The Lemmings Have Grown Pack (156 levels) [Difficulty : Medium – Hard]

[David]

Hello everybody,

I'm new in this awesome forum that brings the game back to life from my childhood, and I want to share with you my The Lemmings Have Grown Pack, comprising 156 levels and using the latest version of NeoLemmix (V12.10.0).

Unfortunately, I am not a computer expert, I am not very good at English (the level titles are in French ) and I am not familiar with your codes and habits. So, this pack does not use the original "styles" and "sounds" folders ; in fact, I added a lot of little things to the existing tilesets (the lastest updates), which is why the downloadable file contains my level pack and my styles and sound folders.

My pack includes 6 ranks, with increasing difficulty levels :

1) Morning walk
2) Fast walk
3) Running
4) 100 metres
5) 400 metres
6) Marathon

(sorry, I don't know how to import images )

My pack : The Lemmings Have Grown (updated !)

Updated styles (December 02, 2020) : davidz_styles

At last, I would like to warmly thank all of the creators/designers who are involved in improving this game ! It's awesome !

David

[IchoTolot]

Welcome to the forums!

The pack sounds gread and I will definitly take a look at it soon.

There is one thing though:

So, this pack does not use the original "styles" and "sounds" folders ; in fact, I added a lot of little things to the existing tilesets (the lastest updates), which is why the downloadable file contains my level pack and my styles and sound folders.

What styles did you add/change? If I would be overwriting my existent styles folder it will lead to problems in the future and I won't create an extra NL installation for 1 pack.

Instead, could you please create a new "david_special" style and put all your new tiles/objects etc into it?

Link to the reasons why: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=4192.0

Sorry to overwhelm you with this right at the beginning, but changing existing styles already lead to huge messes in the past.

And with a "david_special" style you got all your current and future extra stuff together under your control without any compability issues for users.

(sorry, I don't know how to import images )

I, for example, upload my pictures to imgur and get share links for forums from there.

I wish you have a great time here.

[namida]

To add to this: You do not need to go through and change everything manually. Chances are most of this can be automated - as this is an understandable mistake for a new user to make, I'm happy to help sort this out, I'll take a look at it later today.

[David]

Thank you for this warm welcome Ichotolot and namida !

In fact, I have two installations of NL on my computer: one with my styles, the other with the standard styles.

In fact, I created a few styles a while back (under the name davidz), which I updated today :

davidz_addamscrypt
davidz_addamsgallery
davidz_autumn
davidz_gold
davidz_marble_blue
davidz_marble_red
davidz_psychedelic_forest
davidz_raymancandy
davidz_special

Then I made some additions to the following styles (some tiles, sound...) :

arty_silhouette
flopsy_scrapbrain
gigalem_fortune
gigalem_ghz
gigalem_relic
gronkling_beast
gronkling_menace
l2_egyptian
l2_medieval
l2_space
namida_sky
namida_space
ohno_brick
ohno_rock
ohno_snow
orig_crystal
orig_dirt
orig_marble
orig_pillar
proxima_persia
zanzindorf_agony

Finally, in the following styles, I just added a sound (unlocked button and/or locked door):

default
dex_davinci
gigalem_lagoon
gigalem_purplemd
l3_shadow
namida_horror
orig_sega
plom_bastemp

And for the pictures, thank you, I understood !

[David]

Here are the pictures of the first levels of each rank :

1) Morning walk


2) Fast walk


3) Running


4) 100 metres


5) 400 metres


6) Marathon

[Proxima]

Welcome, David

Great to have you join us, and you clearly have a lot of artistic talent. I've only had a quick look so far, but some of your pieces are great additions to the style library. The only thing is, as Icho and namida have pointed out, it's really important that you either keep pieces in your own styles, or else cooperate with the style author in adding to their style, to avoid the situation where another designer uses some of your pieces thinking they are official, distributes a level, and then someone else can't play the level because they don't have the pieces (as well as other considerations namida went through in the post Icho linked to above).

In that spirit, I'm looking through the additions to proxima_persia. As far as I can see, these are all the new pieces:

Objects:

Button: Great idea to use the door-opening switch from Prince of Persia as a button. I haven't made a button object before so I need to double-check that everything is done in the way I would prefer, but this can definitely be added to the style officially.

Entrance 2 / Exit 2: These are much better than the lazy single-frame rips! They should just replace the old entrance/exit rather than existing as separate objects.

Spikes 3 / Spikes 4: I'm wary of these because they are invisible until activated, and general NL convention is not to do that (all traps should have secondary animations). Also, if they are to exist, then authors using the tileset would have to agree that the floor holes would only be used with the trap object -- unless the holes could become part of the object somehow? I need to think about this one.

Terrain:

Spikes: These should definitely not exist as terrain, because they already exist as a fire object (and a trap, though the trap version is distinct because the spikes start out retracted). Having some spikes be terrain (or in general, having terrain that looks like an object in the same style) is confusing to the player. I won't allow this to be part of my tileset, and I would strongly urge that you don't use this tile at all, though I can't enforce that.

Steel 2-6: You've replaced the pieces with identically named but distinct pieces that represent different stages of the gate opening or closing. I don't mind these pieces existing, but they need distinct names so they won't overwrite the old pieces.

[namida]

Okay, I'm working

Any new pieces you've added will be moved to a style under your name with an "ex" suffix. For example, your additions to orig_dirt will go in to "davidz_dirt_ex".

Note that a few of your changes were outright changing an object's type, or moving its trigger area / point. This is an especially big no-no - one of NeoLemmix's core principles is that levels should not deceive the player. If the player is familiar with a style and knows an object to be a certain type, they should not suddenly find that it's a different type in your pack. Most of these cases were just changing "BACKGROUND" to "NO_EFFECT" (which doesn't actually affect the player directly, though there is also no reason to do this), but I noticed that in gronkling_cyber you changed a fire object to water, and in one of zanzindorf's styles you changed the trigger point of an entrance. For this reason, these changes will be REVERTED, not copied to custom styles. Do not manually work around this - use or create a different object that is more suitable instead.

I further note you've added an "updraft_invisible" object to L2_space. For much the same reason as above, invisible objects are a HUGE "do not do this" in NeoLemmix. There can be some very specific exceptions; these would generally only be done by an experienced designer who knows what they're doing and has specifically taken steps to keep it fair. (One example is "Luck Of The Draw" from Lemmings Plus IV, which is a special graphics level where a representation of the objects makes up part of the terrain.) I don't know whether this is the case in your pack or not as I haven't looked at the levels where this is used, but if it's an outright "There's an invisible updraft and you have to guess where it is" or "Some levels are entirely covered by an invisible updraft", this is bad design. On the other hand, if it's more similar to the Luck Of The Draw example, it might be more justifiable. As I have not looked into what the situation is here, I will leave this as-is - but I urge you to get rid of it and replace it with a visible updraft unless there is very good reason for using it, and simply "I think this is cool" does not qualify.

As some historical context - at one point, NeoLemmix was far less consistent about this kind of thing, and one of the frequent complaints was that the rules would be different for every pack a player played - which got confusing quickly. Thus, it is now a big deal that it should remain consistent, and fair.

Please don't take this too harshly. I'm aware that many fan-content communities, including other Lemmings communities (in particular the Lemmini community) are not so strict around this, and that the NeoLemmix community's stance here can be a bit unusual at first. This is not us saying we don't want your content here - we absolutely do, we just want to make sure you do it the proper way, and we're happy to help you achieve that (as you'll realise from the effort I'm putting in to fixing up your pack / styles here).

EDIT: And one other change - it's customary for piece names to only contain lowercase letters, numbers or underscores; so I'll also adjust all your piece names to fit this.

I'll post again when I've got an update for this.

[David]

Thank you very much Proxima and namida for all these details. I understand and I totally agree with you ! In fact, I didn't know the usage conventions when I created these levels (and "augmented" the existing styles). I just wanted to have fun !

Because of these multiple additions, I hesitated to propose the levels on this forum, because I knew that it was not good!   But ... if necessary, I am ready to "readjust" my levels... Thanks a lot for your help !

However, I think the "updraft_invisible" is justified in the level where I use it (Seul sur la Lune, which means Alone on the Moon !)

[mantha16]

It's great to have new content creators so welcome I look forward to playing your pack . I might wait though till you've made some of the amendments that have been recommended

[David]

Hello mantha16 ! Thank you very much ! The welcome is very warm on this forum !!! I'm glad I signed up !
Now, we have to wait for the updates of the great namida... !!!

[ericderkovits]

Welcome to the Forums David. It's always nice to have more new members join. Also great to have more packs availiable. So once Namida and you fix the style issues, it will be interesting to see these levels. Maybe now that 12.10 is released,  more packs will be released, as it seems we need more, especially easier ones.

Anyways,  once again Welcome to the forums.

[David]

Thank you very much ericderkovits for your welcome on this site ! It's a real pleasure for me to be part of this small community and to share with you, with everyone !!!



One last thing namida ! You say :

Most of these cases were just changing "BACKGROUND" to "NO_EFFECT" (which doesn't actually affect the player directly, though there is also no reason to do this)

But there is a reason : "NO_EFFECT" images may be in the foreground or background while "BACKGROUND" images are always in the background (sometimes, I like to quibble ! )

[kaywhyn]

Welcome to the forums, David! This looks like a pack I would like to play, which I definitely will check out once the styles have been tidied up. I might even LP your pack, after I've done a few that I have planned. Love the Tinker Bell level in the image you posted (I'm a huge Disney fan), so I'm looking forward to trying out that level, but especially playing the entire pack once it's stable and ready. It's very awesome whenever I see more packs being released, as I just love playing packs/content.

Anyway, enjoy your time here. You've definitely seen how very friendly this community is and are willing to extend some assistance if you need or request it. Out of curiosity, what is your experience in regards to playing the official Lemmings games/Lemmings custom packs? It sounds like you definitely have played the original Lemmings. Perhaps you've tried ONML too? How about Lemmings 2: The Tribes? What port(s) did you play the official games in growing up?

[David]

Thank you kaywhyn for this very friendly welcome ! I also like Disney a lot, I'm not really a fan, but I have always liked the fairytale universe a lot (well... I also love thrillers and horror films, but that's not the subject !)

Lemmings Original is, along with Rayman and Adibou, THE GAME of my childhood. I played it exclusively on a computer (under Dos, at the time : 1990s). So I played all the originals (including Oh no! And xmas) but I played very little Lemmings 2 (I really didn't like it !). I also tested, with wonder, some namida packs and some packs from other creators.

As I said before, I'm not a geek (far from it), but when I discovered Lemmix, then NeoLemmix, I wanted to create my own levels myself when I had free time ! It took me a long time to figure out how this "new-old" game works.

Uh, what does "LP my pack" mean ?

[kaywhyn]

Lemmings Original is, along with Rayman and Adibou, THE GAME of my childhood. I played it exclusively on a computer (under Dos, at the time : 1990s). So I played all the originals (including Oh no! And xmas) but I played very little Lemmings 2 (I really didn't like it !). I also tested, with wonder, some namida packs and some packs from other creators.

I don't blame you regarding Lemmings 2. I didn't like it too much either, but at the same time it was an ok game. I still enjoyed it, though.

Uh, what does "LP my pack" mean ?

LP stands for "let's play." Basically, I record myself playing and solving the pack. I enjoy these videos when others do it, because you get to see how someone solves your levels on camera in real time, as well as hear his or her thoughts aloud (what was liked/disliked about the level, was it a good/not so good level, etc). Not to mention it's always fun to compare solutions to that of other players on some of the levels. I recently started LPing level packs, and I got to say I am absolutely enjoying my LP experience thus far, so I decided that I'll be doing many more in the future. Both of my LPs seem to be getting quite a positive reception. Be on the lookout for them! I'll be starting another one soon. Not your pack right away, but a couple of smaller packs in the meantime just to ease myself into LPing much bigger packs.