Lemmings re-make

[Leviathan]

I came up with an idea yesterday...
As there are so many different packs available in so much different difficulty ratings,wouldn't it be possible to make a "real" lemmings version and a real "ONML" version by filling the "levelxxxx.dat" files from the original lemmings and ONML with custom-made levels?

If it's possible,we could nominate certain levels from other players for a certain difficulty cathegory (fun,tricky,taxing or mayhem) and off course for ONML levels tame,crazy,wild,wicked and havoc.

Nominated levels should be "reviewed" by the nominator to explain why he nominates that level.If there are too many nominations we can do a poll or something like that,and of course no-one can nominate his (or her) own levels.

For practical reasons,all "part 2" levels should be renamed in the modified lemmings version unless the level does appear twice in the complete set (which is unlikely to happen).

[JM]

Sounds good to me

[Jazzem]

Good idea I think we should make some new levels specifically for the remake however. I'd be happy to do the inevitable tutorial levels like "Just dig" and "Tailor made for blockers", for instance.

[Shvegait]

Do we have the means to edit the data for duplicate levels? Remember that 40 levels in Lemmings are duplicates which aren't stored as normal levels.

Of course, this isn't a problem if we did this with ONML.

It would be interesting to attempt a "perfect" difficulty curve though.

[ccexplore]

Do we have the means to edit the data for duplicate levels? Remember that 40 levels in Lemmings are duplicates which aren't stored as normal levels.

Good point.  Fortunately, I might be able to deal with this.  More later (still at work right now).

[Mindless]

If it's possible,we could nominate certain levels from other players for a certain difficulty cathegory (fun,tricky,taxing or mayhem) and off course for ONML levels tame,crazy,wild,wicked and havoc.

Actually, with a bit of work, we could have our own custom dificulty levels.

[Proxima]

Besides which, compiling 20 "tame" difficulty levels is just boring  

[ccexplore]

Do we have the means to edit the data for duplicate levels? Remember that 40 levels in Lemmings are duplicates which aren't stored as normal levels.

Good point. &#A0;Fortunately, I might be able to deal with this. &#A0;More later (still at work right now).

I have hacked DOS Lemmings to eliminate the whole duplicate thing and at the same time, created an ordering that makes life much easier for us.

URL: &#A0;http://www.geocities.com/guestlevels/lemmings/lemrmake.zip

(Note: &#A0;this just contains the hacked EXE, you'd need to copy the DATs off Lemmings and/or CustLemm. &#A0;Don't bother with levelXXX.dat until you read what I have to say below.)

This is based off of the version of Lemmings that DragonsLover has, the so-called "CD version" where they don't repeat the Fun 1 music when you restart the current level. &#A0;I discovered that apparently SuperLemmings work in that version! &#A0;But I haven't yet made the changes to the max safe-fall so that it's more like CustLemm rather than Lemmings.

I changed the level loading table so that it loads Fun1 - Fun10 from level000.dat (yes, you can have 10 levels in levelXXX.dat now rather than just 8), Fun11 - Fun20 from level001.dat, Fun21 - Fun30 from level002.dat, Tricky1 - Tricky10 from level003.dat...etc. &#A0;You get the idea, with Mayhem21 - Mayhem30 coming from level011.dat. &#A0;Much easier isn't it?

This new scheme can support up to 160 levels total, although of course right now it still stops after Mayhem 30.

[ccexplore]

Obviously the same can be done for ONML, but unfortunately, right now I can't hack the ONML EXE.  The problem is that after I decompress the EXE with unpklite (needs to decompress the program before I have any hopes of hacking it), it no longer works correctly, refusing to load any levels.  Until someone can produce a functional, decompressed version of ONML, no hacks on it.

[ccexplore]

But I haven't yet made the changes to the max safe-fall so that it's more like CustLemm rather than Lemmings.

That was pretty ambiguous.  What I mean is, "We All Fall Down" works properly in lemrmake.exe.  I'll change it later so that it is more like CustLemm instead.

[Leviathan]

Besides which, compiling 20 "tame" difficulty levels is just boring &#A0;

I don't think anyone on the forum is interested in 50 levels in total in the trend of "just dig"
We can start off with levels of an actual difficulty rating of at least "tricky"

[chaos_defrost]

Hey, great idea. I'd be more than happy to submit some of my old/new levels for this. Although, I'd need that version of LemEdit with mouse support for XP (I've yet to download it, for whatever reason) before I create any new levels.

[Proxima]

Besides which, compiling 20 "tame" difficulty levels is just boring &#A0;

I don't think anyone on the forum is interested in 50 levels in total in the trend of "just dig"
We can start off with levels of an actual difficulty rating of at least "tricky"

Maybe; personally, I enjoy making "fun" difficulty levels, and I especially enjoy making easy and hard versions of the same level (like on the original game). "Tame" difficulty, though, is just boring.

[Leviathan]

Don't understand me wrong,I do like the fun levels where you have the ability to try multiple solutions on an easy version of a re-occuring hard level

I just don't like those fun levels where you don't have multiple solutions for (like just dig,now use floaters,tailor made for blockers,...).

We should avoid tedious levels with lots of straight building (like "heaven can wait") or too many bomber timing (like havoc 20) for I think

One proposition of me is to have an easy "fun" rating but all with levels with multiple solutions,and not too easy like "just dig",followed by a "tricky" rating to teach real tricks (climb/bomb,...) and maybe a few glitches (nuke glitch,miner glitch,sliding/climbing trough terrain,...).
Then "taxing" and "mayhem" to be used for challenging levels,going up to near-impossible levels for mayhem 30.

The same can go for ONML,but only the "tame" rating as learning levels,the rest of the levels slightly challenging levels to very difficult levels at the end.

We can both compile new levels specially for this version and copy levels from our packs.We can calculate how many people who want to share their packs for this version,and see how many levels per author we can accept...I believe every author over here (forum) has the right for getting at least one of his/her levels in this new version of lemmings...at least one level for Lemmings and one for ONML,and a maximum of let's roughly say,10 levels per lemmings version (so 20 in total).

Off course people who want their levels to stay out of this have the right to say no

[Proxima]

I'd like to strongly urge that glitch-requiring levels be left out of this. It's simply impossible to put them on the same difficulty scale as normal levels -- their difficulty varies hugely depending on whether the player knows the glitch or not. Levels designed to "teach" glitches would be just boring for people who know them -- and way, way too difficult for Tricky for people who don't.