Lemmings Forums Level Contest #11 - Playing Phase (Discussion Topic)

[namida]

Update may have to wait... my laptop's boot sector got corrupted, Windows won't start, and I don't have a usable recovery medium.

If you have access to another PC (preferably running the same OS) and a USB flash drive, it's possible to create one on that. (You might be able to even use a (Micro)SD card in a USB SD reader.)

[Crane]

Laptop is now in a repair shop, and I'm in a panic because I feel ripped off but completely helpless.  SD card reader seems to be physically damaged anyway (can't get it in) and no other computer I have has the operating system.  I did try using a Windows 7 DVD, but one refused to be recognised as a bootable medium, and the other crashed on start-up.  DVD drive might be a bit damaged too, since the door feels loose.  I fear the laptop got banged around a lot because of how often I use it and transport it, although I know the hard drive is physically fine... just a system crash and a forced power-off caused logical corruption.

[IchoTolot]

Some more replays and backroutes as Simon came over today and played the NL levels!

I only attached the replays which were different from already existing solutions.

Crane got obviously yet another backroute to fix

Gronkling's level may also be backrouted as Simon saved everyone here.

And everyone saved as well on zanzindorf's level, but this is probably more an alternative solution than a backroute.

[joshescue18]

I solved Gronkling's levels.

[Simon]

NL levels.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Complications: Cute tricks. Very hard. Icho told me that you removed the red-herring glider. The level easily musters enough difficulty from good core ideas. Long level, difficult to assess how much leeway there is with skills near the beginning.

The Wishing Well: Feels like a heavily fixed level. You entice lots of fun things to try, the fun ideas look working almost until the end, but then fail for un-fun reasons. If something is going to fail, I'd love to have that more obvious earlier. I can rule out some ideas by reason. But almost everything, I have to try it to be sure that it doesn't work. Bonus points for the dirt set, lovely set, I'm happy every time I see it.

Future Temple: Cute level. Excellent display of the mandatory permanent skills at the beginning, it's hard to miss the permanents. A focused level, the skills accomplish wildly different and unexpected things. Yet not too hard. Like like like.

The Machine: Ruthless exploit of a psychological blind spot. The symmetry makes this harder, not easier. This level wins the special prize for most surprising spike in difficulty. The Zendo player in me is delighted.

Lego my lemmings: I solved this first try, and aked Icho afterwards whether the flickering trees were fire. But that's a tileset issue, not a level issue. It's probably okay, because my hunch was that the trees were fire. Using walker to cancel basher feels like a waste of walker at first, but the solution feels good with this, it undermines a wrong assumption gently. These little moments of enjoyment is what I seek in Lemmings.

Heaven and Earth: Very nice. Excellent and hard decisions where to use cloner, walker, blocker, when all would somehow work. I remember how I raged about NL, it didn't let me assign miner even though I wouldn't remove any steel. This level was soothing, that's strong.

Hailfire Peaks: Lovely blockers. Crucial height difference of a single pixel at the right, that looks unnecessarily precise, but may be okay in practice. Cute alcoves around the screen border, they never feel cramped, but cozy. Lemmings needs more of this.

Ursa Miner? Ursa MAJOR: Cute digging. I thought of your avatar the entire time during this level. The level is cute, and the dragon is too cute. Level feels very gronklingish, lots of attention to small-scale physics details, but never dishonest. Icho puts one screen full of decoration next to his levels? Who needs an extra screen, you can lay out everything comfortably in a fourth of the screen size, and still have massive space for deco.

Harkonnen Force: Very large, strange vertical scrolling, a daunting appearance. Eventually, the action concentrates on the small area, and becomes far less confusing than I suspected.

Bird Knight: I want to disable the background on this. I had to guess what is solid and what isn't, even though the answer has never affected my planning. The bashers are in short supply, I had luck and didn't waste bashers. This rewards sending multiple climbers, even though you could get away with fewer, that's fun. Then we watched Colorful Arty enjoying 30 minutes of Superlemmini on youtube, that was also fun.

Edit by namida: SPOILER TAGS!

-- Simon

[namida]

Just a reminder, there's about 10 days left to get any updates / late entries in (the deadline will extend if need be so that the update phase doesn't close until at least 72 hours after the last update / late entry).

[zanzindorf]

Thanks for the feedback on my level. I just posted a V3 that will hopefully help with the background issues. The background is now much darker, and the terrain is a little lighter. I previewed it on a few other monitors for testing, and it looks alright. My monitor's kinda off, so it sometimes makes art-making difficult

[bulletride]

[Simon]

I haven't looked at Wishing Well v14 yet, but I have watched the v13 intended route at Icho's.

Ideas for v13 (click to show/hide)

Remove the dig-build near the exit. That's not the core idea anyway, but a supplementary idea. The main idea is that you send the floater down, then back up, and down again. When you remove the dig-build at the exit, you can remove the digger, which is critical for my v13 backroute.

Alternatively, put one-ways on the wall at the exit. Then the dig-build becomes obvious, and you have sacrificed this extra idea again, to fix and focus on the main idea.

Bonus: When you trim the skillset, the level will allow fewer things that seem to work, but then fail for technical reasons. That was my main critique from my previous post.

-- Simon

[Crane]

I hate you!  But I believe they are now all patched, including Simon's little trick!  Took a minor redesign of the level, and it now allows a variant of the intended solution to be completed in time, even if you're very inefficient... but given the variant only has one incredibly small difference, I'll allow it!

[Simon]

Crane:Yeah, now I don't see anything but the intended route.

Attached replay times out by 2 or 3 seconds. Now I have to do it all over, except with RR 99 at the beginning? :-/ Does this even need a time limit?

geoo: Inseparables v2, looks intended. Hard puzzle, beautiful timing.

Nepster: Oh yes, here again v1. This feels backroutish, but it uses all the skills. It involved trial-and-error, yet makes perfect sense in the end.

-- Simon

[Crane]

Posted on the wrong board, Simon, but the replay doesn't work on the experimental version of the player... the lemming walks into the water.

Playing in the standard version though... bash closer to the wall so the lemming doesn't continue through the floor.

[Minim]

Being that this Wishing Well level has been updated so many times I thought I might give it a go.

And why not, I found a heavy backroute. Looks like you might need to release V16...

[Crane]

Oh bloomin' 'eck!  I really don't know how to patch that one because you can adjust the timing way too easily.

[Simon]

bash closer to the wall so the lemming doesn't continue through the floor.

Yeah, there are many micro-optimizations that will turn my attempt into a solution.

The issue is that the level punishes such non-optimized attempts. Why can I even bash such that the lem continues through the floor?

-- Simon