More fixes for rank 4. V 2.1 is out!

The following levels have received a backroute fix:

- 4 13 (added a bomber pick-up skill and reduced the bomber count by 1)
- 4 22 (added some steel)
- 4 24 (added 3 stoner pick-up skills and reduced the stoner count by 3)
- 4 25 (the platforms are now thinner)
- 4 28 (added a OWW)
- 4 29 (added some steel)

The following level has received a tiny fix for a visual error:

- 4 11

Also a solution to 4 21 was found that saves 2 walkers and 2 diggers, but I decided to leave this one a bit open-ended so it's acceptable. Both solutions are very hard to find anyway.

V 1.9 is out!

The following levels have received a backroute fix:

- 4 11 (some terrain changes)
- 4 13 (added a OWW)
- 4 14 (-1 miner and some terrain changes)
- 4 17 (added a pick-up skill builder and therefore removed 1 builder)
- 4 18 (extra steel was added)

Round 3 is up! time to determine the 2 finalists!

More updates: V 1.6 is out!

The following level has received a backroute fix:

- 3 37 (moved the central wall up a bit)

Other than that the whole rank 1-3 spectrum has now been restested with intended/acceptable solutions.

Maybe I'm complaining too much, but in the last round, 2 levels got 5 votes each and 4 got 4.  I expected the two with 5 votes to go through, with the four getting only 4 votes having the vote-off (with 3 going through).

The goal of this 1 mixed group is to get down to the 2 finalists. It doesn't matter if 1 level more or less gets thrown out in the stepping-stones to that.

Compare to LOTY 2017:

10 levels were in a group and the goal was to get down to 4. For the first elimination round I was flexible: 7 was the goal, but one more or less did not matter. The 4 was enforced.

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.

For the rules here it was the same: The surviving rate was enforced by tiebreakers. And now the bigger group gets widdled down to the finalists with the stepping stones (5 and 3 was planned) being flexible.

So here the rule is:

- Survival rates get enforced by tiebreakers.

- Finalists get enforced by tiebreakers.

- Stepping stones are flexible.

Why is it needed to vote for each rule separately?
Actually you can have an advantage when you're in a rule with a higher survival rate than the others, which doesn't seem to be justified.
Why not make one big mixed round with all the levels and then best 5 levels or so go in the next round?

A while ago, I submitted a level for a rule that had only one other submission, and both levels pretty much got an automatic pass into the next round. It is a little unfair, but I'm not sure what the alternative is. Trying to put the survival rate above 66% or so is about as fair as possible for everyone, unless it's changed so each rule is judged separately and there's no mixed group, but I don't think that will go down well and the competition will return to just a single rule per contest.

I set the survival rates for the rules as close together as possible while also trying to result in a reasonable sized mixed group, so no big advantage spawns from this. This was the very first thing I minimized when taking over the contests! It could be that before my time there was a more unfair rate though.

Under me the highest diffrence in survival rates was/is 16,666666 %:

Biggest differences I had:

This contest: 50%-66,666666%.
Contest 15:  33%-37%
Contest 14:  50%-66,66666%
Contest 13:  40%-50%

1 big mixed round would be a bad thing. Large groups tend to deliver inaccurate results with the current voting poll way. The results from smaller groups are more accurate with polls as putting 1 level angainst 1 other is the clearest stand-off.
For very large groups a complete different voting scheme would be needed without polls, where the users not just vote for a few favorites from a selection, but deliver a complete ranking of all levels from "most favorite" to "least favorite".
The result would be a median of all rankings sent in.
Only 1 round would be hold this way with an immidiate overall result.
But I must say I don't really like this kind of voting.

I want to make the groups rather smaller than larger in general as a result.

Although I could distribute the levels from all rules together in ~3 groups, with near identical size. Mixing itself is no problem.


All in all I decided that after this contest's voting I will make a poll for 2 things:

1.) Shorten voting time from 3 to 2 days.

2.) Distributing all levels from all rules over a set number of groups with ~ the same size for the voting phase, so rules can get mixed. And survival rates are very colse together or identical, the rates themself will also depend on the number of entries.

V 1.4 is out!

The following level has received a backroute fix:

- 3 05 (added a clam and locked the RR)

Hey, I didn't realise I uploaded some of my levels onto the pack. I've just re-downloaded them today; however they need to be reformatted. Is there a link to help me convert these levels into the new nxlv format? I can't find it.

I suspect you already have a new format NL editor+player.

Simply load the .lvl files with the new editor (you will have to set the file search to .lvl opontrying to find the files) -- then save them again and they will be in the new format as the new editor can only save in the new format.

F12 will start the playtest mode so you you can test your levels and make a solution replay (hotkey U inside the player).

I don't currently have access to my files for the two Precarious Construction levels, but if you can provide the raw level files, I will attempt to convert them and re-solve them.

I attached the 2 levels in the old format.