Flopsy plays Lix's lemforum pack

[Simon]

Simple 1 through Simple 10 on Youtube
Simple 11 through Simple 20
Simple 21 through Simple 28
Simple 29 through Simple 38
Simple 39 through Quirky 8
Quirky 9 through Quirky 14
Quirky 15 through Quirky 20
Quirky 21 through Quirky 27
Forest of Fears, Lix Lata
Quirky 29, 30 = Snowball Battle
Quirky 31-34
Quirky 35-40
Cunning 1+2
Cunning 3 through Cunning 5 = Lix Cannon
Cunning 6-10
Cunning 11-13
Cunning 14
Cunning 15-17
Cunning 18-22
Cunning 23-25
Cunning 26-28
Cunning 29-30
Cunning 31-34
Cunning 35+36
Cunning 37+38
Cunning 39+40
Daunting 1
Daunting 2+3
Daunting 4+5
Daunting 6 = Now This is Fun
Daunting 7-9 = Variety Day, Merge Sort, Backslash
Daunting 10-11 = Go West, Stickup (sorting before v.0.9.12)
Daunting 2 = Round Trip
Daunting 12-14
Daunting 15 = Railroad Plot
Daunting 16-17 = Derailed Level, Lixes in Motion (does not solve Derailed Level)
Daunting 18-19 = Too Much Stepping Stones, Jack in the Box
Daunting 20-22 = Slipping, Slipping Again, Lix Ferenda
Daunting 23 = Segmentation Fault
Daunting 24-26: Cornerstone, Repeating Patterns, The Crimson Room (does not solve Repeating Patterns nor Crimson Room)
Derailed, Repeating, Crimson, Feel the Pressure, Beneath the Lab, Slaughterhouse

Early videos show both Windows's mouse cursor and Lix's mouse cursor. This effect comes from the recording software, it puts Windows's cursor back into the video. Flopsy doesn't see the Windows cursor during play, not even during recording.

When you pull the mouse hard enough to a window side, Lix releases the mouse. This is a feature. Depending on your mouse speed in the game and in Windows, it feels like a bug instead. I fixed this in the later Simple levels.

SI, in the panel, means spawn interval, the physics updates between successive lix spawns. I should write that on hatches instead, during pause, and not use the abbreviation either.

-- Simon

[namida]

I would definitely say permanent trapping, or at least an option. If doing so, be sure to have a hotkey or clickable button to release the mouse. (Alt+Tab will generally do the job of course, but not everyone will know this, and they may have some reason for not wanting to use Alt+Tab specifically due to what else it does besides releasing the mouse from Lix's control. If it even does achieve that for Lix.)

[Simon]

Simple 21 through Simple 28

Mouse leaves window:
1. Update Lix.
2. In the options menu, on the controls tab, uncheck "fast movement untraps mouse".

Platformer too precise on Charge of the Lix Brigade: Yes, the platformer assignment is precise. You must assign platformer on the slope, or it runs out of bricks. I suggest instead:



-- Simon

[Flopsy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAJ_cQEPxOM

New video for this playthrough: Simple 29-38
Reuploaded finally after a licensing issue blocked this video in Germany

[Simon]

This video plays perfectly in Germany. Thanks, that's excellent support to reupload immediately without the offending music.

Crowd doesn't follow builder after blocker turns builder: I know this, and the behavior is unexpected. I haven't made up my mind whether it's good or bad, or what to do about it. ccx: I moved the discussion into the issue thread.



We will change levels:
LionLixWardrobe: 12/24 -> 12/30, that's not so tight.
OneWayRoad: 60/60 -> 30/30, there shouldn't be any more spawns after you dig.

-- Simon

[Flopsy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qudPQ4_s_ns

Simple 39-40 & Quirky 1-8 video is now live.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoSfgImcDvA

Quirky 9-14 is also live

[Simon]

Quirky 15-20

Proxima, Nepster, and I are discussing Another Lix in the Wall. Flopsy's solution is too finnicky. Unclear whether we should change the level (considering platformers 1->0, considering shortening the level outside of the pillars) or whether Flopsy should have recognized the finnickiness and try another idea.

At 28:35, the video shows a bug that I haven't seen before, Framestepping moves into obsolete physics cache, #159.

-- Simon

[Flopsy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9mapME6m3g

Sorry it's been a while, Quirky 21-27 is now live

[Simon]

Thanks!

At your game resolution, default-height levels show only 85 % of vertical height, potentially hiding important ledges.

I don't yet know what to do. The zoom is 2 (every physics pixel generates a 2x2 block on the screen). Zoom 1 is too small, default-sized levels would fill only 30 % of the area. I haven't tested yet whether non-integer zoom looks good at all, I believe it won't look any good. I'd rather not make the levels smaller, a good solution shouldn't depend on level size.

-- Simon

[Flopsy]

Sorry it's been a very long time but I finally uploaded my next video in the LP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UodFM0laF2w

The videos will be shorter going forward but I'm hoping to do Lix more regularly from now on.

[Forestidia86]

Flopsy's next Lix video (Quirky 29+30 as of v. 0.9.4), which contains the attempts to "Snowball Battle". The level haunted me as well for quite a while. It's rough in its own way.

[Proxima]

I am strongly considering re-ranking this level, but I'm waiting until Flopsy has played a little bit further before making a decision on which level to move down in its place.

[Flopsy]

Just as an update, I've now played as far as Cunning 13.

Lix videos will come out every Friday at 2pm GMT until further notice, it saves me announcing each video in a separate post so just check back my channel each Friday

[Forestidia86]

Flopsy has finished the Quirky rank with today's video.
Videos not considered in the first post:
Quirky 31-34
Quirky 35-40

[mobius]

was that solution to Path To Mahiman intended? IMO: it completely trivializes the level; the idea of the level is to go around the maze. Maybe it was tedious before with the builder-only version but with walkers and jumpers I thought it was not annoying at all.

Quirky 35-40

[Forestidia86]

was that solution to Path To Mahiman intended? IMO: it completely trivializes the level; the idea of the level is to go around the maze. Maybe it was tedious before with the builder-only version but with walkers and jumpers I thought it was not annoying at all.

Quirky 35-40

I suppose not; from the Lix IRC:

[19:21:42]    <SimonN> geoo: backroute in Path to Mahiman: https://youtu.be/ok2Q2f8QMDI?t=70
[...]
[21:45:10]    <geoo> hmm, the Path to Mahiman in my version also has that backroute. I wonder if something got changed at some point, or if it was simply never found
[21:45:56]    <geoo> I have the hunch that your commit from Oct 9 did that: "Mahiman rm indirect jump"
[21:47:25]    <geoo> yup, backroute wasn't there before that commit

It was changed for 0.9.2 since it had a precision shortcut (already with same skill set):

Old Backroute:

Fix that seems to introduce new backroute:

But the new backroute looks easily fixable.

[Flopsy]

I knew it was a backroute when I found it because I thought there was no way it was that easy in MazuLems.

So all Quirky rank is uploaded now.
I'm currently recorded up to Cunning 13, I do skip 3 levels along the way up to there because I couldn't solve them but which 3 I skipped I will leave a mystery for now.

Need to record more Lix because I think there are only 4 videos left now.

[Forestidia86]

Flopsy has uploaded two further videos:

Cunning 1+2
Cunning 3-5

[Flopsy]

There should be a new video every Friday on my channel until further notice

[Forestidia86]

I don't want to interfere with Flopsy and this will be probably my last reminder but the videos not considered in the first post until now are:

Cunning 6-10
Cunning 11-13

[Flopsy]

I don't want to interfere with Flopsy and this will be probably my last reminder but the videos not considered in the first post until now are:

Cunning 6-10
Cunning 11-13

Don't worry about it, remind away !

[Forestidia86]

Videos not considered in the first post until now are:
Cunning 14
Cunning 15-17

Yeah, "A Soulful Bounding Leap" is a tricky level, for me the hardest of the rank.

[Forestidia86]

Videos not considered in the first post until now are:

Cunning 18-22
Cunning 23-25

Flopsy solved "Watch Ye Step" blazingly fast. I had so much trouble with that level.

[Forestidia86]

Videos not considered in the first post until now are:

Cunning 26-28
Cunning 29-30

I remember "Little Miner Puzzle (Part 3)" as having been very finicky at one point.

[Forestidia86]

Videos not considered in the first post until now are:

Cunning 31-34
Cunning 35+36
Cunning 37+38

Good job by Flopsy on solving Pillars of Lixdom that fast. As Good As Dead depends on knowing the main trick, which I didn't as I played it first.

[Proxima]

Tribute to Benny Hill

Flopsy and Wafflem both solved the level this way, merging the crowd in the area with the hatch, rather than using the slope in the middle area to help. This makes the level much more tedious than it needs to be, even with fast forward. Should we prevent this?

[Nessy]

Tribute to Benny Hill

Flopsy and Wafflem both solved the level this way, merging the crowd in the area with the hatch, rather than using the slope in the middle area to help. This makes the level much more tedious than it needs to be, even with fast forward. Should we prevent this?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Wait ... merging the crowd in the area with the hatch is not the only way? How would you use the slope in the middle to help with this? I'm very curious now.

[Proxima]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Bridge above slope = longer fall = non-floaters catch up faster.

[Forestidia86]

The lemforum replay does it like Flopsy and others (including me).

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You can seal the small hole to the trap with one stair and then build the two stairs at the slope which gives you a bit more height as Proxima said than if you only use stairs. But therefore the lix have a longer walking distance. My replay for that is quite long as well but maybe you can arrange that more wisely.

[Forestidia86]

Videos not considered in the first post until now are:

Cunning 39+40
Daunting 1
Daunting 2+3
Daunting 4+5

[Flopsy]

After the video this Friday, I will be putting my Lix videos on hold temporarily so I can upload an LP of the LOTY nxp which I will run on Tuesdays and Fridays until it is complete.

After I finish that LP, the Lix schedule will resume as normal

[Forestidia86]

Video not considered in the first post until now is:

Daunting 6

[Proxima]

Daunting 7-9, includes backroute on "Backslash".

[geoo]

Flopsy, a little hint that might make Merge Sort more enjoyable for you:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At some point, it was suggested to turn the red square blocks into steel blocks, to remove red herrings. This should be a hint for one, but I'd also be curious about your opinion on such a change.

Nessy: I saw you commented on YouTube, did you play through the community pack? How did you feel about this level?

As for Backslash, the solution is different from intended, but it's interesting in its own right so I don't even mind so much.

[Nessy]

Nessy: I saw you commented on YouTube, did you play through the community pack? How did you feel about this level?

Yes, every once in a while I would play through some levels in the community pack. I completed the first three ranks and about half of Daunting and some Vicious levels. I even started my own thread where I posted some replays about certain levels I wanted feedback on solution-wise.

About "Merge Sort" (click to show/hide)

I personally don't think the red squares should be changed into steel blocks. I did find "Merge Sort" very tricky to spot the main miner usage that made everything fall into place, but it is still a miner usage that one can figure out eventually after realizing that no matter what they do on the red squares nothing will end up working and thus a player must figure out a new strategy. At the same time, the red squares does allow the solution to "hide in plain sight" without being overtaken by the red herrings it creates at the same time. Changing them to steel might remove too many red herrings and make the solution too clear and take away the puzzle aspect of finding out how to merge the crowd effectively which is how I saw the main idea behind this level.

However, this change might be more sensible if the level has to be moved down a rank. In this case the steel blocks would compensate this down-rank.

[Simon]

I agree with Nessy.

Another idea for Merge Sort (click to show/hide)

I'd like to keep Merge Sort as-is and not downrank. If Merge Sort must change, maybe like this:

I want to remove the earth blocks that encourage bunkering.
I want to keep high the number of possible miner locations.

-- Simon

[geoo]

That's an interesting change, I quite like the idea of this.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The miner placement has to be a little bit more careful now as you might break through the floor on both sides of the vertical bar, but maybe this can be alleviated by making the vertical bars a bit wider. It still allows for a range of possibilities of what to do, but pushes the player in the right direction in terms of what to explore/think of.

[Simon]

Attached is the new Merge Sort. I've tried to make this accepted change more beautiful.

Image of Merge Sort (click to show/hide)

-- Simon

[geoo]

After trying the level maybe the thicker bars aren't necessary, my concern from the previous post is not really an issue.

Pros and cons:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Pro: Thicker bars look prettier than thin bars, probably?
Con: They limit the options of the player as they cannot split the crowd into two separate holding pits with a single miner.

What do people think?

[Simon]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I like the fewer options than with thin walls: It's good that you can't create 2 holes with one miner. In Lix 0.9.17's Merge Sort, you can't create 2 holes with 1 miner either, and it's still hard.

-- Simon

[Flopsy]

Ok, sorry for my long hiatus from my LP, I'm now ready to return to it following solving a lot of levels after revisiting them. I have now solved Merge Sort (in its original form I attempted on video) and Snowball Battle! I have solved other levels also which stumped me which I will demonstrate in my next video

I do admit that I didn't spend enough time on merge sort and it really was not as bad as I expected. I say keep the original layout to contribute to the original discussion but if you have changed it then don't worry.

I feel like I have improved at Lix during my time playing and attempting levels during my evenings while on holiday.
I feel like the LP might stall soon because of the difficulty of the levels getting intense but I'm more determined than ever to hammer on now.
I'm not going to make any video commitments on regularity of videos anymore so just expect videos sporadically.

I will aim to get another video out by the end of the month at the latest, hopefully much sooner than that though.

Also thanks a lot for the feedback on my LP replays, it makes me happier knowing my videos are contributing to the upkeep of the already high-quality Lemforum pack.

[Forestidia86]

Flopsy made another video:

Daunting 10-11 (before v.0.9.12)

Really clean and nice solution to "Go West!".

[Simon]

Round Trip

Glad to see Flopsy return to the Lix pack! It's been a while and your videos have always helped me judge the difficulty curve. (Also happy to see the level title in the video title!)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The digger in Round Trip is hard to spot and the solution fell into place nicely once you found that digger.

-- Simon

[Proxima]

More video links:

Daunting 12-14
Daunting 15
Daunting 16-17 (does not solve Derailed Level)
Daunting 18-19
Daunting 20-22

Simon already started a discussion thread on "Slipping Again". It's a while since I watched 12-15, don't remember what solutions Flopsy found. All other solutions are intended.

[Flopsy]

It's been a while since I have uploaded some videos for this pack, one went up on my channel a week ago now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4MLbf_2gu4
(this video was actually recorded over a year ago and I never got round to uploading until recently)

I've tried recording some more Lix videos recently but I am having great difficulties with recording Lix with OBS without the frame rate tanking randomly.
I may have to continue the LP in Post Commentary format, because it is too risky to do a live video on Lix at the moment, is there a chance that Lix has options to lower the performance in any way, this might be a favourable option for me recording this because even when I record post commentary videos, the videos randomly mess up.
I have recorded 3 Lix videos recently and only ONE ended up not being messed up by OBS when it was finalised.

[Simon]

No options for Lix that affect performance. >_>;;

I don't easily see how to improve, either. Does the recording framerate tank only during large maps?

General loose ideas: Choose different encoder (software vs. hardware encoding), update video drivers, updating DirectX (but probably DirectX just ships inside Windows nowadays?) Or I can add newer Allegro libraries (that will then call into DirectX), even though Allegro library versions likely won't matter much.

-- Simon

[Flopsy]

It doesn't tend to matter what level it is I've found. The whole video either ends up being poor quality with screen freezes and screen jumps throughout, it stays on a still image for 5 seconds before catching up then freezing again or it is perfectly fine.

I'll try what you suggested next time I try to record.

[Forestidia86]

What version no. of Lix are you using?
Maybe providing a 32-bit build can help, although this is only a wild guess, but the older videos still seem to be on the 32-bit version.

[Simon]

Attached is a Lix 0.9.33 Windows 32-bit executable. Flopsy, put this where your normal Lix executable sits, and run it instead of the normal lix.exe (that is 64-bit). Does it record any better?

If it complains about missing libraries, tell me, I'll get 32-bit Allegro libs for you, then.

-- Simon

[Forestidia86]

The 32bit dlls can be found in this archve in the bin folder.

[Flopsy]

Thanks Simon and Forestidia

My initial tests of recording suggest this build might suit recording Lix a lot better.

I might only be doing post commentary going forward anyway because the levels are getting too hard to be recorded live now, the last 5 levels I have done have resulted in no solves until I solved them off camera. I'll try and record the post commentaries quite soon after I solve them anyway so I can remember what I tried before solving the levels.

[Simon]

Thanks for the feedback! I should start building and offering the 32-bit Windows version again.

Still, I wonder whether the slowness really came from the architecture of the executable. I know that the D garbage collection behaves differently, but the impact shouldn't be that big... Or the Allegro libraries' versions differ between the 64-bit and 32-bit build. I should update Allegro libraries anyway in the Windwos builds that I ship. Until then, I'm happy that we found a solution.

-- Simon

[Flopsy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N4Fz_MSfeQ

Part 42 - Daunting 24-26 is out

Another older video but the next video will definitely be a more recent video.

[Simon]

Thanks. Especially helpful to see what doesn't solve in the fixed 15-20 mins.

Derailed Level: Wibble had similar trouble with Derailed Level; it sits next to Railroad Plot merely because of theme, not of difficulty. Derailed by itself candidate for ranking harder.

Crimson Room: Also eligible for ranking harder; even though not-solving after 5 minutes is only weak evidence for ranking higher.

-- Simon

[Flopsy]

I have actually solved all the levels which I had trouble with in recent videos, I do a replay round up video in the next video I believe.

I also went back to attempt the levels which had been added to the pack recently, I did have live attempts at them but that was the video that got messed up sadly so I just ended up showing the solved replays instead. They didn't take long to solve anyway.

I don't think Crimson Room is as hard as I'm making out to be in the Part 42 video, I solved it rather quickly when I revisited it. It was Repeating Patterns which took much longer!

[Proxima]

The Crimson Room was previously ranked higher and moved down. I think it's in a good place now.

[Wibble]

Thanks. Especially helpful to see what doesn't solve in the fixed 15-20 mins.

Derailed Level: Wibble had similar trouble with Derailed Level; it sits next to Railroad Plot merely because of theme, not of difficulty. Derailed by itself candidate for ranking harder.

Crimson Room: Also eligible for ranking harder; even though not-solving after 5 minutes is only weak evidence for ranking higher.

-- Simon

Derailed Level did take a while, though most of it was me trying to force a route that just didn't work. I think Daunting is the right difficulty level for it though (maybe later in daunting if it is derailed [see what I did there] from Railroad plot).

Crimson room just has a lot of options so is fine to solve, yet tough to solve quickly.

[Simon]

All right, I'm happy to leave all these where they are, then, especially when Repeating Patterns was the hardest for Flopsy and the easiest for me among Crimson and Derailed.

If Derailed is not that much harder, we can also leave it next to Railroad Plot for theme.

-- Simon

[Flopsy]

I uploaded another video for this recently, it's a replay round up video again where I go through the levels I failed to solve and played the newer additions in the earlier ranks of the pack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cYIkSUUAPk

[Simon]

Thanks!

Platformers don't turn on hitting terrain, yes, I believe this is a misdesign. Over 10 years ago, I copied this behavior from L2 because I assumed L2 to be the gold standard.

On a fresh design, I would have the platformer turn. It's inconsistent w.r.t. the builder, and (platformer and builder) are much more closely related than (miner and digger, where the digger won't turn on steel but the miner does).


Even with the turn-on-hit builder, a builder bridge is easy to make traversable in both ways. A two-way-walkable platformer bridge is much harder with a turn-on-hit platformer, unless the two shoresides are exactly the same height. The non-turning platformer gives us more leeway. But I doubt this counterargument wins against the inconsistency argument.

At least we can fix some backroutes by giving platformers instead of giving builders.

-- Simon