Colorful Arty's new levelpack

[Colorful Arty]

Hey everyone!

Just wanted to let people know, I have officially started work on a new levelpack for NeoLemmix! I will be posting here occasionally to let people know how progress is going.

I'm not going to say too much now, but I will say this. It will use custom tilesets as well as the main 9, I have already selected the difficulty names, and it will be very different from other levelpacks...

Also, I have finished only five or six levels for it so far, so it will not be released for a LONG while.

[Colorful Arty]

Hello everyone!

I just had a slew of ideas for levels this week, so I have made some decent progress. My level count went up by around 3 or 4 this week (which I consider good progress). I was in a slump these past few weeks, so I have taken to sketching out ideas during work, and then quickly building them in NeoLemmix Editor. Hopefully this productivity will keep up in the following weeks.

Also, a few of the levels I have made will be sent to rtw for his Lemmings Streams, so check in to those for a sneak peek at my pack.

[Colorful Arty]

Hello friends!

Good news/bad news time. The bad news is I really haven't had any good ideas for this pack in a while, so development has slowed down to a crawl. I think I have only made 1 or 2 new levels in over a month.

The good news is, you can have a say in the music for my pack. I'm on the lookout for some good music for this pack (particularly classical music as it tends to be public-domain and AWESOME), so if you know of any, please let me know, and I'll check it out!

Also, if you guys have any suggestions on how to come up with good level ideas, they would be appreciated, as I am in a huge level idea slump right now.

[Simon]

you guys have any suggestions on how to come up with good level ideas

Two main methods:

• Design a landscape, paying attention only to its look. Then carve out a level.
• Play difficult levels by other designers. Turn a failing idea into a new level.

-- Simon

[namida]

Create an X-of-everything type level. Look for challenge solutions that could become their own levels. Discard original X-of-everything level (or keep it, if your pack is doing the repeats thing), use challenging version.

This is an approach I used to use all the time; I don't find myself using it so much anymore.

[Colorful Arty]

Thanks for the suggestions guys! I really appreciate your input, and I'll definitely give those methods a try!

I did make one new level over the last 2 days, and managed to touch up most of my other levels. The results are spectacular!

Progress right now looks like this:

Rank 1 (An): 12/20 levels
Rank 2 (Me): 9/20 levels
Rank 3 (Re): 2/20 levels
Rank 4 (Ba): 3/20 levels
Rank 5 (Ne): 5/20 levels
Rank 6 (Ro): 3/20 levels
Rank 7 (Mo): 6/20 levels

Looking at them makes me realize how very far I still have to go. I have not decided on the number of levels per rank, but right now I'm leaning towards 20. Ideally I'd like to do 30, but I think if I aim for that this pack won't be finished for years, or maybe ever. Finding music has been a challenge, but I've found some really epic tracks that SHOULDN'T result in copyright claims.

I'll keep the level progress updated as I go.

[Colorful Arty]

Well, since returning to college, I can say level progress has not increased all that much. I have had ideas for several cool levels, but building them takes time, which is something I don't have a lot of these days. Hopefully, after a few weeks I can be more productive as I finish up projects, papers, midterms, and work on getting an internship this coming summer. Thanks for being so patient, and thank you to everyone who has suggested good classical music to me!

[Colorful Arty]

Just finished converting all necessary levels to graphic set mixing rather than giant tilesets. The load times are much better!

[Colorful Arty]

I have had a huge burst of creativity recently and had ideas for over 10 new levels! I'm so happy that progress is finally starting to pick up! Unfortunately, due to Thanksgiving break with my family, final exams, Christmas, and Youtube stuff, I'm finding it hard to make levels in a timely fashion, so I'm unlikely to create them all before 2017.

[Colorful Arty]

Right now, I've decided to only aim for 20 levels per rank, so as to set a realistic goal for myself and not to get overwhelmed.

This pack will likely come out in 2018, as if I do miraculously finish in 2017, then I'll probably up the number of levels per rank. 30 would be awesome, but that would take much longer to finish. I'll probably reveal the name/ranks in February or March 2017 and maybe release a demo soon afterward. I'm not sure if I will release a demo for this pack, as I want most of the levels to be fresh for release.

[Colorful Arty]

Two important announcements. First, I've decided to lower the difficulty of my pack, as looking at some of the levels, they seem more unfair than fun or clever. That said, only one completed level is getting the boot, along with maybe one or two ideas I had, the other levels may be hard, but they're at least fun and interesting and not too precise.

Second, if anyone wants to volunteer to test my levels for backroutes, that would be appreciated. I won't be sending any levels for testing for a while, but it helps to ask sooner rather than later.