Tomas Pavlicek

[Mindless]

I'm just posting some info so that we may eventually be able to contact the author of LemEdit, so that he might perhaps release the source code for LemEdit... (yes, ccexplore, I know you think it's a piece of crap)

Location: Czech Republic

Email Addresses:
vtmsoft@geocities.com delivery error
tpavlicek@iol.cz delivery error
vtm@atlas.cz
v_pavlicek@vol.cz ?
*@vtm.hypermart.net delivery error

Websites:
http://vtm.hypermart.net/ no longer available

UseNet posts under these addresses can be found on Google Groups.

If anyone has further information, post it here.

[ccexplore]

I'm just posting some info so that we may eventually be able to contact the author of LemEdit, so that he might perhaps release the source code for LemEdit... (yes, ccexplore, I know you think it's a piece of crap)

LOL, did I really seem that harsh?

I mainly hate the fact that he manages to make LemEdit less compatible with Windows compared with Lemmings.  But ultimately, if source code can be made available, then at least there's a chance to fix things.  I also have to admit that, after you get over its flaws, the program does adequately support the needs of level designers.  And finally, it's a DOS program so that automatically confers some degree of forgiveness on it since in DOS you always have to worry about how little memory there is.

[ccexplore]

Oh yeah, and I now remember the truly most heinous thing about LemEdit--that user "manual"! =8O

Ugh, he manages to make it longwinded, overly complicated, and condescending to the user at the same time.  It is just both awful English and awful writing in general.  I'd say that no matter how flawed LemEdit might be, that crappy manual trumps even the worst of LemEdit.  (It is also kind of funny that he would spend so much time writing that much crap in the manual--isn't the point of GUI be that it's intuitive enough for people to figure things out without having to read for an hour? )

Anyone who's distributing LemEdit nowadays should remove that abomination of a manual and replace it with Conway's LemEdit tutorial.

[Conway]

Well if English isn't Tomas Pavicek's native language, it's not surprising that the manual is messy. He probably took the time to write it in 'English' since most of its users would speak that language. I agree it's tiring to read, though.

[geoo]

Well, appearing "overly complicated" and "condescending" might be caused by the awful English. I have sometimes the feeling that the stuff I write is written impolitely, at least it seems so to me. And when his English is worse than mine...

Anyway, could anyone send me this manual, please? I'm just curious. And I wouldn't mind getting Conway's, too.
EDIT: Oh yeah, me e-mail (in case you don't know): geoo89(ad)gmail(dod)com

[Anatol]

Ok, I sent it to you.

[Conway]

The original LemEdit manual comes with LemEdit. There are many Lemmings sites you can download it from, including The Lemmings File Archive

You can read my LemEdit tutorial at Lemmings Universe. Which reminds me, I should update it for the advent of LemEdit 2.

[ccexplore]

Well, here are some gems of Tomas' lovely writing:

A good idea is to mention what a level should contain to be at least playable. First You need to place the trap door somewhere in Your level. I suppose You do not want the lemmings to fall from top left screen corner. And the next important thing is to not forget include the exit doorway. Maybe it sounds funny, but is not. Also a good level should have a solution. Making an unbeatable level because of solution loss is not a great artwork. It just shows that author is at least a bit stupid. The conditions in level like time and lemming skills amount play a great role too, but the functions handling them will be described later.

I especially hate the part that says "Making an unbeatable level because of solution loss is not a great artwork. It just shows that author is at least a bit stupid."  This is a manual on LemEdit, not a lecture on how people should design their levels, and certainly not a lecture to throw insults at imagined level designers.  It's bad enough that Tomas think we are so stupid as to require being reminded, in such heavy language, to put in an entrance and an exit.  It is worse when he starts going into what levels are good and bad and how they supposedly reflect the intelligence of the level designer--in a manual section that, if I recall, is supposed to simply go into the fundamentals of LemEdit.

I certainly agree that for most people, a level that cannot be solved or have such obvious deficiencies as no entrances and no exits are generally not considered good levels.  But there can be reasonable exceptions.  In fact, Jazzem's original idea about a certain LemEdit competition, originally he allowed for the idea that the level is not solvable. It's definitely possible to think of some way to create artwork out of levelmaking, and a lot of levels have an artistic element to them anyway in addition to the puzzle-solving element.  In any case, if Tomas feel so compelled to discuss the philosophy of level design, at least make a separate section in the manual, rather than bloat up the section that is supposed to help the user get started with LemEdit.

To observe the effect properly You need to load a level, because what can You see if there are no level parts to display?Yes, this is a non-logical jump, but I please You first to load a Lemmings game level in the editor and only then continue reading.  The purpose is very clear. You must have something to work with. If You are not sure how to load the level, please look below in the chapter describing the files menu. Continue reading only when You have already loaded at least one level successfully.

This is basically an admission that the manual is horrifically organized, if it is written such that the user have to take a "non-logical jump" in order to figure out how to get started with LemEdit, and to force the user to have to skip around to different sections of the manual in order to understand the basics.

And I don't know about you, but that whole sentence with the words "non-logical jump" sounds like he thinks we're too dim to grasp the fact that if there's nothing to scroll around you won't notice any scrolling on the screen, and that it is too difficult for us to figure out that we would need to load a level, or god forbid, just add to the level that damn exit he was expounding on just a minute ago, in order to see how scrolling works.

As a first we already talked about is to which level part group it belongs. Then it is so called type number. A type number determines how the level part would look like. I am sure You know that there is for example water and trapdoor. Although they both belong to interactive objects, each looks differently and the type number is the reason.

I find that last sentence almost comical.  I guess maybe it's just bad English, but the type number "causes" the interactive objects to look different?  I know what he means but I'm sorry, this really isn't the way to state it.  I'm not the best in English either, but let's try "The type number is what distinguishes water objects from, say, trapdoor objects".  Or maybe just "each different type of objects has a unique type number."  etc.  Notice that my sentences are shorter too.

I'm at work right now, but noticed I've barely even gotten through section 2.1.  You get the picture.

Overall, it's not too bad, some parts are acceptable.  But things like the above do strain the reader's patience, as is the fact that the entire manual has apparently nearly 2000 lines of often poorly organized text.

IMO, I think one of the problems is, in writing the manual it seems Tomas is almost trying to hold a conversation with his reader, rather than the primary goal of explaining how to use LemEdit.  Conversations are nice, except they only work when they are truly interactive as in a forum, not a manual that cannot possibly figure out by itself what the user needs and wants out of the manual and what the user is confused about.  A manual should be well-organized and should excise unnecessary text and get straight to the point as often as possible, especially since the reason the user is even using the manual might be because they are already confused or frustrated and not necessarily in a good mood to converse with the manual.

[Anatol]

I don't really care what the manual is like, personally. I'm just glad there's a program out there so I can make Lemmings levels 8)

[ccexplore]

Well I agree, certainly despite all its flaws, it remains that Tomas was the only one who put in the time to write something that lets you edit levels, even if the program has its flaws and its manual fitted for the trashcan.

Of course, nothing will erase my annoyance that the program stopped working without DOSBox after going from Windows 98 to XP.

Speaking of that, I can't help but wonder anyway, if he already had accomodated for a "Windows compatible" mode (which was what I did with LemEdit2, to force it to always use that mode), why doesn't he make it the default?

Oh yeah, I remembered another fun fact about running it on Windows 98.  Even though it works without DOSBox, one funny quirk is that it screws up the system time, so that basically time is frozen on the computer's clock whenever I use LemEdit.  I'd have to set the clock back to the correct time afterwards.  Fun times.

[Anatol]

Wait...you mean this isn't the year 1998 after all?!?!

[geoo]

At first, thanks to Anatol and Conway for pointing out where to find the manuals.

Oh well, it took me almost three hours to read all of this text. O_O (Ok, I don't know exactly, I didn't read it nonstop, but I think that's almost impossible.)
And BION, I even learned some new things about LemEdit reading this.

Reading your review @ccexplore was fairly amusing I have to say. But I have to agree to most of the points though.

The first part of 2.1 seems a little condescending, especially the parts you quoted, and now that I read it completely I have to agree, in this case it might be not only caused by the bad English, but I'm actually not sure about whether it is really meant to be, I doubt it; another reason I'd call is in the next few sentences, namely, the third sentence following. (This is a 'non-logical jump' Sorry Toma A;, if you're reading this.)
Another thing is "Maybe it sounds funny, but is not." I somehow imagine he read the prevoius sentences and had to laugh himself about what he wrote because all of this was so obviously clear.
I think the main problem was that he wanted to make it understandable for absolutely everyone, but I think he should have at least assumed that the user had played Lemmings at least a bit before using the editor and hence knows that exit and entrance are required. He should at least have stated that as known fact (e.g. "[...] as you should know" ), but the "Maybe it sounds funny, but is not." supposes that he assumes there'd also be people out there not knowing that.
At that aspect, the other sections are not that bad. Apart from that, section 2.1 is also the most chaotic IMO. Toma A; should have made either a "How to get started" or an explaination of the workbench out of it, but making an explaination with some throw-ins of a 'how-to' referring to other sections (the numbers 2.4 and 2.5, in the survey 2.5 and 2.6 appear twice btw) is certainly not the best way.
Reading "This was a short description of all workbench functions." simply made me laugh. I mean, considering this as short? "If You do not agree with the word "short", [...]" - it almost has something sarcastic in it: "If you do not agree with short, than have a look at the rest I prepared for you to read...". In the actual ending of that sentence is admitted, that there's a lot of other things in the text, showing that it is quite badly organized.
As I said, I think the whole text was meant to be understandable for everyone, hence the long and repetitive explainations were written. But exactly because of these, and I think the lenghs are also caused by the bad English, it became hard to understand (not to mention the occasional deviations, especially the one about "good and bad levels and how they supposedly reflect the intelligence of the level designer", as ccexplore called it), and so these explaination caused the opposite to what they were supposed to cause.
For the introduction, especially 1.3 shows that this manual even suits to users who haven't played Lemmings at all until then. Apart from this, 1.3 would fit very well an introduction for the Lemmings game itself, and it shows that Toma A; really seems to love lemmings. The following introduction (1.4) is quite informative, mainly the first part, and seems to be meant to show that Toma A; did a hard work making LemEdit, which I think he did.
And the troubleshooting section is ok I think.

Overall, now that I have read this, the manual is the polar opposite to the program: Whereas the program is very easy to handle (except the mouse problem and a very few other things) and mainly self-explainatory, the manual is fairly complicated (mainly the important section, 2.), but if you need help with LemEdit, it will eventually provide you the answer, after you had worked yourself through the manual and finally found where to look for the answer.

Compared to Conway's explaination, it gives you more detailled answers and exact and complete (although complicated) information about the program, but if you want to start I'd definately recommend Conway's description, it gives you all information you need to know to edit levels. If Conway's manual doesn't provide the information you need, you'll have to switch back to Toma A;' one, but you should beware if you're unnerved.

I have to say again, sorry @Toma A; if he should ever be reading this. I think I know that the manual wasn't meant to appear like this and took you probably quite some time to write it, but it simply came out wrong.