Revenge of the Lemmings (conversion to v12.7) community help appreciated :)

[Flopsy]

So here it is, my attempt at converting this pack.
This is still a work in progress so I have posted this in "In Development" for now.

I have worked off what was sent to me by mobius and I have not changed any of what was sent to me content wise.

So what I did was I converted all of the levels one by one by loading and saving in the v1.17 editor, I then looked at the levels and saw which ones already exist in new formats and proceeded to replace those levels with the up-to-date versions which already existed (in this case, I took the levels from Clammings, Insane Steve World and MazuLems)

I need help from others at this point though because the following problems exist
1. I have no ordering whatsoever in this pack because the level list is significantly different to any level lists I have seen for RotL.
2. I have no replays whatsoever, I have asked namida if he has his replays from his LP from years back but he does not.
3. Because there are nearly 200 levels which have been converted to new formats, I need help testing these levels to see if they are still as robust as they are for back routes. This is technically a playable pack but I am trying to get it back to how it would have been in the old formats so I encourage anyone (even if you've never played this pack) to help test the levels
4. I have no idea what is going on with the music in this pack, there is a music folder in what I was given which I will post below.

I wasn't able to convert the following levels (only a few!)
land nightmares.lvl
persia.lvl
supaplex tricks.lvl

I'm sorry if this is a poor show because it feels like I have just converted the levels to new format and not really done anything else but I feel I don't know enough about this pack to be able to make "executive decisions" on how it should turn out so I'm asking for help especially from those who were involved with the original pack!

I've also posted the original pack executable I was given, this is a very old version of NeoLemmix but gives an idea of how the original RotL used to look.

So anyway, any help you can give in this topic will be appreciated, even if you have never seen this pack before then you are welcome to come and help out with this gargantuan task!

[namida]

It should be possible to activate a "cheat mode" in Revenge of the Lemmings EXE version that unlocks all levels, then you can navigate between levels, or possibly even use a level select. I'm not sure what NL had at the time in terms of this, and IIRC it was possible for pack creators to disable certain things like this. This should allow you to figure out level order very quickly (at least, without having to solve each level), and if you can be bothered, you could also match levels to musics this way.

It might also be possible to dump LVL files by pressing one of the F keys (probably between 4 and 7) on the main menu. Of course, these might not be of any use, depending on exactly how outdated they are - if they're 2KB, no good, if they're 10KB, probably okay but might not be (only way to be sure is to try it). A variety of different sizes, yep, they're almost certianly useable. Don't convert these one-by-one again - pop them all in a subfolder of "levels" (in current-version NL), which will appear in the list as a level pack. Go to this "pack"'s title screen and hit the Cleanse Levels key (F8 if I remember correctly).

If you can get the LVL files, but they aren't useful, don't throw them away. I might be able to write a bit of code that can at least get the level order / music information and apply it to your current-version copies. (Although I guess - if you can get the LVL files, I can just get them again the same way, so it doesn't actually matter if you do throw them away or not. )

Likewise, I can probably do something similar for grabbing up-to-date versions of the levels (but preserving RotL's author / music data) from other packs and integrating them here. I would, though, need someone else to actually identify the relevant packs.

I can have a go at / help more with this myself a bit later on tonight; just not right now. I could also try seeing if I can do anything useful with historical NL source code to extract data from it...

I want to make sure I draw a line here though: I'm happy to help with this kind of technical stuff, but it's back over to you for any editorial decisions (eg: replacing / modifying / reordering levels) - I'm just helping reconstruct and update the data of the existing version.

[Flopsy]

I've managed to dump the LVL files, they seem to be of variable size between 2-6KB.

Also I have the cheat mode already active on the EXE, maybe it is already active for other people also.
I'm able to scroll through the levels using the arrow keys.

[namida]

I've managed to dump the LVL files, they seem to be of variable size between 2-6KB.

Yeah, those are definitely still useable. I'll see if I can do anything useful with them later tonight.

[Proxima]

Thank you Flopsy, it's great to see this back on new formats!

I'm happy to help in any way I can, and I'll start by playing through as much of the pack as I can and taking notes as I go.

If other community members give their input as well, we should be able to get some idea of whether the current selection of levels is pretty robust as-is or might need changes. Finding additional levels to fill gaps might be tricky -- I'll summarise here a discussion we had on discord last night. RotL is a "best of" the community's work over a certain time period, and I (and others) think it should remain that way and not have newer levels added. For one thing, most newer levels are very different in style, making heavy use of NL features that weren't available yet when the levels in this pack were designed; it would feel odd to have one or two levels using new features in a pack that almost entirely lacks them.

However, it also feels weird to almost have 30 levels per rank with a gap here and there, so we should definitely put our heads together and see if we can find some favourite levels from the old days that aren't in the pack yet. I can certainly remake Labyrinth of Persia, using the Lix remake as a basis for the layout.

Anyway, I'll post again when I have some notes to share. I'll especially look at ordering issues, changes that might be necessary, and whether there are any levels that (I think) should be removed.

[Proxima]

So, my thoughts after playing the Picnic rank. I've attached a document with more in-depth notes, but I'll summarise the main points here.

All time limits in this rank were unnecessary.

Playing the levels in alphabetical order is actually a pretty good way to get an idea of the average difficulty of a rank.

Looking at Pieuw's feedback document, I am reminded that for the most part, this entire rank was added after I last played the pack, since it was felt to not have an easy enough first rank. It contains a lot of N-of-all repeats of later levels in the pack; I suppose these were made specially for RotL.

It's always somewhat tricky for experienced players to make good easy levels, but for the most part, this is a very good selection. Most levels are 10- or 20-of-all (or 10-of-all with 20 builders), but they have a good variety of obstacles such as traps, death drops, steel and one-way arrows that a route has to navigate around; some levels have interesting unique* features such as one hatch rescuing another. A few levels that are not 10-of-all still fit in with the others in terms of difficulty and providing variety.

* Not unique in the sense of "only one level ever has done this", but "unique out of the collection of 10-of-all levels in this pack".

I'm not ready to suggest a full ordering yet, but I noted that "The Great Migration" and "Through Fire and Flames" are the easiest levels in the rank (other than "The Chopping Board", which is trivial and should be removed).

I have some thoughts about which levels to remove from the pack completely, and which to move to a higher rank, but I'll defer these until I've played more and (hopefully) other people have contributed some thoughts. It would be nice to have more of an idea of how many levels we're aiming for -- for example, if there end up being quite a lot of not-so-good levels throughout the pack, we could just trim the worst ones and leave ourselves with 25 in each rank.

[namida]

I've managed to run most of the LVLs from the EXe through Cleanse Levels. 8 have given me issues:

0124 - Proxima, "Minesweeper Lemmings" - No translation table for "michaelxtnd" or vgaspec "preview13"
0226 - Insane Steve, "Flugtag!" - No translation table for "smb"
0231 - Insane Steve, "They just won't climb that wall" - No translation table for "smb"
0318 - Proxima, "Lemmings of Persia" - No translation table for "prince" or vgaspec "preview5"
0331 - Insane Steve, "Mental Process" - No translation table for "smb"
0431 - Proxima, "The Land of Nightmares" - No translation table for "michaelxtnd" or vgaspec "preview20"
0620 - Proxima, "Waltz in C Sharp Miner" - No translation table for "michaelxtnd" or vgaspec "preview13"
0712 - Proxima, "The Hotel In Hell" - No translation table for "michaelfire" or vgaspec "preview12"

Here's my conversion, preserving the rank structure / order from the EXE version. Levels that I couldn't convert have been replaced with a filler level.

I haven't examined the individual levels much - I fired up one level to make sure there's no obvious problems. Likewise, I have not attempted to import updated copies from other packs - this is just straight conversions of the LVL files extracted from the EXE (using NL itself to do the conversion). Levels that were originally secret levels, are put in a "Secret" sub-rank of each rank. Obviously, these need to be either merged or removed now, as NL hasn't supported secret levels for a very long time now.

I'd also like to suggest making the music loop properly, where suitable, for tracks that don't already do so. At least two tracks in there, I used for Lemmings Plus V, where I modified them to correctly loop, so you could take the versions from there. (Of course, this is a relatively low-priority thing - but personally I feel it's a bit jarring when the music suddenly fades out then starts again.)

Let me know if you'd like me to help with any more tricky stuff, eg. merging data between this and other packs (in cases where the other pack has newer versions of the levels), or merging parts from your existing conversions with parts from mine (eg. I think you mentioned yours lacks music data and ordering, this is something that would be very tedious to copy between the two manually but could be done pretty quickly with a bit of coding which I could do).

[Flopsy]

So, my thoughts after playing the Picnic rank. I've attached a document with more in-depth notes, but I'll summarise the main points here.

All time limits in this rank were unnecessary.

Playing the levels in alphabetical order is actually a pretty good way to get an idea of the average difficulty of a rank.

Looking at Pieuw's feedback document, I am reminded that for the most part, this entire rank was added after I last played the pack, since it was felt to not have an easy enough first rank. It contains a lot of N-of-all repeats of later levels in the pack; I suppose these were made specially for RotL.

It's always somewhat tricky for experienced players to make good easy levels, but for the most part, this is a very good selection. Most levels are 10- or 20-of-all (or 10-of-all with 20 builders), but they have a good variety of obstacles such as traps, death drops, steel and one-way arrows that a route has to navigate around; some levels have interesting unique* features such as one hatch rescuing another. A few levels that are not 10-of-all still fit in with the others in terms of difficulty and providing variety.

* Not unique in the sense of "only one level ever has done this", but "unique out of the collection of 10-of-all levels in this pack".

I'm not ready to suggest a full ordering yet, but I noted that "The Great Migration" and "Through Fire and Flames" are the easiest levels in the rank (other than "The Chopping Board", which is trivial and should be removed).

I have some thoughts about which levels to remove from the pack completely, and which to move to a higher rank, but I'll defer these until I've played more and (hopefully) other people have contributed some thoughts. It would be nice to have more of an idea of how many levels we're aiming for -- for example, if there end up being quite a lot of not-so-good levels throughout the pack, we could just trim the worst ones and leave ourselves with 25 in each rank.

I'll write a proper reply to this post later on, this hasn't gone unnoticed

0226 - Insane Steve, "Flugtag!" - No translation table for "smb"
0231 - Insane Steve, "They just won't climb that wall" - No translation table for "smb"
0331 - Insane Steve, "Mental Process" - No translation table for "smb"

I have managed to retrieve these levels from Insane Steve's pack in new formats

I'd also like to suggest making the music loop properly, where suitable, for tracks that don't already do so. At least two tracks in there, I used for Lemmings Plus V, where I modified them to correctly loop, so you could take the versions from there. (Of course, this is a relatively low-priority thing - but personally I feel it's a bit jarring when the music suddenly fades out then starts again.)

I'm not sure how to do music loops myself, I'm not really sure what is going on with the music at the moment.

I have managed to take your conversion and using it as a new ground pack rather than the one I created.

I have transferred over all of the levels which were grabbed from other packs and also the ones which weren't present in your conversion and put them in a rank named "unsorted"

This means the levels now have an order now so that is an improvement to say the least.

Please use the pack I have now uploaded to the first post for testing purposes. Thanks for this namida

[Proxima]

A quick update and reply. I've fixed the backroute in Picnic/Somewhere Under the Rainbow, and I'll upload the fix later today. This is the only backroute fix needed for the Picnic rank.

0124 - Proxima, "Minesweeper Lemmings" - No translation table for "michaelxtnd" or vgaspec "preview13"
0318 - Proxima, "Lemmings of Persia" - No translation table for "prince" or vgaspec "preview5"
0431 - Proxima, "The Land of Nightmares" - No translation table for "michaelxtnd" or vgaspec "preview20"
0620 - Proxima, "Waltz in C Sharp Miner" - No translation table for "michaelxtnd" or vgaspec "preview13"
0712 - Proxima, "The Hotel In Hell" - No translation table for "michaelfire" or vgaspec "preview12"

I will do the work necessary to recover these levels, so please don't anyone jump the gun and do it for me. A few notes:

Minesweeper Lemmings / Waltz in C Sharp Miner (a repeat pair) -- These require the Minesweeper style, which was withdrawn as it wasn't ready for release. I promised to finish the style and I haven't done it yet. Now that this pack is making its way to new formats, I have a strong incentive to get this done so I promise I won't put it off any longer.

Lemmings of Persia -- The Persia style is already in new formats, so it should be simple enough to rebuild this level, using its Lix remake as a basis for the layout.

The Land of Nightmares -- This was a Cheapo level combining terrain from all four Orig VGASPEC levels. MENACING and BeastII have NL remakes, so the level could partially be remade, but it was a cheap hidden-trap level and I strongly urge removing it from the pack.

The Hotel in Hell -- This is a Fire level, and the only reason it was a VGASPEC in the old RotL is that my Fire style for Cheapo included a unique trap, which this level showcased. Bringing it to NL, the level should be remade in the standard Fire style, and the trap either replaced with another trap, or remade and added to proxima_tile. (Again, I am happy to do the work here.)

[namida]

The Hotel in Hell -- This is a Fire level, and the only reason it was a VGASPEC in the old RotL is that my Fire style for Cheapo included a unique trap, which this level showcased. Bringing it to NL, the level should be remade in the standard Fire style, and the trap either replaced with another trap, or remade and added to proxima_tile. (Again, I am happy to do the work here.)

This is one of the few levels from RotL that I actually remember upon seeing the name, I recall it being a really good level. I do hope it can be brought back one way or another.

I'm not sure how to do music loops myself, I'm not really sure what is going on with the music at the moment.

All the music for RotL is tracker formats (MOD, IT, etc), so someone familiar with OpenMPT (or a similar app) should be able to handle this part of things. It's pretty much a matter of finding the appropriate point to jump to, and adding a "Pattern break" and "Position jump" command. I might make a tutorial at some point.

In terms of in general "how the music should work" - if you use my conversion, together with my music download, you should get the correct music.

If you already have the music download from the 1st post, go into the subfolders until you find the actual music files (they're nested a few files deep). Put these into "<NL folder>/music/Revenge_of_the_Lemmings". They'll now work with my converted levels. The files in my download are the same, the only difference is my download also puts them into the right folder so that you can just extract the ZIP and they'll end up in the correct place.

[Flopsy]

Thank you Flopsy, it's great to see this back on new formats!

I'm happy to help in any way I can, and I'll start by playing through as much of the pack as I can and taking notes as I go.

If other community members give their input as well, we should be able to get some idea of whether the current selection of levels is pretty robust as-is or might need changes. Finding additional levels to fill gaps might be tricky -- I'll summarise here a discussion we had on discord last night. RotL is a "best of" the community's work over a certain time period, and I (and others) think it should remain that way and not have newer levels added. For one thing, most newer levels are very different in style, making heavy use of NL features that weren't available yet when the levels in this pack were designed; it would feel odd to have one or two levels using new features in a pack that almost entirely lacks them.

However, it also feels weird to almost have 30 levels per rank with a gap here and there, so we should definitely put our heads together and see if we can find some favourite levels from the old days that aren't in the pack yet. I can certainly remake Labyrinth of Persia, using the Lix remake as a basis for the layout.

Anyway, I'll post again when I have some notes to share. I'll especially look at ordering issues, changes that might be necessary, and whether there are any levels that (I think) should be removed.

Concerning the gaps in the levels, now that namida has helped out with extracting files, we now seem to have the opposite problem, the updated new format nxp I have now compiled using what namida gave me now has a few gaps but there were a lot of levels which were in my original conversion and was not in namida's conversion, I have placed these levels in a folder titled "unsorted".

I have appealed to everyone to try and test these levels out, it is very important that as many as possible try and help de-back route the levels. You're doing a great job so far, keep it up! Keep doing what you're doing
I just apologise that I have compiled a new pack while you were testing the Picnic rank.

So, my thoughts after playing the Picnic rank. I've attached a document with more in-depth notes, but I'll summarise the main points here.

All time limits in this rank were unnecessary.

Playing the levels in alphabetical order is actually a pretty good way to get an idea of the average difficulty of a rank.

Looking at Pieuw's feedback document, I am reminded that for the most part, this entire rank was added after I last played the pack, since it was felt to not have an easy enough first rank. It contains a lot of N-of-all repeats of later levels in the pack; I suppose these were made specially for RotL.

It's always somewhat tricky for experienced players to make good easy levels, but for the most part, this is a very good selection. Most levels are 10- or 20-of-all (or 10-of-all with 20 builders), but they have a good variety of obstacles such as traps, death drops, steel and one-way arrows that a route has to navigate around; some levels have interesting unique* features such as one hatch rescuing another. A few levels that are not 10-of-all still fit in with the others in terms of difficulty and providing variety.

* Not unique in the sense of "only one level ever has done this", but "unique out of the collection of 10-of-all levels in this pack".

I'm not ready to suggest a full ordering yet, but I noted that "The Great Migration" and "Through Fire and Flames" are the easiest levels in the rank (other than "The Chopping Board", which is trivial and should be removed).

I have some thoughts about which levels to remove from the pack completely, and which to move to a higher rank, but I'll defer these until I've played more and (hopefully) other people have contributed some thoughts. It would be nice to have more of an idea of how many levels we're aiming for -- for example, if there end up being quite a lot of not-so-good levels throughout the pack, we could just trim the worst ones and leave ourselves with 25 in each rank.

Looking over your feedback

First Things First - I've altered the author name, should show if I upload another update soon.
Food for the Gods - Proxima suggests the save requirement should increase to 40 from 35
Land of Confusion - in the updated pack, this has ended up in the unsorted folder so it's open season on where it ends up.
Lem Dunk - already in rank 2 in the update
Rounds and Swingabouts - Proxima has suggested this should not be a rank 1 level, too much resource management
Somewhere under the Rainbow - This ended up in unsorted also.
Chopping Block - currently in unsorted, could be let go.
Training Zone Alpha - is in rank 2 in updated pack.

We now have an ordering for Picnic in the updated pack, we should use that as a basis and work off it.

A quick update and reply. I've fixed the backroute in Picnic/Somewhere Under the Rainbow, and I'll upload the fix later today. This is the only backroute fix needed for the Picnic rank.

0124 - Proxima, "Minesweeper Lemmings" - No translation table for "michaelxtnd" or vgaspec "preview13"
0318 - Proxima, "Lemmings of Persia" - No translation table for "prince" or vgaspec "preview5"
0431 - Proxima, "The Land of Nightmares" - No translation table for "michaelxtnd" or vgaspec "preview20"
0620 - Proxima, "Waltz in C Sharp Miner" - No translation table for "michaelxtnd" or vgaspec "preview13"
0712 - Proxima, "The Hotel In Hell" - No translation table for "michaelfire" or vgaspec "preview12"

I will do the work necessary to recover these levels, so please don't anyone jump the gun and do it for me. A few notes:

Minesweeper Lemmings / Waltz in C Sharp Miner (a repeat pair) -- These require the Minesweeper style, which was withdrawn as it wasn't ready for release. I promised to finish the style and I haven't done it yet. Now that this pack is making its way to new formats, I have a strong incentive to get this done so I promise I won't put it off any longer.

Lemmings of Persia -- The Persia style is already in new formats, so it should be simple enough to rebuild this level, using its Lix remake as a basis for the layout.

The Land of Nightmares -- This was a Cheapo level combining terrain from all four Orig VGASPEC levels. MENACING and BeastII have NL remakes, so the level could partially be remade, but it was a cheap hidden-trap level and I strongly urge removing it from the pack.

The Hotel in Hell -- This is a Fire level, and the only reason it was a VGASPEC in the old RotL is that my Fire style for Cheapo included a unique trap, which this level showcased. Bringing it to NL, the level should be remade in the standard Fire style, and the trap either replaced with another trap, or remade and added to proxima_tile. (Again, I am happy to do the work here.)

No problem with your plans there, only need to remake the levels which you feel should be in the new formats pack
It's only these levels really that we are missing from the pack since I have managed to retrieve ISteve's Mario tileset levels.

I'm not sure how to do music loops myself, I'm not really sure what is going on with the music at the moment.

All the music for RotL is tracker formats (MOD, IT, etc), so someone familiar with OpenMPT (or a similar app) should be able to handle this part of things. It's pretty much a matter of finding the appropriate point to jump to, and adding a "Pattern break" and "Position jump" command. I might make a tutorial at some point.

Yeah, I'm not touching that personally because I don't know the first thing about doing it.

I'll get onto extracting the music you posted though

[Proxima]

Thank you for the rapid update!

I've played through Picnic in the new version and have more feedback.

Skill tutorial levels were added (in one case, repurposing an existing level) and some levels removed or moved up. For the most part, I agree with these decisions, but there are some exceptions. Again, my document contains more detailed feedback, but I'll summarise the important points here:

With a few exceptions, the order is really good and there is a steady progression of difficulty and required skill. Well done!

1.6 "Play Bridge" is NOT a builder tutorial and belongs much later in the rank, or even in Rank 2. Since the pack contains a set of tutorial levels for each skill, it would be odd to omit builders, so we need to find a suitable replacement. None of the other levels currently in the rank are suitable, so it would have to be a new level or a new repeat of a later level.

1.17 "Let's get to the bottom of this" / "Somewhere Under the Rainbow" feels a bit harder than the levels around it (if backroute-fixed). It certainly belongs somewhere in Rank 1 though.

1.24 is the gap reserved for "Minesweeper Lemmings", and is a good place for it.

1.25 "Song of the Lemming" is much too easy for its place, and I am not sure it deserves inclusion at all. (It is an easy repeat of a later level, so removing it wouldn't destroy the work done on the level design, which is excellent.)

1.29 "Rounds and Swingabouts" is definitely too hard for Rank 1.

* * *

If my suggestions are followed that 1.6 moves later in the rank and a new level is added, and 1.25 and 1.29 are moved/removed, the rank will need one more level. I've looked at the levels that used to be in the rank and were moved out (this is in my feedback document), but I'll give more thoughts after playing rank 2, since there may be one or more levels there that deserve to move down.

[namida]

1.29 "Rounds and Swingabouts" is definitely too hard for Rank 1.

I don't remember this level, but at a quick glance - it doesn't look like it's particularly hard? It looks long, but not hard. That's what she said.

[Flopsy]

Ok, got round to replying to the feedback.

1.6 Play Bridge - Moving this out of Rank 1 is a possibility. We'll need to of course find suitable levels from Rank 2 to move down or alternately, anything in the Unsorted rank could potentially replace this. Should we need to make a replacement level, I would not be comfortable doing this, I feel it should be someone who originally had involvement with the original pack.

1.17 Let's Get To The Bottom of This - thanks for clearing up the name, it can probably be removed from the unsorted rank now. Would this be better off around level 23 or are you thinking later than that?

1.24 this can be where Minesweeper Lemmings goes, no issues with that.

1.25 Song of the Lemming - this could be removed if you wish, especially if the repeat exists. See what other people think.

1.29 Rounds and Swingabouts - I also think this is more Rank 2 material than Rank 1.

[Proxima]

1.6 Play Bridge - Moving this out of Rank 1 is a possibility. We'll need to of course find suitable levels from Rank 2 to move down or alternately, anything in the Unsorted rank could potentially replace this. Should we need to make a replacement level, I would not be comfortable doing this, I feel it should be someone who originally had involvement with the original pack.

The point isn't just that another level needs to move down, but specifically that 1.6 needs to be a builder tutorial level (since the pack has the traditional set of tutorial levels for all the other skills). Also, I wasn't suggesting making a new level, but finding a new level -- new as in "not part of RotL previously".

I'm going to suggest the builder tutorial level from GeoffLems for this. It's an attractive level, appropriately easy, and GeoffLems is old enough that its levels are suitable for RotL -- indeed I believe some are already in the pack.