kaywhyn's Level Pack: Lemmings Memories (WIP)

[kaywhyn]

All rightie, I've teased this community long enough as to whether or not I'm making a level pack. So, I'm making it official: I'm working on an upcoming level pack for New Formats NL! I've been undecided about this for a really long time, especially as I'm more of a level solver than a level maker, but with encouragement from this community who have supported me so much over the last few years, I've decided to give level pack making a try! I of course will be posting my progress on the pack from time to time

To whet your appetite of what you can expect, I recorded a video showing off a sneak preview of my upcoming level pack

I had originally wanted to make this video sometime in the summer of last year, but I unfortunately hadn't made too much progress with this pack yet at the time, as well as had a laptop keyboard problem that kind of demotivated me to work on the pack. However, I finally found the motivation and will to resume work again in the last few months, so I'm happy to say that this project will still be moving forward!
Background

As you know, I'm kaywhyn, where I currently seem to be the main and sole LPer when it comes to LPing custom Lemmings level packs. You can see the huge list of packs I've LPed through the YT link in my signature

I've registered for the Lemmings Forums back in 2017, and so I've been a member of this community for 7 years now. However, I didn't post publicly to the site until March 2020, so really I've been active in this community for only 4 years. This was where I posted a super lengthy intro about myself and my background in Lemmings

kaywhyn's Introduction and Lemmings History/Background

Long story short, I was first acquainted with the game of Lemmings from when I was about 6 or 7. I started with watching my big brother play the game before I myself took up to playing it sometime later. Even though he had a head start, I managed to finish all of both L1 and ONML before him just due to me constantly coming back to the game while my brother just stopped playing at some point and didn't really re-visit the game afterwards.

Fast forward to around 2012 (about a year after I graduated from college/university and was doing my post-baccalaureate/Master's) or so (according to my hard drive I have some DoveLems replays that are dated 2014, so maybe my memory is fuzzy on the year here ) where I remember searching for something like "custom Lemmings levels" on Youtube and one of the results that popped up was by roundthewheel. I can't remember the order, but it was either a video showing off what the Lemmini engine can do before LPing DoveLems or his LP of Dos L1/ONML. For the former, I was instantly hooked and went about downloading Lemmini and Dodochacalo's level pack. It wasn't on the current link to the Lemmings Forums, it was the one before the .net one. I was a Lemmini/SuperLemmini user for several years before I finally made the dip into NL content in 2019, when I was playing through Icho's Lemmings United pack. Before that, I had completed DoveLems, PimoLems, and Lemmings Reunion on Lemmini, along with SubLems for SuperLemmini.

Shortly after I solved all of Lemmings United (taking me an entire year to do so), Icho encouraged me to "give the level making side a try." With that, I made my foray into level designing for Lemmings with LDC #22, where I made my very first Lemmings level called "Bubble Trouble." You can see the latest revision/first draft I submitted for the contest in the video link above at about the 28:50 mark That one won't be in the level pack by the way, I have a much better and improved version of it that will be

For all LDCs thereafter, I've participated in them as both a level solver and level designer and hence I've been making levels for almost 4 years now. At some point, even though I stated in my introduction post on the Forums that I likely wasn't going to bother with level making and hence a level pack, I re-considered the level pack option. Thus began the long period of me teasing the community and neither confirming nor denying whether I'm working on making a level pack Except for one person who I confirmed it to last year and so really it's two people keeping it secret

So, 7 years as a registered member but only been active for 4 years and still no level pack from me However, with how I've played and solved so many level packs in the last several years, some of which are the hardest ones (Lemmings United, Lemmings Plus Omega 2, Lemmings Plus Alpha, Lemmings Plus V, and Lemmings Plus III, as well as NepsterLems and Lemmings Stampede), perhaps it's a sign that I should work on a level pack of my own Indeed, I've managed to get so much inspiration and level ideas of my own from having played so many packs/levels. It should also be clear that I'm more of a level solver instead of a level designer, considering if my early levels are any indication I wasn't an artist and I still am not However, several members have been kind enough to tell me that I have improved significantly in my designs visually in the last few years. Once again, that harks back to how this community has been encouraging me to work on a level pack
What I have Planned

• 125 levels across 5 ranks of 25 levels each (rank names still undecided and of course the final total number of levels might change)

          - I have a pack name in mind, but I would like to hear some other names/ideas for it. I've made a poll for this
          - Link to list of possible rank names:
                 - Akseli's list of rank names of Various Level Packs

• Classic 8 skills only

          - Probably no NL features, just a "classic" pack. So, no teleporters, updrafts, etc.

• Level height will be kept at the standard 160. Horizontal length is anything goes. Therefore no vertical scrolling levels just like L1/ONML
• All L1/ONML tilesets, as well as the L2 Circus and L2 Sports styles, and L3 Biolab style, with two levels per style per rank (that's 24 levels)
• A special level for each rank just like the special graphics levels of L1

          - So, there will be a level using Gronkling's Beast and Menacing tilesets         
          - Since there's no AWESOME style for NL, I've made a Sega level to be the L1 Taxing equivalent for the pack
          - The remaining two special levels would probably be in one of namida's and one of Icho's graphical sets

• Final level would be a wall of fame thanking some members and the Lemmings Forums for being so supportive of me over the years

          - As such, the Fire tileset would be great for this due to having the 26 letters of the alphabet pieces         
          - Or, I might just mix all the official tilesets I used for the pack into one level for the final level

If doing the last point above, that would mean I would have to forgo a level in one of the styles I plan to use for the pack and therefore there would just be one level in that style for the rank. Or it can be considered the "special" level this way instead and hence maybe no level in a graphical set of a specific designer. Perhaps that would mean I make the final rank an exception of it being 26 levels instead of 25. Thoughts?

I also like time limits, so I may or may not put them for every level for the pack. Yes, I'm well aware that the NL standard is to provide infinite time unless it's for fixing backroutes and/or the main challenge of the puzzle, but I just love numbers, being a math/science person. I considered time limits to be an iconic part of the Lemmings games and loved toying around with being close or on the wire with time remaining on those levels where the time limit was tight when I was a kid and still occasionally do whenever revisiting the game on Dos Don't worry, though, a lot of them will be arbitrarily high so that they won't ever be a problem. In the video, except for one level made so far that has one, the others currently don't have one, so again I may or may not put in one for every level

Finally, I would like the pack to go through some pre-testing before publicly releasing it. The pre-testing phase won't open for a long time, as I'm very slow when it comes to level making and I'm pretty far from my overambitious goal of 125 levels anyway So, don't worry about it for some time. Simply keep an eye out on this topic as to when I have opened up the pre-testing phase. When it does, if you're interested in pre-testing, you can either post in this topic or shoot me a PM So far, I have one person in mind who has gladly accepted and possibly another who might be interested, and I'll probably look into having either 3 or 4 pre-testers
Difficulty

While I don't expect this to be the next Lemmings Reunion or NepsterLems, DO NOT expect me to go easy on the difficulty! I've learned so many neat tricks from having played a lot of level packs over the last several years and I'm not afraid to use them in my own levels! People have also been kind enough to tell me that my levels are still difficult even when I keep thinking they aren't, relatively speaking, to all the other contest levels in the packs. Therefore, it always surprises me to hear my levels are hard. This is simply due to how you as the creator know what's intended while other players don't. It therefore makes it very difficult for authors to judge the difficulty of their own levels. That's where feedback from others comes in handy! I've also been told that my level solutions/puzzles have always been good, so it's nice to know that people have always found them enjoyable!

That being said, don't let the difficulty scare you in either pre-testing or playing the pack. For the former, it's not required that you are able to solve all the levels. Any feedback on the ones you're able to or not is helpful!
Preview Level Images

I'm just going to post the ones I didn't show off in the video, as well as a couple I already did So far, I think all of these are at least rank 2 or higher difficulty.


Bubble Trouble

As mentioned, this is the very first Lemmings level I ever made. Well, after almost 4 years, I came back to the level to fix it up so that it looks way better than the first draft you see in the video, and this is the result after a long brainstorming session IMO I think this is a significant improvement over the original in the design while keeping the intended solution intact!


Crowd and Flow Control


We All Fit In


Sega Special: Brain Drain

This is the Sega level I've made to be the Taxing equivalent of the AWESOME level. It's also the very first level I've made with this style and I think it turned out to be quite all right!
Special Thanks

• IchoTolot for Lemmings Reunion, Lemmings United, and the NL Intro Pack. For Lemmings United, he stood by my side the entire time to give me the push and motivation to keep playing and solving the pack even when I started feeling the pack defeated me for good. Also for playing all my contest levels and giving me so much encouragement, support, and his honest feedback all while being a mentor to me in level designing and just wanting my levels to be great It's thanks to him I even got into level designing, as I think I would had been content with just playing and solving levels otherwise!

              - Also for his LDC 22 R1 and LDC 30 R3 rules because that allows me to use two of my contest levels for this pack!  

• Armani for playing all my contest levels and being so persistent in resolving updates to my levels even if it's stressful and frustrating for me anytime I need to backroute fix, but that's just because he's that good at the game of Lemmings and I in general seem to not be that good at backroute fixing. To be fair, we both have had our fair share of backrouting each other's levels to no end, so we know and understand one another about how frustrating it is when our levels keep getting backrouted In truth, I am thankful for all his help and assistance in catching all these bad backroutes and for all the solutions to my levels he's sent me, backroute or not Also for the nice compliments he has given my levels and the great things he has had to say about me, both as a Lemmings player and person
• Mobiethian for always complimenting my level designs even when I personally keep thinking they don't look good Also for just supporting all of my work/projects like I have with his content
• namida/Nepster for NL
• The Lemmings Forums

[IchoTolot]

What a nice surprise announcement after the christmas break! 

From the titles I would choose "Lemmings Memories" as it sounds more unique than just "Classic" or "Nostalgia" - at least in my opinion though. 

[Mobiethian]

Excellent announcement! I like "Lemmings Nostalgia" as well. It has a good sound to it.

[GigaLem]

My Suggestion would've been "Retrograde Lemmings"

[Blitz]

I Like Lemmings Nostalgica it fits with the Level Design also I love the namens of the Levels and the Level Layout

[kaywhyn]

After 3 weeks and putting this off a bit longer than I probably should had and some discussion with some members, I've made a decision on the pack name and have changed the topic title to reflect that. I expected this to be a pretty tough decision, especially as all the suggestions are so good! I decided to go with Lemmings Memories for the pack name Even though my idea of Lemmings Nostalgia had the most votes, as you can see I'm willing to not go with the most popular choice or the first name idea I had in mind. The biggest reason I decided to go with Lemmings Memories is due to how I posted a very lengthy account of my Lemmings history (I linked to it in the OP, below the embedded Youtube video), which you can pretty much say is my clear recollection of memories of how I got into Lemmings since childhood and then going into some detail of how I got into the custom Lemmings scene. The OP here pretty much gives a brief summary of my Introduction and Lemmings History topic since it is a big handful to read

Quite honestly, I didn't realize that Lemmings Memories would be the next popular choice after Lemmings Nostalgia, especially as I wasn't even trying to be very fancy in the poll choices, let alone think that they were good ones I came up with because of how very bad I am with names/level titles What's really interesting was that early on Lemmings Memories led for a time before Lemmings Nostalgia has taken the lead since like 2 weeks ago or so. Needless to say, little did I know Lemmings Nostalgia and Lemmings Memories would be the most popular choices here

Now that I think about it, I really feel as if Lemmings Memories was suggested to me as a pack name by someone when I was still floating around the idea of a possible level pack by me. I can't find it anywhere in any form of social media though, so I might had just imagined it

As for Lemmings Nostalgia, perhaps I can reserve this for a future pack? Maybe the same with Retrograde Lemmings, as honestly I think I wanted to put this as a poll choice but it totally went over my head Then maybe for sure it's probably a good idea to eventually have a pack with my username referenced in some way in the name, such as some in the list I made at the end of the post  

Now to decide on ranking names. Here, I thought a pretty good starting place is this list made by Akseli:

List of rank names of Various Level Packs by Akseli

One suggestion that was given to me was using rank names of packs that didn't get completed or aren't available for download anymore. A pretty good idea, actually. Here, similar to how level packs often go by the system of increasing intensity in the rank names (eg, Calm, Windy, Stormy, and Hurricane in PimoLems) as one goes along in a level pack, I'm probably thinking of along the same lines as well, with words describing increasing intensity of memories, though I'm not sure of any adjectives that would fit here, or if anything like this makes sense. If I'm not mistaken, I believe Strato specializes in anything memory related or the psychological aspects of memories, so I can probably try asking him for ideas. Even then, any are welcome to give me ideas for rank names if you have any!    

Thanks to everyone who has taken their time to give me their input on the pack name. Much appreciated! For the record, here's a complete list of pack name ideas others have come up with that I've decided to compile, all of which are pretty good IMO!

nin10doadict - K-Y-Lems

GigaLem - Retrograde Lemmings

WillLem - KayLems

tan x - KayWhyLems

Mobiethian - Lemmings Lemstalgic (alternative name idea he came up with)

[Mindless]

One of the ranks has to be "Déjà Vu" and full of repeat levels, right?