Silly question: Disable skill shadows?

[Aaron44126]

Forgive the newbie please...

Brief-ish context:
I've been trying to find the best way to play through Lemmings on a modern PC.  I have fond memories of this game from childhood.  I never finished it.  I know that I finished all of the "Fun" and "Tricky" levels and got lost somewhere in "Taxing".  I want to come back and do the whole thing proper, including the ONML levels.  I still have a copy of "Lemmings for Windows 95" but have been frustrated trying to play that in Windows 10... there are some annoyances, like the game pausing whenever the music loops, or scrolling the stage horizontally causing some thin vertical black bands to appear in the level.  I tried the original Lemmings in DOSBox but didn't have luck with that either...  Whatever settings I use, the game seems to stutter hard whenever I am moving the mouse around, making it pretty annoying to play.  I'm a little bit surprised that whoever owns the property now hasn't made a modern version available.

So, I discovered these Lemmings ports/modernizations Lemmini and Lemmix/NeoLemmix.  (I'm a software developer and actually had been toying with the idea of creating one myself using Unity2D, since I see that the original Lemmings data files are pretty well understood and documented, but then I discovered that other people had already done some modern ports.)

Anyway.  I'm drawn to NeoLemmix and I'm trying to decide between using the actual NeoLemmix distribution, or these Lemmix players which appear to be set up to more accurately recreate the experience of playing through the original games.  I like NeoLemmix proper for its feature set but I've found the "skill shadows" to be a bit too "helpful" and would like to turn them off.  I can't find an option for this.  I have searched around and found references to a "disable skill shadows" option, like this and this, but the option doesn't appear in the "Interface" settings or anywhere else that I can see.  Am I missing something?  Or was this option removed at some point?

Thanks for feedback.

[Simon]

http://www.lixgame.com/etc/nl-options.txt -- Interesting, this is several years old. It was either configuration for the NL Delphi build, or it was a personal reference about what options NL offered.

Nepster (for NL) and I (for Lix) had eventually grown to prefer convention over options, and only introduce an option when users suggest them. E.g., it's conceivable that nobody wants to disable the skill shadows because they're useful and unintrusive enough. Then we shouldn't invest work ahead of time to make it configurable. We've even cut options that nobody ever seems to need, to declutter the dialog.

Since you made the thread, of course, namida can reconsider this NL option to enable/disable skill shadows.

NL is not 100 % true to Lemmings 1, builder and basher have different collision checks, and you can pause-assign or rewind time. NL removes execution difficulty wherever possible; this clashes with the spirit of Lemmings 1.

Maybe it's appropriate to invest time into Lemmings 1 in Dosbox? It works for me with:

• 7,000 fixed cycles (to have AdLib music)
  
• output=overlay in dosbox.conf, although it shouldn't matter
  
• When Lemmings 1 prompts you, select option 1 for VGA, then again option 1 for PC compatibles
  

-- Simon

[Proxima]

Nepster ran a poll concerning which options people actually used, and with no-one using the "disable skill shadows" option, it was removed.

[Aaron44126]

Thank you guys for the replies.

Believe me, I certainly understand the desire to cut back on the number of options, especially ones that don't get much use.  :-P
I'm coming to understand that the goal behind NeoLemmix is a bit different than the "classic Lemmings play-through" that I am going for.  However, it looks like the "Lemmix player" from the same site will work if I don't figure anything else out.  Just missing out on some of the other perks like a GUI level selector (vs. the password system).

The differences in basher/builder collision checks doesn't bother me much.  I'm not that familiar with the original game so I don't think that I would notice if my attention was not drawn to it.  The other "execution assistance" features are easy enough to just not use but the skill shadows are forced upon you.

I just reset my DOSBox config back to default and then set only the options that you specified, but I still have the same issue.  Moving the mouse causes huge stutters in the game (it runs smoothly without mouse movement, but of course, you can't play it that way...).  Not sure what's up with that.  I have a decently powerful system and I haven't had issues with other games that I have tried to run in DOSBox.  However, I did notice that my copy of Lemmings has option 4 for VGA at the first menu, instead of option 1 as you had specified.  I wonder if I need to locate a different copy.

[Edit] - Figured out the menu difference, needed to run vgalemmi.exe instead of the lemmings.bat file.  Doesn't matter, performance is still the same, not good.

[Simon]

Hmm, then I can't guess what else you can try in Dosbox. Good luck with the research!

Indeed, the skill shadows are harder to ignore than other features. Ron_Stard wanted them off in 2016, similar reasoning. Thus there is precedent for optional skill shadows, on by default.

-- Simon

[WillLem]

I'm coming to understand that the goal behind NeoLemmix is a bit different than the "classic Lemmings play-through" that I am going for.

If you're after the classic experience, I strongly recommend playing the Amiga version through an emulator (I'd recommend Amiga Forever, but there are others as well).

If you'd rather have something a bit more modern but which is still close to the experience of playing the original game (i.e. no skill shadows), I'd recommend SuperLemmini. It looks great and plays really nicely, whilst also having one or two more modern features. e.g. like NeoLemmix, it doesn't have timed bombers and it allows forwards framestepping, which can sometimes come in handy - however, the developer has plans to re-introduce timed bombers at some point, along with various other "classic" options. Haven't heard from him in a while though, so couldn't say for sure if/when this is going to happen.

The latest version of NeoLemmix is still well worth downloading and getting used to though - the community around it is strong and friendly, there's plenty of custom-made content for it, and whilst its various player-assist features make the gameplay itself less like the original, it does make it easy to share replays and try alternative solutions.

Welcome to the forums, btw!

[namida]

However, it looks like the "Lemmix player" from the same site will work if I don't figure anything else out.  Just missing out on some of the other perks like a GUI level selector (vs. the password system).

Enter "CHEATCODES" as a password. After doing this, you can skip to any level using its rank and level number as if they were a password, eg. entering "TRICKY25" or "0225" would (in the Orig player) take you to Tricky 25.

[Aaron44126]

Enter "CHEATCODES" as a password. After doing this, you can skip to any level using its rank and level number as if they were a password, eg. entering "TRICKY25" or "0225" would (in the Orig player) take you to Tricky 25.

I've been messing with the Lemmix players and I think that they will work perfectly for what I am going for.  This cheatcodes things seals the deal, thanks...  Now I don't have to bother writing down passwords to save progress between sessions so long as I can just remember what level I was on.

[Dullstar]

It sounds like you've already found a solution, but I'll put this here in case it's relevant to anyone else that's looking:

If you use DOSBox and the original DOS version as a solution, I highly recommend a patched version of the executable that you can find here that fixes an issue where the music always reverts to the first level's music when you restart a level. It's definitely not a DOSBox emulation issue, either - I've observed it on real DOS (also: according to ccexplore, it's an issue in the game code). The patched version (specifically lem-fix3, the one I decided to go with - there's a readme in the download that explains the differences) definitely works on DOSBox. I don't see why they wouldn't work on real DOS, either, but I haven't tried them out there yet because moving files between the old DOS machine and my modern one is a bit of a pain for now, though I should have an improved solution in the near future.

The patched version doesn't come with installation instructions, but it's pretty straightforward - just add them to the lemmings directory then use it to start the game instead of vgalemmi.exe or lemmings.bat or whatever.

[WillLem]

To address the point about skill shadows, since it's come up again:

Any chance of bringing back the option to disable them?

Whilst they're undoubtedly useful, and most people (myself included) would keep them switched on in NeoLemmix most of the time, it would be good to occasionally have the option to play without them. That way, custom content can be played like classic content, when the player chooses.

EDIT: It might also help to encourage potential NeoLemmix newcomers, if they know they can make the gameplay feel more familiar, rather than being a potentially off-putting feature that can't be switched off. Thinking about it, one of the first things I did when I tried NeoLemmix for the first time was look for such an option in the Settings menu. Realising it wasn't optional definitely slowed my initial transition from SuperLemmini to NeoLemmix as my main Lemmings platform.

EDIT 2: Incidentally, it was the backwards framestepping that won me over eventually, and from there I discovered the advanced replay features, the easy-to-use editor, the strong community, and realised NeoLemmix is the best modern platform for Lemmings. The skill shadows are second nature by now, but I do still occasionally wish it were possible to toggle them on and off with a HotKey and get that more immersive gameplay experience that unassisted play allows.

[ccexplore]

I've been trying to find the best way to play through Lemmings on a modern PC.  I have fond memories of this game from childhood.  I never finished it.  I know that I finished all of the "Fun" and "Tricky" levels and got lost somewhere in "Taxing".  I want to come back and do the whole thing proper, including the ONML levels.

For that particular purpose, NeoLemmix is not really appropriate given that you only get rather altered versions of the levels from the original game.  I don't even know if Redux had kept all the levels from Lemmings and ONML.  I don't think I'd count finishing the Redux levels as finishing the original games, especially as a continuation of finishing Fun and Tricky in the original game way back in childhood.

I'm not opposed to option to disable skill shadows in NeoLemmix, but ultimately the classic LemmixPlayers make much better sense for replaying the original levels in their original forms.

I'm a little bit surprised that whoever owns the property now hasn't made a modern version available.

Sony currently owns the property and Lemmings games had been released on PSP and PS3 (note: it doesn't mean Sony itself developed the games, just that some arrangement got established for some company to develop a Lemmings game and Sony blessed them to release such games on specific platforms).  It's not surprising that Sony isn't really giving the blessing to release Lemmings games on most other platforms that they don't own.  And to be honest, you might not necessarily want a commercial "modern" version--the latest development is a freemium mobile game version that features endless procedurally created levels and a pay-to-play energy system that annoys many players.

The return of official Lemmings games to the PC (and let's be honest, it's kind of deficient to play the game without a mouse) seems unlikely for the foreseeable future.  Fortunately there are plenty of unofficial versions and adaptations floating around, plus there are many pretty decent emulation options as well.

[Proxima]

For that particular purpose, NeoLemmix is not really appropriate given that you only get rather altered versions of the levels from the original game.  I don't even know if Redux had kept all the levels from Lemmings and ONML.  I don't think I'd count finishing the Redux levels as finishing the original games, especially as a continuation of finishing Fun and Tricky in the original game way back in childhood.

Lemmings Redux is how we'd recommend experiencing original-levels-in-NeoLemmix for someone completely new to the game, but the original levels are also available and won't go away just because we made Redux. The levels have been slightly edited for NL (in particular, Fun 6 is titled "A task for bombers" and doesn't include blockers), but other than a few changes, the levels are the same and the only difference is the mechanics differences that are part of the NL engine (no timed bombers, steel can never be destroyed, etc).

[Aaron44126]

Yes, I wasn't looking at Lemmings Redux (though that looks cool), I was looking at the level packs which are linked right off of the NeoLemmix web site.  It seems that all of the levels are included.
https://www.neolemmix.com/?page=official
I figured that the purpose of having these available was so that people could play through the classic levels in NeoLemmix.

I hadn't played enough to realize that timed bombers aren't available at all in NeoLemmix.  That's another hard break from the classic game that would put me off from using NeoLemmix for a play-through...

Anyway, I've been using the Lemmix player version of the classic game and it seems like a totally fine solution for me.  Still would like to see the option to disable skill shadows in NeoLemmix to get a more classic experience in that engine.

[Dullstar]

For the classic games if you want to avoid skill shadows and keep timed bombers, the vanilla Lemmix versions are probably much better. You also get the bonus that if you want to use glitch solutions, they are available. Lemmix was designed to mimic the original game very closely, with optional player assist features, so it's the definitive engine for the classic experience without resorting to emulation.

I don't think giving an option to mimic the classic experience would be a good move for NeoLemmix. The original games weren't designed with untimed bombers and skill shadows in mind. These features certainly make them easier, which may be a little disappointing for some players, but at the very least, it doesn't cause content to be more frustrating than intended. The problem with adding the option to remove those passively-active player assist features is the new content.

NeoLemmix offers a number of features like framestepping, skill shadows, untimed bombers, and a lot of the new content is designed with these in mind. At first I tried to design levels that wouldn't require framestepping, but at a certain point, I figured the option is there, pretty much everyone uses it, so I don't test the levels to see if they are playable without it. Bomber placements can be even more frustrating than in the original game with levels that were designed around the assumption of untimed bombers. And with skill shadows and framestepping together, pixel-precise skill placements are no longer important to avoid as long as getting the timing aligned correctly isn't an issue.

The end result is that players using the option to disable skill shadows, use untimed bombers, etc. would need to change these options when playing packs designed with them in mind, since otherwise the levels will be significantly harder than their developers intended, which is, in my opinion, almost always a much worse outcome than when it ends up being easier than intended. The player should not have to tweak their options to play certain content, and level designers shouldn't have to account for the player's options when designing the level. If the player's options have to be considered in the level design, it probably shouldn't be an option in the first place.

[namida]

Timed bombers will not happen in any way. Not as a content creator's choice, and not as the player's choice.

On the other hand, if the situation of "there isn't much demand for it" is no longer the case, I'm happy to look at reviving the "hide skill shadows" option.