[NeoLemmix] Lemmings World Tour [Difficulty: Medium]

[Flopsy]

I have cancelled my LP of this pack and subsequently pulled the Part 1 video of Lemmings World Tour.

I feel the quality of this pack severely deteriorated in Rank 2 Amateur and descended into a mass of troll levels. I had high hopes for this pack and was extremely let down by the severe drop in quality that happens about midway through Rank 2 so I decided to stop recording and cancel the LP.

Spoiler

Levels such as Amateur 7, 13 and 16 are reasons why this pack severely went downhill.
Amateur 7 - why the hell is a Stoner bridge level like this going to be fun to play? I just ended up skipping over this one after a few minutes of trying to pass the vertical wall!
Amateur 13 - again, why is this radiation level going to be fun?
Amateur 16 - I complained about this exact trick being used in SubLems, it caused a controversial topic at the time and I don't see why this level should be spared being mentioned this time.
All these levels in a small space of time was enough to eventually kill the LP, the last straw was seeing that Amateur 28 was called Zombie and I immediately quit the pack at this point.

You claim that you made 280 levels in a year (since one rank is full of re-released levels) that means you were close to making a level a day for this pack and it looks like you spent too much time making the levels pretty and not enough time making quality solutions. I enjoyed the first rank of this pack but I think it's because I expected the levels to be kind of cheap and simplistic, by the 2nd rank I was expecting better quality levels than what came along.
Instead you just succeeded in making the most annoying levels I have come across and it didn't make for great videos, luckily no one is going to see them anyway.

You've been on the forums for less time than me and you've made more than 3 times as many levels as I have. Just slow down and take your time, you don't need to release a big level pack in a small amount of time. I feel like you could have taken all the lesser levels out of this pack and still had a quality pack. But the fact that you've just thrown almost everything in and not even had this pack tested just shows that you probably wanted to throw out a big pack just for the sake of it.

Also I may be on the way out of this forum soon because apparently no one likes my easily angered temper anymore.

I'm sorry if this comes across as harsh but apparently it's my day for telling things exactly as it is.

Best of luck to Arty with his LP, if you make it to the end of the pack, you'll get kudos from me for sure!

[Strato Incendus]

Hi Flopsy,

I think you're falling into a similar trap that I fell into repeatedly with regard to Nepster Lems - I accused Nepster of having designed overly-precise solutions for given levels ("Jump in the Ring", "Final Frustration"), when in reality, I simply hadn't figured out the correct solution yet. (So, sorry to Nepster from me at this point! )

First of all: All the levels you're talking about are there to teach the player about certain tricks - not to troll. That's why the pre-level text hints are there.

I'm going to make my comments visible for everyone, so as to prevent possible future frustration for other players - I'd rather have people know a bit about the solution than giving up entirely, so here we go:

Amateur 7 - why the hell is a Stoner bridge level like this going to be fun to play? I just ended up skipping over this one after a few minutes of trying to pass the vertical wall!

You do not have to create a long stairway of stoners all the way up to the vertical wall. You have to bomb through it at the bottom with a faller, then stone after the faller to make the drop survivable.

If you mean getting across the steel blocks at the bottom: That requires a total of one bomber and three stoners.

Have you played "Ten Story Stories and Tall Tales" from the Snack Pack? Or that vertical Sewer shaft level from CasuaLemmings? Those are levels with 50+ bombers or stoners. Amateur 7 is nothing.

The whole point of these early Amateur levels is to group skills by types and make solutions restricted around these (only upward-moving, only downward-moving, only creative, only destructive, only lethal, etc.) This is the same thing I've done in Pit Lems.

Amateur 13 - again, why is this radiation level going to be fun?

You got more than enough blockers to stop the radiation lemmings exactly at the point where you want them to stop. I use radiation because I want to limit the area where you can use bombers, compared to pickup skills which can be used anywhere in a level; I do not use it as a replacement for timed bombers.

Hence, there is nothing difficult execution-wise about this level. It is simply a radiation-based puzzle.

Pit Lems contained these as well, and two of them got nominated for level of the year. You ended up skipping over them, to my mind simply because they contained radiation. Well, they can't have been so bad, because someone considered them worthy of nomination - it certainly wasn't me! I myself was surprised about that, and it encouraged me to create further fair puzzles involving radiation, because that's something comparatively unexplored.

Amateur 16 - I complained about this exact trick being used in SubLems, it caused a controversial topic at the time and I don't see why this level should be spared being mentioned this time.

I think your main issue with this level is probably the glider-stoner combination, since you mentioned before that you hate those . The intended solution is to platform over the exit, then place several stoners directly on top of each other, creating a verticall wall the gliders inevitably bump against, no matter at which height they hit it, and turn around. Then you simply dig through the platform at the top over the exit, so that the floaters fall right into the exit and the gliders fall towards said wall.

All these levels in a small space of time was enough to eventually kill the LP, the last straw was seeing that Amateur 28 was called Zombie and I immediately quit the pack at this point.

Well, if you don't like Zombie levels, that's your right, but I don't see how this is a fault of the pack. Paralems was the only pack of mine that made extensive use of Zombies. All the others just use them sporadically.

and it looks like you spent too much time making the levels pretty and not enough time making quality solutions.

I think you missed the point of this pack. If you want something exclusively mechanically challenging, try Pit Lems (or Lemmicks ).

I said right from the getgo that Lemmings World Tour would be inspired by Arty's level building style, meaning "optics first".

If some of the "pretty" levels have dull solutions in your opinion, those may be backroutes?

Or does the difficulty simply not increase fast enough for you (since you suggested you could tolerate simplistic levels on Noisemaker but then expected a steeper increase)?

Because for Pit Lems, I basically got the feedback from nin10doadict that it got difficult too fast. So of course, with 240 levels in the main ranks, I can afford to have difficulty increase as gradually as possible.

But the fact that you've just thrown almost everything in and not even had this pack tested just shows that you probably wanted to throw out a big pack just for the sake of it.

The Encore levels are here because they are also song titles, and because many of them have been backroute-fixed since Paralems / Pit Lems / Lemmicks. Usually though, post-backroute-fixed levels don't get that much attention anymore, so that's why I wanted to showcase them again in their "fixed" versions .

The pack became this big because there were a lot of places I wanted to visit with levels. And even though I feared some of the pretty levels would turn out to have dull solutions, most of them actually ended up having pretty unique ones. Again, some of them may still have backroutes, you're never entirely safe from that.

Also I may be on the way out of this forum soon because apparently no one likes my easily angered temper anymore.

That's sad to hear .

For me personally, I can say I don't take it personally when people rage over my levels because they can't find the solution. I can also assure you at the same time that I don't actively try to make levels harder than necessary, least of all by intentionally introducing execution difficulty - I've learned my lesson from Paralems quickly in that regard . If unintended execution trouble arises, such as in Lemmicks's "Do not fear", I get rid of that as fast as I can. I try my best to be like a Dungeon Master in D&D when it comes to level design; I want to challenge the player, I don't want to beat them.



Replays for all mentioned levels are attached.

[Strato Incendus]

Just a question to you all, do the custom post-level jingles for success and failure work?

I've changed these to be real-instrument versions, too, so that they go along with the rest of the music. The victory jingle is a kind of fanfare played by the entire band; the failure jingle is a solitary guitar playing four sad chromatic single notes with a wah-wah .

To my knowledge, these should already be part of the pack (included in "files"). Therefore, I didn't include them again in the music download. I didn't hear them in Flopsy's or Arty's LP though, so I'm not sure if the files are missing or if Flopsy and Arty merely both have post-level jingles disabled by default .


Apart from that, here is the promised spoiler for the "Who's who?" of the Groupie rank . I'll also put it into the starting post, so that it can be found more easily.

Note that taking a look at these before having made an educated guess at who the level is inspired by is like watching a replay before having attempted a level yourself!

(But no, seriously, these spoilers will obviously also include at least partial spoilers for the level solutions themselves, so you might not want to look at all of them out of sheer curiosity ).

Groupie rank level list

Level 01: When the cat's away...

nin10doadict. His level "Yum Yums" was the first to really introduce me to Raymanni's Food tileset. Plus, I just wanted to make a level with a cat in a kitchen . Since nin10doadict was the first one to ever LP a pack of mine, the honour of opening the Groupie rank goes to him. Signature element, aside from the cat trap, obviously, is the compression method required at the end.

Level 02: That's a hard level that is!

Flopsy. Hence, it uses all of his graphic sets that were available at the time of the creation of this level in conjunction (Star Zone and Scrap Brain). Aside from being a standard Hard-for-Flopsy level with release rate 99 and Lemmings headed for immediate death, it also contains a glider-stoner combination at the beginning that's pretty whacky. I didn't know back then that glider-stoner stuff was another Hard-for-Flopsy trademark, though . It just happened, and now I'm glad it's in there, because it just fits perfectly! Also, back when I made this level, I didn't know yet either that Flopsy had made Hard-for-Flopsy levels himself in SEB Lems. So yeah, it's both a level "inspired by Flopsy" as well as "hated by Flopsy".
"Poking fun at how people talk-count: 01"

Level 03: Waking up the neighbours

Proxima. Look to his post at the beginning of the thread, he basically outlined everything perfectly . "Waking up the neighbours" was chosen because a) Proxima means "the neighbour" in Latin, and b) because some of the lemming crowds can break into the neighbouring "rooms" / disjoint unions, creating a solution with the single chambers interacting with each other.

Level 04: Praise be to God!

Colorful Arty. This level combines pretty much everything I wanted to put into it: A "Boss fight" level, as they appear at the end of each rank in SubLems; a level with a very small number of Lemmings (4); one that uses one of Arty's tilesets (Lego); one that requires two skills to pass through each other (digger and basher); and, finally, if you actually carry out that solution, guess what you get? A cross!
I combined Lego and Sky to create the "cliché image" of a God as a face in the Sky with a big white beard. And since "thou shalt not make for yourself an idol" - in German, people translate this as "you shall not make for yourself an image of God", i.e. don't try to imagine what he looks like - the level in itself also creates a great justification to destroy the landscape with bashers and diggers. These Lemmings aren't attacking God, you know; they're merely destroying an image that shouldn't have existed in the first place.
"Poking fun at how people talk-count: 02"

Level 05: No true Scotslem

Nessy. Okay, I know he's not actually Scottish . But this level doesn't claim to be a true Scotsman, does it? It's a level pretending to have been made by Nessy, but that isn't the case. It only relies on the Mineshaft tileset, which Nessy made frequent use of in Lemmings Migration. Also, the intended solution uses the basher-blocker turnaround trick, which I had to use twice in Lemmings Migration - even though Nessy told me it isn't actually part of his intended solution in either of those levels. Additional elements are the usage of a builder to prevent a climber from going up to a lethal fall height, and using a miner tunnel in-creation to turn around a second lemming.
The title is a reference to the No true Scotsman-logical fallacy, where you dismiss a valid counter-example against a claim of yours. The original scenario goes like this:
Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar in his porridge."
Person B: "My uncle Angus is Scottish, and he does put sugar in his porridge."
Person A: "No true Scotsman puts sugar in his porridge!"
Little detail: The tripped-over mine cart in form of an additional, fake exit tilted sideways and spilling gold pieces on the terrain. That's a neat visual gimmick Nessy used in Lemmings Migration, which sadly won't be possible in New Formats anymore.

Level 06: Stacks and stones

Raymanni. Uses his Snow tileset because it looks the most Finnish . Signature element is the stacker-stoner combination, i.e. using a stacker to enable the crowd to six-pixel-jump over a stoner. I had just heard of this trick for the first time here on the forums right around the time when I picked up on playing Raylems again - and then, Raylems was nice enough to confront me with a snow level where I had to put it into practice right away.

Level 07: (K)itty compression

nin10doadict. Pretty much his level building style 1 on 1: LPIV Space tileset + Time limit + having to bash through a wall from two sides because of said time limit + compression method to get past lots and lots of kitties. The level is called (K)itty compression because nin10doadict's own cat is actually called Itty; she had several guest appearances during his LP of my Pit Lems pack. You can notice these whenever nin10doadict shouts "My Itts!" during the videos - hence the pre-level screen .
Meanwhile, nin10doadict does have his own graphic sets, i.e. Tetris Attack and Lava, but neither of these were available at the time of the creation of this level.

Level 08: Icho chambers

IchoTolot & Proxima. Go figure, right? This is not a level inspired by his level building style, though - instead, something IchoTolot explicitly mentioned he hates: Disjoint unions. I made the chambers interact with each other via the teleporters, because IchoTolot mentioned this as a possible redeeming quality for disjoint union levels in his eyes. That way, the level became more similar to Proxima's level building style again. Thinking about it, I could have made it more "IchoTolot rage-quits" by adding in hidden traps... But I didn't think about it back then, and the level is complicated enough in the fair version that it is now.

Level 09: Wrong.

Duuduu. If you pay close attention, you notice the dot after the level title. This is already the first signature thing, because Duuduu somehow likes to put a period in his level title lines. Also, his level titles tend to be - at least in my personal opinion, no offense - a bit generic; like, for example, "A normal level" from "A Master Degree in Lemmings", which was the main inspiration for this one (and is actually a pretty awesome and unique level , merely disguised by what I in this case believe to be an intentionally generic title). I just combined it with a bit of fiddly crowd control on very thin pieces of terrain, because that's something Flopsy noticed as a repeating element during his LP of "A Master Degree in Lemmings". And I used the Marble tileset, because this seems to be the one Duuduu used the most in said pack.

Level 10: Read my lips

Flopsy. Just in case you hadn't already noticed from the letters "SEB" placed clearly visible in the level. Or by, you know, the fact that I openly state this level is for Flopsy in the pre-level screen. This one was an easy choice, given the song title premise of Lemmings World Tour: Just go with a reasonably successful song by SEB that Flopsy hadn't used in SEB Lems himself. Then make a big and complex Marble level with some random pickup skills dispersed throughout it, similarly to Flopsy's "Crash Course" or "Tricks of the Trade" level series. Curious little detail: Notice how the "lips" in the level actually form the letters "S", "E", and "B" next to them!
I'm gonna refrain from spoiling who "SEB" is at this point, because that falls into the domain of SEB Lems itself. But obviously, if you just put the level title into YouTube, you're going to find out, anyway.

Level 11: Killed by death

SQron. The pre-text gives a hint about this by using several words containing the letters "SQ", which are all written as capital letters. And yeah, Motörhead's "Killed by death" actually starts with the line "If you squeeze my lizard, I put my snake on you".
Most of SQron's levels in the "Snack Pack" used Oh no! More Lemmings graphic sets, with Bubble being the most common one. Compression method also was used. I just made the debatable decision of going with the Rock chameleon trap - a) because of "squeeze my lizard", and b) because I wanted to sneak in a hint about "snacky Lemmings", referencing the Snack Pack. Little did I know back then that this was the fastest trap in the entire game! So you have to get a little creative with your compression methods; simply increasing the release rate won't cut it!
Also, at the end there are several of the chains from the ONML Brick tileset placed right next to each other, creating a very rapid upward staircase. This was also used in a Snack Pack level.

Level 12: Tin Limmings on this livel

namida. Tree-tileset + bombing climbers + lots of miner-builder interactions. Also the part in the beginning where you have to seal off a hole between two tree trunks with a builder before other lemmings fall in is taken from a Lemmings Plus level, "Just breathe".
"Poking fun at how people talk-count: 03"

Level 13: You know you make me wanna shout

Nepster & Colorful Arty. This is my attempt at one of these "fine lines of terrain" mazes as they typically appear in the Marble tileset. The original version of this level took aeons to create, because of all the thin terrain pieces, and the solution was way too dull. So I threw that away in favour of something less microscopic with a more interesting solution. This one strays pretty far from its sources of inspiration, namely things like "Don't cross me" from NepsterLems and "Labyrinth of Lucifer" from SubLems. But I feel it benefitted the overall quality of this particular level.
The title should still tell you how I generally tend to feel about these visually confusing fine-line Marble mazes!

Level 14: Scot-free

Nessy. The Brick tileset is the other one frequently used in Lemmings Migration. Signature elements are building across a digger shaft to make the lemmings fall through facing only in one direction - like in "Dolly Dimple" from ONML, but Nessy required this e.g. in "Cringe comedy". Also, isolating a lemming from behind a crowd, building across a gap from two sides, and stopping the crowd by bombing next to a steel block are all things I did to solve "A bridge across the chasm" from Lemmings Migration.

Level 15: Take a Byte

Wafflemm. Not only does this level contain the mandatory myriad of buttons and pick-up skills; it also contains Wafflemm's forum avatar in some fashion. Since that iconic structure made from pipes from the Bubble tileset is supposed to simulate a waffle, I thought it would go best with the Food tileset. Wafflemm himself mentioned in a stream that the only thing the Food tileset was missing was waffles!
The title may be a reference to Lemming Bytes, obviously - which happens to go nicely with the Food tileset here - but actually, most of this level is inspired by Wafflemm's smaller pack, "WaffLems" (which I don't have, unfortunately; I only watched Flopsy's LP of it). There was one Beach level in particular where Lemmings fall from the hatch right into an animal trap, gliders have to be used to bypass it, and a reverse basher is needed to make a wall climbable.
Finally, Wafflemm has the habit of labeling his pre-skilled lemmings' hatches with two pickup skills on both sides, rather than one pickup skill above it. So this is another little detail you can guess it from - just in case the rest of the level didn't make it glaringly obvious to you yet .

Level 16: All for love

Colorful Arty & nin10doadict. I wasn't able to solve Arty's level "Sniper range", so I looked up the solution in his own LP of SubLems... and thought: "Hey, this can be done with fencers as well!" So I came up with something in the Medieval graphic set, because fencers obviously go well with dragon traps, flavour-wise . The fact that you have an infinite amount of fencers though makes this one more akin to the Troll rank levels from nin10doadict's CasuaLemmings.
All for Love is the title song to a Three Musketeers movie, and since you have to unite a lot of Fencers, I thought this was an appropriate choice .

Level 17: I am E.T.

Colorful Arty. This is pretty much a straight remake of his SubLems level "I am R.T.", which in itself is already a parody of the original Sunsoft level "I am A.T.". So it's basically a parody of a parody . But it is also a reference to the Retro rank of SubLems, of course, where Arty came up with new solutions to existing original Lemmings levels. It's just that I did the same thing to one of his levels now! In contrast to the Retro rank though, this level is a lot easier than the one it was inspired by, because you have to go the other way round.
Fun fact: I had to rebuild this level by hand, because Arty cleverly switched off the option to dump the level files in the main menu of SubLems. But with a rather regular terrain shape like this one, that wasn't enough to stop me!

Level 18: Le vent nous portera

Pieuw. PimoLems used degrees of wind intensity as rank names, and Pieuw is from France, so I needed a somewhat successful French song title refering to the wind in one way or another. The title means "The wind will carry us", and actually, that's quite fitting to the solution of the level, which requires a lemming to start building while another one is bashing through a wall, so that this basher simultaneously cuts off the staircase behind the builder, preventing the crowd from following. This is a pretty unique trick I learned in a Brick level from PimoLems, so I just had to go with that!

Level 19: All you zombies

Strato Incendus. Or can you imagine anyone else who likes Zombies and Slowfreeze? Yeah, this one was shameless self-aggrandising. It didn't start out as a Zombie- or Slowfreeze level, though: All I wanted to do was enforcing a Basher going down a Fencer tunnel. So I needed some way to re-obstruct that Fencer tunnel with terrain. Having a bunch of uncontrollable lemmings (Zombies) petrify inside that tunnel without the player wanting them to (Slowfreeze) was the best way I could come up with. Also, I wanted to exploit the fact that at a certain height of terrain under water, non-climber swimmers will dive under it while climber-swimmers will climb up.

Level 20: Bon appetit!

Pieuw, Colorful Arty, Wafflemm, Raymanni... Food levels aren't really anyone's exclusive signature thing. This is essentially a combination of all Food-relating structures I could find in various packs: The cheese from "Lemburger Cheese / This level stinks" and the cake from "Piece of cake! / Cakewalk" (Arty's SubLems), the lemonade from "Lemming Soda" (Pieuw's PimoLems), the before mentioned waffle and the Pillar-tileset Hamburger from "Lemburger" (Wafflemm's Lemmingbytes), the Food graphic set by Raymanni. I did recreate all the structures myself by hand, though, no copy-pasting from other people's levels... and so, I added in some pieces of my own, like the ice cream, the pizza, and the french fries . So now I've contributed my share to the pot-luck dinner party!

Level 21: Kiwi knights in white satin

Zanzindorf. Using his signature Kiwi knight tileset, this one requires two pioneer lemmings, as many of his levels do. Also, digging into a chamber to use it as a climber-turnaround facility is quite neat, plus sending a lemming up somewhere and bomb him as a faller to free the crowd.

Level 22: We are yung

Yung Gotenks. Signature elements are the abundance of walkers, platformers, and builders, plus the Hell graphic set, since Yung Gotenks made an entire pack consisting only of Hell levels... and the fact that the level overall is comparatively easy. No offense here! The way the pioneer lemming is isolated is a little tricky though, I took this from one of the more challenging levels from Yung Gotenks's packs, can't remember which one it was, though, unfortunately.
The title was really fitting, because the song "We are young" actually contains the line "so we set the world on fire", which goes nicely with the Hell tileset!

Level 23: The Earth Song

bulletride. Essentially a combination of the Lemmings Stampede levels "Deep Six" and "A walk in the park", this one requires the crowd to do something while a builder bridge is being built - because once the bridge is completed, it isn't possible to mine in the right spot anymore.

Level 24: Dove is in the air

Dodochacalo. DoveLems taught me this neat little trick of using several diggers to make some space, then use that space to build and close off a basher tunnel, making that basher the pioneer lemming. One of the most creative ways of crowd control I've come across so far! Enforcing it was a little difficult, though, I hope the fire traps at the top of the level are enough...
Also, forcing all lemmings of one crowd to become climbers is a thing in DoveLems, plus the idea of sealing a little gap between two walls to make them climbable. Though one of my levels in Lemmings World Tour also requires the same thing, only with a stacker.

Level 25: Part of ze Reunion

IchoTolot. I couldn't go with having only a "hate" level in here for IchoTolot, right? So first of all, this level obviously uses IchoTolot's City tileset, which I've made great use of for creating all the geographical locations here in Lemmings World Tour. But there's also a neat little trick I learned from IchoTolot, and that is the fact that a digger who is digging so far at the edge of a piece of terrain that there actually isn't any ground beneath his centre can be cancelled by assigning a blocker to him. The only way to make a digger dig so far at the edge though is to place a builder or platformer there first, and then start digging while the lemming is halfway on that bridge. Additionally, the way the crowd has to be controlled here is fairly common in Lemmings Reunion, to my mind. Finally, what I did to namida, I can't spare IchoTolot from: Pronouncing "th" like "z" is a thing typical of many Germans when speaking English .
"Poking fun at how people talk-count: 04"

Level 26: Clam-a-Lem-a Ding Dong

Clam. Apart from the Beach tileset, a thing that's very common in Clammings is vertical scrolling. Few other content creators use it that frequently. This level isn't very complicated, mainly because I haven't gotten too far on Clammings yet - I've played through most of the 10-of-everything levels, and most of the slightly complex levels are already complex enough to stomp me . But this one is slightly inspired by "Bucket list", and makes use of several NeoLemmix skills that Clam has used quite often in his pack (platformers and stoners, namely).

Level 27: Deceit and destruction

Deceit. I couldn't really come up with a better name here: What I wanted to hint at is that Deceit's Lemmings contains a lot of levels relying on destructive skills, oftentimes intentionally not providing any creative skills at all, or only so few of them that you only have enough for the bare necessities, i.e. gaps. Every other obstacle has to be overcome by some creative combination of destructive skills. I was pretty impressed by that, so I hope I was able to recreate it somewhat successfully...!

Level 28: Hiroshima

GigaLem. Freedom planet graphic set + Zombies + Radiation. With Resident GigaLemmings, there is an entire pack dedicated to Zombies, the only one in this fashion I know of, apart from namida's original Doomsday Lemmings, of course. Radiation appeared in the Millas pack, but mostly in the fair form that I have come to use as well, i.e. providing you with enough blockers to stop the radiant lemmings, and only using radiation in the first place in order to limit the area where the bombing can occur. This one is fairly far away from its source of inspiration, though; I really wanted to have this place and song in here, so that there would be a famous song refering to Japan. And the Freedom planet tilesets look Japanese, especially the Dragon one, with these iconic trees.
By the way: This one was the very last level in the pack I finished. And I hated every second of it. Not because of the execution, though; I just had such a hard time coming up with something creative here! Also, the terrain had to be adjusted quite a lot to give one of the pioneer lemmings enough time to escape from the zombies... the radiation actually wasn't the issue here, but Zombies are moving objects as well, after all. But now, everything works fine, and the player shouldn't face any execution trouble with this level.

Level 29: Every Geoff you take

Geoffster. Signature visual element is the steel boat at the bottom, with the side scuttles. Signature mechanic is the necessity to use a turned-around builder to gain 1 pixel in height and get over a wall. The second part of the level was inspired by "Planks", as well as its rerun.

Level 30: Joga

Mobius / Call me Bronco. Originally, I wanted to name the level "Call on me, Bronco", referring to the song "Call on me" made famous by Eric Prydz. But then, I read about mobius's hobby of meditation, and thought, fine, let's make the level refer to East Asian practices instead . An alternate contender for the level title was "Occidentali's Karma", a song by Italian singer Francesco Gabbani from last year about how modern Westerners pick up Eastern customs. But it's pretty much only known inside the Eurovision Song Contest crowd. So I went with this much more famous song by Icelandic singer Björk instead.
Signature elements are the double-duty use of a builder initially required to seal off a water pond, with that builder also being required as part of the path for the later solution. Also, the way to isolate the pioneer lemming here is something I've learned exclusively from mobius: Placing a reverse staircase under the hatch, so that all lemmings go to the left, and then using the last lemming from the hatch (who's still facing to the right) to build the second staircase.
Little visual element: Notice the "torches" that you typically find on top of exits, placed as separate objects everywhere in the level. This is a thing Mobius frequently does, which will sadly disappear, too, in case of a New Formats conversion.

Level 31: Ya ochen rad...

GigaLem. The full title of this Russian song is "Ya ochen rad, ved ya, nakonets, vozvraschayus domoy", translating to "I am very glad, as I'm finally returning back home". But you all know it under a different title . Yes, folks, it is the Trololo song! And it was chosen because GigaLem's first pack, GigaLems, contained a lot of troll elements - not only hidden traps, which is annoying because that pack is only playable in NeoLemmix 1.43, i.e. without clear physics mode - but also exits covered in bricks, which look like normal exits, though. This particular visual trick only works with the Marble tileset. Also, GigaLems contains a lot of levels where you have to get something done before the crowd arrives, meanwhile that crowd goes on an odyssee across a long path of terrain to give you a little more time.

Level 32: Fernando

Alberto Fernandes. His pack "Be smart!" contains lots of random flags, as used in the original two-player levels, placed throughout the levels. Also a lot of steel. On top of that, most of his levels require just a tiny bit of ever-so-slight vertical scrolling. So I literally built than in here, too, just for the sake of it.

Level 33: We don't need another hero

Deceit. Yeah, Deceit's Lemmings also happens to contain a lot of very innovative Hero levels, i.e. one of every classic skill, like in the original level "It's hero time!" Since this refers to the skill set, I obviously couldn't combine it with Deceit's other trademark of emphasizing destructive skills so much. So he earned himself two levels in the rank!

Level 34: I see fire

kieranmillar. The beginning is something I came up with myself, that happened to turn out more challenging than expected in a pleasantly surprising way. The actual signature trick comes at the end: Here you need to free a blocker by bombing another lemming right next to him, so that a third lemming turns around and falls into the bomber pit, from which he can then start bashing to go underneath a bunch of fire traps. You can't do this from the other side, lest the crowd would walk up into the fire traps while bashing.
So yeah, you don't want your lemmings to see fire, obviously. But the title also enabled me to put the hint about the level inspiration into the author line for the first time! (The level is credited to "Ed Kieran".)

Level 35: Fly me to the moon

Colorful Arty. I think this makes Arty the user with the most dedicated levels in this rank. Which is kind of deserved, given that his level design overall inspired huge portions of this pack - and that he showed interest in LPing it early on! This particular level, however... is not necessarily a reason for celebration. I knew about this trick, but I didn't think of it as one of Arty's signature things until I got to the Hellish rank of SubLems, where you have to do this nasty flying builder-stuff twice. I couldn't fit it into any of the other Arty levels, so you earned yourself an additional level here - but I'm most certainly not a fan of this trick!
In the end, to make it a little more Arty-like, I made it more artistic by combining different tilesets again, with clouds from Sky and the moon from the Polar tileset. Also, there's an invisible exit, as they appear several times in SubLems. Just like in SubLems though, it should be pretty obvious where it is - as if the title didn't provide enough of a hint .

Level 36: What does the fox say?

Gronkling. A lot of people seem to expect Lemmings Evolution to be one of the hardest packs ever, possibly topping NepsterLems in that regard. While the first five demo levels didn't stomp me as much as I expected - I was able to solve four out of five of them - every single one of them contained very distinctive signature tricks. Making miners go through with builders is already the most "mainstream" of them; using a miner to free a crowd from a digger shaft so that they only come out facing in one direction, and at the same time turning that miner around by hitting steel, that's some nice double-duty usage right there! Also, at the beginning the similarly obscure double-builder turnaround is required (taught in the Noisemaker rank, though ). I went with Gronkling's highly requested Minimal tileset here, which he originally planned to release as a rewards-only thing. Anyways, for all these reasons, it was pretty certain that this level would have to come very late in the Groupie rank. I don't know if it's indeed one of the most difficult ones, but it's certainly very complex, with lots of different stages going on.

Level 37: Johnny B. Goode

bsmith. Hence the name, a famous song including a separate "B". I also could have gone with "Sloop John B" . A recurring thing I noticed in bsmith's level pack is original Lemmings levels remade in a different tileset - in this case, I went with "Builders will help you here" and made it a Brick level. But obviously, the solution is completely different.

Level 38: A Mazu Grace

Martin Zurlinden. I noticed that MazuLems contains a lot of snow levels, even though the core premise of this level is taken from a Rock level, where several climbers have to work together to put builders in different spots in the most ergonomically efficient way.

Level 39: Not the incended solution

Strato Incendus. For the penultimate level, I played the reverse game and threw together everything that other people had identified as my signature level design elements. In fact, nin10doadict's level "Super Mecha Death Gators" from CasuaLemmings is what got the whole idea to the Groupie rank started, where he took my main idea of spiced-up animal traps and developed it further. So now I did the same thing with another animal trap. Also, there's a skeletal alien creature somewhat reminiscent of my "Death Titan", a level which many people seem to have enjoyed in Paralems, even though I myself considered the solution pretty lame. That alien creature breathes fire and has lightning traps in its eyes, so don't try shortcutting here! Other things I like to do frequently is enforcing swimmer usage to platform over a pont from the opposing side; using stoners as stepping stones for builders under low ceilings; and having a digger pay double-duty to lower a lemming's position and turn around the crowd. This trick proved to be very successful in my Pit Lems "Curse Level", @!#*§$%/!
Finally, I don't know whether backroutes can be considered a signature element of mine, but since I like to test my packs "in the field", probably so? Well, the name just asked for this stupid pun in the level title...

Level 40: The Grand Puzzle

Nepster. This is my attempt at recreating a Final Frustration-like experience. Signature elements are the 20-of-everything skill set with only classic skills, plus the several crowds you have to unite - plus the fact that from all the skills you have, builders are the one you are most likely going to run out of. Also, there's a structure which actually consists of Dirt tileset pieces, but which goes very well with the Pillar tileset: The "Diagonal disarray" from the level with that same title from NepsterLems.
I know Nepster doesn't consider Final Frustration one of his best levels, nor even one most representative of his level building style. But it remains a fact that X-of-everything levels are a very common thing in NepsterLems, and I've built other Nepster-style levels in the past, such as "You had it coming" from Pit Lems.
Nepster's levels were outlined to me by IchoTolot during my early days here in the forum as the prime example of fair difficulty, the epitome of the "puzzle" ideal the NeoLemmix community strives for. Hence the title.
This level is simply put the most challenging resource conservation-level I could come up with. I don't know if it's possible to save everyone here, as it is required on Final Frustration - I had to use one blocker facing in the wrong direction, so I couldn't free him anymore later. Hence, you have to save all but one.
But if anyone finds a 100% solution, please inform me! I would make that a Gold Talisman for sure!

[Strato Incendus]

Okay, I've tried it on my brother's PC, the post level jingles worked, even though I hadn't given these files to him separately (only the music tracks for the levels).

I've uploaded a first small update of the pack (check the link in the starting post), with three backroutes found by namida in the Groupie rank fixed . I had to alter the intended solution on two of them, but that's fine, since in one of the two cases, the trick required by the intended solution isn't actually a signature trademark of the respective user.

Spoiler

As mentioned in the Groupie rank level list, the basher-blocker turnaround trick according to Nessy isn't part of any of his intended solutions in Lemmings Migration. So it makes sense that this trick disappeared from the one of his signature levels where it was "required" before. Technically, it never was required there either, because the attempt to enforce that trick made the level more backroute-able.

I also made some cosmetic changes to Groupie 12 that do not affect the solution at all...

Spoiler

...following namida's written instructions. The web at the top has been removed, the green ropes slightly altered in shape, and the one-way arrows now span the entire piece of terrain they are supposed to affect. I wasn't sure whether the latter would affect the solution at first, but no, it shouldn't.

[Strato Incendus]

Next update! Thanks to Flopsy's mass upload of LP videos today, I was able to fix a couple of backroutes in the Noisemaker rank. Most of them weren't too dramatic, but it's always better get rid of them as early as possible .

Also, some of the Talismans didn't have their criteria set properly, these are fixed now as well.

The link is still the one in the starting post (or my signature).

Changelog

Noisemaker 08, Glide and Joy: I was fine with Arty's alternative solution, but when Flopsy did the same thing plus saved a bunch of skills, I decided to add some steel at the edge indeed. Also removed a builder and the swimmer, the latter one was entirely superfluous. Now, the glider is a necessity to solve the level - which is kind of the point of the title .

Noisemaker 14, Digital world: Steel added to enforce digger usage a little more and prevent fencer shortcuts.

Noisemaker 17, How to save a life: Yet more steel and made the cloner a pickup skill.

Noisemaker 19, Lemming, I hardly knew ya!: Little block of steel added to prevent a backroute using only the top part.

Noisemaker 20, Flight of the bumblebee: Flopsy's solution used all the builders, but skipped the main trick this level is supposed to teach. Terrain on the left was moved further to the left, the level of the water was raised, and a long vine was added on the right to enforce a digger.

Noisemaker 25, Bash to you: Added steel and one-way arrows.

Noisemaker 29, Behind blue eyes: Added steel.

Noisemaker 35, While my Lemming gently builds: No backroute here; I just added a piece of terrain to make it more clear that the climber won't splat. You're welcome!

Noisemaker 36, Pull me under: Here is a backroute I found myself. I had to invert the hatches to create a ceiling low enough that it's not possible to build over a blocker. Looks really silly now, and inverted hatches won't work in New Formats, but it's the best I could come up with for the time being .

Noisemaker 37, Running up that hill: There was nothing urgent to fix here, I just added some steel to push a little more towards my exact intended solution.

Amateur 05, Sugar Baby Lem: Just a cosmetic change, there was a one-pixel gap somewhere that didn't affect the solution at all.

Amateur 06, Cliffs of Dover: Bumped up the release rate to prevent a timing- and stalling-based solution.

[Strato Incendus]

I've finished watching Flopsy's LP, so here are some summarising thoughts. I've also attached the replays of other levels Flopsy struggled with (=skipped or genuinely couldn't solve).

Again, thanks a lot for playing this far, Flopsy, and for sharing all these videos so quickly! The fact that you "only" got to 3/4 of rank two can easily disguise that you still played an entire 68 levels of this thing, which is more than some other packs have in total. (I'm still stuck somewhere on rank three of SEB Lems, just F.Y.I. ...)

On Flopsy's LP

Let's start out with the part of his criticism that I feel is warranted:

Noisemaker 15 (Octopus's garden) does indeed sacrifice a bit of game fairness for visual aesthetics: The fact that there are traps under the terrain forming the octopus's arms may turn off some people right away, but in combination with the updraft-water, the triggers of these traps become effectively invisible even in clear physics mode. This affects the planning of the solution here more strongly than on the last level where this happened, "Dark fate of Atlantis" from Paralems, where it just means having to place a single bomber.
This level is counter-intuitive already, because the "water" in the underwater tileset, as you know, does not behave like water, but like an updraft. That is something the player is informed about by the pre-level screen, but it only solves part of the problem. I can't leave out the updraft, though, because not only would the octopus floating in free air look dumb, but also the lemmings would splat.
So I have no idea on how to improve this for the time being. Fortunately though, all these "player-expectation subverting elements" are combined in the same landscape, meaning together with the underwater tileset. There is a rerun of this level, but those two are the only ones where the underwater tileset, and thereby the water-updraft that cloaks trigger areas, are used at all in the entire pack.

Amateur 14 (Meet me halfway) is a little fiddly to pull off. But it looks cool when it works out, and I see no other or more concise way of teaching a new player that destructive skills can pass through each other.

While I had been worrying that the Amateur rank might have been too easy for Flopsy - since he mentioned a non-sufficient rise in difficulty from rank 1 to 2 - I was pleasantly surprised to see that most of the early Amateur levels did indeed seem to make him think more than the Noisemaker levels.

So the difficulty does indeed seem to rise from Noisemaker to Amateur, just as intended !

For the rest of the levels that made Flopsy angry, I have to say that most of this was self-inflicted .

Hell's bells (see attachment): Flopsy made a small but decisive conceptual mistake: The Walker isn't supposed to cancel the Basher at the end. The Basher must finish on its own by removing all the terrain, then the Walker can be used to simply turn him around. Flopsy put a lot of time into trying to execute a solution that might work as well, but is a lot more fiddly, and neither intended nor necessary. Self-inflicted pixel precision here.

It's a long way to the top (see attachment): Flopsy almost had the correct solution in mind - just the wrong way round.

Join me in death: Same trick used here as on Paralems's "A staircase of skulls": Bomb into the ground, then you can place a stoner in the bomber pit and the lemmings can walk up comfortably. Two more stoners are required to get up the steel block. So the supposed "stoner staircase" that Flopsy criticised is a grand total of three stoners long. I think that's tolerable .

Ayo Technology: Flopsy almost had the solution here: Take the last lemming of the crowd, let the rest fall down safely using stoners, close the gap with a platformer. Then it's just a matter of repeatedly cloning those lemmings at the top to have them walk into the radiation, and make them stop with the blockers at will.

Slide it in: This level could profit from having gliders and floaters pre-assigned. Through delayed assignment, as taught by the preceding level "Shatter me", one can circumvent the necessity to create a stoner wall to turn the gliders around.

Tears in Heaven: Yeah, he simply didn't find the solution here. The right crowd needs to do the majority of the work.

General conclusion for all players:

- If it's way too easy, and you manage to save a lot of skills, it's probably a backroute .
- If it's too easy, but uses exactly all the skills, you probably already know the trick the level was supposed to teach. Good for you!
- If it's extremely fiddly and therefore annoying to pull off, while it doesn't necessarily have to be a backroute, it's certainly not the main intended solution. So in those cases, you may want to consider going back to the drawing board.

[Strato Incendus]

Next major, major update! Can't believe it's only been 10 days, but I thought I better get this done early.

Check the link in the starting post, or get it from here.

This barely has anything to do with Arty's LP; most of what he and Flopsy did in the late Noisemaker rank was as intended, and in Flopsy's LP of the Amateur rank, there were hardly any backroutes at all.

But I've found some further backroutes myself in the later ranks - levels which will take some time until Arty gets there - by actively trying to break the levels. Everything I've found in that regard has been removed now .

One level in particular got an emergency treatment with buttons. I think this may also be the way to finally fix the ever-broken level "Crossing the Nile" from Pit Lems.

Changelog

Noisemaker 36, "Pull me under": The terrain was flattened to make the execution easier, as well as to prevent freeing the blocker with a single basher alone. I chose to keep it normal terrain rather than steel - to allow for Arty's awesome alternative solution!
Noisemaker 37, "Running up that hill": Added in a floater just for cosmetic purposes to make this a 1-of-everything level .
Noisemaker 38, "Rock, Paper, Scissors": Hate to break it to you, but I had to break your solutions because they were breaking the level . Flopsy and Arty both did the same alternative approach, and while it's not a backroute and a great solution in and of itself, it has the option of bypassing the main trick this level is supposed to teach. I had to put steel into the trees to enforce this trick.

No further changes to the Amateur or Professional rank since the last version!

Diva 05, "All the single Lemmings": Fixed the fire traps and added a useless bomber for cosmetic purposes, again to make this a 1-of-everything level.
Diva 06, "Diggas in Paris": Because this is a Paralems repeat, the time limit was still enabled. Since it wasn't relevant to the solution, it got removed from the Lemmings World Tour version now.
Diva 08, "Dragostea din tei": Made some of the pickup skills overwrite so that they are more easily visible.
Diva 20, "Only time": The top red stripe of the US flag was missing, apparently I forgot to select it correctly wherever I copied it from. Fixed now!
Diva 22, "Wrecking ball": The fire traps weren't completely touching the ground here, too. Even though they shouldn't really be relevant to the solution, I've fixed them now, just to be on the safe side.

Rockstar 04, "Staying alive": Adjusted the save requirement to factor in the cloner. I have learnt my lesson from Pit Lems, as far as cloners are concerned, but apparently I forgot it here again .
Rockstar 14, "Boulevard of Broken Lems": A spontaneous epiphany made me remove a fencer here, which should make this level a lot more difficult!
Rockstar 24, "I'd do anything for Lems": Made the steel go all the way through, again just to be on the safe side.
Rockstar 28, "Berlin": This is the one that had to have the buttons inserted, because otherwise you could just trap the crowd in a digger pit and build a long staircase to the left.
Rockstar 32, "Engel": Removed the excess diggers to make the methods of crowd control in this level a little more various .
Rockstar 37, "I'm your Venus": Put some fire traps on top of the mountain - partly to make it look like a volcano, partly as a precaution, in case someone wants to try going along the bottom. No one shall walk on the surface of Venus! Lemmings has to be realistic, right?

Legend 03, "We can be heroes": Removed the excess digger. The intended solution included it, but only for something that looked cool without actually being necessary. Now there's an equal number of each skill.
Legend 05, "Hallelujah": Fixed misplaced terrain, there was a hole in that chair.
Legend 09, "Eye of the tiger": Added one-way arrows to prevent bashing towards the exit from the right.
Legend 17, "Y. Lem C. A.": Put one-way arrows across the big lemming's face so that the altitude where you're supposed to bash in the opposite direction can only be reached by a climber.
Legend 23, "Wish you were here": Removed a builder and added a stacker + basher instead.
Legend 29, "Africa": It was painful to dissolve that wonderful 1-of-everything pattern here, but the cloner made one specific aspect about the level way too easy. Now you simply have two climbers, rather than being able to clone the climber.
Legend 30, "Knocking on Heaven's door": Exchanged the exit button for one from namida's Metal tileset to make it more easily visible, i.e. for gameplay reasons; exchanged the background for GigaLem's Metal tileset cloud background for artistic reasons.
Legend 35, "Scarborough Fair": Added the Union Jack!
Legend 39, "I will always love Lemmings": Removed all stackers except for 1 because they were redundant.
Legend 40, "The Time of my Life": Removed a platformer because it was redundant.

No further changes to the Encore or Groupie rank since the last version!

[Strato Incendus]

The next update (10-19-2018) brings a couple of fixes to the Amateur rank (since there weren't any in the last update), as well as a couple of new talismans!

These were made from solutions Flopsy and Arty found that were superior to mine, so thanks, you two, for finding these!

The link in the starting post works, too, as usual .

Changelog

Noisemaker 21, "Rainbow in the dark": Some skills had to be turned into pickup skills in order not to be used too early in the level and thereby bypassing the main trick. Also, one-way arrows next to the exit prevent shortcutting from the left.

Noisemaker 26, "Don't stop me now": Builder made a pickup skill to enforce the main trick.

Noisemaker 29, "Behind blue eyes": Yet more steel + widened the water pond to make sure all skills have to be used.

Amateur 04, "Stairway to Heaven": Added upward arrows to prevent mining and enforce fencing in one specific place.

Amateur 14, "Meet me halfway": The terrain at the top has been flattened to improve the execution of timing this correctly. Also, a talisman for saving everyone has been added, after Arty invested so much time into attempting this - even if this attempt actually just resulted from overlooking the saving requirement...

Amateur 16, "Slide it in": Implemented the previously anounced change to make the lemmings either floaters or gliders right out of the hatch.

Amateur 18, "Tears in Heaven": Added steel to prevent bashing into the chamber with the exit, rather than mining.

Amateur 23, "Fields of gold": A single hexagon has been made steel.

Amateur 24, "Wonderwall": Added a fire trap to prevent digging down all the way to the steel to stop the digger. Then made the blocker and 1 digger pickup skills to prevent cancelling the digger with a second digger (as taught before! ) or turning him around while digging with a blocker (though that is also a nice trick that I actually forgot to turn into a Noisemaker level! ).

Amateur 25, "Radioactive": Basher made a pickup skill.

Amateur 26, "Like ice in the sunshine": Upward arrows added. May still not be entirely backroute-proof, though.

Amateur 31, "The Great Level of Indifference": Added a firetrap to prevent a semi-shortcut.

Amateur 32, "Ich und mein Holz": Downward arrows on one block, steel through the horizontal pillar.

Amateur 35, "Black Polished Chrome": Put downward arrows on the synagogue to prevent simply bashing through it.

Amateur 36, "Walk this way": Flattened the terrain around the exit to enforce the more obscure solution. The width of the water had to be slightly adjusted to go along with this. This level should now be quite a bit more difficult, but it got this position on the basis of the difficulty of the intended solution anyway, so I hope this is fine.

Amateur 39, "Japan": Added just 1 tiny bit of steel to the second mast, so that both of the masts have to be bombed through, rather than going underneath. Before you only had to bomb through the first one.

Amateur 40, "God gave Rock 'n Roll to you": A bit of steel to prevent the crowd from going over the top piano keys.

Groupie 25, "Part of the Reunion": Has been renamed to "Part of ze Reunion" , raising the "poking fun at how people talk-count" to 04. Sorry, but I have to be even handed in this regard!

[Strato Incendus]

I felt the change to Amateur 14 was important enough to get it done right away, so I've changed the update date from yesterday to today, only changing that single level and adding the "save everyone"-talisman.

To be fair though, this is one of the most difficult talismans in the game now, so blame Arty for finding it !

[Strato Incendus]

Just a general note to everyone: Don't feel rushed to "re-solve" levels where a backroute fix on my part might cause your replays not to work anymore. Your savegame file still remembers the level as solved, and that is also my philosophy: Anyone who solved a level in the state it was in when they first attempted it has beaten me at some point in time - be it entirely through own skill or partly because of my own stupidity !

I simply advise people to update whenever a new version comes out and then continue playing where they left off, just in that new version. That raises the chance of the levels still following being more backroute-proof, and thereby more enjoyable! No need though to go back and constantly recheck whether everything is still working!  With 40 levels per rank, that's just nuts!

I noticed only recently that a lot of my old SEB Lems replays were broken, and I resolved those levels now, but I still focus mainly on getting ahead in the pack.

I'm constantly refining Lemmings World Tour, like IchoTolot has been fixing PimoLems right after each of Nessy's streams. Given the unusually large size of the pack, I didn't want to wait until the end of an LP before I started fixing the first backroutes and thereby leave all those levels "vulnerable" in the meantime.

I also guess I'm going to see some familiar backroutes again in the second half of the Amateur rank of Arty's LP - hopefully only stuff I have fixed in the meantime already. But that is only going to underline how badly these fixes were needed! Apparently there's even going to be one episde where all five levels appearing in that video are broken, so... bring it on!

[607]

Hello, did you copy the track so it played twice or did you play everything twice yourself? If the first case is true, why did you copy it at all, and not stick with one loop?

[Strato Incendus]

Oh, I played everything a lot more often than twice, I just combined the best takes!

So no, it's not like you're hearing the same thing twice ; on a lot of tracks, some things change in the second half. On ONML 01, I alter the guitar melody slightly, ONML 02 features a slightly different solo, the Can-Can is played higher the second time, so is Rondo Alla Turca, the second half of Smile if you love Lemmings contains the guitar solo throw-ins, and so on .

[607]

Thanks! I'm putting the music on my phone, and when I do video game music, I fade out after the first loop. But I thought here the second part might actually be different... I just couldn't tell for sure anywhere.

[Strato Incendus]

At last, here's the update with Arty's backroutes up to the end of the Diva rank fixed!

Click me or the link in the starting post

I haven't received any further replays - so I guess people either stopped playing because it's Old Formats, or because Arty's LP was so entertaining to watch that they'd rather watch that instead ^^, and now they already know all the solutions.

Well, not anymore, because now most of the backroutes that Arty found shouldn't be possible anymore!

I think there were like 1 or 2 levels with so whacky intended solutions that I couldn't yet figure out who to enforce them, and so I just didn't bother. But the majority should be cleaned up now - even though that usually only means "time to look for a new backroute to the same level"...

[Strato Incendus]

Here's a little update regarding the conversion of Lemmings World Tour to New Formats:

I have converted the entire pack using the pack converter and am now in the process of fixing the single levels (Noisemaker, Amateur, and Professional are done so far).

This mainly refers to inserting the proper backgrounds again, as they got lost during the conversion, despite being available in both formats (I reported this as a bug). Fortunately, I don't have to do this for every single level - in that case, I probably would have waited for a bug fix first - but only for those that don't have a monochrome background. For those levels which do, including everything that simply has a mono-black background, no changes are necessary in that regard.

The other main thing is adding ceilings in the cases where it's relevant, because the deadly ceiling in New Formats obviously destroyed some solutions.
To avoid confusion, I'm doing this in the Old-Formats levels and then re-convert those single levels by opening them up in the New Formats editor.

That way, even if you (continue to) play the Old-Formats version, you won't get confused about whether the ceiling is solid or not, because in all cases where it's relevant, there's terrain covering the ceiling now, and this will be the case in both versions.

It may affect the timing of the solutions in your Old-Formats replays, though, because I always placed the ceiling in such a way that it's visible to the player, obviously, therefore, a lemming who hit the level border before is now going to drop down 1-2 frames earlier.



Finally, there's the elephant in the room, which are the radiation- and slowfreeze levels.

The biggest challenge will be adapting those levels where zombies had to walk into radiation / slowfreeze. Those are "Only time" from the Diva rank, "Blowing in the wind" from the legend rank, and "All you zombies" from the Groupie rank. Since zombies can't collect pickup skills like they used to do as "classic zombies", nor do we have the instant-pickup-skill gimmick anymore, there's no way of having specific spots in the landscape automatically give skills to zombies. The worst case would be to cut these levels entirely. There will not be any dedicated replacement levels that would become exclusive to New Formats; LWT was created for Old Formats, and the New-Formats version is merely trying to be as accurate of a representation of this pack as possible.

For regular radiation / slowfreeze levels, in some cases, there was an easy enough fix by simply replacing radiation and/or blocker pickup skills with exploder pickup skills (e.g. Amateur 13, "Ayo Technology", and Amateur 25, "Radioactive").

In other cases, it's more difficult, because the skill panel was already full with radiation / slowfreeze in place.

For example, I can re-create the solution of Amateur 26, "Like ice in the sunshine", easily by replacing the slowfreeze with a stoner pickup skill - the only problem is: The level was a 1-of-everything level before, and there's no space (yet) on the skill panel to add a 9th skill.

This also affects Amateur 39, "Japan", which is one of my favourite levels in the pack, and was praised by Arty as one of the few radiation levels he actually enjoyed .

Thus, I think it's safe to say the New Formats conversion of LWT won't be released before the NeoLemmix update enabling the level creator to have up to 10 different skills.

This is kind of the ideal redemption for the removal of radiation and slowfreeze at this point, because while the Shimmier was what gave me enough of an incentive to transition to New Formats completely as far as creation of new levels is concerned, I didn't want to include any Shimmier levels in LWT at such a late stage, because that would have meant casually introducing the skill in the middle of a rank while everything else has had proper introduction levels.

Simply having more skills however is nothing that needs a lot of additional explanation. I wonder how many players would even notice if I didn't bring it up on the level preview screen!


Some of the aesthetics will change as well, few of them because I want them to, but some objects (certain exits, teleporters, differently shaded terrain pieces etc.) and backgrounds that I used are simply not available anymore in New Formats (as of now, at least). Since we're not supposed to add stuff to other people's tilesets, those levels can only be given their original look again if those pieces are re-added. To be clear, this is nothing that will make me put a New-Formats release on halt, but I still hope I can restore the original look of the pack again eventually.

A huge upside of the New Formats version, though: As namida and Nepster told me during the early days of New-Formats development, the graphic-set performance has improved immensely! The worst part was converting all the graphic sets that had been missing or incomplete. But so far, I haven't experienced any crashes related to heavy graphic-set mixing yet!


Nevertheless, since LWT was created for Old Formats, I'm going to continue maintaining it for both Old- and New Formats!

This is likely going to be the only pack for which any content creator is doing this, but for me it simply means I do any backroute fixes in the Old-Formats version first and then re-convert that single level by opening it in the New-Formats editor.