Quote from: WillLem on November 19, 2024, 03:56:36 PMMulti-hatchers are one of my favourite types of level! Most of the ones I've played/designed tend to fit into one of two styles; "each for themselves" levels where the goal is to guide each lemming/group separately (either towards the same exit or perhaps a few different ones), and "herding cats" levels where the crowds need to be gathered together. Either type of level can feature path crossovers or one group doing something to help another group, or can keep each path entirely separate (or a mix of the two).

Yeah, with 12 of these levels to make I did use a variety of styles and level sizes - the long/flat ones are a journey from end-to-end, the tall/thin ones have a circular flow (at least in parts) and the other ones tended to be a series of branches that congregate in the middle or to one side.

The link to the level pack is in my sig 

Quote from: WillLem on February 07, 2024, 08:55:29 PM

Quote from: Simon on August 27, 2023, 10:23:54 AMIn NL 12.5.5 12.12.5, this rewinds to two ticks before the assignment has happened
...
Years ago, NL had a bug where cutting the replay would cut one frame too late. Is this rewinding behavior an obsolete workaround for that bug? Or is there another reason?

...I'll see if I can get it to "one tick before assignment" in SLX - I'll investigate the bugfix and see if there's any reason it can't be done.

Finally got around to investigating this. Turns out that namida fixed the "-2" bug (in Commit 9c665ca), so NL (and indeed SLX) actually skips back only 1 frame prior to the previous assignment. Or, at least, it should.

When checking in the program itself, there is in fact an additional frame to step over before the assignment takes place.

I wonder if, prior to namida's fix, it was necessary to step over 2 frames. If so, then the current behaviour (having to step over 1 frame) is technically correct according to what's written in the code; i.e. the "Previous Assignment" hotkey which performs this skip asks NL to skip to "TargetFrame -1".

Is having to step over a single frame desirable? Or, is the expected behaviour that the next mouse click (i.e. to step forward 1 frame) should advance to the assignment frame? I wonder what the purpose of the extra frame is...?

It would be an easy fix, anyway (at least in NL/SLX); we'd simply ask it to skip to the "TargetFrame" itself.

E(*)D, where (*) represents each of the 26 letters of the alphabet (e.g. EAD, EBD, ECD, etc.).

EDIT: In addition, please test every letter of the alphabet individually (*), as a string of length 2 (**), as a string of length 3 (***), and as a string of length 4 (****).

Please by all means express the results of this guess as a statement rather than adding each string to the list of koans.

Multi-hatchers are one of my favourite types of level! Most of the ones I've played/designed tend to fit into one of two styles; "each for themselves" levels where the goal is to guide each lemming/group separately (either towards the same exit or perhaps a few different ones), and "herding cats" levels where the crowds need to be gathered together. Either type of level can feature path crossovers or one group doing something to help another group, or can keep each path entirely separate (or a mix of the two).

One of my earliest levels You have to be kidding me features 20 hatches, but each only spawns a single lemming (this was before I knew about pre-placed lemmings).

The idea of the level is similar to what you've outlined here...

Quote from: Ste Woz Ere on November 18, 2024, 10:16:07 PMthe last level in each tribe of my Lemmings 2 pack has 10 trapdoors...the idea being about rescuing many small pockets of lemmings instead of a big crowd going from A to B

...and, I discovered pretty much the same pros and cons as the ones you've listed. In particular, I now greatly dislike the fact that this level can't be solved without using player assists or (at least) constantly pausing and moving backwards and forwards across the map - lesson learned! A later contest level Lemmy Watch The Stars employs 4 hatches and is less obnoxious in its requirement of multi-tasking and map-jumping, but is still virtually impossible to play without using player assists (and, the skillset is way too restrictive to suit the level's "herding cats" style).

With the Lemminas II pack, I feel like I finally got the balance right with multi-taskers. Oh No! It's The 5TH DIMENSION!!! can be completed in real-time, whilst presenting a challenge in which at least two of the lems must perform tasks to help the others along their route. Meanwhile, CPU Test #8 is essentially a much more playable version of You have to be kidding me. It turns out that the key with "each for themselves" levels is in the timing; ideally, it should be possible to assign the skills in real-time, either one after the other or with some gap in between each assignment. That way the focus is more on the puzzle of working out which skill to assign to which lemming, and the assignments can be made without over-reliance on player assists. Bonus points for keeping the map to a single screen's width!

Lemminas im Kraftwerk is more of a "herding cats" type of level. It's probably too difficult to attempt without player assists (although it is technically possible), but provides plenty of skills and allows a lot of room for error and player interpretation. The lesson I learned here is that when it comes to the "cat-herders", it's way too frustrating when the skillset is also demandingly limited; what's needed here is to give the player a chance to get creative. Even And then there were four... from L1 has a very generous skillset, because the challenge is in herding the four separate crowds to the exit rather than solving a limited-skillet puzzle; the player has to delegate the skills between the crowds themselves, and that's what makes this kind of level more enjoyable to solve.

Good luck with it! Where can I play your L2 levels?

Wow, that's a really interesting guess Simon. But a counterexample is AAA which does not have matching sets as per your rule, but is marked white.

White koans:
* AAA    I
  E    * N
  EEE  * NED
  END    NEE
  ENE    NEN
  ENN    NNN
  EXD    U
  HHH

Black koans:
  BEGIN    EAGLE
  CD       FINISH
* CDE      LEMMING
  CED      NDE
  CH       STA
  DDD      STAR
  DNE      START

This is about the shape of the letters.

AKHTBN iff (first shoving the letters together to remove the gaps between them, then taking the convex hull of the entire koan) is the same set as (first taking the convex hull of each letter individually, and only then shoving the hulls together to remove the gaps between them).

Examples:

• The convex hull of H is a filled rectangle. Three such filled rectangles next to each other can be shoved together to make a long rectangle, which is already convex and thus identical to the convex hull of HHH.
  
• All 26 single-letter koans will be white.
  
• You can insert EHEXIHHX in the center (but not necessarily at either end) of a white koan, keeping it white.
  
• The letters D and B can appear at the end, but not anywhere earlier.
  
• The letter C has a little dent in the top-right, which the convex hull of CH fills, therefore CH is black.
  

-- Simon

CDE
N
NED

Quote from: Silken Healer on November 18, 2024, 08:05:57 PMNone disproved Proxmia's guess at the time of posting though, so it's still in the rules you need to provide a counter-example.

Since there's an actual turn order in live Zendo but playing by forum allows multiple guesses in one go before marking koans, I just resolved the guesses in my own particular order. We could add a "turn order" rule if you like.

Once again with the new batch of guesses there exist counterexamples to the last rule guess (and even before that the koan NDE is a counterexample).

White koans:
* E    * HHH
  EEE  * I
  END  * NEE
  ENE  * NEN
* ENN    NNN
* EXD  * U

Black koans:
  BEGIN    FINISH
* CD       LEMMING
* CED      NDE
* CH       STA
  DDD      STAR
  DNE      START
  EAGLE

You're both right. Yes, Ramond has to provide a counterexample, and he chose NNN, which is a valid counterexample. I wanted to test NNN anyway, but there's no rule that prevents Ramond from looking at future posts. He could have chosen something else to help us more, but it's still early in the round and he wants to give as little away as possible.

CD
CED
CH
E
HHH
I
U
EXD

-- Simon