For a list of nominated levels so far, please see the nominated levels topic (http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=3056.0).
Alright. We did this last year, and we're doing it again!
This is a bit different from the usual contests. You don't create a new level for this one; instead, levels released during 2016(ish) get nominated and a winner picked from them. To be precise, the eligible dates are from 1st December 2015 to 30th November 2016.
The following conditions must be met in order for a level to be eligible:
1. The level must have either been part of a large pack released during the eligible timeframe (1st Dec 2015 to 30th Nov 2016), or in some other way had its first public release during the timeframe. Private releases (such as sending to prerelease testers) do not affect eligibility either way. *
2. The level must be available for an engine that is usually eligible for the contests. Or in other words: NeoLemmix (must be compatible with at least one version from V1.47n onwards), SuperLemmini, or single-player Lix.
3. The level must be designed by a single author; collaboration levels are not eligible.
4. The creator of the level must not have specifically requested it be excluded.
5. The level must not have been nominated for LOTY2015.
* To clarify here: If it was released publicly prior to Dec 1st 2015 as part of a demo or preview, but the full pack was released during the eligible period, the level is fine (as long as it wasn't nominated for LOTY2015).
Being a derivative of an ineligible level (as long as it's from the same author) does not disqualify a level; as long as the level in question is clearly intended to stand as a seperate-but-related level rather than a newer version of the same level.
To nominate a level, please PM me with your list of nominations. If you wish to modify your nominations at a later date, please resend the whole list of levels you wish to nominate, not just the changes.
Each user may nominate up to eight levels from authors other than themself, up to a maximum of three levels per author. Anyone who nominates at least three levels by other authors may also nominate one of their own levels; anyone who nominates at least seven levels by other authors may also nominate two of their own levels. (These self-nominations do not count towards the eight nomination limit.)
Note that levels that won a level design contest during the eligible timeframe get an automatic nomination, unless their author requests otherwise.
Nominations will be open until the beginning of December 31st 2016 (UTC). No additions / changes to nominations will be permitted after this date, with one exception: If a level someone has nominated is found to be ineligible for any reason and this is not discovered until after the deadline, they will be offered a chance to nominate a different level in its place.
Similar to last year, the voteoff will occur in three stages:
Stage 1
This will be done similar to how the first rounds of the voteoffs for the official games were. The levels will be put into random brackets, and the top ~50% from each bracket will qualify for Stage 2.
Stage 2
This will also be done in regular voteoff style. The aim here will be to get down to around 4~6 remaining levels, so exact details will depend on how many levels are entered.
Stage 3
This will be done in an elimination format over multiple rounds; each round, one level gets knocked out, and the others continue onto the next round, until we have a winner.
As with last year, the prizes on offer will be US $15.00 for first place, and US $7.50 for second place. However, I have an extra prize available to throw into the mix - a copy of the Clickteam Humble Bundle that was available earlier this year, containing Clickteam Fusion 2.5 Developer Edition along with most exporters and a handful of games made with Clickteam products. In terms of pure price this is actually over $1000 worth of software, though the actual cost of it (while the bundle was available) was only $15. Either winner may choose to take this bundle instead of the monetary prize (however, if both winners want it, only first place gets it and second place will only have the monetary prize available). If you get this, you'll get a Humble Bundle gift link for the package, which you are free to do whatever you want with.
There are a couple of special cases that may apply:
1st and 2nd place are won by the same user - The 2nd place prize is passed down to 3rd, 4th, or whatever the highest place that was won by someone else was.
A prize is won by a user who cannot be contacted - They will be assumed to have chosen the monetary prize, and it will be donated to a charity of the other winner's choice (within reason).
Both prizes are won by users who cannot be contacted - Very unlikely, we will discuss what to do in this case if/when it happens.
Also note that, in the interest of being reasonable, the "don't discuss levels involved in contests anywhere on the site during the voting period" rule does not fully apply to this contest; instead, it will be "do not discuss them at all within the LOTY2016 topics during voting, and don't discuss them in relation to the contest anywhere on the site".
So, that's about it! Any questions, ask here; and feel free to start nominating levels!
Eligible Level Packs
This is simply a list of levels that are eligible. They have not nessecerially been nominated, and the majority probably won't be. Please note that this is probably not a complete list, especially in regard to Lix levels; if you can think of anything that should be added, let me know!
- All levels entered in Contests #9, #10 and #11
- Colorful Arty: All levels from SubLems
- GigaLem: All levels from Resident GigaLems, except "Bashilvania", "Heated Delay" and "The bURns of DrEAD" (due to being nominated for LOTY2015)
- namida: All levels from Lemmings Plus V
- Nepster: All levels from NepsterLems except "Jump in the Ring" and "Final Frustration" (due to being nominated for LOTY2015, the latter under a different title)
- JW: All levels from JWPack V2
- Prince Jamie: All levels from Prince Jamie's Super Challenge Pack Set 1
- zanzindorf: All levels from zanzindorf's Special Pack 1 and Zemmings Vol 1
Excluded Levels
These are levels / packs that the author has requested be excluded from LOTY2016.
- Colorful Arty: "Hailfire Peaks" (Contest #11 level)
- Flopsy: All levels from SEBLems demo
- namida: All levels by namida except those from Lemmings Plus V
- Nepster: All Return of the Tribes levels
- Wafflem: All levels by Wafflem
I believe Reverse Lemmings and NepsterLems are also eligible level packs as well.
You're correct in regards to NepsterLems (with one exception level, due to it being nominated in LOTY2015 from a demo). I actually meant to add it - even went as far as double-checking which level(s) from it were nominated for LOTY2015, but forgot to actually add it to the list in the end.
All the levels in Reverse Lemmings fail the 3rd condition, if I'm not mistaken.
Is that because the original DMA team would be considered collaborators?
I nominate: "teh evil happy faces" by fishthekiller99
Quote from: Colorful Arty on November 15, 2016, 03:47:33 PM
Is that because the original DMA team would be considered collaborators?
Yes.
Quote from: möbius on November 15, 2016, 10:41:12 PM
I nominate: "teh evil happy faces" by fishthekiller99
Oh crap, contest is over, we have our winner right here. :P
Quote from: namida on November 15, 2016, 09:18:58 AM
As with last year, the prizes on offer will be US $15.00 for first place, and US $7.50 for second place. However, I have an extra prize available to throw into the mix - a copy of the Clickteam Humble Bundle that was available earlier this year, containing Clickteam Fusion 2.5 Developer Edition along with most exporters and a handful of games made with Clickteam products. In terms of pure price this is actually over $1000 worth of software, though the actual cost of it (while the bundle was available) was only $15. Either winner may choose to take this bundle instead of the monetary prize (however, if both winners want it, only first place gets it and second place will only have the monetary prize available). If you get this, you'll get a Humble Bundle gift link for the package, which you are free to do whatever you want with.
Im deeply sorry that this has nothing to do with the contest
Gonna be honest, the mention of Clickteam fusion made me wince, I've heard how much of a nightmare it is to work with (See Sonic Worlds and Freedom Planet)
And yet a friend of mine who goes by "Creepario" was able to make some of Freedom Planet's cut content work
But what if someone wants to win a humble bundle prize but doesn't want to get clickteam fusion?
What if someone wants a different humble bundle prize if available (Im not sure if the Humble Bundle for Game Maker Studio is still around, if anything I would've chosen that)
like if they don't want to have that prize but they still want something from humble bundle, what then? I'm sure there's an obvious answer im missing but still
I like the idea of winning a game developer tool, I really am but i don't want something as nightmarish as Fusion IMO.
Sorry about going off topic
I can go on about Dev tools and what not in either a different topic, IRC, or where i am the most Skype or Discord
And about Resident GigaLems, It should work with v1.47 how ever some levels required the use of the invisible wall in v1.43 and a report of one level was unsolvable due to the removal of Direct drop
but for the most part, its Solvable
Im going to get RGL compatible with v1.48 or v010.010.010 (God I hate typing that out) after the holidays are over
and as much as I hate repeating myself, Sorry for going off topic
I don't have a copy of the Game Maker bundle in any form, let alone in a form that can be given away. I have a spare gift link for the Clickteam one. (Personally, I would pick Fusion over Game Maker any day, but each to their own.)
Nonetheless, if someone won a cash prize, they could ask that it be used to purchase any current Humble Bundle at the time rather than being given to them in monetary form.
Would any levels sent to me via stream be eligible? Or do they have to be released on the forums publicly?
Public release of some kind is a requirement. But even if they aren't released yet, as long as they're released by the end of the month they're eligible.
I'm confused as to why demos are allowed to have levels voted for in this contest.
Why are the 12 levels in my SEB Lems demo even eligible for this contest, the pack is not even released?
Quote1. The level must have either been part of a large pack released during the eligible timeframe (1st Dec 2015 to 30th Nov 2016), or in some other way had its first public release during the timeframe.
So if the demo was released during this timeframe, it's eligible. However, you can request that your demo levels be excluded from the contest if you want.
I don't feel it's right that the 12 levels in the SEB Lems demo are eligible then they will not be allowed to be eligible for LOTY2017. I'd rather that SEB Lems as well as the demo levels had an equal right to be voted for in the same contest.
That means I would not like the SEB Lems demo levels to be included. Sorry
Quote from: namida on November 17, 2016, 04:59:14 AM
Public release of some kind is a requirement. But even if they aren't released yet, as long as they're released by the end of the month they're eligible.
in that case; I'll upload my revised level Arty did in stream here. Because I consider levels streamed to be "public" even though they may not be released to everyone. Everyone can see them.
duh; I forgot this level already appeared in the contest during the summer. :XD: well I want to upload the revised edition anyway;
A reminder that tomorrow (forum time) is the last day for levels to be released in order to be eligible (of course, if they miss it, there's always LOTY2017!).
Nominations are still open for quite a bit longer, though. :)
Quote from: GigaLem on November 16, 2016, 06:33:27 AM
Gonna be honest, the mention of Clickteam fusion made me wince, I've heard how much of a nightmare it is to work with (See Sonic Worlds and Freedom Planet)
And yet a friend of mine who goes by "Creepario" was able to make some of Freedom Planet's cut content work
...
I like the idea of winning a game developer tool, I really am but i don't want something as nightmarish as Fusion IMO.
Just a quick note as someone who has used older versions of Fusion before (though I hear it hasn't changed much since then):
Spoiler Tag because this is in reply to an off-topic remark
Certain types of projects are nightmarish, but it works fine for others. Its greatest weakness is that its handling of global events is poor, and certain things become rather messy. You can for some reason give objects families to have a single event code for multiple objects (e.g. collision detection coding for enemies is probably going to be identical for enemies that behave similarly, except with a different enemy, so you can create a general "enemy" family that will handle all of them) but you can't use them globally (meaning you have to either copy and paste the global events and swap out the object, or have to copy/paste the events into every individual level).
Its built in platforming movement shouldn't be used, because it's awful (I can't remember what specifically was bad about it, since it's been a while, but I remember that it was bad) though there's an extension object that's okay to use.
If you're trying to make a Mario clone, it's probably fine. If you're trying to make a Metroidvania, it's gonna start getting a little screwy but it should still work. Some puzzle games are probably fine. I'm not sure how well a lemmings replication would work - I'm not sure if it would cooperate well with terrain removal.
Don't even try to make an RPG.
Its strong suit is that it's fairly simple for simple projects, so it can be decent if you're just starting out, as at least some of basic techniques will transfer to other, less user friendly software. Just note that if your project gets complicated, things get convoluted because it doesn't really offer many ways to keep things organized.
I've never tried Game Maker before so I can't comment on that.
TL;DR
Clickteam Fusion is usable at the entry level, but there is better software to use if you're making a serious project.
Recommendations for Altnernatives in Case Anyone is Interested
General Usage
For general usage purposes, you may wish to consider Construct 2. It's not as user friendly, but for more complex projects its better handling of events will make things much easier. (You can have multiple levels share the same event sheets without committing literally every screen in the game to having those same events - which means your title screen doesn't need to share the same code with the rest of the game anymore! - this would also allow things like having event sheets coding for enemy AIs then not loading them when they're not needed - not to mention you can keep things a bit better organized that way)
RPGs
For RPGs, I'd recommend any of the RPG Makers except VX. The most recent version is currently RPG Maker MV. 2000 and later are all available on Steam, with 2000 and 2003 being relatively cheap (pretty sure XP is pretty cheap too). If you're using game making software instead of programming everything yourself, there's really not much point in making an RPG engine as opposed to using this. There are a few limitations but most of them aren't a huge deal on the latest versions, since functionality can be changed with scripts (XP, VX, VX Ace) or plugins (MV; same function, but made easier to install and configure). Screen resolution used to be an issue in earlier versions but has been resolved as of MV. The nice thing about them is that if there's an advanced functionality you need that's not built in, you can write your own code for it (in many cases, someone else has wanted to do what you're trying to do and released a plugin you can use). It's limited in terms of built in functionality but it's pretty simple to extend it because of the plugin system.
Note that projects made with RPG Maker carry some stigma, because the ease of use means there are a lot of low effort works made with it out there. It can be overcome fairly easily though simply by putting in effort. It's usually as simple as "Don't use the default graphics for serious projects." Also, put in effort, like you should when you make anything you publicly release.
I forgot to mention it, but I would like Hailfire Peaks to be excluded from this contest as it will be in my next levelpack that won't see release for a while.
Just a reminder - there's only two weeks left to get nominations in! :)
In particular, we don't have any Lix nominations yet. Those who are more active on the Lix side, remember, Lix levels (as long as they meet all the criteria) are eligible for the contest too. :)
Due to that I'll mostly be away from the forums for a while until after the 25th; I've extended the nomination deadline to the 31st of December.
We haven't had too many nominations yet; don't forget to get yours in if you haven't already!
There's about a week left to get nominations in. We still haven't got that many, so if you were intending to nominate but haven't got around to it yet, don't forget!
Okay; we didn't get that many nominations this time, but the time is up so nominations are now closed. Will put together an NXP of all the levels and make a playing phase topic shortly. :)