Save One : do you have what it takes to save one Lemming ? (16 levels, medium)

[Guigui]

Hello WillLem,

Thank you a lot for the write up and the kind words ! I'm glad you had a good time with the EON rank. Things may get a bit tougher after, but all remain accessible I hope.

Indeed the pack is small, mainly because I do not have that much time to create many levels and I cannot think about something else when I have a level creation in mind. So I had to get those levels out to be able to move onto something else. I guess this is less intimidating than 100+ levels packs.

Also about the decoration in the levels, thank you again for noticing and appreciating them. Those took way longer than expected to create ; each time I decided to add decoration, they created unwanted backroutes. Countless times during playtests, IchoTolot used what was supposed to be decorations to destroy the levels, evil him !


As for your replays they are perfectly fine and almost intended, congratulations !

I say "almost" intended because of EON 2 : Trust Your Lucky Star ? (the one with big vertical structure at the end). Details under spoilers :

Spoiler

The clever solution you give makes very little use of the crowd : just need a bomber apart from pionneer. Intended uses the crowd a bit more.
I always think interaction with the crowd is better ; if the pionneer can go in by himself, then the whole "Save One" theme falls apart.
I'll certainly work a bit more on the vertical structure to enforce things. I have to find a way to ensure that if one lemming bashes through the structure, then he cannot stop without using a skill.

[kaywhyn]

Ouch, now comes the time when kaywhyn will LP my pack, such a good time  . Many thanks to you, and this whole forum, for making the Lemmings game alive.

Our pleasure! We're very happy to have you!

I'm also very glad that IchoTolot playtested the pack, he helped a lot. Because of the whole "you can only Save One lemming" thing, levels tend to be very prone to backroutes. A single mistake and all Lemmings can go in, not good.
At first I was working alone : make a Save One level --> playtest --> find it's nice --> go to sleep --> launch the level again the morning after --> find 3 backroutes that save more than one --> 

Yup, happens even to the best of us. I've been making custom Lemmings levels for 4 years now and I still haven't gotten a lot better at backroute fixing myself Similarly, just ask others who have been in the level making scene far longer than me, and they will tell you that their levels have still been known to get backrouted. Doesn't matter how long one has been making levels. A person could possibly have been making levels for twice as long, or maybe three times as long, as me (just look at how many patches Lemmings United received after Icho released it!), but still backroutes can result. With experience, over time the amount of backroutes can be drastically reduced, though on occasion one or two can still slip by unnoticed That's pretty much why people have testers for their levels/packs!

So I quickly understood that my solving skills were not good enough to ensure the pack to be solid and asked IchoTolot for help.

Nah, your solving skills are far better than you give yourself credit for. For example, you were able to complete DoveLems, Lemmings Plus 1, nearly all of Weirdyland, and I believe all of Quest for Kieran? This is quite an accomplishment, I must say, so congrats! Even if there are a few levels of a pack you couldn't solve, it is also, in my opinion, a great achievement to come very close to solving all of a level pack, especially one that is really hard

I recently explained to another member in this community that it is a misconception that everyone here is an expert Lemmings level solver. What is true is that nearly every member here has completed at least one of the official Lemmings games and hence possess adequate knowledge of the game. However, few have been able to solve completely many custom Lemmings level packs. This is in large part due to how custom packs tend to be far harder than the official games themselves. The hardest custom packs make ONML look like a pushover, even though a lot of us, myself included, really struggled with that game back in the days.

The only reason why I asked Icho instead of you kaywhyn is because he is moderator on this subforum and he seemed to be more active than you on the forum at this time, I did not want to bother you.

No worries at all. It's simply letting you know that you can also ask me to playtest your levels for future reference You're right that for the last few months I kind of gave the appearance that I wasn't around. In truth, I was, where I checked in a few times whenever I could each day, and simply didn't have anything to post on the site