Lemmings Redux [Easy-Medium]

[namida]

On the one hand "Bomboozal" has been reduced from Taxing to maybe Fun difficulty due to untimed bombers, which makes replacing "A task for bombers" with it an interesting idea at least (you've still got "bomb" in the title for one thing), but on the other hand "A task for bombers" is better known as a tutorial level, so I'm not sure what to lean towards. Just a couple thoughts of my own.

Disagree. Bomboozal or Let's Block And Blow (the difference between the two is basically negligable in NL) never showcases using bombers to blow through a thin vertical wall, only through a thin horizontal platform.

[ccexplore]

I don't recall anyone else on this thread asking for the bomber tutorial level to be replaced, nor for Bomboozal to be added anywhere to Redux?  I'm sure there are more interesting levels to consider for inclusion first before we get to considering levels like Bomboozal.

[chrisleec728]

Never mind. Namida made a good argument against it, plus I wasn't officially suggesting it anyways.

[WillLem]

Here's an LP of the first rank of Redux, episode 1 of the new series!

[Proxima]

I was just about to post that link myself

In a comment, ericderkovits said he would prefer it if every level had its original music, instead of the current system of cycling through all Lemmings / ONML tracks so each one is used equally often. (This was not a deliberate decision; we simply never even considered that it might be an idea to do things differently.) Does anyone else feel like this? I'm open to making this change if there is a consensus in favour of it -- but it would have to be a clear consensus, because there may be people among the "silent majority" who prefer the current setup and would be against this change.

At the moment, Redux has 160 levels and cycles through 23 tracks. Since 7 x 23 = 161, all tracks are played seven times each except for ohno_04 and the tracks that get skipped when a special graphics level appears (orig_16, orig_02, orig_11, ohno_03 and orig_06).

With the proposed change, ONML tracks would play on the ONML levels (36 in total), Holiday tracks on the Holiday levels (12); we'd still have special graphics tracks for the first four special levels, and original Lemmings tracks on the remaining 108 levels. However, because of the lack of any numerical pattern in which levels are included, we could end up with some tracks playing a lot more often than others (as the Genesis version already does). I haven't yet looked in detail to see what things would look like.

Any feelings for or against this proposal?

[ericderkovits]

Yes mine has all the music from each level as they are supposed to be, orig, ohno, holiday, genesis, psp, nes and I think even 1 zx spectrum level. I have a folder on my hard drive that has all the music for any lemmings game-dos, amiga, many others(got from various sources online).
if other people want this, I can upload the music. I even have music for 3d lemmings, revolution, all world of lemmings, adventures of lomax, the tribes (amiga, dos, SNES). All are in .ogg form because I use also for Superlemmini. But I won't upload unless others want since redux has a lot of music that would be played often like genesis. I don't mind that's why I changed mine, but others may. Thx Eric.

[chrisleec728]

I was thinking the same thing actually, especially since I like the PSP music in particular. However, there are four different levels that are attributed to both Genesis and SNES and others from Budget Amiga, Prima and ZX Spectrum, so I'm not sure how that would work.

[Proxima]

Yes mine has all the music from each level as they are supposed to be, orig, ohno, holiday, genesis, psp, nes and I think even 1 zx spectrum level. I have a folder on my hard drive that has all the music for any lemmings game-dos, amiga, many others(got from various sources online).
if other people want this, I can upload the music. I even have music for 3d lemmings, revolution, all world of lemmings, adventures of lomax, the tribes (amiga, dos, SNES). All are in .ogg form because I use also for Superlemmini. But I won't upload unless others want since redux has a lot of music that would be played often like genesis. I don't mind that's why I changed mine, but others may. Thx Eric.

That sounds like a great resource! I think you should definitely post it somewhere (maybe in Level Design?) since others may want to use different versions of the music for customising their own NL installation or for custom packs.

For Redux, I wasn't considering changing which version of the music plays to match the game it comes from, since I would find it jarring to keep switching between Amiga music, Genesis music and so forth from level to level -- just maybe (if this is what the community wants) playing the same track as the original games played on that level. What do others think about this?

[ericderkovits]

it wouldn't be too hard because all my music files are cleary labed ie orig_01cancan_dos, tune3_amiga, specialone_genesis. Not just labled orig01 or tune03. so if they were in the music folder one could just look for the music file with the _ver. But it would take time, since redux has many levels. In Superlemmini much easier and quicker. for the pack you want (ie SNES) just in the levelpack.ini just add the music_id at end of each level and just list the music in that pack ie Music_## = musicname.mod(.ogg)

This is why I wish the neolemmix editor could some how read a music.ini file and you could put the levels and the musictitle in it.

[namida]

I suspect that if we try to match the original games' track selection, we're going to run into "which version?" questions. Just between the three most significant ones, my understanding is that Genesis has no pattern (it's basically arbitrarily selected for each level - though I might be mixing it up with SNES here?), while Amiga follows a pattern, and DOS it entirely depends on what level the player started with and how many they've beaten - which means that for DOS exclusive levels (Vacation From Gemland, and anything from Prima) there isn't a "correct" music.

I don't really have anything against this idea, but I personally wouldn't consider it worthwhile either - even without the above, it's a lot of work.

This is why I wish the neolemmix editor could some how read a music.ini file and you could put the levels and the musictitle in it.

You can sort of achieve this by using a music.nxmi file and having the same number of lines in it, as the total number of levels in your pack. However, this is a really kludgy way to do things, and of course, it breaks as soon as an NXLV file is played standalone (including in testplay mode from the editor) rather than as part of a pack; so I really strongly don't recommend doing this.

[namida]

From another topic:

"It's all a matter of timing" duplicates the middle hatch, after a vote was taken specifically on this level.

I don't recall the vote, but I'd like to specifically raise that I feel this duplication is not acceptable. It breaks expectations of the order lemmings will spawn in, which is a direct contradiction to the goal of NeoLemmix-izing the levels for this pack. In my opinion, either the ABCABC order should be restored, or else the two hatches should not completely overlap, so that it's clearly visible that there's two there.

[Proxima]

Proposed fix for "It's all a matter of timing":



This fix (if accepted) will only be used in Redux. For my "NL versions of the original levels for challenges" project, I think I'll just leave the hatches untouched (so that they spawn in ABCABC order) since, as you say, this is the expected behaviour in a NeoLemmix version.

[ccexplore]

Is it accurate to assume the positionings of the two entrances are calibrated precisely, so that they effectively match exactly where the lemmings would be located had they been fallen and landed from the original entrance under ABCB ordering?

[Proxima]

Indeed. A lemming falls 3 pixels per frame, so moving a hatch (1,-3) or any multiple of that is equivalent to its current position, if the lemming lands on flat terrain. In this case, the two middle hatches have been moved (4,-12) and (-4,12) from their original position.

[Proxima]

It's been a while with no further posts, and Minim mentioned wanting to do a thread combining challenge Results for Redux, so I think it's time to get on with the final round of decisions and updates.

Firstly, should we add more levels to Redux? Since I proposed this, we've only had a couple of suggestions, so at this point I'm ruling out expanding the pack to 175 or 180 levels. Going up to 165 or 168 is still on the table (maybe even 162 if just one or two levels get championed strongly), but it's looking more likely than ever that we'll just stick with the current selection. Also, it's now confirmed that my retouches to namida's conversions of the official levels can go ahead and will be the new official versions, so that means any levels we leave out will still have an official version available.

Regarding specific levels proposed: WillLem proposed "Heaven can wait (we hope)" and "The ascending pillar scenario", and this made me check whether we currently have a level that requires using a digger pit to trap the crowd. I don't think we do -- at least not the straightforward type of digger pit and release typified by "Heaven can wait". However, Quirky 28 "Speed Trap" shows the use of diggers to separate a worker from the crowd; Zany 14 "Pitfall" requires a digger pit and is overall more complicated than "Heaven can wait"; a digger pit is the easiest way to solve Zany 26 "Across the Gap"; finally, Manic 13 "Upside-down World" has a talisman for saving 100%, requiring some trickery in containing the crowd -- and, as with "The ascending pillar scenario", this is especially difficult due to the limited space.

So overall I think that, while the two levels proposed are a little different from anything we have, I don't mind leaving them out. Similarly, namida's suggestion of "The Boiler Room" is a great level that I like a lot, but we do already have Zany 13 "Don't leave any Lemmings" to show reaching the exit by bombing through a ceiling.

Any more feedback, or should we just mark this as settled and stick with the current level selection?