Guide to making Lix Multiplayer Maps by Flopsy (Work in progress)

[Flopsy]

Flopsy's guide to making Lix multiplayer maps.

Welcome, this is a guide to helping newer players make better multiplayer maps. After making a good amount of maps myself and played in a lot of sessions over the years. I want to share my opinions of what I have learned.

Feel free to disagree with things I say in this guide, I'm interested in listening to feedback on improving this guide. I am open to debate.

The Basics

⦁   Lix is basically the multiplayer of Lemmings but expanded to cater for up to 8 players. It's very like the 2 player mode of Lemmings but with additional skills such as batters, cubers, jumpers, walkers.... etc.

⦁   There are 8 Lix colours: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Light Gray and Black. You will choose a colour before playing and these are the Lixes you can assign skills to in the game. Note: There can be more than one player assigned to a colour.

⦁   The idea is to save as many Lixes as possible in the exit of your respective colour, it doesn't matter what colour Lixes enter your exit, they will get added to your score. The idea is to use your skillset on your Lixes to guide ALL Lixes (or just your own) on the map to YOUR coloured exit. There is a lot of strategy to cover and I will try and help as much as I can in this guide.

⦁   Lix comes with an editor in the game to make your own multiplayer levels, it's very easy to do if you're already familiar with the NeoLemmix editor (I'll go through the editor a little later).

⦁   Each multiplayer map must specify a number of players the map is designed for. The hatches in the level will display a Letter which corresponds to the exit with the same letter, that means that the Lixes from hatch A will have to go to the exit A. Lix maps can be played by 2-8 players. Sadly that map can only be for that number of players, you'll have to make a separate map for another amount of players (between 2 and 8).

⦁   You can make the same map for more or less players, it will always mean changing the size of the level to cater for the increased/decreased number of players. You will have to save this map separately though.

⦁   Each level must have a name like how levels are named in Lemmings, it may be handy to write in the level field after the name for example "2P" to denote the map is for 2 players and "3P" for 3 players and so on....

⦁   Each level must have a specified number of Lix allocated to each player, a good amount of Lix is generally around 50-60 Lixes if you are keeping the release rate as standard (RR is known as SI in Lix, more on this later).

⦁   It's a good idea to have a value set for overtime as well, a common mistake I see in multiplayer levels is people often leave this at "0:00" and this is bad. I'll cover overtime in detail later but the general idea is any player can choose to nuke if they have saved at least 1 Lix in their exit, when they nuke then this timer will start to countdown and the game will end when this timer has expired.
"1:00" tends to be a standard overtime value to use if you're not sure what will be a good timer.

⦁   Spawn interval can be converted into release rate, and vice versa, by the formula SI + RR = 103. This means that SI 4 corresponds to RR 99, the fastest possible in NL, and SI 1, 2 and 3 are even faster. Since spawn interval is simply the number of frames between successive spawns, SI 2 is twice as fast as SI 4, and SI 1 is four times as fast.

⦁   If you have never played Lix multiplayer before then it's highly recommended that you play it before trying to make maps. Watching videos on it doesn't really prepare you for what the game is like, there is no substitute for experiencing the game for yourself!

Making Multiplayer Maps
The Level

It's a usual convention to make an equal amount of work to get through the level for each player so consistency is an important element in making a good multiplayer level.

Examples


Get on the Revolution (2 player map)

This is a 2 player level which is usually referred to as a team map (where you have more than one player on each team). Notice the symmetry and the fact that there is nothing different for each team to navigate.


Along the fabrics of your clothing (6 player map)

This is a 6 player level with horizontal and vertical wrap, note how it gets harder to get the hatch and goal positioning correct in this, but it is consistent that each player has to go down two levels to get to their goal from their hatch.


Downward Reduction (8 player map)

This is a 8 player level with horizontal wrap, each exit is in the same position relative to their hatch.
Notice how this is horizontally aligned? This sort of level is very easy to make a version for any number of players by simply reducing the number of hatches and exits simultaneously.

The point is every player has to do an equal amount of work to get to their exit.
However there are examples of levels which rip up this rule so don't be afraid to experiment.

Examples


The Great Lix in the Sky (5 player map)

This level is just an asymmetric level where there is a definite imbalance between players, and there is often controversy on levels like this however, it is still something different to play.


Snatched (5 player map)

This level has symmetry for the 4 players in the middle levels however the player at the top has to go all the way from the top to the bottom of the level. The level has increased overtime to account for this because the player at the top needs a long time to get to their exit.

Levels like this are less regular in the current multiplayer level pool.

It is hard for me to tell you exactly how to make a good Lix level, you need to have ideas of your own but I have hints to make these level ideas be their best potential.

What make good Lix multiplayer levels

⦁   Levels which have lots of crossovers with paths of Lixes of another colour. This encourages sabotage and will always produce different results.

⦁   If you want to make larger levels that is fine but this only really works if you make a level where you are using paths made by other players and not having to entirely craft your own path to the exit which can be very time consuming.

⦁   Levels where the skills given each play a part in the level and are not too plentiful.

⦁   If you must give blockers, give about twice as many batters to balance the game out.

What not to do

⦁   don't make maps which are effectively disjoint unions and each player is playing the same version of a level, the only exception to this I'd say is acceptable is if you are putting a hatch of Lixes of another colour in the same segment.

⦁   be careful when considering the amount of Blockers and Cubers to put in a level, these are very strong skills which can be annoying to counter so as a rule of thumb, you should never have more than 5 of each, or 10 of one of them if you have none of the other. Some might disagree with this but levels with lots of these 2 skills never seem to be popular levels. If you have too many, your level may be subject to having Blocker spam near exits which are very hard to counter.

⦁   Levels where no walkers and jumpers are given in a level which requires a lot of navigation.

⦁   Hard to explain, but levels where there are a lot of builder or miner countering don't tend to be popular with some either. This is where you are in a stalemate situation where you are always building over someone else's exit but someone is always mining through the bridges you just built (usually the player whose exit it belongs to), so you are effectively just infinitely delaying the inevitable.

⦁   don't make maps which don't encourage people to sabotage or steal other players Lixes.

[Dullstar]

On the topic of SI, it's worth noting that SI is always locked in Lix, since some newer designers might be wondering "wait, how do you change it during play?". NL also supports use of SI and levels actually store SI internally, though the editor specifically only supports RR, which kinda bothers me, since SI is a bit easier to work with since doubling the number basically doubles the time between spawns (halves the frequency at which lemmings appear).