So... what's the hardest level you can make with only one type of skill?

[namida]

Although I never managed to get it to work properly without backroutes (and eventually ditched it), one of my ideas for a PSYCHO level in LPDOS was a clever puzzle that only provided builders.
Thinking about this idea just now gave me another idea: How hard can a level with only a single skill type be?

Obviously, you can't really do anything that great with the first 4 skills... pretty much the worst you could do with climbers would be a puzzle of at which point to assign the skill to every lemming, for floaters the best I could think of would be something similar to The Deady Climb (but without needing climbers), bombers would pretty much be limited to pixel-perfect hard-to-time bombers, and blockers would again be simply a matter of when to block... but the last four skills should have some potential. Any ideas (or existing levels)?

[ccexplore]

Well, one good place to start would be to look at the "How many levels can be beaten with only one type of skill" challenge thread that you created some time ago.

[Clam]

Is it implied that the poor soul who gets to try to solve this level has to do it without access to editors to check the types and locations of objects? If so, then I'd suggest using the Crystal tileset and making the whole thing out of black terrain . Be sure to riddle it with hidden traps and fake exits, and make the real exit invisible while you're at it.

[ccexplore]

Heh, one wrinkle with your evil scheme is that the invisible color in Crystal tileset is visible in EGA mode.

[Clam]

Fair enough, I guess it's safe to assume anyone game enough to try this level would know pretty much everything there is to know about Lemmings.

Another thought I just had: Would you use a special (VGAspec) graphics file? It would limit the left-right extent of the level, but you could make any terrain arrangement you like without worrying about the 400-terrain limit. Since you can only have up to 99 of one skill, you might not need to use the full width of the map.

[ccexplore]

And as a bonus, using VGAspec would allow for invisible colors that work in both VGA and EGA modes (since you get to control both palettes in the VGAspec file).  I don't remember whether my vgaspec-creation program does anything with the EGA palette though, so an update may be required to make that work.

[geoo]

Now for a change talking about meaningful levels (i.e. levels that bear a genuine challenge in figuring and not just cheap tricks as suggested above ), for builders, bashers and miners I can remember some using (almost) only that one skill.
ISteve07: Bash and no Time - As the name implies, this one works exclusively with bashers.
ClamSpam04: Builders' Cracks - Builder puzzle, has one floater though.
Insane Steve' Cheapo Sets: Stairway to Somewhere - Another nice builder puzzle, makes use of a blocker and a floater though.
My Cheapo pack: Little Miner Puzzle - also makes use of one floater.

The latter three are coming close though, and it's most likely possible to make equally interesting levels without that one or two additional skills. Of course, when it comes to only using diggers, I'm am A.T. immediately springs to mind, which can be adapted to only use diggers. For miners (and possibly bashers), A.T. variants would also be possible, along the lines of I am I.S. (Part 2).

[Clam]

Ah yes, for the actual challenge...

I'd envision maybe somthing along the lines of Crazy 11 from the "add skills for 100%" challenge, where you need to assign a new builder every 9 frames (as soon as the previous builder places its first step) in order to have any chance of reaching the exit in time. Of course, that means you need to have a lemming in exactly the right place at that moment, which would be a mission in itself, especially if there are few enough lemmings that some have to build multiple times...

[namida]

I should've seen half of this coming...

I did kind of mean fair levels, no cheap tricks or anything. Restrictive time limits are probably as "cheap" as I'd count as fair...

[finlay]

I've just spent the last couple of hours creating this level. Call it inspired by this thread at any rate; it's probably not what you guys would call difficult, but I haven't done this in ages. Anyway, it's a bomber level and incorporates a lot of things that I despise about levels (hidden traps, essentially), so I found it very challenging myself even though I know its "secrets". Try it out.... I don't know of a better place to put things like this, anyway...

[Nortaneous]

I don't think there's much potential in bomber-only levels, since the only puzzles you can have with just bombers is bomber timing.

There was a level in a four-level pack somewhere in the level thread (I think it was by either ccexplore or Clam Spammer) that was basically a miner-only level, except it also had floaters. The basic idea was to time the miners to get all the lemmings in a tight enough group that only one of them would die to a trap.

Here's my attempt at a basher-only level. It's ugly, but there might be a few puzzles in it that could be put into a real level.

[Clam]

There was a level in a four-level pack somewhere in the level thread (I think it was by either ccexplore or Clam Spammer) that was basically a miner-only level, except it also had floaters. The basic idea was to time the miners to get all the lemmings in a tight enough group that only one of them would die to a trap.

Wow, I had to rack my brains a fair bit before I remembered this (it was some time ago ), but that would be my remade version of "Singular Squish". There's really not much to that one, since the miner placements are all equally spaced, unless for some reason you change the release rate during play. Even if you added more lemmings, it wouldn't add to the difficulty in terms of finding a solution, just executing it would be more tedious.

[ccexplore]

The basic idea was to time the miners to get all the lemmings in a tight enough group that only one of them would die to a trap.

I don't know about custom levels, but I do remember posting a miner-only solution (with replay) for Fun 17 where I used that very technique for the lemmings from the leftmost entrance.

[geoo]

I don't think there's much potential in bomber-only levels, since the only puzzles you can have with just bombers is bomber timing.
[...]
Here's my attempt at a basher-only level. It's ugly, but there might be a few puzzles in it that could be put into a real level.

In kinda like the first move here, it's nicely hidden in the terrain. I initially went for compression to get past the traps, until I realized that you could just bash away the terrain under them to get 100%.

I think it might be possible to set up some non-trivial bomber-only puzzle that doesn't rely on bomber timing, if only you base the puzzle around the level terrain enough.

[chaos_defrost]

I remember a well made but fairly hard Cheapo pack that got posted here a while back (forgot who made it, though) that had a dirt set level with nothing but bashers that was not at all trivial and actually quite fun. Used the non-even terrain of the set very, very well.

[Nortaneous]

Wow, I had to rack my brains a fair bit before I remembered this (it was some time ago ), but that would be my remade version of "Singular Squish". There's really not much to that one, since the miner placements are all equally spaced, unless for some reason you change the release rate during play. Even if you added more lemmings, it wouldn't add to the difficulty in terms of finding a solution, just executing it would be more tedious.

Equally spaced? Did the intended solution involve the steel bits? I just waited for them to turn around, made the first one a miner at the part where you mine down to get through the horizontal barrier thing, and then had the rest of them mine in that same mineshaft.

[Clam]

Ooh... that could work, I guess. I seem to recall testing that, but I don't think I managed to actually solve it that way. Maybe I should make that bit of the floor thinner, so you can't get all the lemmings to mine together (they'd just take a swing and fall through instead). Yes, the intended solution uses the steel to turn the lemmings around.

[geoo]

I've taken a shot at making a bomber-only level that doesn't solely rely on bomber timing to create the difficulty. I guess it's rather easy to figure, but hopefully not entirely trivial.

I remember a well made but fairly hard Cheapo pack that got posted here a while back (forgot who made it, though) that had a dirt set level with nothing but bashers that was not at all trivial and actually quite fun. Used the non-even terrain of the set very, very well.

What you're referring to might be the pack 'Why bother?' by the Purpletraitor (and drumnbach?), specifically the level 'Mount Bashmore'. "A while back" is quite an understatement though.
That reminds me though that I've still got to have a thorough play-through of this pack, because back in the day these levels still seemed pretty daunting to me.

EDIT: In this pack, there's also "...but, but, but...?!?!", a builder-only level.