18 levels have made it through to this third phase. We are gonna cut this number in down to 6 in this phase and the ramaining levels will be mixed into 1 final group for the last phase.

Every one of the 3 groups will have 2 voting rounds that will try to get the number of levels from 6 to 4 and finally down to 2!

If we have a tie there will be tiebreakers.

If you want to see the full list of nominated levels in non-randomized order, check the nominations list topic.
If you want to play these levels without having to dig up all the various level packs, check the playing phase topic which has an NXP available for download that contains all the nominated levels.

Please remember that discussing the nominated levels is not allowed in the LOTY2017 topics now that voting has begun. This does not apply to levels that have already been eliminated at the time. Discussing them elsewhere in the site is okay, as long as it's not in the context of LOTY2017.

Reproducing:

- Get NL to crash (for example through renaming a levelfile in a pack and starting it).

- After the error messages NL has vanished on the deaktop.

- Open the task-manager.

- In there NL still runs and eats resources + this effect can stack multiple times.

NeoLemmix Level Pack: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0vs7dh96yy6tl8t/Contest_15_NL_Levelpack.zip?dl=1

- Put the folder of the level pack in the "levels" folder of your NeoLemmix Player.

Music: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wfq3utvabb1iib5/Contest_15_Music.zip?dl=1

- The music must be put inside the "music" folder of the NeoLemmix player. If the folder doesn't exists, create it.

Lix Levels: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1uusq6ftt05yxoe/Contest_15_Lix_Levels.zip?dl=1

 - The .txt levels needs to be put into Lix's levels folder, then they can be loaded inside the program.

Namida's bridge tileset (nessesary for 1 level inside the NL pack): https://www.dropbox.com/s/muz02y9yq1f9ki4/namida_bridge.zip?dl=1

- Put the tilesets folder into the styles folder of the NL player.

Note: The bridge tileset from namida should not be used for level making by other people yet!

Rule 1 Levels

IchoTolot's "Laboratory D-E-S-C-E-N-T" (V2) +  "Laboratory A-S-C-E-N-T" (V1)
Colorful Arty's "It's Lemmings Doofus!" (V1) + "See you on the Flipside, Doofus!" (V1)
Nessy's "Turbulent Turnpike Act 1" (V4) + "Turbulent Turnpike Act 2" (V4)

Rule 2 Levels

Crane's "Glide Slope" (V4)
grams88's  "Tree from hell" (V1)
Gronkling's "Come Back" (V1)
namida's "Tight Schedule" (V2)
Raymanni's "Seashore Shenanigans" (V3)
SQron188's "Minifigure Multi Pack" (V1)
Proxima's "Turnabout Sisters" (V1)
geoo's "Deadly Cells" (V2)

Rule 3 Levels

IchoTolot's "Death By Crevasse" (V2)
Colorful Arty's "WaterWorks" (V10)
Crane's "Dodge This!" (V13)
Gronkling's "Temple of the :3 God" (V7)
SQron188's "The Lapse Rate" (V5)
namida's "Latent Lodge" (V2)

You can check the rules details again here: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=3863.0

Playing Phase will be closed on 7th of September!
Updates will close on 4th of September!

Note: This topic is for posting your comments, replays, etc for the levels. If you wish to post an update to your level, or enter a late submission, please do so in the Updates Topic instead.

So 36 levels have made it through to this second phase. We are gonna cut this number in half in this phase and the ramaining 18 level will be mixed in 3 new groups of 6 levels for Phase 3.

Every group will have only 1 voting round that will try to get the number of levels from 4 down to 2!

If we have a tie: All tied levels will be moved into a Tiebreaker group(s)! The number of Tiebreaker groups will be dependent on how many tied levels we have.

These Tiebreaker group(s) will come into action after the 9 groups had their voting round and the levels there will face of for the last places that are left.

Example:

Group A had 1 winner and a 3 way tie. The 3 levels move into the Tiebreaker group and deliver 1 ticket for the next phase that was still left .
Goup B had a 4 way tie. The 4 levels move into the Tiebreaker group and deliver the 2 unused tickets into the tiebreaker pot.

That makes a Tiebreaker group with 7 levels that will face of for 3 remaining places for the next phase.

If you want to see the full list of nominated levels in non-randomized order, check the nominations list topic
If you want to play these levels without having to dig up all the various level packs, check the playing phase topic which has an NXP available for download that contains all the nominated levels.

Please remember that discussing the nominated levels is not allowed in the LOTY2017 topics now that voting has begun. This does not apply to levels that have already been eliminated at the time. Discussing them elsewhere in the site is okay, as long as it's not in the context of LOTY2017.

A while ago I found a presentation from a Game Develoer Conference and I was just remembering it now and thought: Why haven't I linked it here?

It's ~ 1hour long and it's called: Empowering the Player: Level Design in N++
As you can tell from the name N++ is the example here and the developers who created thousands of levels for it are talking about game and level design.

Now not all the points they bring up can 100% be projected on Lemmings or Lix levels in my opinion. For example the point: Let players choreograph, not just execute.

Of course only having precise trick levels is not very good, but especially on higher difficulties levels Lemmings level are a bit more about one or a small group of solutions. On the lower ranks this point fits way better, but in higher difficulty ranks you often want to enforce certain patterns or parts and I think finding the right mixture of restricted and a bit more open levels is the best way.

Other points they bring up:

- Minimalism on the core level idea + expanding that idea with more and more details for higher difficulties. Also the danger of overdoing it with adding too much.

- Level creation process - from core structure to the finished level.

- The nessesarity of culling stuff. Scrapping of levels and ideas - not everything fits and it can be better to cut it out.    - This point I feel needs to be addressed more here in the case of levels. For mechanics: Yes, I know I argued a lot about keeping stuff and features, but I also was in favor of culling a few things (gimmicks as an example). I still believe the right balance is correct and I don't wanna see things that offer a lot of gain and just fit disappear.
Sometimes levels just don't work out that well. I think that can also be expanded to features and machanics. They talked about at some point they added portals in N++, saw that it makes things too complicated in a fast platformer and threw them out again. I think Slowfreeze, Radiation and Gimmicks are the NeoLemmix equivalent here with them adding only unnessesary precision and complexity without offering too much.

- Balance between "boring/calm" and "exciting". Calm parts make exciting ones stick out more.

- Smooth difficulty curves and inclusion of breathers.

- Mastering of skills and levels of high complexity + difficulty.

- Variance in level desgin - one type of level is not enough!  - I especially agree with that point. You don't wanna make only huge/tiny/button or trick levels for example. You wanna have a huge variation of levels that has something for everyone.

- Naming of levels.

- Access to all/a lot of the levels from the getgo to avoid getting stucked completely.      - We solved that with unlock all.

 
So, I think maybe you can take a few things with you from this presentation, even if it's another quite different game they are referring to and not everything can be transferred to Lemmings 1:1.

Welcome to another contest of the Lemmingsforums! This time the three rules have been picked by Nepster as his prize for winning an older contest.

A few words to new participants and forum members: If you haven't entered before, I strongly encourage you to try - even if you don't win, it's fun to participate; and we have had cases where first-time entrants have won before!; there are three choices of rules given, you may enter one level each for up to two of the rules.
You may either use new format NeoLemmix, or Lix.
If you have two entries, they may (but do not have to) be for the same engine. Please make sure you tested your level for basic solvability before submitting and be sure to also submit any custom tileset you are using, so others have no problem playing your level.

New guideline: You can choose 1 person who does a bit of pre-testing for you, so that the biggest backroutes and screw-ups of your levels can be detected before the playing phase. I cannot control this so it's only a guideline, but still I would prefer not everyone knows every level before the playing phase starts.

Here are the rules on how the submission deadlines work:
- Initial submission phase deadline will extend such that it's 72 hours from the time of the last submission, up to the 5th submission (inclusive). After this it no longer changes no matter what.
- Update phase deadline will not extend over the initial dead line!
- Even if you missed the cutoff date for the initial submission phase, late entries are accepted until the update phase ends. There is no penalty for a late entry, beyond that people are less likely to spend as much time on the level before voting begins.

And here is the new ruleset provided by Nepster:

Rule 1

Create a pair of levels: The second one has exactly the same terrain as the first one, just upside-down. There is no restriction regarding the object placement, skills, or Lemmings.
These 2 levels will count as 1 entry and it's the 2 levels combined that will also be voted for! So no extra entry and be sure one level doesn't drag down the other!

Hint:
This can be easily achieved in the new format NeoLemmix editor by simply selecting all of the terrain, click on invert and then save the level in a different file. Then you may proceed replacing objects again and carving out a new solution.
I am not 100% sure about the process in the Lix editor, but it should still be easily possible there.
EDIT: In Lix you can select all, mirror horizontally and then turn twice -> that should correspond to mirroring vertically.

Rule 2

Construct a Miniature: At most a total of 10 lemmings, at most 5 skills (not skill types!) and the level must not be larger than the following sizes:

- NeoLemmix: 240x120 pixels    (Nepster's chosen ammount)
- Lix: 480x240 pixels                  (as Lix has exactly double the resolution of NeoLemmix, levels get twice the size there)

Rule 3

Create a level without any of the original 8 Lemmings 1 skills.

This forbids only one of the Lix bombers: The imploder. As the fling exploder can have vastly different uses than the standard L1 explosion.


Submission phase ends July 30th 2018 at 00:00 UTC. A bit longer due to Rule 1 being a bit more time consuming. This should give everyone enough time to think about a level. Deadline for the playing / update phase will be announced when it begins.

Ruleset in detail again: http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=2246.0

Send me a personal message with your level/s and if needed tileset/s to participate. It would also be nice to also tell me the rule which each level satisfies.

Prize selection:
- US $5.00
- One month's advertising on the forums news ticker
- Pick next contest's rules

Entries so far: 18

- Crane (2)
- geoo (1)
- IchoTolot (2)
- grams88 (1)
- namida (1)
- Proxima (1)
- Raymanni (1)
- Nessy (1)
- Gronkling (2)
- Flopsy (2)
- Arty (2)
- SQron (2)

Welcome to the Level of the Year 2017 voteoff!

So, most of you will know how this works, but just in case - and so that specifics are covered - here's a quick rundown.

The nominated levels have been divided into 9 groups of 10 or 9 levels, semi-randomly. To be specific, the division was done in such a way that a single author wouldn't have too many levels in a single group.

Each group will be voted on one at a time, with four levels from each group advancing to Phase 2 (which will run in a similar fashion). First we bring them down from 10/9 to 7 and then to 4.

Voting for each group will be open for three days. Remember, you're voting for the levels you think should win, not the ones you want to see eliminated.

If we get ties, there may be some tiebreakers to ensure only 4 levels out of each group advance to Phase 2. That says: 10/9 to 8 or 6 levels instead of 7 will be acceptable in the first rounds, but afterwards the 4 will be ensured by tiebreakers.

If you want to see the full list of nominated levels in non-randomized order, check the nominations list topic
If you want to play these levels without having to dig up all the various level packs, check the playing phase topic which has an NXP available for download that contains all the nominated levels.

Please remember that discussing the nominated levels is not allowed in the LOTY2017 topics now that voting has begun. This does not apply to levels that have already been eliminated at the time. Discussing them elsewhere in the site is okay, as long as it's not in the context of LOTY2017.