Pandora NanoLemmings [Original Game]

[fusion_power]

I like the idea of the game, Lemmings was one of my first PC games I played.  I always was fascinated how cute the Lemings were animated even with only some handful of pixels. I also liked the Levels, even some of them made me crazy, never finished "mayhem" difficulty. Didn't palyed lemings since ages, I guess I shoudl do it again.

Oh, I had drawn alot of my own ideas of Leming levels, on paper! I'm sure I still have these drawings, not sure if ever usable in a real game but if you ned some ugly stone-old pencil drawings of never existed leming-Levels it may be some kind of inspiration. ^^  Just have to find and scan them of course.

 

[_wb_]

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.png

out-cheese.png

Cool stuff! How are you implementing this? You said procedural, so I guess it's not based on just applying textures?

Would your algorithm be fast enough to do the conversion on the fly (while loading a level) on the Pandora?

I really appreciate how this is becoming a real group effort!

 

[mcobit]

Doesn't look bad.


My handpixeled approach is a bit more timeconsuming and time is something rare these days...

 

[Matthias_H]

There. I attached the code including all data needed to reproduce these examples. Compile on unixoid system and run as follows:

./LevelGenerator <infile.png> <outfile.png> <style>  

Definition files (*.mdef) are provided for styles greenhell, cheese, atmo1 to atmo4. My favorite is atmo1

Feel free to do whatever you want with the code (beware, it includes two 3rd-party header files).

The code is a mess and pretty much undocumented, but it should not be too hard to use it for on-the-fly conversion of levels, and to extend its functionality. (If you have questions, just PM me) Right now, the tool only does two materials, diggable (CC9933) and hard (grayscale).

Enjoy!

Matthias



LevelGenerator.zip

 

[_wb_]

Nice! It is a bit too slow to generate the images on the fly on the Pandora (that is, I don't want level loading to take 30 seconds or so), but it's still a nice tool to make levels look better in an automatic way. I added material3 for the exit (#00FF00) because that one is necessary to make it playable. The particle-based water and lava are rendered by the game, so with just the three materials (diggable, hard, destination) most levels are covered.

 

[Matthias_H]

Nice! About the speed; the code is largely unoptimized but has never taken longer than 5-7 seconds on a single core here (i5 laptop). I just added a bunch of basic tricks (reduce branching in inner loops, etc), and using -O3 compiler optimization, everything ended up between 1.2s (cheese) and 2.1s (atmo1). Writing to JPG instead of PNG saves another 0.2s on top of that, and keeping the HDR maps in RAM should help too.

Find the cpp file attached. LevelGenerator.cpp.zip A diff should easily tell you where I made the changes.

Cheers,

Matthias

 

[Matthias_H]

By the way, all these timings are on full-res images. The game itself appears to be half-res, which would of course speed everything up by at least another factor of 4. (8x for the blurring part)

 

[mcobit]

The images can be any size. They are scaled accodingly.

 

[mcobit]

Bug: If the scale level is actually 1x it is shown as 2x.

 

[_wb_]

Bug: If the scale level is actually 1x it is shown as 2x.

That's not a bug, that's a weird feature

Currently, the game works at 800x480, 600x360, 400x240 or 200x120. So if I would call the most zoomed out one "1x", then the others would be "1.5x", "2x" and "4x". Instead, everything is multiplied by 2 so it becomes "2x", "3x", "4x" and "8x".

 

[ekianjo]

Here are two early examples. Still buggy as hell (artifacts on the cheese world) but already lots of fun to play around with

very impressive well done! 

 

[_wb_]

Compo version of NanoLemmings is on the repo. This is not the final version of the game, I didn't have time to really wrap it up before the compo deadline. But it should be fun to play like this already.

In future updates (after the compo is over), I want more levels, C4A support, and stereo sound effects (so you can hear where the lemmings are dying ). If and when I find time and motivation for that. Getting a good compo ranking would help, haha

Enjoy!

 

[ekianjo]

Getting a good compo ranking would help, haha

Haha, it's not like there is a ton of competition in the NEW Game category anyway  

 

[PowerGod]

This game is cool, I like the "liquid effect" of the lemmings moving, and the water that works as water do

But there are too many controls to use for my taste, and while I use the stylus I find it difficult to use even all the face buttons/dpad/nubs/shoulder buttons... luckily not every level require the use of all those functions

 

[mcobit]

I am not sure if people realize that all the game can be played with the touchscreen without even using other buttons.

Most of the buttons are for nubmode, when your touchscreen isn't working for some reason or if you prefer playing with the nubs.

Only physical controls you would need are the d-pad and the left/right nub. Everything else should be doable by clicking on the icons on the bottom bar.

so you can hold the Pandora in the left hand and the stylus in the right one.

 

[_wb_]

I am not sure if people realize that all the game can be played with the touchscreen without even using other buttons.

Most of the buttons are for nubmode, when your touchscreen isn't working for some reason or if you prefer playing with the nubs.

Only physical controls you would need are the d-pad and the left/right nub. Everything else should be doable by clicking on the icons on the bottom bar.

so you can hold the Pandora in the left hand and the stylus in the right one.

Yes, the normal way to play the game is by using touch for everything except panning, which is done with one of the nubs (if you're right handed you probably want to hold the stylus in your right hand and use the left nub for panning) and lemming movement with the dpad.

The only other keyboard shortcut I sometimes use is the A button to quickly select All lemmings (it's easier than drawing a rectangle around all of them). The rest of the shortcuts are there mostly just in case you want to avoid using touch, but that's not recommended anyway. "Nub mode" was added in case you really cannot use touch at all, but it's not a very practical way to play the game.

tl;dr: dpad, one of the nubs and stylus. That's all you need.

 

[Magic Sam]

Hi,

I just wanted to say "thank you" to everyone involved in this game, it's very well done and really fun to play

Cheers, Magic Sam

 

[PowerGod]

I am not sure if people realize that all the game can be played with the touchscreen without even using other buttons.

Most of the buttons are for nubmode, when your touchscreen isn't working for some reason or if you prefer playing with the nubs.

Only physical controls you would need are the d-pad and the left/right nub. Everything else should be doable by clicking on the icons on the bottom bar.

so you can hold the Pandora in the left hand and the stylus in the right one.

 Yes, the normal way to play the game is by using touch for everything except panning, which is done with one of the nubs (if you're right handed you probably want to hold the stylus in your right hand and use the left nub for panning) and lemming movement with the dpad.

The only other keyboard shortcut I sometimes use is the A button to quickly select All lemmings (it's easier than drawing a rectangle around all of them). The rest of the shortcuts are there mostly just in case you want to avoid using touch, but that's not recommended anyway. "Nub mode" was added in case you really cannot use touch at all, but it's not a very practical way to play the game.

tl;dr: dpad, one of the nubs and stylus. That's all you need.

In the pyramid level I have to constantly use the DPAD at the beginning because the lemmings can die if they reach both the end of the screen, but at the same time I have to zoom in to make some ladders and for every second I leave the DPAD to use the NUB for scrolling I hear lemmings dying... I just find impossible to play in the right way that level without having at least two thumbs on the left hand...

Maybe a scrolling system like the "SHIFT+drag" can make things better, just an idea.

 

[_wb_]

I am not sure if people realize that all the game can be played with the touchscreen without even using other buttons.


Most of the buttons are for nubmode, when your touchscreen isn't working for some reason or if you prefer playing with the nubs.


Only physical controls you would need are the d-pad and the left/right nub. Everything else should be doable by clicking on the icons on the bottom bar.


so you can hold the Pandora in the left hand and the stylus in the right one.

 
Yes, the normal way to play the game is by using touch for everything except panning, which is done with one of the nubs (if you're right handed you probably want to hold the stylus in your right hand and use the left nub for panning) and lemming movement with the dpad.


The only other keyboard shortcut I sometimes use is the A button to quickly select All lemmings (it's easier than drawing a rectangle around all of them). The rest of the shortcuts are there mostly just in case you want to avoid using touch, but that's not recommended anyway. "Nub mode" was added in case you really cannot use touch at all, but it's not a very practical way to play the game.


tl;dr: dpad, one of the nubs and stylus. That's all you need.

In the pyramid level I have to constantly use the DPAD at the beginning because the lemmings can die if they reach both the end of the screen, but at the same time I have to zoom in to make some ladders and for every second I leave the DPAD to use the NUB for scrolling I hear lemmings dying... I just find impossible to play in the right way that level without having at least two thumbs on the left hand...


Maybe a scrolling system like the "SHIFT+drag" can make things better, just an idea.

I could add a drag-to-scroll key, just not sure which one (maybe a shoulder button and put the zoom shortcuts elsewhere).

In the Pyramid level I always start by drawing "blockers" (vertical bridges) on both sides to avoid lemmings walking out of the level.