WTF levels

[Clam]

Thanks to minimac for putting a name to this. To avoid taking Giga's thread too far off topic, I've decided to shift the discussion of this concept to a new thread.


What do you get when you take a perfectly normal level and copy it over into another tileset? A level that makes you go "WTF???", that's what

I've played around with these before, and I think they're awesome. If you have Lemmix, then these are easy to make. Here's how:

• Open a level
• Select everything (press "a") and copy (ctrl+c)
• Open another Lemmix window and start a blank level in a different tileset
• Paste into the new window
• Copy over the skills, etc.

Things to be aware of:

• Terrain objects in the original set that don't correspond to a tile in the new set will default to ID 0 and move to the upper-left corner of the map.
• The resulting level is not guaranteed to be solvable - in fact, you might end up with no ground below the trapdoor
• Some tilesets work better as a "source" than others. In general, sets with mostly small tiles are good sources, and those with lots of big pieces are better to copy terrain to. Of course, there are a huge number of possibilities, and there will be exceptions. Also, sets with relatively few tiles will suffer as a result of the first point above.

Attached is a pic of minimac's WTF level from the other thread. That's Taxing 2, WTF'd from Dirt to Fire, and still solvable too.



And if that (for whatever reason) didn't make you go "WTF?" then this surely will. You can take this a step further and create some truly bizarre things. If you manage to trick the editor into opening a level in the wrong mode, then it glitches and replaces some terrain pieces with random pixels. I call these "Super-WTF" levels. This isn't an exact science, and in fact I've noticed some inconsistencies in the resulting levels, but the method goes something like this:

• Open some Original Lemmings levels in Original mode.
• Switch to ONML mode and open some levels. (Still Original mode)
• Switch back to Original mode and open an ONML level.

And if the editor doesn't crash, then you should end up with something like one of the two bottom pics below. (Those are Mayhem 21 and Tame 4, by the way - both solvable in this mode.) You can swap Original and ONML in the above instructions, or substitute in something else altogether.

Points to note:

• Unlike regular "WTF" levels, you don't have free choice of tilesets unless you rename the graphics files. The tilesets are paired according to their filenames. Between original and ONML, you have: Dirt - Brick, Fire - Rock, Marble - Snow, Pillar - Bubble, Crystal - nothing (these can't be "super-WTF'd" so easily...)
• If you don't open a level in the right tileset at the start, then this won't work. I recommend opening a level from every available tileset before switching modes.
• If the level contains terrain pieces that don't have counterparts in the new set, you will get black squares with diagonal lines across them. Clicking on a level in the editor when these are present causes an error message, and may crash the editor. In playtest mode, these act as solid terrain. (By the way, has anyone seen a level called "Earthworks"? This level has these blocks.)
• If the above happens with objects, no objects will display and you won't be able to do anything with the level.
• Traps (non-constant ones especially) look completely wacky in this mode.
  
• As far as I can tell, these can't be "saved". If you want to reproduce one of these exactly, you'll probably have to keep track of all the steps taken on the way to producing the level, due to the aforementioned inconsistencies. My guess is that it depends on the actual tiles present in the levels opened before the first "switch".

Now it's time to go off and experiment

[Minim]

I've played around with these before, and I think they're awesome. If you have Lemmix, then these are easy to make.

Or if you have LemEdit, it's possible to just do it the easy way by changing the graphics set after the level was created. I just wish that this method works on the "unfinished" Lemmix level designer.

[Dullstar]

Let's not forget about my own WTF levels!
I am going to do a WTF level pack, but make all the levels beatable.

[Clam]

I just thought of another type of WTF level that you can make easily in Lemmix. Just change every terrain piece in a normal level to the same type. Depending on which tile you choose, you could end up with a complicated builder puzzle, or a break-out and exit hunt with everything covered up by terrain.

[Dullstar]

Can you post a pic of one of those?

[Clam]

What's up with people demanding pics lately? These are really easy to make yourself. (To be fair, those "perfect remakes" are a bit harder, but not too much so.)

You know what? I'll post some pics. But only because I managed to find a really good one of these that works as a puzzle. This is Wild 6, with all the terrain pieces converted to:

1) #9 (two blue balls - #15 works too)
2) #27 (diagonal grids)

Both are solvable with the original level stats (skills, lemmings, %, time).

[Simon]

For each terrain piece, take its usual terrain ID, but roll randomly among all graphics sets. Note that such a freakshow is not possible in Lemmings/Lemmix, I played around with my own level-drawing code.

See attachments for the results of "Just Dig" and "This should be a doddle". The latter one is still solvable. :-)

-- Simon

[Clam]

 

Now that is art. I love how they both ended up with a web too.

[Mindless]

Wow.  It's really weird seeing pieces from different styles together in one level.

[Simon]

While it looks neat, almost like cake or ice cream, it does not provide new value in the form of playable levels inside L1/ONML ;-) I came up with this thinking of a contrast to Clam Spammer's single-piece levels. I liked their abstractness, and that they are playable and still not trivial.

-- Simon

[ccexplore]

While it looks neat, almost like cake or ice cream, it does not provide new value in the form of playable levels inside L1/ONML ;-)

Well actually, if you make it a VGASPEC level it could be playable inside L1/ONML.  The only downside is that you'll be severely limited in your colors, so it's definitely not going to look as nice as the original bitmap.

[Clam]

Yet another way of creating bizarre-but-playable levels from existing ones would be to invert all the terrain. This isn't as good as the other methods already mentioned though (and in some cases it makes no difference at all to the solution).

[Clam]

For each terrain piece, take its usual terrain ID, but roll randomly among all graphics sets. Note that such a freakshow is not possible in Lemmings/Lemmix, I played around with my own level-drawing code.

See attachments for the results of "Just Dig" and "This should be a doddle". The latter one is still solvable. :-)

-- Simon

Any chance of remaking these (or something similar) for L++ so we can play them?

EDIT: Actually, the level file format is dead simple. I may even be able to produce such levels by myself...

[Clam]

Here we go, I've got it. This is a mixed up WTF version of Tricky 1, playable (and solvable of course) in L++.

[GigaLem]

SWEET WTF LEVEL
AWSOME!!!!!!!!!!!!