What we lack and need the most. Icho's observations and planned future steps.

[IchoTolot]

As I am quite busy this month, I took a step back and observed the current situation. I made thoughts about this and tried to come up with a plan for myself for "what's next?". As a result, I also saw what in my opinion is underrepresented in NL and desperately needs more attention.

So what is it what we lack and need?

It's basically a combination of 2 things that are connected to each other: Beginner packs and proper maintenance of content!

The lack of easier packs in the new format version is known, but how did it come to this? We had an abundance of packs in old Lemmini/Lemmix/NL with relatively easy levels. Due to no maintenance at all or at least a lack of doing maintenance they are either forgotten, inaccesible, or completly outdated now. This results in new players coming in slower and are less likely to stick around.

Simply telling people to update packs won't cut it here. Either nothing will happen, or 1 update will roll out that will after time has passed be outdated again. Also doing it yourself only results in you getting all future work related to this pack.

As a result, what will be my future steps?

First of all, the NL community pack is coming along better now. Levels are slowly trickling in and everything is replay covered. But what to do againat the maintenance and new player issue?

Here I unfortunately must say as hard as it sounds: You can only count on a small number of people to keep packs functional. That's why I think the best strategy is to personally address the peoblem as I can then assure that the content is functional and up-to-date.

As countermeasures I plan on doing 2 things: A new NL-Introduction Pack and something I think about calling Lemmings Isolation.

The new NL-Introduction pack point should be clear: We need a new introduction pack for new players and the next thing for me to do should be to start working on that.

What's Lemmings Isolation? Well, it's simple: (NL Intro Pack ->) Isolation -> Reunion -> United. They together should form a difficulty curve, with Isolation being the easiest pack of the three. Players should have no problem jumping from the introduction pack to Isolation and work their way up. The introduction pack should teach them the basics, Isolation should bring in routine and experience, Reunion should make them veterans and United shall make them masters.


So my planned schedule for executing this plan is:

1.) Start with making the NL Introduction Pack beginning next month.
2.) While the Intro-Pack is in construction, all new harder or not fitting levels will go into United or already be gathered for Isolation.
3.) After the Intro-Pack is completed, begin working on Isolation.

As I said: New harder levels and also new shimmier levels will probably be added to United while working on the other projects.

As a result of all of this, I probably will put the NL-source-code reading on ice for now, as I think these areas are way more critical in the current state. Yes new functions are nice, but the content is lacking and lagging behind. And in a pinch, I still have the code ready to go.

I also plan on updating the manual when the shimmier is released, as this will require quite a few things to be changed in there. At last, over the next days the new contest should pop up.

[namida]

Just wondering, have you heard from Nepster lately? He hasn't been active on the forums for a while now, as far as I can see.

If he's not active, and you're focusing on content, I may need to look after at least getting the Shimmier / secondary-anims / 10 skills features into a stable version...

Regarding the introduction pack, I have an abandoned new introduction pack that I was working on for a while. I'll send it to you so, if you like, you can use it as a starting point (and if you don't want to, that's fine too). EDIT: If I can find it... it looks like I don't have it either in Git or in my NeoLemmix folder, maybe I lost it. EDIT: Nope, found it!

[IchoTolot]

I haven't heard from Nepster lately, but it is most likely the case that he is currently busy as well.

In regard to the started Intro-pack, I'll take a look at what you have there when I start.

[grams88]

Hi IchoTolot, Hi everyone

I wonder if we should think about preserving old packs or old format packs, that way it can last forever if you get my drift. Lets say for instance I remember someone on the forum talking about updating their level pack but updating it might cause them to maybe alter some of the levels in their pack, does that not create a lot of hassle itself. God forbid if we were to leave this world, who would be updating their pack, would there be a way of keeping a ten year old pack still fresh or even a 20 year old pack, i.e martin zurlinden pack might be near that mark. I wonder if there might need to be a way when you play a pack it automatically goes to the version the pack was really meant for and what I mean by this is when you first created the pack what version was that originally on.

That way a lot of the older packs will be remembered and kept in an achieve of some sort. I know it probably sounds like a long shot idea but it got me thinking, we need to think about the future and preserve things.

[Proxima]

grams88: I'm not sure what, in concrete terms, you are proposing we do.

We have an archive right here. For playing the levels, old versions of NL can be downloaded from the NL website.

About updating levels: the point is that while old packs can be played on old versions, for many creators and players that's not ideal. Some players don't want the hassle of keeping lots of versions and having to switch between them to play different packs; which in turn means that for creators, having their pack available only for old versions narrows its potential audience. Newer versions of NL have better quality-of-life features and (by and large) make for a more enjoyable playing experience.

Some old packs can't be updated without drastic changes, because they contain levels using deprecated features such as radiation and slowfreeze (or gimmicks, going even further in the past). Yes, deciding what changes to make -- whether to adapt levels, remove them or replace them with completely new ones -- is a hassle for the pack creator/maintainer; but some creators have decided it's worth doing so as to get the improved playing experience and wider audience. For packs whose creator has chosen not to update them, the pack doesn't disappear and can still be played.

If we're talking 10-20 years in the future, I believe that NL is likely to stabilise, and any content that does get updated to (or originally created in) new-formats will not need continuous updating to remain playable. We've already abandoned pretty much all the more problematic old features, so further culls are unlikely. The text-based format is good and I don't think there's likely ever to be a change into a third format.

For creators who are no longer around, such as Martin Zurlinden: we have to make some decisions on their behalf, and for packs that don't make extensive use of deprecated features, I think updating the packs to keep them playable on the latest version is more likely to be in line with the creators' wishes than automatically playing them on the version they were made on (which, in the case of MazuLems and many other old packs, is not old-formats NL, but other engines that predate NL altogether).

[Strato Incendus]

The lack of easier packs in the new format version is known, but how did it come to this?

I think I've suggested this earlier already: Self-selection .

The most motivated members on the forum, regarding programming, maintenance etc., have this high level of motivation because they're the most passionate Lemmings players. Since they deal with the game a lot, they're also on average the best ones at the game. Consequently, the levels they create are among the hardest ones.

Conversely, those of us who create less challenging levels often rely on different features to make our levels stand out and fun to play - artistically, thematically etc. Some of the things we've used in the past to achieve this goal were removed during the transition to New Formats, which in some sense may have given the more casual content creators the subconscious impression that the direction NeoLemmix is moving towards maybe isn't for them anymore.

Of course, there's nothing stopping new players from creating fresh, easy packs for New Formats, completely from scratch. When I started out creating levels for Old Formats, most of the packs already existing for Old Formats were too hard for me, including those which I consider on the easy side by now. For me personally, that was precisely why I spent more time creating levels than playing other people's packs - but I may be in the minority here .

For many others, it may work the other way round: They see the existing custom packs for New Formats, can't even beat them, least of all create levels of that difficulty themselves, and as a consequence, might not share levels they would have shared otherwise because they consider them to be crap.

I remember how many disclaimers I put into the release topic of my very first pack, Paralems, telling everyone how it's totally not in line with standard NeoLemmix philosophy and how, as a consequence, it does a lot of things that "purist" NeoLemmix players were going to hate. Other people simply might not take that "risk" in the first place, i.e. sharing an easy pack of which they think the core audience won't appreciate it.

Yes, you only get better by practicing, both with regards to playing and level creation - but how high you set the first hurdle to jump over is crucial when it comes to giving someone the movitation to continue.

[grams88]

Hi everyone

ahhh I spelt Archive wrong in my last post. (lol)

I was probably more thinking about it like for example if say you downloaded a pack it automatically goes to the NL version that was in place at the time the level pack was made. Would that not involve the person making the pack have to do some programming as they would have to program it in such a way. (I'm no programming expert so I have no idea how you would go about this)  As Proxima was saying about people having to keep the old NL versions a lot of people probably don't want that hassle.

I have to admit you guys have got an archive as Proxima was mentioning and I like the way we done it on the level pack website, I think that is Mindless's one where a lot of the old packs are found and many other places such as the link Proxima posted there.

I was thinking more about the future in relation to levels pack becoming forgotten, inaccesible, or completly outdated as IchoTolot was mentioning.

I think the Martin Zurlinden pack is a lot easier compared to the newer packs that are out now, great work from everyone.

[Simon]

This is really 3 issues now that should not be confused.

Easy pack. Make easy NL12 pack that is harder than tutorials. Icho already takes care and plans a project, Isolation, in the middle term.

Porting. Port NL10 packs to NL12. Icho's proposal is to let volunteers to this. This seems to be the correct approach. Normally, the author should maintain their work and has, by unspoken agreement, exclusive rights to publish modified versions.

If the author loses interest, community members should step forward to maintain and publish ports, taking certain liberties when NL10 levels aren't trivial to port. This is a service to both the community and to the original author. The most recent NL10 version by the original author should remain available. The original author may return and reassume maintainership.

In Lix, the content is overseeable at ~800 singleplayer levels across 4 big and many more small packs. I include most packs in the main download and maintain the proof collection for everything. NL is more decentralized, it shouldn't copy what Lix does.

Long-term preservation. You want to guarantee access to the NL10 and NL12 packs for 20 years. This is a separate issue than porting the NL10 packs to NL12. Proxima links to the NL pack list, but that is merely an index, not an archive. What happens if random authors' Dropbox links or Google drive links rot?

It's good that NL offers some packs for download already from within the installer/main pack. Does the NL site mirror these auto-downloadable packs? In general, should the NL website server mirror most packs and their replay proof collections? Should such mirroring merely be backup, or should it become the sacred central place to get packs? What happens if the pack author releases in quick succession and the (manual) mirroring is outdated? Very interesting problems.

-- Simon

[Proxima]

Good points. I'd like to add one more issue:

Accessibility of packs. Suppose I as a new player want to play some NL content. At the moment, there are two ways to do this:

(1) Go to the "Lemmings & Lix Fangame List" (linked above). First problem: it's unclear that this is the place to go. "Fangame list" doesn't say "place to find NL packs". Second problem: Opening the NL tab in the list brings up a list of all NL content, old-formats and new-formats jumbled together with no indication at all of which is which. Third problem: every pack's entry on the list indicates author, number of levels, and a bit of history. As a new player, the absolute most important thing I want to know to help me decide which packs to play is difficulty.

(2) Browse the "NeoLemmix Levels" subforum. At least here, old-formats and new-formats content are separated, and there's no ambiguity about where to look. Still, it's less than ideal that I have to click on each pack's topic to get information about that pack, rather than being able to get an overview. And again, a typical opening post tells me the number of levels, a little about the history, and some pretty pictures to advertise the pack -- but nothing about difficulty.

What I'd love to see is a really good "overview of NL packs" webpage that contains direct download links in addition to links to each pack's topic, and has each pack's author, year of publication, number of levels, and a difficulty rating (or maybe indicates the difficulty range). I accept that difficulty is somewhat subjective, so maybe find some way for the community to put our individual ratings together into a group rating?

On a side note, I'd like to point out that my pack GemLems is a new-formats pack on the easier end of the spectrum, and I want to port Lemmings Redux to new-formats as soon as I've finished watching the replays and deciding about backroute fixes.

[IchoTolot]

I've added some diffuculty estimaters to the content I am maintaining:

United: Hard-Extreme
Reunion: Medium-Hard
PimoLems: Medium
DoveLems: Easy-Medium

My format currently is: [Engine] Packname [Difficulty: Difficulty-Rating]

[Strato Incendus]

Since a lot of my earlier packs tend to have been on the easier side, I might chime in regarding my conversion plans .

The first thing on my list is definitely converting Lemmings World Tour. As I said though, that is on a halt until the 10-skills-panel is a thing.

I don't want to start converting something else in the meantime, because I think I'd get confused easily when jumping around between packs, trying to update them all at the same time.

That said, though, I don't believe I've used any Graphic Sets in Paralems or Pit Lems that weren't part of Lemmings World Tour, as well. So all the graphic-set conversions I did for World Tour should, as a side effect, allow me to also convert Paralems and Pit Lems in principle. Those two would probably fill this "gap" of easy packs quite nicely, at least to some extent.

Paralems is really easy and might be a great intro pack, since it includes remakes of Original Lemmings levels, but for the NeoLemmix skills ("Just fence", "Only gliders can survive this", etc.). However, I'm not sure how far playing this pack can actually take a new player, because it diverges from the core "puzzle philosophy" so much. It doesn't really do much with regard to making people aware of obscure solutions.

Pit Lems therefore would most likely be converted first after LWT, then - precisely because it's more challenging than Paralems. The reason it's called Pit Lems in the first place was a reference to Star Wars: Pit Droids (hence also the Star Wars font in the pack title), the very first game I played that described itself completely as a "puzzle" game (compared to Lemmings being an "action puzzle").

Lemmicks definitely won't be converted to New Formats, except for the select levels that re-appear in Lemmings World Tour. That's because for those levels, I've already figured out a non-gimmick solution. A lot of the other levels don't actually work without the gimmick in the first place.


All of my packs, as you probably know, include some amount of radiation and slowfreeze levels.

Lemmicks, as I just said, is out of the question.

Paralems has comparatively many levels involving zombies, including at least one where zombies need to walk into radiation and slowfreeze areas, as well as another level where you need to clone radiating lemmings. Cloning radiating lemmings can sometimes be replicated with enough bomber pickup skills - that is the way I converted a World-Tour level, "Ayo Technology" - but bombing and stoning zombies is something that was effectively removed together with radiation and slowfreeze.

Pit Lems barely has any zombie levels, and those that are there don't require them to interact with radiation or slowfreeze, as far as I remember. The issue with Pit Lems is that some of the best levels (including 2 of the 3 LOTY nominees) included radiation and/or slowfreeze. More precisely, at least one of them I can't even modify into a pickup-skills level, because that level itself already is part of the pack (the version with radiation and slowfreeze is the rerun of said level, "Controlled overload" vs. "The long way down").

The only other option would be to create a massive redux pack of my own levels, either combining all the non-radiation/slowfreeze levels from Paralems and Pit Lems, or simply creating a "Best of" collection of all the levels I still consider worthwhile. A "Best of" of all my levels in general however should probably also contain levels from Lemmings World Tour and Lemmicks... partly because I'm not sure whether just Pit Lems and Paralems together would provide enough material to work with.

It does sound like fun though to go over my old levels again and simply cherry-pick the best ones into a single combined pack .


When it comes to other people's packs, I think New Formats would greatly profit from having Arty's SubLems and nin10doadict's CasuaLemmings available.

CasuaLemmings was one of the first packs I attempted, because it was one of the few packs I even had a chance at solving. As a consequence, it was largely fun, also because it featured some slightly trolling, Paralems-like levels to loosen things up (with one of them even being explicitly inspired by Paralems ). But it also had some surprisingly difficult puzzles that stumped me out of nowhere. And those are precisely the ones that offer a new player the opportunity to grow and get better.

SubLems simply has what I would describe as a perfect difficulty curve. The beautiful architecture of most of the levels also does its part in preventing the pack from annoying the hell out of a new player.



Hence, that is definitely my main advice for IchoTolot and anyone else trying to deliberately design an easier pack: Start by simply trying not to annoy the player!

I think a good starting point for that would be our discussions about immediate turn-offs when seeing a new level for the first time.

When I see whacky terrain that just instantly looks like it's a mess to navigate through (best example: the dreaded "thin-terrain-pieces chaos maze"), or massive amounts of flow control without any possibility to contain the crowd (a popular device on "Hard-for-Flopsy" levels), I'm just willing to throw in the towel much more quickly than in a nice 1-of-everything level or so, with lots of connected terrain pieces (=not a builder fest). The latter type of level can then happily be challenging and obscure, having me wonder "okay, where does that miner go; how the heck do I get to turn this lemming around just one more time", etc.

If there's one thing to take away from this in short, I'd say "no flow control in easy packs". Keep in mind that original Lemmings actually never even teaches you how to properly contain the crowd in different ways than with blockers. Digger pits, cutting off the pioneer's builder-staircase behind him, sealing off the pioneer's basher tunnel, freeing a blocker by mining etc., all that is just stuff that some players figure out by themselves, and those who don't get stuck as early as the Tricky rank.

Crowd control as an overarching term is a necessary part of pretty much every level, and I think there are clearly three tiers to it:

Level 1: crowd containment with blockers (--> "Noob strategy" )
Level 2: crowd containment with digger pits & Co., usually enforced by requiring to save everyone, or simply not providing any blockers (--> Intermediate)
Level 3: flow control, i.e. no ways to contain the crowd at all, it's all about keeping them busy and timing things just right (--> Professional)

[Proxima]

I think a good starting point for that would be our discussions about immediate turn-offs when seeing a new level for the first time.

Except that that topic showed that we have a lot of differing opinions about what turns us off from a level. And if we're thinking about new players, how can we know what would turn them off when they are just getting to know the game?

For example: You list "10-of-everything" levels as a massive turn-off; but I think it helps new players to have more sandbox-like levels in which they can play around and find out what the skills do without being in any real danger of losing.

Crowd control as an overarching term is a necessary part of pretty much every level, and I think there are clearly three tiers to it:

Level 1: crowd containment with blockers (--> "Noob strategy" )
Level 2: crowd containment with digger pits & Co., usually enforced by requiring to save everyone, or simply not providing any blockers (--> Intermediate)
Level 3: flow control, i.e. no ways to contain the crowd at all, it's all about keeping them busy and timing things just right (--> Professional)

Aside from the fact that some levels don't have a crowd because there are only a small number of lemmings, there's a major consideration you've missed: some levels can have no way to control the crowd, but the save requirement is low enough that you can let the lemmings behind the worker die until the path is created. In GemLems, four of the first five levels are of this type.

[namida]

I would say those two situations fall outside the spectrum, or could be considered a Level 0 (no control required, not even blockers). This would also cover levels where lemmings are unable or unlikely to die so crowd control isn't needed, too, such as (to pick the easiest example imaginable) Just Dig.

Further to this, I'd say levels like Bitter Lemming also fall into level 1, where the terrain contains the lemmings and separating a worker is trivial (in this case simply by using a climber).

Of course, this doesn't account for difficulty points unrelated to crowd control.

[Strato Incendus]

Of course, this doesn't account for difficulty points unrelated to crowd control.

Sure! It's just that a lot of the more challenging levels show the tendency to make the crowd control part of the puzzle - meaning if you spend just one skill too many on crowd- or flow control, you can't get on with the actual solution. That's how these two challenges interact frequently.

Except that that topic showed that we have a lot of differing opinions about what turns us off from a level. And if we're thinking about new players, how can we know what would turn them off when they are just getting to know the game?

For example: You list "10-of-everything" levels as a massive turn-off; but I think it helps new players to have more sandbox-like levels in which they can play around and find out what the skills do without being in any real danger of losing.

I stand by my point that 10-of-everything levels don't teach the player anything. Except for how the skills work. And that's something that individual levels on the individual skills, such as "Just dig", can accomplish just as well, if not better. Moreover, teaching the individual skills isn't actually the challenging part. You could have all that in a single level, call it "Playground", akin to the Practice section in Lemmings 2. Those levels didn't even have an exit, i.e. they were unsolvable - their only purpose was allowing you to try out all the various skills.

What we're thinking about here, however, is how to get new players to the next level - quite literally - where they are being equipped with the necessary basic knowledge to merely have a shot at the harder packs out there. For that, you need to train the player's eye and mind to discover specific places in a level where a certain skill can go in, and often that insight arises from skill restriction. Most prominently: "Oh, crap, I don't have a blocker, how else do I turn the lemming around now?" Or "I don't have a bomber, how do I get rid of this blocker now?"

And 10-of-everything levels simply don't do any of that. They don't get you any closer to solving actual harder puzzles.

For clarity: I haven't beaten a single hard pack out there. But I have beaten the beginning 10-of-everything levels on all of them. Where did that get me? Exactly - nowhere .

Aside from the fact that some levels don't have a crowd because there are only a small number of lemmings

A crowd to me is any number of lemmings larger than one. In those levels with, say, 1 to 6 lemmings, where you often have to steer every single one of them individually along various paths, I'd regard that as a form of flow control. Characteristic trademark of this: All of them are moving pieces. There is no group of lemmings that you can just leave behind without having to worry about them.

there's a major consideration you've missed: some levels can have no way to control the crowd, but the save requirement is low enough that you can let the lemmings behind the worker die until the path is created. In GemLems, four of the first five levels are of this type.

I'd agree with namida here, that's level 0: no crowd control required. Unless the save requirement is very tight and you can barely create a splatform or similar before the allowed number of lemmings have died. Then it can indeed feel more like flow control again, just that, rather than worrying "how many can I let slip by here?", it goes right away to "how many can I let die here?"

Regarding GemLems: As far as I recall, you haven't released that pack in its completed state yet, so how would I know?

In most custom packs I've seen so far, having such a low saving requirement is more the exception than the rule - and, as far as I understand you, even in your pack GemLems, it seems to be especially prevalent on the lowest rank.

If however you can manage to create more of such levels than the average pack, where the question is how many lemmings can die before you construct the correct path, or where a different number of lemmings die depending on the path you choose, that would certainly help your pack stand out from the rest!

[Proxima]

I stand by my point that 10-of-everything levels don't teach the player anything.

I rebutted that point with a detailed examination of what the player learns from each Fun level. That's not just hypothetical; it's how I learned the game. And sure, it didn't put me in a position to cope with really difficult puzzles (even solving "The Steel Mines of Kessel" on Mac took me ten years after beating the rest of the game); but it did equip me with the knowledge I needed for the mid-Tricky levels where it stops holding your hand.

In short: if your point is that 10-of-everything levels aren't going to get the player from A to Z, then I agree, but I would respond that they have to get from A to B first, and once we're there we can think about the next step.

A crowd to me is any number of lemmings larger than one. In those levels with, say, 1 to 6 lemmings, where you often have to steer every single one of them individually along various paths, I'd regard that as a form of flow control. Characteristic trademark of this: All of them are moving pieces. There is no group of lemmings that you can just leave behind without having to worry about them.

Okay, but then levels with only a small number of lemmings can be very easy even though they would technically fall into your "flow control" classification, e.g. "Nightmare on Lem Street".