[NeoLemmix 1.43] Lemmicks - Lemmings with gimmicks! ANOTHER UPDATE

[namida]

So I text-edit the single level to add pieces to it - not the translation table of the style file, right? Because if I did the latter, we'd end up with two versions of Fire, Pillar, Marble, and Brick again.

No - edit the translation table. These are only for your personal modifications that you've made to old formats styles for *your* levels (hopefully - please tell me there haven't been alternate versions of these styles going around in the wild!), so you never need to distribute these modified NXTT files.

The only purpose of the translation table files, is in conversion from older formats to the current NeoLemmix format. Once the level is converted, the translation table no longer affects it, so people do not need your modified NXTT file to play your converted levels. (Of course, they do still need the new pieces themself - but if I'm understanding you correctly, these arent' custom pieces, just new-formats pieces you back-ported to old formats. So, everyone should already have them.)


And, on a side note...

So I guess this is precisely the wrong pack where one could try to convince me to take it to New Formats, because that isn't even possible in the first place .

Actually, this is a perfect example of a pack to use - because it's one where you went out of your way to use old formats, to create a pack that couldn't even work on new formats. Not only that, but even by old formats standards, the version this pack requires was extremely outdated.

[Strato Incendus]

but if I'm understanding you correctly, these arent' custom pieces, just new-formats pieces you back-ported to old formats. So, everyone should already have them.)

Yes, that is indeed the case, nothing new created by me. I just "maintained" the old formats versions of these tilesets for a while, as the new formats versions kept getting updated .

Thanks a lot for explaining the purpose of the translation table to me! I had already read through the conversion instructions that IchoTolot linked to here again several times while doing my conversions of the graphic sets, but it wasn't clear to me that the translation table could effectively even be thrown away entirely, once a given user has converted all of their own levels featuring a particular style.

Actually, this is a perfect example of a pack to use - because it's one where you went out of your way to use old formats, to create a pack that couldn't even work on new formats. Not only that, but even by old formats standards, the version this pack requires was extremely outdated.

Yeah, but not out of spite or aesthetic preferences (like with New Formats and the level preview screen), but in this case purely for game-mechanical reasons. Lemmings World Tour probably could have been created without radiation or slowfreeze, minding the levels where you need them to interact with zombies (Only time, Blowing in the wind, and All you zombies). Lemmicks however literally couldn't have worked on any other platform.

It wasn't an easy choice to create levels that were bound to be without the fencer or tileset mixing from the beginning. But the sheer amount of absolutely unique design space opened up by the gimmicks was definitely worth it!

Mechanic-wise, Lemmicks has caused me no performance issues whatsoever, in contrast to Lemmings World Tour, where I brought it on myself with the tileset mixing. Lemmicks, for all the features it's missing, runs pretty smoothly on my PC (partly perhaps precisely because you cannot mix tilesets in 1.43 ).

So I don't see the issue with these styles being outdated. If outdated merely means "old-fashioned", I'll happily take it!

All I wanted to do now is make sure that works the same way for other players, because there were certain levels they couldn't access while I could.

[607]

I managed to beat The 8 Commandments, and enjoyed it! I feel like I got rather close at Do not Fear and Salem Chaverim (by the way: I love the level titles here!!). I'll now check out a gimmick rank, as I've heard every rank starts out easy.
Edit: I tried the first level of Moist but when I didn't get it quickly moved on to Consequential, as that is the gimmick that most intrigued me when I was into NeoLemmix level creation myself. I beat Ticking down, and really like it!
I probably won't play more soon, as I rarely play Lemmings, and prefer the original above NeoLemmix. But I'm a bit sick/ill, and when I saw this topic, I got the impulse to try this out. (and when I'm ill, I tend to give in to impulses very easily )

[Strato Incendus]

Thanks, 607, that's good to hear! If you need help with those two levels, save a replay of what your doing so far by pressing U while in the level. (This old replay format is called .lrb)

Yes, all the gimmick ranks start out pretty easy, but with only 10 levels per rank, the difficulty obviously increases pretty drastically. Don't let yourself get intimidated, though, and start with whatever gimmick looks most appealing to you! There's a pre-level screen on each first level of every rank telling you what gimmicks are active.

When it comes to the Bedlam rank, I may still remove the Frenzy- + Superlemming-gimmicks from a couple of its levels to make them less annoying to execute.

EDIT: Yes, the first two Consequential levels I'm rather proud of . I must admit though that they do get a little weaker in the sense of "more generic" towards the end. It's pretty clear that whatever skill you have the fewest of, that's the one you have to use first. And if you have an equal number of every skill, i.e. an X-of-everything level, that just adds so many degrees of freedom to the level that backroutes are hard to prevent. Still, if that's the rank you're most curious about - and if it helps you recover more quickly - go ahead and try it!

[WillLem]

Really enjoying these so far

I'll get some replays over when I've made a decent way through the pack. Just a quick question in the meantime - is it possible to customise Lemmings sprites and/or in-game graphics in NL 1.43?

[namida]

Just a quick question in the meantime - is it possible to customise Lemmings sprites and/or in-game graphics in NL 1.43?

A pack can provide custom graphics; but the user can't modify them themself.

[Strato Incendus]

Hi WillLem,

I'm glad this pack is receiving some more attention! I think it whent somewhat under the radar after Flopsy dropped his Let's Play for technical reasons (he couldn't record NeoLemmix 1.43 in full-screen mode).

Nessy had announced his attentions to Let's Play this pack on his channel a while ago, but maybe he changed his mind.

Packs for older versions than New Formats are now also more "hidden-away" than they used to be when everything was in one and the same forum. Consequently, fewer people find them. But I get that it would become very confusing to have everything mixed up in one forum, especially given the large number of packs which are still unconverted.

Feel free to send me your replays, of course! I have only received selected ones from various single levels, as well as having watched Flopsy's LP up to the upper middle of rank 2. So many ranks seem to be completely unplayed, and therefore probably also still full of backroutes. It probably won't take long until I have to release another update then .

I might also use this opportunity to make some of the Bedlam levels at the very end of the pack a little fairer.

Specifically, the Hasty rank used to combine the Superlemming gimmick (=increased game speed), the Frenzy gimmick (=no pause button), and the instant-pickup-skills gimmick on every level. Since the latter gimmick makes for better puzzles, while the first two just require fast reactions, I split the rank in the middle, with the puzzles coming first, then the reaction-time levels. However, some of the Bedlam levels still feature the complete combination of Superlemming, Frenzy, and Instant Pickup Skills. The worst offender here is probably a level called "So much to do, so little time". This is something I want to look into again.

But it will probably take a while until you arrive there, so I should have enough time to fix this level - and some of the backroutes you might discover on the earlier ranks - in the meantime.

[WillLem]

Hi Strato,

Is there a way to 'unpack' the NXP file to get to the individual levels? Or - do you have the levels as separate LVL or INI files which can be opened in the editor?

I ask because since SuperLemmini supports most of the gimmicks, I think it's well worth giving this pack an SL port now that Tsyu has done an update - it'll look glorious in hi-res.

Let me know what you think.

[Strato Incendus]

I think it should be possible to press a key in the main menu that allows you to "dump" all the level files, i.e. extract them from the pack. They will then show up in a folder in your NeoLemmix folder called "dump".

I don't remember which key it is, since that features was only necessary in Old Formats - in New Formats, you already have every single level file, and the pack is pieced together in the NeoLemmix player, so it's exactly the other way round. But if you look at the preferences window in the main menu, if NeoLemmix 1.43 already had the "level dump" function, simply look for that keyword "dump", and then see which keyboard shortcut ist assigned to it.

That said, I don't see how this pack would work in SuperLemmini, given that it uses NeoLemmix skills? Neither the Fencer nor the Shimmier were available back then, but the pack still makes use of Disarmers, Walkers, Gliders, Shimmiers, Cloners, Stackers, Platformers, and Stoners. So unless Tsyu has added all those to SuperLemmini, I don't see why this would work. Also, SuperLemmini has timed Bombers, to my knowledge? The levels weren't designed to work with those. In fact, I think that's obvious, not a single level in this pack was designed to work in SuperLemmini. So I won't guarantee for anything in this regard.

Try whether the level dump-feature works from the main menu of NeoLemmix 1.43 when you start "Lemmicks". If not, of course I still have the individual LVL files, which I could put in a ZIP folder or similar. But you might already be able to extract the level files yourself from the main menu. I definitely did not actively disable level dumping when compiling the pack. Meaning, there was an option to actively not allow the extraction of single level files from the pack. But to my knowledge, the only user who ever did that was Colorful Arty on SubLems, probably to protect his "paintings" from being re-used by other forum members...

[WillLem]

Thanks for the reply, I'm not seeing the "Level Dump" feature anywhere in the NL Main Menu. There was an option that says "Look for LVL files", so I checked it but I don't think that has anything to do with unpacking levels.

It didn't occur to me that, of course the levels won't work in SL as the new skills aren't there! I'd forgotten about that.

If you fancy sending me the individual LVLs anyway so I can see what's possible, that'd be great. Lemmicks is a cool pack, I think it's worth investigating further.

[Proxima]

It didn't occur to me that, of course the levels won't work in SL as the new skills aren't there! I'd forgotten about that.

I'm also pretty sure it doesn't have gimmicks! Other than Superlemming (which is from the original games) and wrap (which Lix also has) the gimmicks have, as far as I know, only ever been a feature of NeoLemmix before they were removed. Or am I wrong about that?

[Strato Incendus]

The level dump feature definitely does exist in NeoLemmix 1.43, because I have a folder named "Dump" in my NeoLemmix 1.43 folder. But anyways, here's all the Lemmicks level files attached as a ZIP! Usually those aren't too useful for people, because if you wanted to play the "pack" this way, you'd have to open every level separately in the editor. But that's kind of how I did pre-release testing for this pack: By uploading a ZIP folder with the levels finished so far to the development thread.

It also includes some of the rejected / unfinished levels, for those interested - I pretty much just grabbed the entire folder in its latest iteration and converted it to ZIP.

[mantha16]

is there any chance this can be converted for a more up to date player?  I can't get to grips with it without the frame rewind function im too rubbish at the game without it lol

[WillLem]

is there any chance this can be converted for a more up to date player?  I can't get to grips with it without the frame rewind function im too rubbish at the game without it lol

The new player unfortunately doesn't support any of the "gimmick" features included in the Lemmicks pack, so even if it were converted to new-formats, it wouldn't work anyway!

You can use framestepping in the old version, though. Press F3 in the main menu screen and under the Global Options tab click the "Hotkeys" button. From here, you can customise any key you want to be assigned to forward/backwards framestepping.

For example, in this picture you can see that "B" is assigned to Time Skip -1, which means it will skip backwards 1 frame:



Of course, you can set any key to skip forwards/backwards any amount of frames. The only thing to be aware of is that, in this version of NL (1.43), time skip doesn't automatically pause the game, so if you want to skip forwards and backwards whilst paused, you have to press pause first.

[Strato Incendus]

Thanks for explaining, WillLem, you're doing my work for me here...

Note that the default setting in NeoLemmix 1.43 is that, when you rewind, the skill selected on the skill panel also switches back to whatever skill you had selected at that frame (see starting post). It is possible to switch this off in the preferences window, though (which I did, because I've always been used to the "new" way - which already existed in Old Formats, i.e. version 10.13 - in that the selected skill on the panel is not part of the replay file).