Optimising the Reverse level pack

[Minim]

I went through the whole challenge thread again on Lemmix and now that we have some better results I've decided to optimise all of the originally impossible levels to make them all possible. I've done this for all three of the lemmings games (and also converted each level to the lvl format suitable for Lemmix use). Before I bring up a download to this big level pack, would you rather play the levels in order of easiest to hardest per rating, or normal order, or maybe even reverse order?!

Click http://www.lemmingsforums.com/index.php?topic=928.msg19121#msg19121" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">here to download the levels.

[ccexplore]

I'm a little confused here (probably because I didn't follow that thread closely in recent times).  I wasn't aware that there are that many "originally impossible levels" which can be made possible w/o drastic changes such as adding many more skills or changing terrain outright.  Can you show us a few examples of changes you are making?

[ccexplore]

Ok, I think I know what you mean.  You want to make those levels an actual playable pack, and are adding in the skills identified by the challenges to make them all solvable.

Some questions:

- Mayhem 3 has not been proven possible so far, have you decided what you would do with that level?  Even if someone does one day manage to provide a solution, I suspect it will be quite a pain to execute (even considering other glitch solutions from the challenge).
- Some/many solutions reported in the challenge thread require glitches, do you intend to make the pack that way, or would you be adding extra skills to allow for a glitch-free solution to each?

I quite like the idea of having them in reverse order from the original.  Sorting by level difficulty will scramble the level sequence too much for my taste.  Of course, I don't mind playing such a pack out of order, but I suppose if others feel differently then maybe we need to sort by difficulty.

[Minim]

Ok, I think I know what you mean.  You want to make those levels an actual playable pack, and are adding in the skills identified by the challenges to make them all solvable.

Some questions:

- Mayhem 3 has not been proven possible so far, have you decided what you would do with that level?  Even if someone does one day manage to provide a solution, I suspect it will be quite a pain to execute (even considering other glitch solutions from the challenge).

To make Mayhem 3 possible I raised the timer to 5 minutes to put that out of the question. For levels that require the pause trick (Mayhem 24, Frost http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/cool.gif" alt="8)" title="Cool" class="smiley" /> I raised the timer to 2 minutes, Hope that's OK.

- Some/many solutions reported in the challenge thread require glitches, do you intend to make the pack that way, or would you be adding extra skills to allow for a glitch-free solution to each?

My original intention was to include the glitch solutions as well, but you do raise a very interesting point. I could add more skills to each glitch-required level; However some of the levels will still need one to solve due to their strict time limits, such as Crazy 17 and Mayhem 24, so I don't think adding skills would help very much for these particular levels.

[ccexplore]

I was going to say raising Mayhem 3's time limit might make it too much just like Fun 24 (ie. the earlier repeat), but then again I guess the save requirements are different, so maybe it would be different enough to be workable.  I think we should at least keep the time limit as tight as we can, to at least preserve that same feel as the non-reversed version.  5 minutes I'm guessing is probably too much in that case, but I guess I'll have to play around to find out how low it can go..

And speaking of repeats does make me think that, at least for the original Lemmings, maybe having the levels in original order is better than in reverse order, even though the latter sounds more thematic at first thought.  I say ordering doesn't matter, but with so many repeats in the original set, having the order reversed means the player first encounters what is likely to be the harder version of the level, before later encountering an easier version that may well accommodate the exact same solution from the harder version.  That probably wouldn't be desirable.  (It would be as if the original levels have "Just a Minute Part II" come before "Just a Minute", though granted maybe not the best example.)  ONML and the rest though don't have repeats and the "reverse order" idea may still fly there.

[namida]

^ You could just swap the positions of repeats...

[Minim]

OK, I don't think there a real consensus in terms of ordering. I've decided to keep the level sequence in normal order just like in my original download back in 2011. Anyway, here are the downloads for each version. Have fun! Please let me know for any queries.