Breakout (Tricky 25): a depiction of the Breakout game, with the lemmings walking diagonally to emulate the direction of the flying ball
You could easily be forgiven for thinking this - I did too until I actually opened up the level in an editor - but the lemmings do not actually walk diagonally in that level. It's an illusion created by creating the level mostly out of deflector blocks and having the base land at a 45 degree angle.
Hole in one, two, three! (Mayhem 75): a golf course (the first one, Hole in Ten, looks more abstract)
Fun fact: These two levels
were not even created by the same author ("Hole In Ten" was Martin Hall; "Hole In One, Two Three" was James Thomas). I'd entirely believe the similar name could even be a coincidence.
I'd also say including levels like Family Tree and Across The Network here is a stretch. They're pretty arbitrary designs made with things that
look like computer chips. (On the other hand, "Motherboard", while far from perfect, definitely does at least attempt to specifically look like a motherboard.) Likewise, Tricky 30 and 34, a pyramid is a pretty standard shape, and they're more one element in the level than anything else - I feel this is almost like saying "I put in a pyramid-shaped terrain piece, so this is now an artistic level featuring pyramids" in NeoLemmix.
On the other hand, I'd argue that "Garden Maze" could be added to the list. Also, "Play Time" looks like a house with a tree near it from the right angle - it's a bit more abstract in that, rather than being something outright, it forms a 2D picture when looked at from the right angle in 3D.
In terms of what L3D is capable of - some further examples can be found in my pack (link in signature; from there, you can find a link to a Youtube playlist of solutions if you don't want to actually download and play the pack, although not all level solutions are up yet):
Fun 3 "Lemmings on a Train" - A train. A few of L3D's cosmetic options are even used to make the train look like it's moving.
Fun 4 "Performance Tower" - A "pushing it" case, but a tower.
Fun 11 "Device Upgrade" - A slightly newer PC. Note that this level is an edit of Fun 8 from the official levels.
Fun 12 "The Armageddon Machine" - The Omegamatic (sometimes known as the Armageddon Machine) from Commander Keen 5.
Fun 14 "Pac-Lems" - The "typical" PacMan layout.
Fun 15 "The Mansion - A mansion. Or at least, one face of it.
Fun 18 "Just Let It Bee" - A bee next to a flower.
Tricky 21 "Sputlem IV" - A satellite, or at least some weird space device.
Tricky 25 "The Moat" - A moat around a (small) castle.
Tricky 30 "Longboy" -
haha long boyTricky 32 "Guard Wall" - A ridiculously oversized wall.
Tricky 34 "Mysterious Artifacts - This actually doesn't replicate anything specifically, but is designed to sort of look like it replicates something
in general.
Tricky 40 "Data Corruption" - A bit of a stretch, but at least part of the levels (the odd shapes of land areas, the intentionally-glitchy sea, the random electric panels) are meant to give a "corrupt" appearance.
Taxing 49 "Big Green Birb" - A
male eclectus parrot.
Taxing 50 "Longboy (Part 2)" -
haha long boy, but actually standing up this time
Taxing 54 "The Claw" - A generic carnival-type ride; unlike "Fun Fair" from the official game, it's not trying to replicate any
specific ride.
Taxing 55 "Walk The Plank!" - Title should say it all.
Taxing 56 "Ultimate Lemja Warrior" - A "Ninja Warrior" style course, inside a circus tent.
Mayhem 72 "Acrobatics" - A bunch of trapezes, mostly.
(Tricky 36 "Firewall" is not intended to replicate an "actual firewall", which in reality is usually not even something that has a physical form. It's just a computer-themed name. And while most of my Lemgo levels try to replicate something; Taxing 46 "Short 'n Simple" and Mayhem 78 "Activity Center" do not and are just abstract layouts.)
That's 19 out of 80, or roughly 1/4. Not quite as good as the official levels do, but I'd say this is probably much more than my NeoLemmix packs tend to have. I didn't conciously decide "I'm going to make a lot of artistic levels" (except in the Lemgo levels, where I usually did aim for some kind of artistic aspect). I also probably haven't been as lenient on the castle levels as you have; for example, you'd quite possibly consider Mayhem 73 "The Grand Arch" for inclusion on the list too.
But I feel this is definitely strong enough to say - it's not just level designer preference among L3D's creators; L3D really does lend itself more strongly to artistic style levels.
Wild tileset mixing to get as close as possible to an actual location in the world is probably not possible inside the L3D editor anyway
This is correct. You could mix a background from one style, block face graphics from another, signs from yet another, non-interactive objects from yet another again, interactive objects from again another style (although many of the objects aren't too tightly tied to a style in the first place, to be fair). You could then give the level a preview wallpaper and music from
another style (although the preview wallpaper and music must be of the same style).
However, within any specific one of these categories, you can't mix, except by creating custom graphic files (and in the case of interactive objects, not even then - you're strictly limited to one type of interactive object per level, although some things that would count as interactive objects in NeoLemmix do
not count as such in L3D, most notably entrances and exits). So you can't, for example, create a level half out of Lemgo blocks and half out of Space blocks (unless you made a custom TEXTURE.xxx file, that is).
For reference, the things that actually count as interactive objects in L3D are - teleporter, spring, rope slide, trampoline, and all 5 types of triggered traps. Anything else does not - so exits, entrances, splitters, water, one way arrows, steel, ice, antisplat pads* etc do not - these are usually properties of blocks; the "zap" effect on the sides and top of the level is instead a property of the level itself.
* Yes, these exist in L3D. No official level visibly uses them, though a few levels have invisible ones for technical reasons, and there's at least one case where a level randomly has one for no reason whatsoever in a location it's not even possible to land on from stun height, let alone splat height.On this note, if you want to *really* go for authentic, some interactive objects have limits on how much they can be used. You can only have four spring/landing-pad pairs, or four rope slides. You can have eight teleporter pairs, although note that L3D's teleporters are bidirectional. All other objects can be used infinitely. And another concern - levels in L3D need to either be small, or sparse. If a level has too many blocks, L3D will start to glitch and not display all of them correctly, and destructive skills might start not working correctly. The levels "Walk The Plank!", "Breaking The Routine" and "Power Distribution" in my pack are all levels that push it
very, very close with this limit.
EDIT: As a point of interest, L3D has a couple of block face graphic sets that seem to be made entirely for the purpose of a single level - relevant levels include "Corkscrew Digger", "Breakout", "Lemmhanger", "Land Ahoy", "Dot To Dot", "Lemmtris" and "Fun Fair", as well as the rope slide practice level. (There's probably at least one or two more I missed here.)