[NeoLemmix] [WIP] Lemmings Destination (Difficulty: Easy - Very Hard)

Started by Nessy, November 13, 2017, 04:23:38 AM

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Nessy

An 8 level demo is now available! Download below! --- Demo contains levels from Helium, Neon, and Argon



Almost 200 years after "The Great Lemming Migration" and its story is now a mere legend that only a handful of elders can remember inaccurately. Regardless, our cute little rodents have accomplished grand things in the meantime. They have build a new metropolis from the ground up that serves as a sanctuary to all Lemmings from around the world. A sanctuary to all lemmings who wish to escape the mysterious "cataclysm" and to escape the on-going need to solve puzzles in dangerous landscapes just to migrate to warmer climates. It's time to go beyond survival and reach one destination that will end all destinations.

Only you can successfully guide these cute rodents through 90 levels and get them safely to their new home again! Can you do it?



Difficulties

Helium



Lemming Rig

These levels are nice and light, and you may simply float through them. Don't get too comfortable though, as these levels aren't complete pushovers. X-of-everything levels are super rare as your first simple puzzles with limited skills will be presented right away!


Neon



Crossover

Now the neon glow of menacing difficulty will begin... but that's too dramatic for these levels are some more simple puzzles with limited skills, but solutions require a little bit more thinking now.


Argon



Hikers

Things start getting heavier now. The levels start becoming a bit more complex and solutions will challenge your ideals and beliefs... or just your solving skills really.


Xenon



Blue Wedding

Here we are at the odd child of the five ranks... more Wicked and Taxing than ever! They take pride in their penultimate position and will gladly start presenting some tough levels that are almost borderline.


Radon



City Escape

Levels are now just radioactive, and a huge health risk to anyone unprepared. You've come too far now, can you really turn back? Levels are more complex and require max creative thinking on how you use all your skills and how you approach even the simplest of strategies. Just remember to never give up!


Synthetic (Bonus)



Guardians Of The Hero's Shrine (Contest 14)

Because a bonus rank is always the best rank :P. Made in a lab and unable to occur in nature, these levels are mostly contest levels gathered together into one rank.


Fallout (Bonus 2)



The Ominous Plane

The final bonus rank filled some of the weirdest creations from my sick and twisted imagination! No one would bother putting them in the main pack, so they got their own rank and its only warning is to make sure you keep your sanity nice and tight on your head!



Nessy

Unfortunately I still don't have a name for this pack but I'm going to unlock this thread anyway and start development on it for real this time.

Also made a new level today:



Nessy

Quote from: GigaLem on November 18, 2017, 02:06:09 AM
Since your last pack was called "Migration" how about "Destination"

I like that! Thanks.

Nessy

It has been a long while, but I managed to get up to around 20 levels :thumbsup:

I'm also trying to make this pack so that it's on the easier side, or at least have a more gentle difficulty curve than my last pack :P It will, of course, get really challenging in the last rank, because it's the final rank after all!

Finally, I made a level based off of one of Colorful Arty's rejected levels for the bonus rank.


Before




After




I basically took the little terrain combination with the green and purple piece on the bottom right and ran with that idea for the level. I'm still working on the solution, but I'm happy with the terrain so far :)

GigaLem

Nice to see more progress from you, as well as see more progress.
I also like seeing the the first post update, giving us previews of brand new levels.
And I'm glad you're making use of more graphic sets.

I look forward to more progress. :thumbsup:

Nessy

#6
Another update!

I have reached the 40 level mark (42 levels as of now) and have decided to celebrate by making a video of me creating another level for this pack :) I'm not concerned with solution spoilers because whatever solution you see on video is not complete and will probably change a lot due to backroute fixes.

I have also decided to make a list of all graphic sets that I am currently using. Unlike my first pack which was a bit more traditional, I want to kind of expand a little bit and use a lot more graphic sets. Even if a graphic set is used once it's still enough to give a bit more variety:

Graphic Sets

Dirt: 6
Fire: 5
Pillar: 6
Crystal: 6
Marble: 6

Rock: 6
Brick: 6
Bubble: 6
Snow: 7

Honeycomb: 5
Abstract: 5

Factory: 7

Cyber: 5

Sonic: 7
Mario: 1

L2 Egypt: 5
L2 Shadow: 5
L2 Space: 1

Ray Circus: 5

I also want to start testing out SOME levels. Not the whole pack, but mostly levels that I am more sure have backroutes. This is a mistake I made in my first pack where a lot of levels were kind of broken and I want to make sure that at least a good chunk of the major unintended stuff is out on the first go.

I might even release a tiny demo just for fun, but I am still unsure about this.



Nessy

Lemmings Destination Demo (8 Levels)!

Well this is it! This month marks about 8 months that this pack has been in development, and I still have a long way to go before it's completed. However, why not show-off some highlights so far to get everyone excited? Sounds like a good idea!

To celebrate 8 months I have published a demo made up of 8 levels (8 months and 8 levels was completely unintended by the way :P) in the original post of this thread. Please feel free to give me any feedback on whatever comes to your mind while playing :)

Please keep in mind that level names and music may or may not change in the final release! Also don't forget to make sure you have the latest styles in order to play this demo properly.


Finally a BIG thank you to:
- Nepster for all the work he has done in maintaining NeoLemmix
- Flopsy and joshescue18 for pre-release testing
- Pieuw for giving me permission to use a track from PimoLems
- Everyone that made and/or converted the graphic sets present in this demo


Have Fun!

Akseli

So, I just extemporaneously decided to try this demo this evening, usually I can wait for the full releases but in this case I guess I craved too much for some more of your levels as soon as possible. :XD: My solutions for 8 demo levels are attached to this post.

Are the levels in some kind of an order, like by difficulty, for example? Anyway, I'm glad to say that quality in Lemmings custom level designing is absolutely stellar these days thanks to people like you! :thumbsup: So many outstanding releases in the last few years, and in your case, Lemmings Destination is one of the most anticipated ones for me ever, given your already glorious debut with Migration and those eye-popping previews in the first post of this topic. Truly a wet dream for a custom level enthusiast like me!

Comments on the levels (contain spoilers):

Spoiler
Rock Is Mine – I love when easy levels get this much love from a design perspective, also! :thumbsup: It's more complex and more decorated equivalent for a NepsterLems Dirt styled miner tutorial level.

Don't Steal Our Honey! – Great, isn't that trivial, I already did lots of other stuff before finding the solution.

The Slippery Slope – This level I skipped and solved the last after the other levels. Again, I tried pretty much everything before I realized that I can only "half-release" the crowd with the miner and climb back again and do the rest of the stuff with the hero lemming. :P The song is a classic, BulletRide used this also in one of his Snow levels! :thumbsup:

Type B Personalities – It's a flawless level, like this demo seems to be from start to the end. This tileset I've seen earlier in SEB Lems, but I still really don't know what it is or who has done it. :D

Flaming Hallway – Seems to have leeway in its solution in a delightful manner, the builder I used to delay that guy can be used elsewhere, and the bomber can be a guy going to the left etc.

Cute Little Traps – Okay, I used this precise but efficient trick here now that makes me save all lemmings and two skills. Now you people can watch my solution and use the trick in your levels... :b

Loving The Chaos – One could think that turning a hero lemming around with a builder isn't enough elegant, but it's again the greatness of this game, that sometimes you actually need to think all the possibilities, not just the most shiny looking stuff!

Crossover – Pure beauty both the solution and the looks, this level reminds me lots of NepsterLems level Jump in the Ring, that was one of my favourites as well in that pack, but both levels are enough different and excellent! :thumbsup:

Nessy

Thank you so much for playing Akseli and for the kind words! It really made my day :)

Comments

All of your solutions were pretty much intended or acceptable. Well done! :) I also never realized that two of the tracks in this demo are also used in Lemmings Stampede. Wow :P

I want to give a special shoutout to the following however:

- "Type B Personalities": Nice solution here! This was actually the original intended solution although many people have found a more simple solution to this level that I have accepted. With your solution however I think I can enforce it now. Hehehe :evil:

- "Cute Little Traps": Beautiful solution! Not only did you save 100% but you also saved one entire basher and a digger! I was meaning to make a talisman for 100% but now I know I can make a talisman for 100% and having one basher and digger left over.

- "Loving The Chaos": Another beautiful solution! It saves a blocker and I can even make this into another good talisman! Well done!

Nessy

Just an update: I have reached the 80 level mark a while back and never mentioned it on here :thumbsup:


From IRC:

<Nessy> 82 built over the span of one year so mid-2019 should (unless another dry spell comes up) be the time of completion  :D

Nessy

Progress has finally picked up again and the pack is in its last development stages :thumbsup:

The pack will officially have around 90-95 levels if I decide to have one or two more levels in each rank. The pack will also contain 7 ranks: the main five ranks and two bonus ranks called Synthetic and Fallout. Synthetic will contain all of my contest levels in one place (or anything that wasn't specifically made for a pack whether it's my pack or not) while the Fallout rank will contain rejected levels that usually have more unorthodox solutions that I don't want in the "main" pack.



Akseli

Heyaa, dare I ask what's the situation with this upcoming pack? :) :) :) :) :) Absolutely no rush at all, I'm just pretty curious.

Nessy

Quote from: Akseli
Heyaa, dare I ask what's the situation with this upcoming pack? :) :) :) :) :) Absolutely no rush at all, I'm just pretty curious.

Ha no problem I find these posts very flattering :D :D

I admit to have been doing other stuff in my free time but I am still working on this pack very slowly in the background. I still haven't reached my target goal because I have removed some levels but it is indeed in a small testing phase ;) I think that if I had to give an estimation on when this pack will be released I would say next year 2020 is very, very likely.

Nessy

#14
I really should post a little bit more on this thread... :8():

So a while back this pack did manage to reach 100 levels which is roughly 5-10 more than the originally planned 90-95 size. I know that quality is more important than quantity but the best part about all of this is that all level ideas came to me naturally over time so that the 100 level mark was never forced at any point. Additionally since the pack has 5 ranks I think that having a nice round number of 20 per rank looks nice and makes each rank feel not too long and not too short.

The pack was in testing before reaching this mark but now it's officially in a 100% testing phase. This means that I may actually have a release for this pack sometime before the end of this year instead of the planned 2020 release. This is, of course, not a set deadline but since it's looking more and more like a possibility I thought it would be worth mentioning.

I will also be putting the pack under git version control. Details of that will be released when the pack is released. Right now the repo only has one commit of a README file and a .gitignore file which basically just ignores extra folders that are for my eyes only just as a "Solution" folder where all intended solution replays are kept.

So what's next? I originally had an idea of making another smaller pack inspired by L2 where each rank was a different tribe but instead of the original L2 tribes it was new tribes from custom tilesets. For example, maybe a Cyber tribe, a Silhouette tribe, or a City tribe, etc. However now that L3D level editing is a thing... I might just start making more levels for it after Destination. I still don't know the details of what exactly I'm going to do, but more L3D levels will definitely be a thing ;) Believe it or not L3D was one of the first Lemmings games I played to death as a child and I want to pay tribute to it by making custom content.

For now... another preview!



Life With Mystery