Diving prohibited" does some work at teaching the player this, since the stoners can be used to dive below the clamshell. But of course, if a player solved "Shallow water" the way you did, by simply increasing the release rate, "Dark Fate of Atlantis" might provide some more headaches.

IT'S FEEDING TIME! I'm just glad I had already added the steel at the top when I released the first version of this pack, because otherwise this level would have had just the most ridiculous backroute ever - just a single fencer, plus perhaps a builder. Looks like adding a little more steel here and there will enforce the long way around all of these hungry, hungry jaws .

Winter is here. The general idea is indeed to kill the zombies and then complete the level. However, the "frost fire" trap on the right is probably too much of a help for that goal, and even if it weren't there, the zombies would finally walk off the screen on the right - the only remaining issue being the time limit. I will probably remove the frost fire trap and add some kind of unclimbable thing on the right, so that the zombies will keep roaming the level until the player somehow disposes of them himself, without getting the entire crowd infected.
It seems like this time, you only had to wait for winter to pass in order to solve the level . That might not be possible anymore in the future version!

Thank you very much for playing the entire 150 levels with such ambition and giving such extensive feedback! I will begin overhauling the levels now, though I'm still waiting for my brother to make it through the last couple of Demented levels, but there's enough stuff to fix on the lower ranks to get started already.

[Colorful Arty]

Here are my replays from the Disturbing rank. While overall well-done, there were two many builder/platformer/stacker fest levels for even MY liking, but I did enjoy them overall, and the Bitter Lemming repeat took me far longer to figure out than it should have.

Also, I believe Disgusting 10 is impossible just looking at it. I even used clear physics mode to see if there were hidden exits which there weren't.

[nin10doadict]

I also thought Disgusting 10 was impossible just from looking... And then I started it and saw that all the Lemmings were swimmers.
This is why it's a nice thing to put pickup skills next to hatches that release Lemmings that have preset skills.

I kinda wish you hadn't used copyrighted tracks for the custom music. It's better than nothing, but if you don't own any of those tracks (like me) then there's no difference. And some of the default music tracks are pretty lame IMO, so I don't want to listen to it for a long time while trying to figure out a hard level. I end up muting the music and picking other music that I think matches the level theme and have that play in the background.
I've managed to clear all but the last rank so far, which I have made some progress on.
A few notes on some levels...

Spoiler

I must say that Demented 30 was really fun. It looks intimidating, the title provides a good hint (which I didn't figure out for the first 20 minutes) and solving it felt really satisfying. The time limit was annoying and I felt it didn't need to be there, but at least it didn't actually bite me. I have no idea what music you intended for this level, but I played it with Id (Purpose) going and I think it fit rather well.
As far as time limits go, most of them have been rather benign. A notable exception was on Abhorrent 24. It was a good puzzle and took me a while to figure out how to get all the pieces in the right places. Then, once I had done so, the time limit bit me and told me to do it again. I didn't have to change my strategy, I just had to be more precise. Having to replay a whole level for that reason is super frustrating... Also that trap should be made visible, seeing as how you have to go under it because going over it seals you off later. Trying to go under a trap you can't see with that kind of terrain is also frustrating.

[Strato Incendus]

Thanks for sticking with it, guys! I consider "no ragequits so far" a first mark of success...

Spoilers for Colorful Arty

Spoiler

Thanks! You've found a backroute to "Have you seen my screwdriver?" that no one had found so far! I thought about adding a piece of steel above the trap to prevent the player from building over the trigger, forcing him to get the disarmer pickup skill. Having consulted my brother on this, however, we agreed to enforce his solution instead by making the pillar next to the trap a one-way block. Now the player will have to get the pioneer in the chamber with the exit first. It is still possible to solve the level without using the disarmer though, since there are enough builders - I guess Nepster will approve .

I have already started to overhaul a lot of levels. Levels that were over-generous with builders, such as "The Pit and the PenduLem", or just pointless, like "Twilems", have now both become a lot more challenging imho . In order to reduce the amount of building on certain level, I'd obviously have to know either the number and/or the name. While watching your replays, I found that "Across the seven seas" provides a lot more platformers than necessary, so I can easily reduce them, but that won't reduce the amount of platforming necessary to solve the level, of course.

Also, I believe Disgusting 10 is impossible just looking at it. I even used clear physics mode to see if there were hidden exits which there weren't.

Clear physics won't help you on this one - unless you were to believe that the lava on fire levels was indeed a fire object.

So I guess you're also one of these guys "just looking" at a level with the hatch still closed?

Then you will love the levels where lemmings come out alternating between left and right !

Spoilers for nin10doadict

Spoiler

I must say that Demented 30 was really fun. It looks intimidating, the title provides a good hint (which I didn't figure out for the first 20 minutes) and solving it felt really satisfying. The time limit was annoying and I felt it didn't need to be there, but at least it didn't actually bite me. I have no idea what music you intended for this level, but I played it with Id (Purpose) going and I think it fit rather well.

Thank you! I just don't get the second part... you said "the title gives a good hint" (at what this level is about, I guess), but you had no idea what music would fit this level?

Perhaps we think of this level referencing two different things?

Anyway, if you've picked a specific track to go along with "Winter is here", that track should in theory also be played automatically on a couple of other levels, and all of them overlap thematically - namely "The Wall" and "All Lems must die". I actually thought that was pretty obvious ...

A notable exception was on Abhorrent 24. It was a good puzzle and took me a while to figure out how to get all the pieces in the right places. Then, once I had done so, the time limit bit me and told me to do it again. I didn't have to change my strategy, I just had to be more precise. Having to replay a whole level for that reason is super frustrating... Also that trap should be made visible, seeing as how you have to go under it because going over it seals you off later. Trying to go under a trap you can't see with that kind of terrain is also frustrating.

Would you mind attaching your replay of that level? The intended solution doesn't actually require going beneath the trap, so I'd be interested in seeing how you solved "Beam me up, Lemmy!" Also, the time limit isn't too harsh if the level is solved the intended way. It's always a little tricky with teleporters, since they take so long to transport single lemmings anywhere, but that factor has been considered already when setting the time limit. There are later teleporter levels where the timing is more critical, most notably "You can't even" (Demented 27).

This is why it's a nice thing to put pickup skills next to hatches that release Lemmings that have preset skills.

So that players don't have to bother waiting for a single second for the hatch to open? What's the difference between stopping before the hatch opens and stopping after the first lemming has come out?

Other players have also told me about this "etiquette" of labeling hatches with pre-assigned skills. I have decided that I won't do this on this pack because I couldn't do it consistently - and consistency is something the community cares about, as well, IIRC .

Some levels e.g. have lemmings coming out of a single hatch facing in both directions - no way to signal this to the player beforehand. In fact, the player can't even see whether lemmings come out just facing left or just facing right. Furthermore, there are pre-placed lemmings (and zombies) with skills. There is no way to label these with pickup skill signs without placing pickup skills in the landscape that could be collected - and making them fake objects, which has been suggested, too, would be inconsistent with actual pickup skills again.

In general, I find it funny that "Skies aflame" seems to cause so much issue. Without knowing what pre-assigned skills lemmings have, other levels would be "impossible", too - like "Volunteers first!" or "Point me to my training course", both of which appear earlier in the pack. Yet, "Skies aflame" is the first one causing trouble, apparently .

I'm currently working on a more puzzly pack following Pit Droids philosophy, but even those levels will have differently skilled lemmings coming out of the same hatch sometimes (as this also happens in Pit Droids). Such a hatch could also not be labeled, because placing all the skills of the lemmings coming out of that hatch above it could mean two things: 1) All the lemmings in that hatch have all these skills, 2) The hatch spits out a sequence of just-climbers, just-floaters, just-swimmers etc.

In short: Simply letting the lemming come out and hovering your mouse over it (which you will have to do anyway to actually try solving the level) will provide you with much more information than any label applied to the hatch.

It's quite baffling to me that people claim a level were impossible even before they have actually tried to play it ^^. And no, calculating through everything in your head might be "trying to solve it", but not "trying to play it". Even pure puzzle levels often require some trial and error, e.g. because a player can easily under- or overestimate the length of a builder / platformer, or the angle of a miner / fencer, or just the time a lemming needs to get somewhere. Even some of Nepster's levels, which I would consider the epitome of "puzzly", have such timing challenges involved. How would you be supposed to solve these types of levels just by thinking through everything in your head?

I kinda wish you hadn't used copyrighted tracks for the custom music. It's better than nothing, but if you don't own any of those tracks (like me) then there's no difference. And some of the default music tracks are pretty lame IMO, so I don't want to listen to it for a long time while trying to figure out a hard level. I end up muting the music and picking other music that I think matches the level theme and have that play in the background.

I guess if NeoLemmix can't find a music file with the required name, it just plays the standard rotation of Lemmings songs? If it were only the main Lemmings music, I wouldn't consider that a problem - other packs work this way, too, like Nepster Lems. However, I believe if there's no track specified, NeoLemmix circles through the standard Lemmings songs plus those from Oh no! More Lemmings, doesn't it?

Yes, some of the Oh No-songs are indeed quite lame or annoying... if any particular music annoys you, you always have the option of deliberately failing the level so the rotation goes on to the next track ^^. Or you put some of your own favourite tracks into the music folder and name them like the tracks listed in the starting post. That should be less annoying than having to switch to iTunes in between levels .

Otherwise... there's always YouTube, just sayin' ...