Pandora NanoLemmings [Original Game]


tried the alpha - I like it!! one small thing: maybe its unavoidable, but the lemmings seem to flicker a bit as they move...
I'll try to improve that. It's because when you have a large heap of nanolemmings, it looks differently depending on the direction they're facing. Those who are stuck in the middle of the heap switch direction each frame, causing the flicker.
 
tried the alpha - I like it!! one small thing: maybe its unavoidable, but the lemmings seem to flicker a bit as they move...
I'll try to improve that. It's because when you have a large heap of nanolemmings, it looks differently depending on the direction they're facing. Those who are stuck in the middle of the heap switch direction each frame, causing the flicker.
I also see it at the highest zoom when they are marching in one direction (and this is more distracting than the 'ant heap' effect ;) )
 
Another bug report from my kid: "Water Test" seems linked to "Buckets". Levels are the sames, and whatever score you do in "Water Test" go to "Buckets" (even if less good), and Water Tests stay to 0.

The Kids has complete all but 3 levels ("Just Dig?", "How?" and  "Dragon's Lair"). He save (exactly!) 19000 nanolemmings on last levels :p
 
Ah yes, that is a copy/paste error in the level list.

Good to know that most of the levels can be completed by your kids. Those 3 remaining ones are rather tricky.

The levels currently on the repo are mostly just for testing / debugging and to give inspiration / examples to level designers. I want to have much more levels in the final game, and it would be nice if they can have the same graphical quality as mcobit's Pyramid level. But I suck as a graphics artist and I mildly suck as a level designer :/
 
  particularly liked some of the sound samples used, the Sonic theme especially made me grin! I'd like to see (hear?) more audio treats like that in the game if someone has the time to record them :D   :rolleyes:
 
A suggestion after I played with it a little over the weekend :

- organize the levels in a specific order and have them being unlocked before moving to the next level, just like in the original lemmings. 

- make the levels a bit more difficult. Maybe I havent seen many yet, but most of them were too easy to reach the expected number of lemmings to save :)

- for the levels with simple "blank" graphics (grey forms), it would be better to at least add some effect on the shapes to make them look less dull -> add contour, and something like a gradient too. If not it makes it look very, very alpha :) The Pandora can render beautiful colors, let's use them :)
 
A suggestion after I played with it a little over the weekend :


- organize the levels in a specific order and have them being unlocked before moving to the next level, just like in the original lemmings. 


- make the levels a bit more difficult. Maybe I havent seen many yet, but most of them were too easy to reach the expected number of lemmings to save :)


- for the levels with simple "blank" graphics (grey forms), it would be better to at least add some effect on the shapes to make them look less dull -> add contour, and something like a gradient too. If not it makes it look very, very alpha :) The Pandora can render beautiful colors, let's use them :)
I think he said that this version is very very alpha and that he wants the levels look nice.


The PND is tagged alpha, hmmm could be a techdemo/alphaversion you are looking at here ;)
 
  particularly liked some of the sound samples used, the Sonic theme especially made me grin! I'd like to see (hear?) more audio treats like that in the game if someone has the time to record them :D   :rolleyes:
EvilDragon did an excellent job with those samples, didn't he.

Sure, I'm aware this is alpha, I just don't really know what to expect in terms of change in the upcoming versions so I just voiced out my concerns on certain points :)
The levels currently on the repo are mostly just for testing / debugging and to give inspiration / examples to level designers. I want to have much more levels in the final game, and it would be nice if they can have the same graphical quality as mcobit's Pyramid level. But I suck as a graphics artist and I mildly suck as a level designer :/
Step 1 is coding the game mechanics. That is now mostly done -- I'm still finetuning the behavior of the water and lava particles now, but most levels should not depend on that. The other game mechanics are more or less final or will at least be backwards compatible. There still is coding to be done of course, but not in the core game mechanics -- things like more sounds effects, menus, level unlocking, help screens etc.

Step 2 is making interesting levels of gradually increasing difficulty, playtesting them and tweaking them. This can only be done once the game mechanics have been coded. To keep the levels easy to modify, it's best to use no art yet, just the raw terrain maps.

Step 3 is making the levels pretty: a nice background image, maybe with animations and/or overlays.

I can do step 1 and some of step 2. I'm hoping others can also contribute to step 2, and I'll certainly need help with step 3.
 
  particularly liked some of the sound samples used, the Sonic theme especially made me grin! I'd like to see (hear?) more audio treats like that in the game if someone has the time to record them :D   :rolleyes:
EvilDragon did an excellent job with those samples, didn't he.

Sure, I'm aware this is alpha, I just don't really know what to expect in terms of change in the upcoming versions so I just voiced out my concerns on certain points :)
The levels currently on the repo are mostly just for testing / debugging and to give inspiration / examples to level designers. I want to have much more levels in the final game, and it would be nice if they can have the same graphical quality as mcobit's Pyramid level. But I suck as a graphics artist and I mildly suck as a level designer :/
Step 1 is coding the game mechanics. That is now mostly done -- I'm still finetuning the behavior of the water and lava particles now, but most levels should not depend on that. The other game mechanics are more or less final or will at least be backwards compatible. There still is coding to be done of course, but not in the core game mechanics -- things like more sounds effects, menus, level unlocking, help screens etc.

Step 2 is making interesting levels of gradually increasing difficulty, playtesting them and tweaking them. This can only be done once the game mechanics have been coded. To keep the levels easy to modify, it's best to use no art yet, just the raw terrain maps.

Step 3 is making the levels pretty: a nice background image, maybe with animations and/or overlays.

I can do step 1 and some of step 2. I'm hoping others can also contribute to step 2, and I'll certainly need help with step 3.
you could also leave it as a sandbox game and include a level editor..
 
Well, slightly more - as there's meta-data to the levels ;)
 
i got some levels nearly ready do you want me to post them here or deliver them via PM _wb_
 
seems like putting the "map" folder from the tarball containing the maplist, graphics etc. into the nanolemmings appdata folder crashes the PND, with the map folder removed the pnd runs fine.

maybe i'm doing something wrong but here's the pnd.out for when the map folder is in appdata if this helps:

pndrun_nanolemmings.out.txt
 

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Maybe you're using a maplist format from an earlier version?

Now the format is as follows (repeat for each level):

[level id]

[level name]

[terrain map filename]

[background image filename]

[number of animation frames] [delay between animation frames] [number of overlay animation frames] [delay between those]

one line per filename of all those animation frames

[background music filename]

[number of lemmings to rescue] [selection available] [building available] [digging available] [number of exploders] [nb of climbers] [nb of floaters]

This format has changed, so maybe you are still using the previous format.

Oh, I just re-read your post. Yes, the tarball is outdated and uses the previous format. Don't use it. An easy way to extract stuff from the PND instead, is just by running it, then minimizing it by pressing the Pandora button, and copying over the files from /mnt/utmp/nanolemmings to some other folder.
 
New version on the repo. Still just an alpha version, but approaching final in terms of code. Still needs levels, help screens etc. So don't download it if you want to play for real, it's still just for testing and level design.
 
Here are two early examples. Still buggy as hell (artifacts on the cheese world) but already lots of fun to play around with :)

out-greenhell.pngout-cheese.png
 
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