namida's Lemmings Page

NeoLemmix Level Design Conventions

This page will highlight some of the general conventions in NeoLemmix level design (and to an extent, pack design). The following guidelines should be kept in mind when creating levels for NeoLemmix, or converting levels from other engines to NeoLemmix. Even if designing levels for other engines, these tend to be good advice where applicable, but it is possible that the culture surrounding other engines may differ from that surrounding NeoLemmix.

Note: This list is a work-in-progress and is likely to change based on community input.

1. If following these conventions would be harmful to the quality or thematic design of your level, break the conventions.
It is important to keep in mind that these conventions are recommendations, not requirements. NeoLemmix and/or its toolkit will not reject a level for not following these. Other players may not like your level as much, but if you have a good reason for breaking the conventions, chances are they will overlook it. Therefore, although they are considered good practice, if making your level design work properly relies on breaking these conventions, break them.

2. Avoid deceptive elements in your level design.
The most notable things to consider here are level elements that are not visible to the player, or deliberately mislead the player in a negative way. Examples of this include traps that are impossible to spot until they catch a lemming; fake steel blocks; exits hidden behind terrain or made invisible; fake objects; and so on. Do note the "mislead the player in a negative way". If you design your level so that it looks like one approach may be the right way, but in fact this doesn't work and a more complex solution is required, this is not considered negative - this can be a very major element of level design. The key thing is that all functional elements of the level aren't misleading in regards to what will happen where; not that the level itself isn't misleading as to what the solution may be. A good rule of thumb is - an extremely smart human who has never seen the level before should be able to, just by observing the level without taking any actions, be able to tell if any given solution will work or not.

3. Indicate elements that may not be immediately obvious, such as entrances spawning lemmings with pre-assigned skills, or levels using Zombies/Ghosts on death.
This is somewhat of a flipside to the previous point. The kind of elements that may be inherently deceptive if not pointed out, generally should be communicated to the player in some way. If the effect applies on every level of your pack, then including a note in your pack's readme or release announcement, or a pre-level text on the first level, is sufficient. If they apply differently on different levels, then they should be indicated on a per-level basis. Some existing conventions for such situations are:
- Pre-assigned skills from entrances: Place a fake (possibly overlaid on steel) pickup skill near the entrance.
- Zombies/Ghosts on Death: Use the zombie / ghost signs; the Horror tileset includes these, or they're also available as VGASPECs. (Recent editor versions include them already, and the engine can autodownload them when needed.)
- Teleporters: There is no universal convention for indicating the corresponding receiver; sometimes similarly-colored pieces are used; some graphic sets have numbers or other marks specifically for this purpose. Obviously this does not matter if your level only contains a single teleporter/receiver pair.
Note that some of these, there are plans to indicate it more effectively in future updates.

4. As much as possible, use the autosteel options rather than manual steel areas.
Autosteel tends to be simpler, tidier, and more accurate than using manual steel areas. The overwhelming majority of levels, even those originating from other engines, will have perfect steel placement simply by using autosteel alone (be sure to remove the existing steel areas, or turn on the Ignore Level Steel option). In many cases where this does not suffice - for example, levels in the Dirt graphic set, where moss is overlaid on the steel for decorative purposes (examples: Mayhem 1, Mayhem 6) - merely using the Simple Autosteel option (which will cause overlapping terrain to not cancel steel that's underneath it) will overcome these issues. Only in very rare cases (such as levels that have those kinds of decorative features, and cases where terrain does overlap - and should cancel - the steel, both within the same level) will it be impossible to have accurate, non-misleading steel areas without making use of manual steel; one of the very few examples of this kind of situation is Taxing 7.

5. Avoid having one-way-walls spill over onto other terrain, but cover the intended terrain as much as possible.
NeoLemmix allows you to declare which terrain pieces should or shouldn't be able to have one-way arrows applied to them. By using this, you can avoid the common situation in Lemmix / Lemmini where a one way wall would either have to not stretch entirely to the edge of terrain, or overlap onto other terrain. It is even possible for one-way-arrow areas to have rough edges through doing this. As such, you should attempt to cover the intented terrain, the whole intended terrain, and nothing but the intended terrain.

6. Avoid time limits where unnessecary.
In the days of DOS Lemmings, and even Cheapo and Lemmini, a level simply had to have a time limit. Levels that didn't particularly need one generally just set a very high time limit, more than would generally be needed to complete the level. NeoLemmix, on the other hand, allows for levels that do not have a time limit whatsoever. As such, do not create small levels with insanely high time limits; instead, create small levels that do not have a time limit at all.

7. Unless only using the traditional 8 skills for the entire pack, remove unused skills from level skillsets.
NeoLemmix packs can to an extent be divided into two types - those that stick to the traditional 8 skills (Climber, Floater, Bomber, Blocker, Builder, Basher, Miner, Digger), and those that also make use of the NeoLemmix-exclusive skills (Walker, Swimmer, Glider, Disarmer, Stoner, Platformer, Stacker, Cloner). When using the new skills, the general convention is to not have any skill in the skillset with a quantity of zero - instead, remove the skill from the skillset entirely - obviously, this doesn't apply if a skill quantity starts at zero, but can be obtained via pickup skills. When only using the traditional 8 skills, on the other hand, the convention is generally to have all 8 of them in the level's skillset, with some of their quantities set to zero if need be; however it is also considered acceptable to use the other convention of removing these skills. If making a level pack, you should stick to the same convention throughout the entire pack - thus meaning that if using new skills at all, even the levels that don't use any of them should have unused skills removed from the skillset entirely.

8. Avoid unused space on the sides of levels.
NeoLemmix allows you to resize level area, instead of being a fixed 1584x160 in size. As such, there is generally no need for huge empty space on the sides of levels. It is perfectly acceptable to use some space for decoration rather than try to make the size as minimal as you can, but rather than try to fill up a full 1584x160, it's better to reduce the level's size.

9. Keep the number of lemmings down, within reason.
If a level idea works fine with 20 lemmings, there's no need to give it 100. With that being said, keeping it as low as possible for every level does destroy the theme of working with a crowd of lemmings, so should only be done if there's a reason specific to the puzzle for doing so. 20 to 40 lemmings is generally considered a good amount.