[SUG/DISC] Athlete/Swimmer recolouring

[jkapp76]

Have you ever considered recoloring swimmer lemmings to look like the revolution's water lemmings? If your changes cause a boost in swimmer levels it might be beneficial to quickly identify lemmings that can swim. It's basically the same as an athlete recoloring.

[Strato Incendus]

I like those new Jumper and Shimmier interactions! I just refuse to worry about all the new backroutes this will probably introduce into my existing levels right now...

Have you ever considered recoloring swimmer lemmings to look like the revolution's water lemmings? If your changes cause a boost in swimmer levels it might be beneficial to quickly identify lemmings that can swim. It's basically the same as an athlete recoloring.

We already have these recoloured sprites as part of Arty's underwater tileset.

Aside from that, it seems like SuperLemmix actively moved away from recolouring athletes. Rather than switching to green shirts, blue hair, the athletes of the standard lemming sprites currently just adopt a darker shade of blue for their shirts. Which is confusing to me, since I'm so used to the NeoLemmix colour switch. It's harder to spot the athletes in a crowd now.

I've discovered that this also affects custom sprites, e.g. my African lemmings, even though the colour swap is written into the theme file. Meaning, even if I want the athletes to swap colours for my own sprite sets, apparently SuperLemmix does something else with them.

I also don't see how Swimmers could be recoloured separately from other athletes, at least not given the current way this is written in the theme files. These only distinguish between regular lemming clothes and athlete clothes.

[jkapp76]

I have a hard time seeing the athletes too.

[WillLem]

Have you ever considered recoloring swimmer lemmings to look like the revolution's water lemmings?

Good idea, we can look at separate Swimmer recolourings for sure. I agree it would be good to be able to see Swimmer lems at a glance.

My only reservation is that there are already 4 different tunic colourings for lems: normal, athlete, zombie and neutral. A fifth might be pushing it, especially since custom styles may use completely different colours for each.

For the record, though, I personally wouldn't be against the idea. Anyone else in favour?

I like those new Jumper and Shimmier interactions! I just refuse to worry about all the new backroutes this will probably introduce into my existing levels right now...

That's the spirit!

It's harder to spot the athletes in a crowd now.

I have a hard time seeing the athletes too.

This was done partly to mitigate the above issue (i.e. lots of state recolourings to distinguish between), and partly because I just prefer blue tunic, green hair.

If you want the NL athlete recolouring, paste the following into the scheme.nxmi file in styles\default\lemmings under $STATE_RECOLORING:

Code Select Expand


  $ATHLETE
    FROM x00B000
    TO x4040DF
  $END
 
  $ATHLETE
    FROM x4040E0
    TO x00AF00
  $END


And, be sure to delete this:

Code Select Expand


  $ATHLETE
    FROM x4040E0
    TO x202080
  $END


I've discovered that this also affects custom sprites, e.g. my African lemmings, even though the colour swap is written into the theme file. Meaning, even if I want the athletes to swap colours for my own sprite sets, apparently SuperLemmix does something else with them.

This shouldn't be happening to your own sprites - I haven't changed anything about the hard-coding of colour swaps. Please can you send me a copy of theme.nxmi from one of your affected styles and I'll see if I can see what's going wrong.

I also don't see how Swimmers could be recoloured separately from other athletes

It would essentially mean adding an extra state recolouring for just Swimmers. Not out of the question by any means.

[Floyd Brannon]

I love everything about the swimmer video. I also think a different color swimmer is a good idea. After reading about the issues people have with the athlete colors I think I agree with that. I prefer a different color over a different shade of color when it comes to singling out an affected lemming. Green was nice because red is taken by xmas.

I don't think a fifth coloring is pushing any limit. We seldom see zombie and neutrals all together. And if we do, we know them.

[Strato Incendus]

This was done partly to mitigate the above issue (i.e. lots of state recolourings to distinguish between), and partly because I just prefer blue tunic, green hair.

Yes, in spirit of original DMA Lemmings, I agree — this was something I appreciated about Very-Old Formats (1.43), where Climbers etc. still looked like all the other lemmings. There are also some sprite sets (like the Spider-Man sprites) where we might actively want athletes to look the same as other lemmings. Of course, I could write that into the theme file, already in NeoLemmix — but in NeoLemmix, deliberately sabotaging the walker-athlete distinction for mere aesthetic reasons would probably be frowned upon.

In SuperLemmix, we don't have that problem yet — however, as we see from the responses in this thread, a few of us have at least gotten so used to the visible distinction of blue shirts and green shirts that it feels odd / annoying now to have to isolate an athlete from a crowd of walkers. Especially since the highlight lemming no longer works the same way as it used to, as well.

This shouldn't be happening to your own sprites - I haven't changed anything about the hard-coding of colour swaps. Please can you send me a copy of theme.nxmi from one of your affected styles and I'll see if I can see what's going wrong.

This happened with my African lemming sprites, which are part of the strato_generalmd miscellaneous tileset. I don't know if that comes as a stock tileset of SuperLemmix by now? It was originally first uploaded for Lemmings World Tour. I can send it to you again via PM, to be on the safe side.

What is supposed to happen is that clothes and hair swap colours, just like for regular blue-green lemmings. Meaning, where walkers have yellow shirts, green hair, athletes should have green shirts, yellow hair. Instead, the athlete just received some color overlay that gave him the same clothes as an athlete from the default sprites (EDIT: I had originally described this incorrectly, I've fixed it now.)

It therefore looks to me like the same darker shade that is applied to standard lemming sprites, in order to make the athlete clothes a slightly darker shade of blue, is also applied to my custom sprites here. Perhaps, it is indeed due to this line of code being somewhere in the general SuperLemmix game files, too? So that it applies to all spritesets, rather than just to the default ones while ignoring custom sprites?

Code Select Expand


  $ATHLETE
    FROM x4040E0
    TO x202080
  $END

[WillLem]

Especially since the highlight lemming no longer works the same way as it used to, as well.

I haven't changed anything about the Highlight lemming feature - again, this might be a hotkeys thing. I'd strongly encourage you to move the hotkeys.ini file over from NeoLemmix\settings to the same folder in SuperLemmix in order to avoid any further issues.

Or, head to the F2 menu, Configure Hotkeys, and click "Set To Alternative Layout" - this will restore NL defaults, if that's what you're used to. As of 2.5, this button will simply say "Set To NeoLemmix Layout"!

What is supposed to happen is that clothes and hair swap colours, just like for regular blue-green lemmings.

We've resolved this via PM, but just to keep everyone in the loop:

The current default scheme.nxmi isn't set up to take hair-colour-swapping into account. This has now been restored and will be available as of 2.5 - note that the current hair and clothes colours for athletes will remain the default. If you wish to mod your own copy, then you are of course welcome to do so.



Regarding Swimmer recolouring, I've added it to the wish list under "discussion pending" - it seems worth getting a bit more feedback on this idea first, since it's a prominent visual change.

[WillLem]

I'm wanting to get an idea of whether this is a feature people are still interested in (i.e. a dedicated Swimmer-specific state recolouring, different from other athletes).

Now that Zombies have their own Walker sprite/speed different from regular lems, it's even easier to distinguish these. An invincibilty mode is currently being considered, which would almost certainly involve lem tunic/hair recolouring - however, I'm also considering adding an ethereal "glow" overlay via the effects logic to further distinguish this mode and not rely only on tunic colour.

So, it seems reasonable to allow more recolouring states if that's what people want. I'm currently thinking let's go ahead with Swimmer recolouring; we can at least give it a try in 2.7 and see if we like it.

Two questions, though - 1) What about when a lem is a Swimmer and (another permaskill): which recolouring should we prefer in this case, athlete or Swimmer?... and, therefore 2) would it be better to simply adopt the tunic/hair recolouring from Revolutions as the SLX default for athletes in general?

This would solve the issue some people are having with SLX's "darker blue" athlete tunic colour. I've never particularly liked the green/blue swap from L2; the idea of a more unique athlete-specific recolouring seems much better, and we can certainly look to Revolutions' Swimmer recolouring for inspiration.

Please do speak up now if you have anything to add. I don't really want to poll this, I'd rather encourage people to get involved in the discussion.

[jkapp76]

I still like the Revolutions coloring.

[WillLem]

I still like the Revolutions coloring.

Would you be happy with it being used for all athletes, or should we dedicate it to just Swimmers? If the latter, what colour should we use for Swimmers that also have another permananent skill?

[WillLem]

From Discord:



OK, we'll give dedicated Swimmer recolouring a try in 2.7

Whenever a Swimmer has additional skills, for now we'll "prefer" the athlete recolouring, but this may be changed later.

[WillLem]

Implemented this today. Here's how the proposed Swimmer recolouring looks when compared to a regular lemming:



Currently, this is "preferred" over regular athlete recolouring even when the Swimmer lem has other permanent skills. This can always be changed later if people think it necessary.

Meanwhile, Swimmer lems will continue to be recoloured using the normal athlete recolouring by default, so it's a purely optional thing; users will need to mod their copy of the default scheme.nxmi to apply the swap. Here's what needs to be added to make it happen. N.B. Be sure to leave all other data inctact, this is to show which sections the additions need to be in. Leave $SPRITESET_RECOLORING as it is, and add the following under $STATE_RECOLORING:

Code Select Expand


$STATE_RECOLORING

  ...

  $SWIMMER
    FROM x4040E0
    TO xB49EFF
  $END
 
  $SWIMMER
    FROM x00B000
    TO x288F75
  $END


Furthermore, Swimmer recolouring won't be a requirement for custom sprites in the same way that athlete, zombie and neutral recolouring are; it will remain optional design-side as well.

Implemented in Commit a4ddb52c1