Hi! This post was inspired by a groupie level on Strato Incendus lemmings world tour levelpack. The level in question was inspired by Clam , and it inspired me to put some thoughts about Clam's level design philosophy, chalenge solutions in general , and how Clam was influenced by the challenges board. Originally I had posted this post in the world tour thread , but it was way off topic so I instead , decided to put it here.
Original post:
Hi Strato! After seeing the description for the groupie level for Clam, I decided to put here some thoughts about the author, and more importantly to put here a small piece of the lemmingsforums history , back in the beginning of the decade. Personally I joined the forum in 2013. There were several authors whose packs made me solving custom packs , but Clam was the main one and he is still my favourite level designer. This post is not a critique for the groupie level . Unfortunately I didn't have the opportunity to try the pack , very probably I will try it next month. This post is just an opportunity to put here some small pieces of the history of the forum.
Clam's main characteristic is that he liked small levels. I remember him saying that he liked to see what you can fit in one screen in terms of level size. Now for the exact quote I need to dig older threads but that's I remember him saying (another older user can correct me if I am wrong here). In any case he seemed fan of the idea that "less is more".
Also the way he designed his level had influences from challenge solutions in the challenges board ( ther were also other authors that had the same phlosophy like Geoo and Tseug). Back in the day almost every old member were participating in the challenges board. Clam was one of the most regular members there. There are still a lot of members here that were regulars in the challenges board, but unfortunately that board is not visited often nowadays because almost everything in terms of records has already been achieved. But you can still have a thread like the "oh!no more challenges" one and you can even make it Neolemmix exclusive if you want.
The vast majority of the challenge solutions were the several records that we have now, but you could setup a challenge solution with adittional requirements if you wanted ( for example: save 100% in the "what an awesome level" without the use of builders ). One characteristic of the challenge solutions is that the concept of a backroute was nonexistent for them . You needed to achieve the record period. For example Alfonz1986 , a regular of the challenge board achieved the world record for Wicked 9 by using a not known before builder trick that took his name afterwards. Ccexplore achieved the same record but with a different method. Both the solutions were legit.
And you could find other stories like this from that board. A newcomer back then named Fernito was browsing the max savings thread and he was stunned because of the "save me" record (78/80 lemmings saved). He was like " save me Is my favourite level and I was proud of my 95% solution . How the 78/80 solution is possible? " And then a regular of the challenges board , Lemsteven, guided him step by step and gave him all the hints needed. Fernito then managed and completed his favourite level with the world record solution. Here is the link for his awesome solution:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX9UTfUNrOUAlso I can't leave a post talking about challenges without posting Geoo's legendary Tame 13 , 1 bulder , save 100% .
link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by3MunMkw1MClam not only had been influenced by the challenges board for his design philosophy, but released two packs that were practically challenge solutions.
These were called cstame 1 and 2. These were practically the onml tame levels "challenge edition" . Instead of describing how the challenges are setup he made two packs with challenge levels. There were some easy levels there , but most were pretty challenging. Several of the levels had very strict time limits (because there were practically speedrun challenges) , with most characteristic the final level called "speedrun challenge" and it was tame 20 , but you had to complete it in less than 30 seconds ( and things like framestepping and rewind didn't exist back then ).The pack also had some levels that required the use of glitches in order to be solved. That's was because using glitches was pretty common in challenge and world record solutions back then , and the cstame packs as I said, were challenge solutions. Two examples of glitch levels from these packs were " now you are struck" and "the squares fight back"