The first voting round is up!

Short explanation on why we have 6 instead of 7 levels now: Proxima has wished to withdraw his entry from the contest and I have to respect that wish.

In each voting round, you're allowed to vote for up to a certain number of levels. Vote for the levels that you want to stay in the contest, not for levels you want eliminated. You may vote for fewer levels than the permitted maximum. You may vote for your own levels.

It's not allowed to discuss the levels publicly on the forums during the voting phase, even if the level is not in the current round, or even between rounds.

You may discuss any level in private messages. You may discuss publicly off-site, e.g., you may post Youtube videos of your playthroughs, or discuss in IRC chat. Eliminated levels may be discussed anywhere, even publicly on the forums.

There'll be voteoffs within each design rule, to get down to one/two/three remaining levels per design rule. After this, all qualifying levels will go into a mixed voteoff.

Generally, the number of levels that qualify for the next round will be the same as each user's permitted vote maximum. 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=4390.0

I should be there as well.

I would say:

- Graphic sets are required to either provide high or low res physics (or both). I think there could be sets that would work best in a higher res.

- If a user plays in a high res mode and plays a set that doesn't have high res graphics, NL should fall back to low res graphics. I think upscaling (or downscaling) could go wrong and create inaccurate or quite weird graphics. The same goes for the lemming sprite point. If I play in low res and I encounter a high-res only set I think it would be better if NL keep the graphics for this set high res. I could be proven otherwise here though as I am quite sceptical of the accuracy of scaling algorithms.

- I don't think we need a high res editor, especially when it's a ton of work.

Alright, here is a new graphic made by Willem that should make the outer frame appear less solid, it is a little change though.

The frame is now more rough with cold black coal edges on the left and right. In the middle we have grey/red glowing coal. These should appear way less solid.

I think in both cases (deadly/non-deadly) it should do a better job of appearing non-solid.

If alterations are desired those are totally possible!

However, ultimately, this is an object with an effect, not a purely decorative piece. Concerns about decorative use come second to concerns about a good visual-physics correspondence.

Yes, but it's still a lot more extra work. I still consider a level with visual flaws a flawed level that critically needs fixing. It doesn't matter to me if it's only decorational it's still flawed.

As such - not only do I disagree that this breakage is important to consider, I disagree that this is actually breaking them at all - rather, it is fixing them, so the player is clearly aware that there is a safe space to pass under them.

As the objects were unreachable this is anything but not a fix. The change did not affect the level gameplay (no fixing) and broke the visual aspect.

The workload is a critical thing to consider after all.

If the 2 object approach is chosen I would still consider to let the shrunken version be the new one superior as the possible workload is way smaller this way.

I think that would still cause a ton of confusion and checking and switching objects would also still be mandatory.
If we would go with 2 objects I think the new one should be the shrunken one, the visual breakage is much higher this time as the physical. I would rather take the trigger area change than the size change.

I still think a simple animation change is the way to go though.