Author Topic: [NewFormatNL] Clammings  (Read 17748 times)

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Offline mobius

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Re: [NewFormatNL] Clammings
« Reply #15 on: March 31, 2018, 02:40:27 AM »
@Josh; thanks! will look at these soon
----
The following levels are out of order; [this is how they should've appeared]

Arcane 4 - Interval Training
Arcane 5 - A step two far?
Arcane 14 - Over and Under and Out

I don't know how this happened but I'll fix it for the next update.
everything by me: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=5982.msg96035#msg96035

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Offline mobius

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Re: [NewFormatNL] Clammings
« Reply #16 on: May 31, 2018, 01:02:23 AM »
Update: Some changes to music, and backroute fixes. See first post for full change log. Note that there's been an update to the music pack.

Thanks to joshescue for replays. Only Insane 4 was altered; the others were acceptable alternate solutions.
everything by me: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=5982.msg96035#msg96035

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Offline joshescue18

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Re: [NewFormatNL] Clammings
« Reply #17 on: May 31, 2018, 04:08:39 AM »
How about this?

Offline mobius

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Re: [NewFormatNL] Clammings
« Reply #18 on: May 31, 2018, 10:28:50 PM »
that's intended, nice job :thumbsup:
everything by me: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=5982.msg96035#msg96035

"Not knowing how near the truth is, we seek it far away."
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Offline Nessy

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Re: [NewFormatNL] Clammings
« Reply #19 on: June 09, 2018, 12:37:25 AM »
:8(): I finished Humane and Arcane! :8():

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Offline Nessy

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Re: [NewFormatNL] Clammings
« Reply #20 on: June 12, 2018, 09:44:25 PM »
:8(): I finished the first 16 levels of Insane! :8():

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Offline Nessy

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Re: [NewFormatNL] Clammings
« Reply #21 on: June 19, 2018, 10:54:10 PM »
:8(): I finished the last of Insane! :8():

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Offline mobius

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Re: [NewFormatNL] Clammings
« Reply #22 on: September 22, 2018, 01:00:15 AM »
Version 6 update:

Fixed an issue with the custom skill panel not displaying correctly. Thanks to Icho and Nessy for pointing this out.

backroutes:

I mistakenly thought I already looked at these latest replays by Nessy (a while ago) but I didn't!!
Thanks to Wafflem for reminding me (and Nessy for these replays)


Spoiler (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: September 22, 2018, 12:44:35 PM by mobius »
everything by me: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=5982.msg96035#msg96035

"Not knowing how near the truth is, we seek it far away."
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"I have seen a heap of trouble in my life, and most of it has never come to pass" - Mark Twain


Offline Akseli

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Re: [NewFormatNL] Clammings
« Reply #23 on: September 25, 2018, 09:33:51 PM »
Thanks mobius and Wafflem for this NeoLemmix pack of Clam's best stuff! :thumbsup:

I attached my solutions so far, solved 70/75, still remaining Insane 10, 20, 22, 24 and 25. I've played Clam's Lemmix packs 5 or so years ago, and now found some of the solutions I hadn't yet solved. :) I haven't touched ClamLix, those levels were new for me.

Here's Clam's packs in the Lemmings level database with level pictures. Levels from Lemmix packs that aren't in Clammings are:

- The Square Route of Lemmings (1-4)
- Singular Squish (1-9)
- Brick Replacement Therapy (2-7)
- Stay Out of the Pool!!! (2-10)
- RABBIX (3-2)
- Pillars of Hades (3-7)
- Rise Through the Ranks (4-2)
- Dropout (4-8)
- Singular Squish II (6-1)
- Digger convergence (6-4)
- 11 Xmas levels out of 13. Spiralling Snowstorm and Santa's Workshop are there, and they're real puzzles, others seem to be technical levels.
- Both CSTame packs. Ridiculous and technical solutions to already existing ONML levels.

Yeah, I pretty much agree with these levels that didn't make the cut, some of them have solutions that need original game mechanics, but most of them aren't that interesting. One okay level could have been ClamSpamXmas09 level 1: "Happy New Year: The Reversal!" but the three Christmas levels that are in Clammings already are perfect.

____________________

Then, ClamSpam05 and its repeats. Here's Clam's original post for challenge solutions in his pack. Did you mobius or Wafflem take these from here or where did you find them? Pretty nice. Advanced Altitude Training and OH NO! MORE WEE CREATURES, did you come up with these modified names yourselves?

The repeat for Lem Squared is named Square Squabble, that's in ClamLix and has the layout of Clammings Insane21: The Square Route of Lemming. The Square Route of Lemming was the title of ClamSpam01 level 4, that's not in the pack. These issues shouldn't matter too much, I'm just pointing them out if you weren't aware of them.
- Insane 14: Box of tricks - This level title is from a ClamLix level, that's somewhat similar to this (repeat for Circus lemmings in training), I guess.
- Arcane 13: A step two far? - Even 5 blockers are removed (from the original level) which makes this level even more hard and interesting, challenge solution was "just" save 100% with no builders.
- Guns Blazing challenge is seemingly "no bashers". There isn't this repeat in Clammings, but I have to say I don't have the slightest clue how that should be solvable.
- The other challenges aren't that interesting and they don't need to be in Clammings, yep.

More comments:

- Humane9: Web 3.0 - I can't find this from my laptop, but I'd recall it was 3-of-everything level, so it's been changed for Clammings?

- Humane18: Works on so many levels... - The decoration on the sides has been removed, even though all the other levels have most of the decoration.

- Humane22: Altitude Training - The one-way wall is missing, intended?

- Arcane10: About Face! - This level has changed somehow (in addition to welcome decoration), the steel blocks are attached to terrain and the lemmings are climbers by default, are these changes supposed to decrease multitasking?

- Insane7: Spiralling Snowstorm and 17: Santa's Workshop - Ooh, I love the song here and in addition, these two levels are absolutely fantastic! :thumbsup:

- Insane10: Urban-Ledge End - The song doesn't loop, it's all quiet after few minutes. :P

- Insane17: Santa's Work Shop - Why is the time limit 25 minutes, is there a funny story for this? :P

____________________

Finally some spoilery comments on the levels:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Oh yeah, and one more question: Do you know Clam's intended solutions for sure?
« Last Edit: September 25, 2018, 09:49:08 PM by Akseli »

Offline mobius

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Re: [NewFormatNL] Clammings
« Reply #24 on: September 26, 2018, 12:09:45 AM »
Thanks for all the comments! I will look over the replays when I can. (It may take me a while!)

We used the (or based on) the challenges from that link you posted.
We (mostly wafflem) came up with new names.
It's my belief that the "no bashers" is a typo on Clam's part. His own replays for that pack reveal his challenge solutions and in that level I think he uses no bombers, so he probably meant bombers instead of bashers. In any case I just didn't feel a repeat of this one was worth it.

Yes, Humane9 was changed.

Humane 22: yes; this is the easier version (with multiple solutions).

Arcane 10: these changes were necessary if the level was to be included; in the original there are gaps which bashers avoid but also need to be dropped through in that intended solution. This behavior no longer works in NL.

Insane10: Thanks for pointing that out! I'll look into it!

Insane17: The time limit is supposed to give a subtle hint to part of the solution (having to wait a while for lemmings to sync up). I might shorten it a bit thought since it's way more than necessary.

No; I am not 100% certain of Clam's intended solutions for sure because he's no longer active.
everything by me: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=5982.msg96035#msg96035

"Not knowing how near the truth is, we seek it far away."
-Hakuin Ekaku

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Offline kaywhyn

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Re: [NewFormatNL] Clammings
« Reply #25 on: December 19, 2020, 07:27:35 AM »
Hello mobius,

I have finished solving all of Clammings. Replays attached. I already gave you the link to my LP of the pack, but I'll go ahead and link it here as well.

LP link: Kaywhyn's LP of Clam's Clammings. Enjoy! :P

Thoughts on the Pack

At the very start of the LP, I mentioned that I haven't ever played any of Clam's levels before. However, this turned out to be very wrong, as I ended up recognizing many of the levels from the other pack you compiled, RotL. I think I might had ended up playing some of Clam's 10-level Dos packs from a long time ago, as I recognized far more than I thought I would. Because of this, it wasn't a complete blind LP as I thought it would be. However, a lot of time has passed that I pretty much don't remember solutions to any of his levels. Even then, that doesn't matter, as I still ended up being able to solve all of them, even if many of the levels took me a while.

This is a very well-done pack from start to finish. This appears to be a "best of Clam's levels pack," as the levels are taken from his various packs. It appears that Clam was huge on glitch levels, and so many of the levels had to be reworked in order to work properly in NL, since it eliminated all glitches. I'm not sure if this is correct, but I believe that's how the challenges for Lemmings and ONML got started? I'm guessing Dos/Lemmix was used and he ended up discovering a lot of glitches that initially weren't revealed but they later became well-known to this community. It's quite unfortunate that he's been inactive for a very long time and so I might not ever get a chance to meet and know him. He seems like a decent and great fellow from all the posts I've been reading from him during the times I have come to the Forums to read the discussions.

Regarding the difficulty of the pack, it starts off very easy with X-of-everything levels, but then the pack drops this at about the halfway point of the first rank. Once that happens, the pack immediately gets difficult and stays hard until you finish solving the pack. There are still some easy levels here and there, but for the most part progressing further into the pack the levels get quite hard. For that reason, despite being a 75-level pack, it gets hard very fast. It was then that I realized the pack wasn't going to be as quick of a solve as I thought it would. I ended up taking longer on the Arcane rank than I thought, and similarly with the Insane rank. Several levels ended up needing multiple videos to solve. Except for Sammings 1, this has been true for all the LPs I have done so far, where every pack I have LPed has at least one level that needed more than one video to solve. I suspect this will be true for all other packs I LP.

I absolutely loved the challenges that awaited me in the pack. I felt they all challenged me appropriately, especially since some of the hard levels felt extremely satisfying to solve once I was able to figure out the solution and get them to work. I've noticed that a lot of the levels were quite small in size, but don't be fooled. Most of them turned out to be hard levels. As has been true with most of the packs I have LPed, smalls levels give the appearance of being easy, but in actuality turn out to be hard, mostly due to the skillset. What makes them not as hard is due to how there isn't that much happening, though there are exceptions.


Humane Rank Feedback

Since the first several levels are very easy X-of-everything, I'm just going to do feedback on the ones that weren't. As was previously mentioned, the rank starts off easy but already starts getting difficult around the halfway point. That was the biggest sign to me that the rest of the pack wasn't going to be a cakewalk and not be a quick solve. The only levels I will remark on are Humane 9 - Web 3.0 and Humane 10 - Diagonal Construction. The former is probably the most difficult X-of-everything in the pack, although it's more due to navigating the top, but it's still an easy level due to the very lenient save requirement. The latter I thought is an excellent level due to how it encourages mixing up different skills to use instead of using just one skill over and over, e.g, some areas are better suited for platforming instead of using builders despite generally being better to get higher using builders.

Some Humane Levels Feedback (click to show/hide)


Arcane Rank Feedback

The pack is done playing around, and it only gets harder from here. Pretty good mix of challenges here.

Some Arcane Levels Feedback (click to show/hide)


Insane Rank Feedback

More hard levels await. Solving time slowed considerably in this rank, much more than the Arcane rank. Most of the time I could only solve 1-2 levels per video. Some videos dedicate just a single level! A lot of these were extremely satisfying to figure out and solve.

Some Insane Levels Feedback (click to show/hide)


Clam did a great job with these levels, and again I absolutely enjoyed solving this pack. It was very satisfying figuring a lot of these levels out. The levels especially got hard in both the Arcane and Insane ranks, but nothing too overly hard that I wasn't able to handle. Thank you to you and Wafflem for converting the pack to New Formats and keeping Clam's legacy alive. It would be nice to meet Clam, but I'm not going to keep my hopes up that he will eventually come online here, not after having been absent from here for years.   
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPMqwuqZ206rBWJrUC6wkrA - My YouTube channel and you can also find my playlists of Lemmings level packs that I have LPed
kaywhyn's blog: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=5363.0

Offline Proxima

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Re: [NewFormatNL] Clammings
« Reply #26 on: December 19, 2020, 09:56:46 AM »
Great review! I just wanted to reply to a few points....

It appears that Clam was huge on glitch levels, and so many of the levels had to be reworked in order to work properly in NL, since it eliminated all glitches. I'm not sure if this is correct, but I believe that's how the challenges for Lemmings and ONML got started? I'm guessing Dos/Lemmix was used and he ended up discovering a lot of glitches that initially weren't revealed but they later became well-known to this community.

The original challenges thread was started by LemSteven in 2005. I had a look back just now and was surprised to notice that the 35-page thread ended in February 2006; all that work and all those discoveries happened in less than a year! Although other people (including me) posted, virtually all the discoveries were made by LemSteven, ccexplore and tseug, with ccexplore in particular discovering most of the glitches. In this period, new glitches were largely kept secret in case their discoverers wanted to use them in new custom levels (yes, that was seen as legitimate back then).

Clam joined the forum in 2008. All the major glitches had been found by then, but were still secret. As far as I can tell, Clam managed to rediscover all the glitches by himself (though obviously with the help of hints from knowing what challenge results had been achieve with them), and he was the first to reveal all the known glitches.

Quote
Humane 15 - Play Bridge IIRC I believe this was somewhat a huge step up in difficulty for the Picnic rank of RotL.

This level was incongruously placed among the skill tutorial levels in RotL, just because it uses builders only. Obviously, I will be moving it to later in the rank for the new-formats version of RotL :P

Quote
Humane 20 - Lemming Pachinko I think this is the very first level to break the long streak of levels that I have played before by Clam. This definitely wasn't in the other engines due to the stoner skill, since it is a NL exclusive skill.

Actually, it's originally a Lix level. NL's stoner isn't exactly the same as Lix's cuber (the cuber makes a square of terrain, and can't be assigned in mid-air), but they are similar enough to be interchangeable in many cases.

Offline Turrican

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Re: [NewFormatNL] Clammings
« Reply #27 on: December 19, 2020, 12:10:14 PM »
First of all , great job on beating the pack , and on your LP! :thumbsup:

To add to what Proxima said , several of the glitches and non-glitch tricks , the participants of the challenge boards had discovered , would also make it on custom levels they have made (assuming that they were active in the custom levels scene too , not all of the participants were).

So in that case you could find glitch levels , amongst other levels in their levelpacks , but in any case the number of glitch levels was moderate , because when you create a small 10 levels pack , you don't have the luxury of dedicating a large part of a pack to a single type of level.

Clam if I remember correctly , had two glitch levels in his main packs ( "Get out from the pool!" , and "Rise through the ranks" )

But most of his glitch levels could be found in his CSTame packs ( CSTame 1 + 2 ) .

The CSTame packs were two packs , Clam made in 2009 , and their purpose were , to make the Tame levels from onml much more challenging. These packs were practically "challenges:The levelpack" , because they contained 20 challenges ( 1 for each Tame level ) , tranformed into custom levels.

The players here had two options: They could load the two packs and try to complete the levels , or they could load the dos version of onml , and try to complete the challenges there.

Because the challenges needed to work the same way in onml , things like what Willlem did in his pack ( like adding additional opening hatches ) , were not allowed in these packs. You are not allowed to make a single change on the terrain , when you design these levels/challenges , because every solution needs to also work on dos onml , exactly the same way. And for that reason , the concept of backroutes doesn't exist for these levels/packs.

As a result some of these Tame-based levels ended to be some of Clam's hardest levels (probably harder comparted to the levels that exist here in Clammings).

And also some of these levels , ended as some of the most high quality glitch levels that have ever appeared in dos/Lemmix ( levels like "Now you're stuck" , "The squares fight back" and "LemmisXVIII" ) .

Also several of the levels had a very strict time limit because they were practically speedrun challenges ( with most notable example the final level , called "Speed run challenge!" , which required you to save 100% in Tame 20 in 30 seconds. you had 1 minute time limit , but you needed to beat it with 30 seconds remaining on the clock ) .
« Last Edit: December 19, 2020, 05:24:15 PM by Turrican »
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Offline kaywhyn

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Re: [NewFormatNL] Clammings
« Reply #28 on: December 20, 2020, 10:52:39 AM »
Thanks for the useful info, gentlemen! :thumbsup: Especially to Proxima for linking the glitch topics.

The original challenges thread was started by LemSteven in 2005. I had a look back just now and was surprised to notice that the 35-page thread ended in February 2006; all that work and all those discoveries happened in less than a year! Although other people (including me) posted, virtually all the discoveries were made by LemSteven, ccexplore and tseug, with ccexplore in particular discovering most of the glitches. In this period, new glitches were largely kept secret in case their discoverers wanted to use them in new custom levels (yes, that was seen as legitimate back then).

It's understandable, considering that they didn't want others to know about them just yet, if ever.

Quote
Clam joined the forum in 2008. All the major glitches had been found by then, but were still secret. As far as I can tell, Clam managed to rediscover all the glitches by himself (though obviously with the help of hints from knowing what challenge results had been achieve with them), and he was the first to reveal all the known glitches.

This definitely explains why a lot of his levels are so hard, because he did a really good job of using glitches and enforcing them in his levels. Even if they weren't glitch levels, they're still quite hard anyway, as I found out from my LP of Clammings :XD:

Quote
Quote
Humane 15 - Play Bridge IIRC I believe this was somewhat a huge step up in difficulty for the Picnic rank of RotL.

This level was incongruously placed among the skill tutorial levels in RotL, just because it uses builders only. Obviously, I will be moving it to later in the rank for the new-formats version of RotL :P

Well, it's not hard if you allow yourself to lose some lemmings. It's definitely much harder going for the 100% solution, although it's still not too hard. Even then, I don't think I'm the only one to say that the level's a big step up in difficulty.

First of all , great job on beating the pack , and on your LP! :thumbsup:

Thanks for the kind words, Turrican! :thumbsup:

Quote
But most of his glitch levels could be found in his CSTame packs ( CSTame 1 + 2 ) .

The CSTame packs were two packs , Clam made in 2009 , and their purpose were , to make the Tame levels from onml much more challenging. These packs were practically "challenges:The levelpack" , because they contained 20 challenges ( 1 for each Tame level ) , tranformed into custom levels.

The players here had two options: They could load the two packs and try to complete the levels , or they could load the dos version of onml , and try to complete the challenges there.

As a result some of these Tame-based levels ended to be some of Clam's hardest levels (probably harder comparted to the levels that exist here in Clammings).

And also some of these levels , ended as some of the most high quality glitch levels that have ever appeared in dos/Lemmix ( levels like "Now you're stuck" , "The squares fight back" and "LemmisXVIII" ) .

Also several of the levels had a very strict time limit because they were practically speedrun challenges ( with most notable example the final level , called "Speed run challenge!" , which required you to save 100% in Tame 20 in 30 seconds. you had 1 minute time limit , but you needed to beat it with 30 seconds remaining on the clock ).

Thanks for the useful info. I have yet to try his ONML Tame levels, but I'm doubtful I would be able to solve them myself. As familiar as I am with the Dos version having grown up with it, there's plenty of glitches I don't even know about, let alone be able to work them out and get them to work.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPMqwuqZ206rBWJrUC6wkrA - My YouTube channel and you can also find my playlists of Lemmings level packs that I have LPed
kaywhyn's blog: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=5363.0

Offline Proxima

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Re: [NewFormatNL] Clammings
« Reply #29 on: December 20, 2020, 02:22:10 PM »
It's understandable, considering that they didn't want others to know about them just yet, if ever.

That doesn't answer the question of why they [mainly ccexplore] didn't want others to know about the glitches. The only excuse that was given at the time was "I might want to make custom levels requiring these glitches, which people therefore won't be able to solve", which felt weak even at the time; it feels crazy looking back, now that culture has changed and we understand that glitch levels are not much fun because it's like being asked to solve a puzzle when the rules are hidden from you.

And this was a time when Lemmix was the primary engine for custom content. Designers who weren't aware of the glitches still had to live in fear of having their levels ruined by glitch solutions, which were considered to be valid backroutes. Sharing knowledge of the glitches would have been a huge benefit to the designing side of the community, but as I said, it didn't happen for years after they were first discovered.

I don't want to sound like I'm attacking ccexplore, who has always been a great community member. I just never understood this particular decision, and still don't.
« Last Edit: December 20, 2020, 02:28:27 PM by Proxima »