Ok, my latest custom L2 level is
finally ready; I've been working on and off on this over the past months or so. This time I've chosen (originally for puzzle reasons) the Shadow tribe, which actually is pretty good for level design in terms of availability of "straight" pieces. The only con to working with that tribe, and this is partly a deficiency with GP's editor, is that because everything's in shades of dark blue, it can be very difficult to tell visually what the various tiles look like until you put it into the level. It's also not a great style to use obviously if you crave color, but I find myself generally pretty uncoordinated color-wise anyway.
Gold is save all lemmings. The title "Mission: Impossible?" actually was inspired by the theme music of the Shadow tribe, but I can easily understand if you think it refers to the level's difficulty.
Actually, I have to say I'm a bit ambivalent about the intended solution. You know it's worrisome when even the level creator usually takes half a dozen or so tries to successfully execute the intended solution.
Part of it I'll say is necessary evil for the intended solution (which sounded good on paper, I swear
), although I suppose there are one or two places where it might be possible to ease up on precision, though doing so may require doing things like changing the level's visual design or adding skills, which I decided to be problematic. At least now that I've introduced a
good way to frame-step in DOSBox, hopefully it'll help keep down the frustration level resulting from some of the precision. I'll also say that this level is
not a case of precision for precision's sake, at least not intentionally, so think twice if you find your solution seems to feature precision that exists for no good reason.
I've taken some time at backroute elimination and managed to convince myself that despite a number of potential backroutes, they do not actually work due to lack of skills. Of course, level creators are the worst when it comes to judging backroutes of their own levels, so feel free to prove me wrong! I might even feel pity at the slight difficulty at executing the intended solution and give you a free pass on it.
(Nah.)
Oh, one more thing: the Shadow tribe is notorious for having lots of background graphics, and it's not always obvious what is background and what isn't. Therefore, I've attached a screenshot of the level in GP editor's "reveal mode" so there's no question as to what's what. You'll note that just as before, I've kept the usage of foreground vs background graphics absolutely consistent with how the official L2 levels do it in the Shadow tribe. The background graphics are definitely very helpful in this level visual-design-wise, as the general form of the level naturally leads to certain areas that would otherwise be somewhat empty.
Good luck!
[edit: forgot to mention, feel free to PM me if you want to know you're on the right track with a solution that you just have trouble executing]
[edit2: another random thought: feel free to add a superlemming or two to the level if you feel it helps you explore various areas in the level (obviously any solutions that need the extra skills don't count). I'd argue you don't really need this because I think you still have enough skills to get at least
one lemming to just about anywhere in the level, but hey, whatever helps.]