Solved "Liftboy Wanted".

I have a basher to spare, so it could be a backroute. I really like the design though.

Oh, IchoTolot, the picture you have for Blood Born is of V12, not V13.

Do you insist I pm Nessy and ask for a V13 link, or is it ok we let it be as it is right now as the visuals don't really changed significantly from V12 to V13 to be very noticable?

The first round is up!

Okay, so, by now most of you know how voting works.

Just as a quick guide for those who are new to the contests - the voting is broken into rounds, and each round you're allowed to vote for up to a certain number of levels. Votes are for the levels that you want to stay in the contest, not for levels you want to be removed. Just to be clear, you are allowed to vote for fewer levels than the permitted amount, and you are allowed to vote for your own levels. Generally, the number of levels that qualify for the next round will be the same as the number of levels that each user is allowed to vote for. The results so far are only visible once either the voting closes or you've already voted.

Please remember that discussing the levels anywhere on the forums (except private message) is not allowed while the voting phase is in progress, even if the level in question is not in the current round, even between rounds. However, it is okay to discuss levels that have already been eliminated. This rule does not extend to anything off-site, so you can eg. continue posting Youtube videos of your playthroughs, discuss in IRC chat, just don't draw attention to them on the forums.

There'll be voteoffs for each rule, to get down to one/two/three remaining levels each. After this, all qualifying levels will go into a mixed voteoff.
I've decided to keep the percentages of "surviving" levels of the rule-voteoffs somewhat similar to give every rule a fair chance. Example: A rule with a 66% survival-rate and one with a 33% survival-rate for the mixed rounds doesn't seem that fair to me.

There's only a prize for the 1st place winner - of course, getting close to that still means you made a great level.

So... let the voting begin! Each round will be open for voting for 3 days, except the final which will be 4 days.

All levels are still avialable in the discussion topic: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=4204.0

And here is my solution.

Nice level.   The timer isn't really nessesary though.

Will start the voting phase soon after the level images are uploaded.        I guess ~ at the weekend I will post the topic.

Getting people to convert is a hassle.

I know you had/have quite a bit of trouble with it, but for the majority of the non-converted packs you listed it would be way less of a hassle as they mostly use the core tilesets and not many are based on those uncomplete conversions you battle with.

I can quote myself again: Puting something out is easy, but maintaining it is hard. Most people just want to throw something out and that's it. You can't force them to maintain and convert either. So what to do? You can do it yourself, but then the burden of maintenance passes onto you most likely. That's the major reason I am not active with helping getting more conversions out, the work would be mine in the end. The one who steps up gets all of the work. Also a helper from outside would need the intended solution replays and I doubt those exist on the creator side.

I can only advertise to care and maintain stuff properly. With solution replays and everything.
My time is sadly limited and I am currently managing contests, playing/testing packs when new stuff comes up, managing the NL community pack, recording solution videos and when I find the time: Read a bit of NL souce code. Of course not all of my free time is dedicated to Lemmings as then I would get fed up pretty fast here.

One thing that comes to my mind:
As namida seems to be in the dev team devision again and Nepster isn't alone anymore, you can argue that I should go full forum maintenance mode with contests, playing/testing packs, answering questions and maybe some extra pack maintenance help on top. That could help out on the pack conversion front, but you must ask what's better here: More dev team capacity or a better maintenance service. I would like to hear some opinions about this.

I am also for more casual packs and can see myself aiming for a little easier pack in the future. Still we do have some easier converted stuff like Lemmings Plus 1, GeoffLems and MazuLems. But you are right that we can use some more.

A little word of general advice as I see the ever growing trail of you hunting for lost tilesets and pieces:

Using most tilesets and most pieces that ever existed is very dangerous from a maintenance point of view. There is always a tileset core that is well maintained and stable, but there are quite a few tilesets that were made once and then forgotten.

Not every person cares about maintenance and at some point the content is outdated and left behind, especially if an update is required at some point. Content loss is inevitable over the years, there are always some cases that will get forgotten over time and you can't be certain that a creator maintains every piece of content they made.

We can't be asked to search through the whole forum ourselves and convert everything that ever existed. That's why we also maintain a standard tileset library now, that a stable core exists.

If you really want or need something from the forgotten content: Do it yourself from scratch. Because of that L2 and the L3 biolab tilesets exist and maintained NL versions of PimoLems and Dovelems. I wanted something and so I did it.

For removed pieces I would simply say: Use an alternative. We have enough tiles that can fulfill the same effect, especially in the teleporter case.

For not converted tilesets: Make a new format version from scratch and rebuild certain levels if it's critical to have, maybe even use a different stable tileset, or compromise and replace removed pieces with an alternative. I myself did that back when I removed my Lemmini conversion for a bunch of tilesets and rebuild the affected levels from scratch using an alternative NL native version of the tilesets. The work helped in reducing the tileset redundancy by quite a bit.

In the end, I think it is impossible to ensure everything is well maintained if the content is made by many people. Loss will always be there. If no one cares and maintains a certain part of content than a death clock hangs over it and at some point it runs out.

Maintenance is hard and in modern software-life-cyles can be responsible for up to 70% of the overall costs. Creating something is not the challenge, maintaining it is where the real challenge lies.

If you don't convince a person to maintain it and does't want to maintain it yourself the golden rule is: