The Lemmings Chronicles... Remastered! [50+% COMPLETE]

[The Tomato Watcher]

I've seen some discussion on here about converting some L2 levels to NeoLemmix. That got me thinking: what about L3? Sure, the physics are entirely different from both L1 and L2, but that doesn't need to be a problem as long as you redesign the levels to better fit NL physics. The enemies could be replaced with zombies in most cases, and with all the new skills in NeoLemmix nowadays, almost every skill in L3 is in NeoLemmix in one form or another, minus a couple of the more situational or finicky ones. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say the that the entire game, more or less, could be converted to NeoLemmix. So that's what I set out to do. And so far, it's going quite well.

At the moment, I've converted the first 10 levels from each of the 3 tribes. When possible, I tried to preserve the look and layout of the original level, but whenever that caused a problem, gameplay always took priority. Some of the recurring changes you'll see are...

• 8-pixel-tall stairs being made less steep or replaced with slopes
• Traps added to enforce something close to the original solution (though a few levels have mostly different solutions to avoid absolute insanity and hideous looking levels)
• Tall levels being shortened due to the shorter splat height
• Big levels being miniaturized in general
• Entirely different ways of dealing with enemies/zombies due to a lack of a certain copyrighted fireball...

Egyptian 8 - Choose Wisely... (heavily miniaturized)

I also did a few things to get closer to the original gameplay, where pick-up skills are individual instead of global. In some cases, if said skill was an L1 permanent skill, I put it on a pre-placed lemming instead, and made sure that skill wasn't available anywhere else, so only that lemming can do the task you need. I should also note that I didn't strictly follow L3's rules for skills. By that I mean, in some levels, walkers, blockers, and/or jumpers are finite, or skills that aren't those three are available right away. Additionally, the straggler lemmings are required to be saved to move on (unless one has to be a bomber or something). I have a feeling most people here would agree that that's the right move, but if someone presents a convincing case for them to be for talismans instead, I'll reconsider. I've also given the levels new titles, as, weirdly, L3 is the only mainline Lemmings game that doesn't title its levels at all. I'm proud of some of them, but I'm definitely open for suggestions there. Finally, I condensed the story and lore from the bloated intro cutscene into a few preview screens.

The attached .ZIP is the initial demo. This demo contains the first 10 levels of each tribe (probably a bit much but whatever). Later levels will definitely need more drastic changes and a few may need to be outright replaced, so before I mess with all that, I'd like to see how you all like the idea and what you think of my current progress. Again, I'm open for any suggestions you may have.

The music can be downloaded from here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wpj2rggwirovhlg/L3Remastered.zip?dl=1. The music is from the CD-ROM version of the game, with two tracks from different versions of L2 to make all the tribes have three tracks. Unzip the levels into your levels folder, unzip the music into your music folder, and enjoy!

[NieSch]

Great work Tomato Watcher! You clearly put a lot of effort into this.

I played some Lemmings Chronicles using an emulator but I never got far with it. This is a great new way to try some more levels.

[The Tomato Watcher]

I have been working on this quite a bit slower than I would have liked, but I have finally surpassed the halfway point! Currently, 48 out of 90 levels have been remade, and to celebrate (barely), I'm posting another quick teaser image of one of the levels, one that's actually somewhat significant.


Shadow 15 - Messy Mineshaft (shortened)

As a level made almost entirely made of 8-pixel staircases in the original game, it was obviously gonna be shorter here. You can also see some one-way walls and a preplaced permanent lemming to enforce something close to the original solution, but not exactly the same.

But most significant is the incinerator trap you can see near the top left. That trap actually wasn't in the NL L3 Shadow style for quite a while, even though it was in the original game. Take three guesses who remade it for NL. Though I will say, my version is nowhere near as good as the original animation, as I only had the initial frame to work with (some website had the first frame as a still image; don't remember which), and I was basing the animation off of compressed gameplay footage (because I'm unforgivably lazy), which is not viable to get accurate colors from, so I used colors from other fire animations from the official styles... Yeah... Maybe someone could do better? I don't know. It's probably fine.

[jkapp76]

I like the looks of it so far!

[grams88]

Those levels look really good and look just like the lemmings chronicles levels.

[The Tomato Watcher]

Those levels look really good and look just like the lemmings chronicles levels.

That's pretty relieving to hear honestly. I was hoping I wasn't making the level layouts too different from the originals, but at the same time, the physics require level adjustments, and since the Lemmings are smaller on the screen in L1/NL than in L3, I was more concerned with maintaining relative scale for the really big levels, as you can see in Egyptian 8 at the top of this thread.

[The Tomato Watcher]

My sincerest apologies for being silent on this for months. I have made very little progress on this from March to now due to a lot of things going on in my life--not all of them bad, but still a lot to juggle. Even though I have gotten embarrassingly little work done for this, I have NOT abandoned this project, and I'm hoping to get some more progress made over my month-long winter break.

With all that said, you all at least deserve another level image.


Egypt 13 - Just Gotta Do It Yourself!

This level made significant use of the Mole in the original game. NeoLemmix obviously has no Mole, which is probably for the best, so my version features the Laserer, which felt like the closest available thing. Honestly the level feels a bit trivial now, but I'll worry about that once I start getting playtesters involved. I might reduce the levels per rank to 25 or something for the levels whose spirit simply cannot be captured even remotely in NeoLemmix, and this level would be one of the first on the chopping block, but we'll see what happens.

[The Tomato Watcher]

Added a poll because I want some input on the above question ^^

[jkapp76]

I say you remove those levels, but make them all into optional bonus levels. Or something.
I would personally love to see them. and I voted for all 30.