NeoLemmix V12.7.4, Editor V1.18 Release

[namida]

Well, it's time. V12.7.0 of NeoLemmix is here!

The first "flagship" feature is neutral lemmings. These are sort of half way between regular lemmings and zombies; and can be identified by their greyscale clothing; entrances that spawn them can be identified by a hollow diamond appearing over them. Like zombies, the player cannot assign skills to neutral lemmings. However, unlike zombies, neutral lemmings can be saved, and are not infectious.

The second is that custom pickup skill objects are officially supported now. A system has been implemented that allows for designing these, such that they won't need any updates if/when new skills are added, or the skills are reordered, etc. At the time of initial release, the only pickup skill objects present (other than the default one) are in namida_bridge, namida_basement and namida_garden; but I'm aware of several more that are in the works and will likely be in the next styles update (and probably available to download manually from the forums even sooner).


Moving onto smaller details, antisplat pads - a feature we had in old-formats that got culled in the move to new-formats - are back! We also have a few minor changes with zombies - they're now affected by the nuke, and a zombie that bounces off a blocker always infects that blocker (addressing an edge case where sometimes they wouldn't - this edge case resulted from the physics behaving exactly as intended so this was not a glitch, but was an illogical result, so there is now a special rule here). We also have an explicit rule for overlapping one-way arrows; one-way arrows of different directions that overlap each other now cancel out, instead of combining their effects in various (and visually-obscured) ways.


We've also had some tweaks to the styles and level formats. For styles, all styles included with NeoLemmix have been updated - but if you have any unreleased work-in-progress styles, there's a tool to auto-update them attached to the 2nd post. For levels, we've got a new feature - "Cleanse Levels". This is activated by pressing F8 on a pack's title screen; this loads and re-saves a copy of every level in the pack. Cleansed copies of levels are saved in a "Cleanse" folder, they do not overwrite the originals. This isn't a blind "make a copy", but rather a load the level, then re-save it, so the output is completely up-to-date format-wise. Files other than levels are just directly copied, except for automating replacement of $RANK with $GROUP in levels.nxmi files. This can also be used as a way to mass convert old-formats or other engine levels, without having to build an NXP first. The engine retains full support for non-updated content for now, though this will be dropped in the future for styles (V12.10.0 most likely) - it will be kept as long as possible for levels and packs; while the editor does mostly support it, support on the editor side is not guaranteed and could be dropped at any time (including that some things might already not work) - if the editor doesn't seem to be loading a level properly, and that level was created before V12.7.0's release, run the level through Cleanse Levels before reporting a bug.

In short: Styles need to be updated before V12.10.0, but any included with NL are already updated. Levels don't need to be updated with any urgency for game compatibility, though may need to be updated for editor compatibility.


Editor-side, we've finally got talisman and preview / postview text editing in the level editor - a feature that's been sorely needed for a long time. Do note that the addition of these has broken the non-tabbed view, this will be fixed in a near-future update to the editor. We've also got much nicer handling of secondary animations now. Unfortunately, we still don't have proper alpha channel handling.


And of course, for both the engine and the editor, we've got plenty of bugfixes too.

Full changelog (V12.6.5 -> V12.7.0)

FEATURES
--------
- Antisplat pads - an inverse of the splatpad (these used to exist but were removed; they're back now)
- Custom pickup skill objects are now officially supported, see: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=4435.0
- Neutral lemmings (lemmings that can be saved and interact with objects, but cannot be assigned skills except the nuke)
- Recoloring of lemming sprites - styles can just specify custom colors instead of having to provide recolored spritesheets, if their lemming sprites are just palette swaps of the default ones

PHYSICS CHANGES
---------------
- If one-way arrows of different directions overlap, they now cancel out instead of creating a combined state
- Skills cannot be assigned to former-ohnoers, even if they revert to a state in which a skill usually could be assigned
- The nuke now affects zombies
- Zombies always infect any blocker they bounce off, regardless of trigger areas

FORMATS
-------
- Tweaks have been made to the formats of several files. Backwards compatibility will exist up to and including V12.9.X.

STYLES (Official / Lemmings Plus styles only; please see authors' topics for other styles)
------
- All custom pickup skills have been removed, so that they can be re-added with the appropriate V12.7 updates
- All L2 styles use the L2 lemming colors for the respective styles
- Changes to some trigger areas in official styles (default:button, orig_crystal:trap_03, orig_pillar:rope_trap)
- Changes to the graphic of orig_fire:firepit and orig_fire:firepit_blue (no physics change)
- Changes to trigger areas and resizability in various namida styles
- Default and Xmas have a new Disarmer sprite, thanks to WillLem
- Fix to one-way arrow animation in l3_shadow
- namida_bridge, namida_basement and namida_garden all have new pickup skill objects
- Removed a duplicate piece in namida_circuit (will automatically be replaced with the non-duplicate version in levels)
- xmas:lights is now horizontally resizable

BUGFIXES
--------
- Assigning a skill to a highlit lemming when impossible did not queue the assignment
- Auto-saving of replay was not prevented when playing a level twice in a row
- Clear physics mode color shift sometimes freezes if game is paused
- Cloner-stacker and Cloner-builder skill shadows are sometimes off by one brick
- Fixes to the postview text selection algorithms
- Levels in unordered packs still tried to use rank/position for replay filenames
- Level select menu could still be accessed in test mode via pretext / posttext screens
- NeoLemmix may hang when switching rank from the preview screen under certain conditions
- Several fixes to alpha-blended terrain
- Skill panel icons may use zombie and/or athlete graphics in some cases
- When a specified music file cannot be found and the standard rotation is empty, the previous level's music was reused
- When attempting to assign a new skill on a frame where an assignment already exists, the old assignment got priority

OTHER
-----
- "Cleanse Levels" feature. Press F8 on a pack's title screen to save an up-to-date-format copy of all levels in the pack. (You can create a pack with old-formats, (Super)Lemmini and/or Lemmins levels, and run this on them, to quickly convert them all to up-to-date NXLVs!)
- Color of objects in clear physics mode is now slightly darker
- "No Hotkey Assigned" in preview texts is now "None"
- Skill panel graphics have been moved from "styles/default/panel" to "gfx/panel"

Changelog (V12.7.0 -> V12.7.1)

- Cleanse Levels now copies (and updates, in the case of levels.nxmi) files other than just levels in a pack.
- Cleanse Levels now saves all feedback to a text file, and just shows a single message when completed to tell the user if there are any errors or not.
- Missing pieces in levels are replaced with placeholders instead of causing crashes / cleanse failures.
- Translation table for namida_wasteland now uses the restored antisplat pad.
- Fixed bug: "Go to previous rank" goes to different pack when on first rank of a pack. (Applied to both menu and preview screen.)
- Fixed bug: Incorrect data saved for levels without a background - doesn't affect in-game but may affect editor or other tools.
- Fixed bug: Piece auto-replacement doesn't work for terrain, unless it's a "replace the entire style" redirect.

Changelog (V12.7.1 -> V12.7.2)

- Draw priority order for lemmings (front to back): Selected lemming, then highlit lemming, then regulars, then neutrals, then zombies. Within each category, athletes are drawn in front of others.
- Slow motion functionality added. Is not assigned a hotkey by default.
- Fixed bug: Directional select / force walker are applied even to replay assignments.
- Fixed bug: Terrain pieces in terrain groupings may be replaced with fallback when they shouldn't be.

Changelog (V12.7.2 -> V12.7.3)

- Fixed bug: When frame is advanced or skill is assigned immediately after a paused RR change, the replay and gameplay will desync (the release rate change is lost in the replay data).

Changelog (V12.7.3 -> V12.7.4)

- Fixed bug: Cloner pickups, especially when providing multiple skills, can interfere with the save requirement

Full editor changelog (V1.14 -> V1.16)

EDITOR CHANGELOG
----------------
- Editing of preview / postview texts and talismans is now supported.
- Fixed most (or hopefully, all) incorrect implementation details in saved level files.
- Greatly improved handling of secondary animations.
- Supports the new V12.7.0 versions of formats. Note that this means levels edited with this version will NOT be compatible with V12.6.5 or earlier.
- Fixed bug: Editor always thinks levels containing specifically-paired teleporters/receivers haven't been saved.
- Fixed bug: One-way arrows with the "no overwrite" flag are rendered incorrectly.
- Fixed bug: Resizable objects' trigger areas are assumed to be the same size as the object itself.

Editor changelog (V1.16 -> V1.17)

- Changed the wording of the buttons that alter the order pieces are drawn in. (Their function remains unchanged, only the text on them is different.)
- Empty space around objects is trimmed (unless this would cause the object's size to drop below 8x8).
- The fallback placeholder object is no longer shown in the object selection list.
- Fixed bug: Non-tabbed display was broken.

Editor changelog (V1.17 -> V1.18)

- Resizable objects, or objects with a trigger area size the same as the size of the object itself, no longer get cropped.
- Object NXMO files can specify "EDITOR_CROP true" or "EDITOR_CROP false" to specify if the object's graphic will be cropped or not, overriding the above check.
- Fixed bug: "Draw first" actually meant "draw last" and vice versa.

Download: https://www.neolemmix.com/download.php?id=379 (Permalink to V12.7.4)
Styles: https://www.neolemmix.com/download.php?id=374 (Permalink to 2019-12-11)
Editor: https://www.neolemmix.com/download.php?id=376 (Permalink to V1.18)

Upgrade from earlier V12.7.X (stable only!) -> V12.7.4: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=4504.msg79276#msg79276

The styles must be downloaded in full when updating from V12.6.5 or earlier (or from V12.7.0-RC builds); there is no "upgrade" download.

It is VERY HIGHLY recommended that you create a new folder for V12.7.0 instead of using your existing folder when updating from V12.6.X. You can use the same folder if you're updating from a V12.7.0-RC build, but to be safe delete the "styles" folder first. You can copy the "settings", "music", "levels" and "replay" folders, and the "NLEditorSettings.ini" file, from your old folder if you like - those will work with the new version no problem. It's the "styles", "data" and "gfx" folders that should be cleaned out.

As usual - please report any bugs you find, with the new features or otherwise, in the Bugs & Suggestions board.

[namida]

You can use the attached tool to update your styles if needed.

You do NOT need this if your style is included in the styles download, even if you submitted it un-updated, even if you haven't submitted any updates in ages. All included styles have been run through the updater already. Instead, get the up-to-date copy from that.

Put this in the base of your style's folder, and run it. Alternatively, put it in your "styles" folder and run it with the command line parameter "-all" to upgrade all styles.

[Strato Incendus]

Awesome, namida! I think that's everything I need for updating LWT: anti-splat pads, talisman editing, and the custom pickup skills brought back (the official GigaLem Tree Mod tileset has been failing me lately, with its custom Cloner and Bomber pickups not working).

Speaking of GigaLem Tree, the interim version GigaLem Tree Bright, which I converted for LWT and share alongside with the pack, would be one of the graphic sets I'd need to treat with this tool, right? Because it isn't part of the official styles download, just like my strato_generalmd.

GigaLem Tree Mod Bright also has custom pickups, consequently, which are also slightly brighter than the official ones.

[IchoTolot]

Before I start fixing stuff 2 3 4 bugs I immidiatly noticed and 1 odd thing:

- In the main menu if you scroll through the ranks of a pack with the arrow keys: If you scroll down bleow the first rank it doesn't go to the highest rank of the pack anymore, but to the highest rank of the pack BEFORE that.
So in my case if I scroll below rank 1 in United I end up in Reunion and have no way of getting up again.

- The editor tabs are still messed up. I think it's because of the new misc tab, maybe move that to the edit tab on the top as a subpoint

-

- Removed a duplicate piece in namida_circuit (will automatically be replaced with the non-duplicate version in levels)

That doesn't work.      "namida_circuit:wire_end_08" is marked as missing and I get errors on my levels. It is not automatically replaced with 07.

- I cannot recommend cleansing levels in packs right now. The levels are alright, but the pack's structure afterwards is messed up, as everything (ranks + levels) is then sorted alphabetically and not in the pack's intended order anymore.

- The default pickup skill graphic is really large in the editor if you click on it. It's 30x30 which is way larger now than the object itself.


And that's it for the first wave of bugs and stuff I noticed.

[namida]

- In the main menu if you scroll through the ranks of a pack with the arrow keys: If you scroll down bleow the first rank it doesn't go to the highest rank of the pack anymore, but to the highest rank of the pack BEFORE that.
So in my case if I scroll below rank 1 in United I end up in Reunion and have no way of getting up again.

Will look into this.

- The editor tabs are still messed up. I think it's because of the new misc tab, maybe move that to the edit tab on the top as a subpoint

This is addressed in the opening post: "Do note that the addition of these has broken the non-tabbed view, this will be fixed in a near-future update to the editor." The current editor version is unchanged from the RC phase (not even recompiled).

- I cannot recommend cleansing levels in packs right now. The levels are alright, but the pack's structure afterwards is messed up, as everything (ranks + levels) is then sorted alphabetically and not in the pack's intended order anymore.

This sounds like nothing's wrong with the feature itself, but rather, the "bug" is in my explanations of it. It does not fix up, or even blindly copy, any custom graphics or levels.nxmi files etc. All it does is create updated copies of the level files. (However, it DOES maintain folder structure and filenames of the levels when doing so.)

That doesn't work.      "namida_circuit:wire_end_08" is marked as missing and I get errors on my levels. It is not automatically replaced with 07.

o_O This was working... maybe I broke it again somewhere (possibly when restoring orig_dirt_md). Will look into it.

- The default pickup skill graphic is really large in the editor if you click on it. It's 30x30 which is way larger now than the object itself.

Are there any levels that have broken as a result of this? Although the boundary box is larger, the graphic and trigger area should remain in the same place they were before. (A technical explanation of this would be quite long.) I can look eventually at having the editor cut the empty surrounding region, but it's a low priority.

[IchoTolot]

Are there any levels that have broken as a result of this? Although the boundary box is larger, the graphic and trigger area should remain in the same place they were before. (A technical explanation of this would be quite long.) I can look eventually at having the editor cut the empty surrounding region, but it's a low priority.

Nothing breaks for me. I just noticed the very unusual large selection box around the default pick-up skills

This sounds like nothing's wrong with the feature itself, but rather, the "bug" is in my explanations of it. It does not fix up, or even blindly copy, any custom graphics or levels.nxmi files etc. All it does is create updated copies of the level files. (However, it DOES maintain folder structure and filenames of the levels when doing so.)

So you have to copy the cleansed result and overwrite the old folder structure

o_O This was working... maybe I broke it again somewhere (possibly when restoring orig_dirt_md). Will look into it.

I manually did it in the levelfile now for my few levels affected by this, but yes this 100% wasn't working for me as the levelfiles still had the duplicate in them.

[namida]

(the official GigaLem Tree Mod tileset has been failing me lately, with its custom Cloner and Bomber pickups not working).

Speaking of GigaLem Tree, the interim version GigaLem Tree Bright, which I converted for LWT and share alongside with the pack, would be one of the graphic sets I'd need to treat with this tool, right? Because it isn't part of the official styles download, just like my strato_generalmd.

GigaLem Tree Mod Bright also has custom pickups, consequently, which are also slightly brighter than the official ones.

My earlier advice regarding that alternate TreeMod version still stands, and as I noted, NL should (although IchoTolot's report may affect this too EDIT: it does not, whole-style replacements work fine) replace it with the normal one anyway when you play the level. I feel this redirect needs to exist if the style is going around but not being included - it would be too easy to accidentally use it by anyone who's got a copy, then the level gets shared with someone who doesn't have it. If you want to remove this redirect from your individual copy of NL, modify data/alias.nxmi.

If the whole reason you were using it was as a workaround for the broken pickup skill in the normal one - that won't work anymore; V12.6 pickup skill objects are incompatible with V12.7, and no backwards compatibility exists (as they were never an officially supported feature prior to V12.7 - they are now, so it's safe to create new ones going forward now). This is why all of them were removed from the styles download with the V12.7 update - theoretically if anyone had created and submitted an updated version, that would've been included, but the only custom pickup skills that made the cut time-wise for V12.7.0's initial release were three entirely new ones (for the LPVI styles). GigaLem is working on V12.7-friendly pickup skills for his styles, they just aren't ready yet - you'd have to ask him about timeframes; but they'll be included in the next NL monthly styles update once he's made them (and he may also choose to post them on the forums before that, but that's his decision, not mine).

Basically - V12.7.0 adds official support for custom pickup skills, but it's still on style creators to actually make V12.7-compatible pickup skills. They just won't have to upgrade them yet again next time the skill order changes or a new skill is added; the copy they make now will automatically adjust to it.

strato_generalmd would be an example where you'd do this, yeah.

[namida]

So you have to copy the cleansed result and overwrite the old folder structure

Think of it this way - it cleanses the levels in the pack; not the pack itself. It maintains the folder structure when saving these levels, but doens't maintain the other files in those folders.

For example, if your pack contains "levels.nxmi", "info.nxmi", "01 Fun/01 Just Dig.nxlv" and "01 Fun/levels.nxmi", Cleanse Levels would save the level as "01 Fun/01 Just Dig.nxlv" (not just "01 Just Dig.nxlv" or "Just Dig.nxlv", etc), but it wouldn't create any copies - modified or otherwise - of the nxmi files. If no errors occur during the cleanse process, you can pretty much copy the output into your pack's folder and it should be good to go - filenames will match etc.

Yeah, I definitely need to improve explanations of this feature. Or maybe just improve the feature so it does create copies of these files too.

[Strato Incendus]

Okay, the positive things first: The updating of graphic-sets has been working fine for me - levels in the Dex Halloween tileset (not yet included in the styles download, therefore requires manual updating after manual download) or GigaLem Tree Mod Bright tileset can be opened without any issues, as long as they don't feature any custom pickup skills, of course (which the GigaLem Tree Mod set has).

Now we get to the cleansing part:

1) Currently, the cleanse feature will just skip levels that contain e.g. custom pickup skills. Meaning, those cannot be cleansed. It's not like with the Old- to New-Formats transition, where radiation and slowfreeze objects in the old levels would simply be ignored, and the level would be opened intact, except for these specific objects missing. The same was true for missing pieces of terrain or other missing objects: New-Formats NL would try to rebuild the level as much as possible and simply ignore all the individual pieces it couldn't find.

Now, however, whenever I try to open a level containing such an object that 12.7 doesn't find, it doesn't create the rest of the level as instructed. Instead, I get the attached error message over and over again. I cannot click to shut it, because it just reopens again; I have to end NeoLemmix editor with the task manager to do anything else.

The German part translates to "The object reference has not been assigned to an object instance."

As you can see, this particular message refers to arty_underwater. I also got it for the updraft in that tileset; as I imagined, the updraft has been renamed from "invisible_updraft" to "underwater_updraft". The background in question here has been renamed from "blue_background" to "underwater_blue".

2) I really hope this constant renaming of terrain and object pieces from graphic sets for no apparent reason stops! It's often just about minor details, such as added underscores or changing a single word, that don't really add any benefit, but force content creators to go over every single level again on which they might have possibly used this tileset, and then replace all the instances with whatever the current name of a particular piece is.

3) On a similar note, why have all the standard key assignments been changed? Anytime I press the spacebar, instead of jumping 10 seconds ahead like I'm used to, this activates the pause button. Pressing P, in contrast, simultaneously activates pause and opens the replay-editing window. T no longer activates true-physics mode, but instead selects the Platformer skill, and so on...

4) Anti-splat pads seem to function properly again, thanks for that! However, opening an Old-Formats level with an anti-splat pad in New Formats still replaces them with updrafts, rather than with actual anti-splat pads. For me, this wasn't so much of an issue, because I usually don't use a lot of anti-splat pads and can relocate them manually (at least the presence of the updraft allows me to identify the exact position each anti-splat pad needs to go). But on levels featuring several of these, this is bound to be annoying.
This is a comparatively minor thing, but if you want to maintain Old-Formats backward compatibility until 12.10, this should probably be fixed in the translation tables provided with the main download.

5) The ultimate question is how I even fix levels featuring deprecated objects to begin with now:

1) The 12.7 editor cannot open them without spamming the attached error message.
2) The 12.7 player cannot cleanse them and simply skips them.

Even in the case of the arty_underwater levels, although I have now edited the text of these levels, the new editor still can't open them because of the nxmo-files, and the player still skips these levels when trying to cleanse the pack.

Therefore, it is currently impossible for me to update my packs to version 12.7., because some levels always and inevitably get skipped. Just so that anyone currently trying to play Lemmings World Tour with the newest version is aware.

My packs in development, of which I've got several at the moment, are of course also affected.

[IchoTolot]

Cleansing levels is not needed currently! It is not needed getting things to work. It should be the very last step.

So let's work with the normal levels first, patch them up, then cleanse.

As you can see, this particular message refers to arty_underwater. I also got it for the updraft in that tileset; as I imagined, the updraft has been renamed from "invisible_updraft" to "underwater_updraft". The background in question here has been renamed from "blue_background" to "underwater_blue".

5) The ultimate question is how I even fix levels featuring deprecated objects to begin with now:

Go inside the affected levels textfiles. Search for "invisible_updraft" via the search function and replace it with the new term.

Do this for all problematic levels. Worked for me as well.

3) On a similar note, why have all the standard key assignments been changed?

I bet you did not retain your old Settings file then. Copy it over from your older version and it should be fine. If you don't have it anymore one of us could send it.

[namida]

1) Currently, the cleanse feature will just skip levels that contain e.g. custom pickup skills. Meaning, those cannot be cleansed.

Remove the offending pickup skill objects manually with a text editor or the V12.6.X editor + V12.6.X styles. This issue doesn't occur with levels that didn't use a feature anyway when I repeatedly said "this isn't officially supported, it might be in the future but for now don't do it, issues could occur at any time". Custom pickup skills are officially supported from V12.7.0 onwards, so this won't be a problem again in the future.

I'm not going to make any special effort for pickup skills, but I'm open to a generalized solution for missing pieces: If a piece is missing, NL could remove the piece (and display a warning) in the cleansed copy of the level. This is on the condition that it doesn't end up being too difficult to implement this.

2) I really hope this constant renaming of terrain and object pieces from graphic sets for no apparent reason stops! It's often just about minor details, such as added underscores or changing a single word, that don't really add any benefit, but force content creators to go over every single level again on which they might have possibly used this tileset, and then replace all the instances with whatever the current name of a particular piece is.

If you know of any such cases, let me know - I'll update the default alias.nxmi to account for them, so that levels should autocorrect. With that being said - renaming or removing pieces is something content creators should not be doing. Instead, create a copy under a new name, and mark the old one as deprecated. In the future, I should expand the alias feature so that styles can define their own aliases, instead of having to rely on a single central one in "data". This can be considered for V12.8.0.

3) On a similar note, why have all the standard key assignments been changed?

You've chosen "Functional layout" during the initial setup this time, whereas you've chosen "Traditional layout" in the past. Copy your "settings" folder from the previous version, or delete it and this time select "Traditional layout" when NL asks the next time you run it.

4) Anti-splat pads seem to function properly again, thanks for that! However, opening an Old-Formats level with an anti-splat pad in New Formats still replaces them with updrafts, rather than with actual anti-splat pads. For me, this wasn't so much of an issue, because I usually don't use a lot of anti-splat pads and can relocate them manually (at least the presence of the updraft allows me to identify the exact position each anti-splat pad needs to go). But on levels featuring several of these, this is bound to be annoying.
This is a comparatively minor thing, but if you want to maintain Old-Formats backward compatibility until 12.10, this should probably be fixed in the translation tables provided with the main download.

Agreed. Will fix in V12.7.1.

5) The ultimate question is how I even fix levels featuring deprecated objects to begin with now:

1) The 12.7 editor cannot open them without spamming the attached error message.
2) The 12.7 player cannot cleanse them and simply skips them.

Pickup skills, as mentioned above, will need to be handled manually. Anything else - we should get the appropriate entries into alias.nxmi, this will resolve it player-side (at which point Cleanse Levels will get it working with the editor again). I will create a reminder topic on the styles board telling people not to remove / rename pieces for now, or if there's a really pressing need to do so, they should coordinate with me so I can get an entry into alias.nxmi.

[Strato Incendus]

Cleansing levels is not needed currently! It is not needed getting things to work. It should be the very last step.

I bet you did not retain your old Settings file then. Copy it over from your older version and it should be fine. If you don't have it anymore one of us could send it.

You've chosen "Functional layout" during the initial setup this time, whereas you've chosen "Traditional layout" in the past. Copy your "settings" folder from the previous version, or delete it and this time select "Traditional layout" when NL asks the next time you run it.

Thanks for clarifying these issues! Indeed I wasn't aware of these.

Go inside the affected levels textfiles. Search for "invisible_updraft" via the search function and replace it with the new term.

This, in contrast, I was aware of, which is why I had already done precisely that - still doesn't work. See below.

If you know of any such cases, let me know

The arty_underwater tileset is the only one I'm currently aware of.

I've taken a look again, and it seems like these pieces were indeed completely removed from the official download of the arty_underwater tileset, rather than just renamed:

My version in my 12.6.5 folder includes, among others, the following objects, which are easily confusable:

blue_background.png
blue_background.nxmo
underwater_updraft.png
underwater_updraft.nxmo
invisible_updraft.png
invisible_updraft.nxmo

As well as in the background folder:

underwater_blue.png

My initial thought was that the underwater_updraft had replaced the invisible_updraft, and that underwater_blue as a background had replaced blue_background. I had experienced several such renaming issues with the modified versions of the Lemmings Plus tilesets (GigaLem Metal Mod, Plom Psych Mod etc.).

But apparently, blue_background and invisible_updraft (both the png and the nxmo) are just completely gone.

Does this have to do with the removal of mask files? And if so, how can we replace these completely removed objects?

At least I know now why simply text replacement doesn't work, because those terms are not actually referring to the same pieces.

Thus, there actually isn't anything to rename, only pieces to re-add.

This issue doesn't occur with levels that didn't use a feature anyway when I repeatedly said "this isn't officially supported, it might be in the future but for now don't do it, issues could occur at any time"

I'm pretty sure all of the levels in question here were created before any warning about using custom pickup skills was given out. Lemmings World Tour has been released for over a year now, and while that was indeed Old Formats (i.e. unaffected in case you issued a warning about custom pickups in New Formats early on), I have also been working on Lemmings Open Air in New Formats since December last year.

One error I kept receiving referred to my gigalem_treemdbright tileset and an object called O4 - this was the old top of the exit, for which there is no counterpart in the official gigalem_treemd. It took me a while to realise this was the result of namida's above-mentioned code automatically replacing each instance of gigalem_treemdbright with the matching object from gigalem_treemd.

The problem is: This code of yours also moves the exit down into the ground, thereby breaking my solutions. Apparently, the exit is the only object that slightly differs in position between the final and the interim version of GigaLem's Tree Mod tileset.

When I open the level in the new editor, it's still displayed in the gigalem_treemdbright tileset, and the position of the exit is fine - but within the player, the change to the standard GigaLem Tree Mod gets applied, breaking the level.

If you want to remove this redirect from your individual copy of NL, modify data/alias.nxmi.

This would have to be done by everyone who plays Lemmings World Tour in New Formats, though, because otherwise, the levels in questions are not solveable.



A final question: Ever since Pit Lems (and playing SEB Lems in Old Formats), I've come to enjoy the custom skill panel that changes its colours depending on the level's theme. Is this still possible in 12.7? Because I think there was a skill panel mask for that... which, given the absence of mask files in 12.7, should no longer work...

I know I can simply drop a custom skill panel into my pack folder, but I don't see how the colour change would work without the mask.

[IchoTolot]

But apparently, blue_background and invisible_updraft (both the png and the nxmo) are just completely gone.

Does this have to do with the removal of mask files? And if so, how can we replace these completely removed objects?

I have taken a look at the "underwater_updraft" and it seems it is indeed the piece you would want. I would simply try replacing all "invisible_updraft" objects with the "underwater_updraft" ones.
This "underwater_updraft" seems to be a water looking object that's actually an updraft, so exactly what should happen in the level. So maybe it is the combination of your blue background and the invisible updraft!     So you can replace "invisible_updraft" objects with the "underwater_updraft" as I mentioned and delete the other "blue_background".
That tileset change would also have made sense merging 2 objects into 1.


For the background, if it should be indeed a full level bg instead, I would remove the old one and then simply look around what else is there in terms of fitting backgrounds.

This, in contrast, I was aware of, which is why I had already done precisely that - still doesn't work. The pickup skills actually refer to the collection "default", as well.

Now, for the pickup skills, I just noticed I can bypass is by switching the level's theme to a different one, e.g. orig_dirt. Then again, this also alters other things, like the colour of builder staircases etc., things you don't necessarily want to change.

This seems weird to me, as I did not have to do that at all. I bet there is an error in your process, but here is a possible alternative:

- Note down the coordinates and skilltype and delete the pick-up skill from the levels textfile. Now it should be openable in the editor. Then add a valid pick-up skill at the old location.

[Strato Incendus]

Okay, so my error with the blue background was that I had still classified it as a background object in the pieces list (which it used to be), rather than as a regular background at the beginning of the level. I guess this was the reason why NeoLemmix was still looking for an nxmo-file.
I have removed said objects and replaced the invisible_updraft with the underwater_updraft.

This seems weird to me, as I did not have to do that at all. I bet there is an error in your process, but here is a possible alternative:

- Note down the coordinates and skilltype and delete the pick-up skill from the levels textfile. Now it should be openable in the editor. Then add a valid pick-up skill at the old location.

I've edited this since in the post above: The object gigalem_treemdbright actually complains about is the top of the exit (object O4). I hadn't merged it with the bottom of the exit during conversion, because I figured only I was using this tileset anyway.

As a result, the regular GigaLem TreeMd exit gets flushed into the ground when NeoLemmix tries to replace the bright exit with it.

I guess I'm just going to cave in and swap out the tileset for the official GigaLem Tree Mod now, for the time being, via text replace. That's the only way to ensure I can correctly place the exit in the editor, because in order to do that, the editor itself needs to already display the level in the regular, darker GigaLem Tree Mod tileset.

Since the player doesn't allow me to use the bright tileset anyway, unless I alter this alias file for personal use (which would probably yield a bunch of error reports from any user trying to play LWT in New Formats for the first time ), I think I don't really have a choice here.

But I hope we can revive these variations of tilesets once the palette-swapping feature becomes a thing!

[namida]

Strato - can you summarize what issues you're still having that haven't been resolved during this discussion? I'll look into helping you with them / making appropriate fixes to NL (as applicable) later. Don't worry about fully explaining the issues again, this is more just about me knowing which ones I need to focus on.