Ideas for new sprites / "tribes" (either just recoloured OR completely reshaped)

[WillLem]

Thanks for the explanation. Did any of the other people who downloaded the Trump sprites (as well as the others) experience these problems? So far it says each sprite type has been downloaded 4 times, so I assume by four different people.

I figured out the issue! The .zip file is a .theme within a folder within a folder, meaning that the editor was looking for the .theme file but only finding a folder (which the .theme file was in).

I've now moved the .theme files out of the folders-within-folders, and they all work a treat in both resolutions.

Also, since you were asking about this on a now-closed topic, the "Reacher" state of a Shimmier can jump through and and land upon a 2px platform, provided their head is above the platform. Here's a quick video to demonstrate this:

[Strato Incendus]

Great, thanks for both "types of information"!

[Strato Incendus]

So, I tried to make some Dutch lemmings with orange clothes and orange hair. In order for athletes to still be identifiable, I wanted to recolour athlete hair to blue while leaving the clothes as they are.

However, this doesn't seem to work - as the attached picture shows, the Climber still looks exactly the same as everyone else.

Does anyone have an idea what I'm doing wrong (the theme file is also attached)? This issue hasn't occured with any other sprite recolouring I've made so far... except with the Spider-Man sprites, where it is intentional that athletes look just like normal lemmings (because they should of course especially look like Spider-Man when sticking to a wall as Climbers). Meaning, for the Spider-Man sprites, I deliberately set athlete hair and clothes colours to the same colours as for regular Walkers.

Here, in contrast, I specified a different colour for athlete hair, yet nothing seems to change.

So do I need to implement a channel swap for athletes? I noticed that this is being done for the L2 Shadow sprites, which are the only ones I know where hair colour and clothes colour is identical...

[WillLem]

So, I tried to make some Dutch lemmings with orange clothes and orange hair...
However, this doesn't seem to work - as the attached picture shows, the Climber still looks exactly the same as everyone else.

Does anyone have an idea what I'm doing wrong?

The recolourings for athletes, neutrals, etc, needs to be specified in lemmings>scheme.nxmi (I think!)

I'm not sure if it works by just applying the colours in the theme.nxtm file...

A suggestion for the Spider-Man sprites: maybe the normal lemmings ought to be Peter Parker coloured, and then recoloured to blue & red when they're athletes...!

Meanwhile, I've been experimenting with ways to get invisible lemmings. First, I went for a straight-up invisible set (by simply manually recolouring all lemmings hair, skin and clothes to Alpha 0), and a camouflage set where they're coloured the same as the background (i.e. hex #000030). Let me know which you think is best: I've attached a level which uses each set as well.

The invisiblems don't even show up in CPM!

NOTE: these spritesets are intended purely for experimental purposes ONLY, and the level Cascade II is intended as a demonstration level for these spritesets.

[grams88]

I had to laugh at Donald Trump lemmings, that was funny.

[Strato Incendus]

@WillLem: It should work with theme files, because that's what I've used on previous recolourings (Soviet, Indian etc.), and it didn't cause any problems there.

Going via the scheme file is what you have done with your Lara Croft sprites; however, this also included recolouring every single one of your sprites by hand, which is precisely what we wanted to avoid having to do by introducing the recolouring feature in the first place.

So is the reason the Dutch lemmings don't get recoloured as athletes rooted in the fact that the hair and clothes colour for the regular sprites is identical? Does the colour you choose for an athlete's hair and clothes reference the default colours in any way? I thought you can simply pick a different colour for both, independently of each other.

I guess this question goes out to namida specifically.

Peter Parker as Walkers for the Spider-Man sprites sounds like a good idea on paper, but keep in mind that Shimmiers don't necessarily need to have permanent skills assigned to them in order to perform Spider-Man-like movements (if they jump or reach towards the ceiling, rather than climbing first to get there).

@grams88: Thanks a lot!

[WillLem]

Peter Parker as Walkers for the Spider-Man sprites sounds like a good idea on paper, but keep in mind that Shimmiers don't necessarily need to have permanent skills assigned to them in order to perform Spider-Man-like movements (if they jump or reach towards the ceiling, rather than climbing first to get there).

Good point: maybe a way around this would be to ensure that any level featuring this sprite set requires a lemming to become an athlete before they need to shimmy...

[Strato Incendus]

Well, I've also changed the colour of parachutes and bridges (i.e. Floaters, Gliders, Builders, Platformers, and Stackers) to white so that they look like made of web. Constructive skills can also be performed without the lemming being an athlete. So those levels would require the lemming to become an athlete to look like Spider-Man before they literally do anything.

[WillLem]

Well, I've also changed the colour of parachutes and bridges (i.e. Floaters, Gliders, Builders, Platformers, and Stackers) to white so that they look like made of web. Constructive skills can also be performed without the lemming being an athlete. So those levels would require the lemming to become an athlete to look like Spider-Man before they literally do anything.

Not necessarily: Peter Parker is capable of producing web when he's not in costume.

[Strato Incendus]

Of course he is. He is also able to climb walls when not in his costume.

I'm still considering the idea - however, with the way athletes work in NeoLemmix, it could still be weird. For example, you could have other types of athletes - Floaters, Swimmers, Disarmers, for example - that look like Spider-Man and can't actually stick to walls. Now, they just all look like Spider-Man, independent of what they're capable of.

However, this "only athletes wear the costume" solution would work great with pioneer levels, because then there would only be one Spider-Man per level, and the rest would be civilians...

[ccexplore]

The invisiblems don't even show up in CPM!

Interesting.  Regardless of what people think about invisible stuff, that sounds like a bug.  CPM should be using its own fixed color scheme for everything, that is independent of styles.  Even if it isn't rendering things invisible in other cases, having any colors in CPM potentially mean something else, even while still visible, would defeat the point of CPM.

[Strato Incendus]

Okay, so I solved the issue with the Dutch lemmings: Apparently, athlete recolouring is indeed not possible if clothes and hair of the regular lemmings are the exact same hexadecimal value. So I just changed the last digit for the clothes from 0 to 2. It still looks like the same shade of orange to the human eye, but it isn't for the program. That way, I can recolour the athlete - I chose to just recolour the hair to blue. The Dutch style is attached.

Regarding Spider-Man: Peter Parker for regular lemmings sadly doesn't work, because then, the athletes also have regular skin colour, thereby no longer looking like Spider-Man with mask, boots, and gloves on. To my knowledge, it isn't possible to separately recolour an athlete's skin - only his hair and clothes, correct?

[WillLem]

To my knowledge, it isn't possible to separately recolour an athlete's skin - only his hair and clothes, correct?

Not correct: you can use the .scheme file to change skin, hair and clothes colours independently of each other. That's how zombies are possible (e.g. the zombie lemminas are complete recolourings from within the scheme file - no manual recolouring at all).

Not sure how this would work in the .theme file, but it's certainly worth a try.

[Strato Incendus]

Thanks for the reminder, I had forgotten about the scheme option! So the real question is: Can we use a scheme file for recolouring without providing separate .png files? Since the only example I know - your Lara Croft lemmings - did feature separate sprite .png files, as do any other cases that use scheme files that I'm aware of (X-Mas, Millas, Lemminas).

[Strato Incendus]

Here are the Swedish sprites!

Would still be good to know whether sprites can be recoloured using a scheme file without having to provide hand-recoloured .pngs for every single file. Or whether it is possible to recolour an athlete's skin using a theme file as well.