geoo visiting IchoTolot & Simon, August 2015

[Simon]

ccx: Lovely reply with hints from TV chefs! Putting the parsley in later, that's a good idea. If you have the time to look after the stew, you can put in ingredients based on their individual time to cook.

After eating, we had a three-headed race through L2 Egyptian. The tribe shouldn't be too hard. Icho didn't remember any route through Labyrinth of Fun, and geoo failed to cancel his attractor there. Icho's mouse acceleration prevented proper upwards twister control on Spiralling DNA.

I had a nice two-level lead at the long horizontal level, Ruper'z Questling, so I played it safe and go for the long route around. The others went for quick roper routes, and caught up a bit. After that crawler route, geoo maneuvered a superlem through the entire Egypt Cottage and saw the short top route in Heroe'z Quest, winning the race with a comfortable lead.

We've grown wary of rock climbers and sliders, they break our mental playthroughs.

We had a discussion about the merit of each of L2's skills, going through the practise menu. Everything went smoothly for 48 of 50 skills, then we got into an argument at the Icarus Wings!

-- Simon

[ccexplore]

We had a discussion about the merit of each of L2's skills, going through the practise menu. Everything went smoothly for 48 of 50 skills, then we got into an argument at the Icarus Wings!

Oh now you're just leaving us hanging.  Who were the "for" and "against" and what were the points being argued (wrt Icarus Wings)?  My gut feeling says it's a mostly unremarkable skill, except for the ability to turn the lemming's facing direction around at will.  Though perhaps that by itself already makes it relatively more remarkable compared to many of the other wind-driven L2 skills?

[edit: learned more on IRC, see logs]

[IchoTolot]

We also solved the last level I had not beaten yet in Akseli's Lemmix level pack ("Why do you all look the same?"). Haven't tried it in the last week due to my tileset making progress and we thought it would be a blast solving together.
And after a while we finally beat it!
It was not that far away from one of my ealier attemts, but quite some adjustments had to be made together with adding a few little tricks here and there + getting the timing right.
I will not spoil the solution for you, you have to solve it for yourselves!
After the success we had to remove the ? in the level title in Lemmix to be able to save a proper replay for Akseli and today he gave me the answer that the solution is indeed the intended one!

Now the whole pack is beaten even though it had some nasty L1 tricks and glitches in it, some of them I were not aware of.
 

[Simon]

Hi,

there will be a Lix session tonight! Saturday, August 8th, 2015, at 22:00 UTC. This is Sunday in New Zealand.

I will release a new Lix version tonight, at 21:30 UTC. This will bring some new physics: Basher, digger, possibly miner too, will remove the dirt all in one frame. Mid-stroke cancelling and basher staircases should not be possible anymore.

Instant bombers in singleplayer are in, but it won't affect the multiplayer session.

-- Simon

[NaOH]

Here's a recipe that works every time.

• 500 g broccoli, i.e., one head of broccoli
  
• 400 g crème fraîche (Quote geoo: Frặîçħè! Put 5 accents on every word! Simon: No, NaOH will be angry.)
  
• 400 g noodles
  
• 250 g cubed ham
• some butter or margerine

The meal of the day was Gargantua Blargg's lava pot, a spicey stew.

• 400 g of goulash, we chose lean beef goulash
• 1 Gargantua Blargg

NaOH's assertions about garlic reads like a challenge.  If anyone ever met up with her in real life, they should totally do a modified recipe that uses all grated cloves of a garlic and have her eat it.

I am not offended by the lack of accènts, nor the egregious amount of garlic, but as a vegetarian I am deeply offended by the presence of meat . Therefore, I propose you make this simple vegan breakfast tofu scramble:

• 226.796 g (or 8 ounces) extra extra firm tofu, crushed to bits
• 1/2 a white onion, diced
• 1 clove of garlic, crushed, or 1 whole garlic grated, or whatever geoo decides is best
• 1 pepper, diced
• 2 piranha plants, whole. The added plants make this more vegan.
• 1/2 tsp salt, to taste
• 4/7 tsp cumin powder, to taste
• 1 pinch of cayenne or 1/4 tsp chili powder
• 1/4 tsp turmeric for colour

1. Dry tofu and crush to bits
2. Cook plants in a frying pan on medium heat with some olive oil, let sàûtée for three minutes
3. mix dry ingredients together and add some water to form a sauce.
4. add crushed tofu to frying pan, pour sauce over tofu
5. stir together, let sit on medium heat for three minutes, add black pepper and additional dry ingredients as desired.



It looks and tastes just (kinda) like egg, but without the awful sulphurous aftertaste. Plus it's nice to know no animals were harmed in the process.

[ccexplore]

To be fair to eggs, you're probably cooking it wrong (or they've been in the fridge for way too long ) if they're having that much of an "awful sulphurous aftertaste".  Hard-boiled eggs is the main cooking method I believe most susceptible to the problem (it also shows up visually as that greenish layer between the whites and the yolk), and even there I believe tricks exist to avoid/minimize the issue.

The general problem with vegan recipes is that they tend to offend the taste buds of non-vegan folks relative to recipes with meat. Tofu isn't bad per se, but if one comes in with the expectation of anything remotely meat-like (or heck, even seafood-like), that aspect will never quite measure up.  On the other hand, it does have the advantage that it has virtually no taste of its own, so for the most part it can be sprinkled into most recipes with minimal effects if you simply don't bother eating the tofu afterwards.   As opposed to say, for example, mushrooms came to mind when I'm forced to think of a vegan protein substitute that's not tofu, but its not-so-neutral taste may affect a recipe in undesirable ways.

[NaOH]

The general problem with vegan recipes is that they tend to offend the taste buds of non-vegan folks relative to recipes with meat. Tofu isn't bad per se, but if one comes in with the expectation of anything remotely meat-like (or heck, even seafood-like), that aspect will never quite measure up.

This is actually true for many vegans/vegetarians, including me. Using tofu or soy as imitation meat is something I hate, even though I'm vegetarian. The reason isn't hard to understand: as a vegetarian, I dislike meat. Therefore, something that tries to taste like meat is not appetising in the slightest.

For vegetarians who do like meat (but are vegetarian for, say, health reasons), this isn't often the case. But I've been vegetarian my whole life, so the idea of eating meat is comparable to what most people in my country would think of eating bugs.

Anyway. I like tofu as tofu. Tofu scramble is cute, but not really imitation eggs. Tofu veggie burgers are usually awful if they are imitating meat, as is the case for most restaurants here. But vegan food that delights in being vegan, not trying to appease meat-lovers, this can be delicious. These are my opinions.

[ccexplore]

Come to think of it, your garlic comments take on a whole new light given that you are lifelong vegetarian.  After all, the flavors won't be coming from the meat since there aren't any, and hardly any from the tofu.  So yeah, I imagine you'd want to pile on the garlic and other flavorings.

[Simon]

We have tried NaOH's tofu scramble!



Since NaOH is not vegan, but vegetarian, we allowed ourselves to add eggs to the recipe. Here's our version:

• We quadrupled the amount of spices and garlic: 4 cloves cut into little pieces.
  
• We doubled the amount of onion to 1 whole onion, and of bell peppers, to 2.
  
• We left the amount of tofu as-is, and added 6 eggs, which weigh in about the same as the tofu.
  

The eggs and tofu blended nicely. Eggs carry some flavor, but the overall meal relies mainly on spices/onion/garlic, as ccx has described. It was an enjoyable derivation from our usual ideas.



The piranha plant is hidden at the bottom! Arrrha!

Tomorrow, we'll spend another evening at Ichotolot's apartment. Stay tuned and visit IRC -- there has been lots of IRC action these days.

The cool kid in the first image is Kid Chameleon, the legendary kid in town who's too tough to beat at video games. He is the titular hero of a 1992 Sega Genesis platformer. It's a favorite game of geoo, who has hacked in a level selector. Kid Chameleon plays like Super Mario with a berserker helmet instead of a raccoon suit.

-- Simon

[RubiX]

You should setup a webcam for the appartment meeting tommorow, so we can watch the craziness

[Simon]

Leekdiana Jones found the following ancient source file:

leek_and_sucuc.h

• 500 g of couscous
  
• 500 g of sucuc (Turkish sausage with garlic)
  
• 250 g of corn
  
• 1 large leek, or 2 smaller ones
  
• 1 large eggplant fruit
  
• 2 bell peppers
  
• 1 small onion
  
• 1 clove of garlic -- optional, because sucuk is already garlic-flavored
  
• some margarine or oil, to fry things
  
• some salt and herbes de provence
  
• some powdered spices: cumin (kyoo-min, like moomin) and maybe nutmeg
  

try {

• Cut everything into small pieces, unless it's already small pieces.
  
• Get a large pan, add oil or margerine. Fry onion, garlic and sucuc for a while.
  
• Add leek and eggplant. Fry for a shorter while, until the eggplant got brown. Stir frequently.
  
• Add all the spices -- salt, herbes, cumin, nutmeg.
  
• Add bell peppers and corn. Fry for a shorter while, stir frequently. While doing this, begin in parallel the next point.
  
• Take a pot, fill in 1 L of water, add salt, and heat it. When it starts to bubble, take the pot from the firepit, and pour in the couscous. The couscous will soak up all of the water. To speed it up, stir.
  

} // We had an argument about the brace style here.
  // I've learned C++ first and like Stroustrup's brace style.
catch (Explosion e) {

• Clean the kitchen ancient temple.
  

}
finally {

• Put pot and pan next to each other on the table.
  

}

Leekdiana Jones donned his hat, grabbed his trusty whip, and got adventuring supplies from the supermarket.



The path to the temple lead Mr. Jones and his companion to the north for more than 20 minutes. The temple belonged to the ancient Mexican god of Ichot'olot.

Ichotolot did not grant access to the sacred firepit immediately. He put the adventurers to a challenge first: Beat all the contest levels, using an unknown game engine. The Mexican god was astonished: How can people play that noble game for 5 seconds, but already rage about controls?

The party has elected a certain level as their favorite, but does not want to name it, in risk of rule violation.

It was time for the exquisite meal.



Some ideas about speedrunning L2 Cavelem and Sports:

Deadly Exit: geoo beat it on first try, I took 15 to 20 tries, and Ichotolot took 30 tries. We all went to the top-left exit, but that's execution-heavy. The top-right exit might be safer to get to. There are two bogeymans in front of it, disable them both with a single platformer.

geoo and I begun Cavelem 10, Ah'm No Done Yet, at the same time. I had played this level 3 weeks ago, and remembered where to put the platformer -- my solution uses it at the same place as the linked image's solution. This solution is execution-heavy, with pixel-perfect shimmier assignment. geoo didn't try to platform here, and took half an hour to carve out a solution to spare the platformer, so he could close the gap at the exit with it.

Thus, I've won the Cavelem race, and was bold enough to continue with Sports, trying to win two tribes before the others won the first. The others aren't bad players at all though, and I was at Sports 6, Double Trouble, when geoo finished Cavelem. Ichotolot finished 3rd, but found the most beautiful solution to Cavelem 10 by going over the skeleton with the worker, without relying on execution.

Sun Sign Selection: The easiest possible backroute is to jump on the block holding the trampoline, not the trampoline itself. To jump off this block again, don't assign jumper, because the jumper will interact with the trampoline. Assign shimmier! The shimmier upwards motion is very similar to the jumper, but will not activate the trampoline.

Take Up Archery: You have 3 arrows for each gap at the bottom. Use them all, don't plan to use 2 per gap. Avoid assigning roller. Jump the runner at every opportunity, and delay the crowd with spearers.



geoo won the beach tribe afterwards! The beach tribe uses the coastal suction function in many places, it's a fun trap. No clam has ever eaten a single lemming in all three playthroughs.

-- Simon

[IchoTolot]

Great post

The Mexican god Ichot'olot still is astonished how hard it is to get those Lix players to focus on actually solving the level instead of raging about the controls!
They ran even in danger of awakening and angering the god next by (also known as my roommate). It was a hard time trying to control their rage!

[ccexplore]

Too bad L2 doesn't have replays, getting envious hearing about all the great fun you guys had with speedrunning through the levels. Sounds like even watching a recording of it (or more accurately, 3 of them simultaneously) may be quite insightful and funny.

And each time I hear about these speedruns, sooner or later my mind starts wondering about how Lix could potentially support this mode through net play.  Granted, the experience will never be quite as good due to lack of display real estate (although with a 2+ monitor setup...), but hey, one can only dream......