geoo's Lix level pack

[geoo]

It's finally time for me to release the Lix levels that I have created over the years. Some of them are brand new, some of them are over a decade old, but better late than never. They are part of the latest Lix download in the level folder single/geoo!

The pack has 5 ranks, which are more like themes. Each rank is independent, and you can play the ranks in any order and freely skip between them. Within a rank, I recommend playing the levels in order.

• wrappy: Levels that make use of the horizontal and/or vertical wrapping. It turns out that even in single player, wrapping is more than a gimmick and gives rise to a lot of interesting ideas! If you only ever play one rank from this pack, this should be the one. The majority of these use 5 skills or less, but even a 3 skill level may stump you for a little bit here. These turn out to be primarily logic puzzles with very easy execution, except for maybe the last few.
• flowy: These levels make use of dynamic crowd control: stalling, redirecting, merging crowds without fully blocking them off. These levels require thinking about when things happen as much as where, and a lot of skill placements will be unintuitive, initially. Due to the nature of this, some levels may require a bit of trial and error to find the placements, but I tried to make execution as easy as possible, and the replay tweaker should help as well. Note: 4 of these levels are also featured in the lemforum pack, but I replicated them here for the purpose of the level progression.
• classy: More traditional and often larger levels with more skills where you need to figure out the skill placements.
• loony: Many of these revolve around some physics quirks or some other quirky idea. A good portion of these keep it very simple, though some of the later ones may end up taking some work to get the execution right.
• sketchy: This is where you find the levels that didn't really work out. Many of these may have some interesting underlying ideas, but somehow these ideas didn't translate into good levels. Feel free to skip this one.

The ranks are not sorted by difficulty, but rather by how interesting and fun I perceive the levels to be. Within wrappy, flowy and loony, the levels are ordered to create a level progression that gradually introduces and explores different ideas. This only loosely corresponds to actual difficulty of the level, but each of these ranks starts out gently. Classy and sketchy are sorted by how I estimate their difficulty, which may be different from how difficult.


I may add and shuffle levels in the future, so posterity, please refer to levels by their name rather than rank/number, as the number within a rank is likely to change in the future.

Thanks to Simon for playtesting, and Ramon for playing some of these during the races with Simon! The levels are part of the official lix release as of version v0.10.21 (for about a month already, so about time I make this topic), and can be found in single/geoo.

I'd be very happy to hear everyone's feedback and see your streams, videos or replays!


Just Mine (wrappy): This map wraps horizontally. Why do you have three miners here when it looks like two are enough? Play this level to find out and wish you had four miners!


Humpy Bump (wrappy): This map wraps horizontally. How can you safely build a bridge when lix are walking around everywhere?


Pommes Schranke (flowy): How do you fit your sausage (that comes with fries, ketchup and mayo) on a plate that's too small for it?


Roots of Life (flowy): Even though this level has only 5 skills, it stumped Ramon and Simon for almost an hour!


Bathroom Break (classy): Hurry before everyone else arrives!


Filter, Map, Fold (loony): The typical (functional) pipeline of reducing data to a single (summary) value. Can you do the same to this crowd of lix?

[Forestidia86]

Solved some levels in the wrappy rank.

Spoiler

The wrapping around is a challenge on its own to understand how everything works out.
At least some of the levels felt astonishingly execution heavy considering there is framestepping etc. Sometimes it was a bit precise or I couldn't find much hints in the design for the proper setup, which made some assignments very hard to perform at the right place.
There was a lot of infinite mining though this fits the wrap around mechanics.

welcometospace: Quite a conundrum, don't know why it suddenly worked out.
rainbowroad: Not too hard of a level, a bit of a pathfinding puzzle.
3lix1miner: One of the 'infinite' miner levels, here you only have to find the proper starting point, a decent introduction to this mechanic.
patienceyoungpadawan: Works according to the title.
powerlines: Again about adjusting and finding the proper path, liked that one.
justmine: Downwards Reduction as single player level, again quite mind blowing.
oneisnotenough: More on the standard side of a puzzle, again about guiding the Lix in the proper direction.
offthegrid: Similiar to welcome but I had more of a grasp how to do it.
gottaturnaround: This was a bit harder for me, harder version of oneisnotenough.
bumpyhumps: I think I needed a bit longer for this level.
humpybump: I think it's a clever level. I thought at first in the completely worng direction but it makes perfectly sense.
kruskalsdelight: Got lucky and solved it first try. Interesting concept to have a maze level.
homotopytheory: Combination of infinite miner and path finding, didn't need that long to solve it.
pleasecomehome: Finicky infinite miner level, needed tweaker here.
hive: Another maze level, was quite fun.
undergroundclub: Not sure if it is a backroute, was finicky though still quite interesting.
forevermine: Hardest of the solved levels so far, was hard to tell where to make assignments but a very elaborate level. I generally liked it.

[geoo]

Thanks for playing so far! A few comments below:

Spoiler

Underground Club and Forever Mine are indeed a bit tricky to execute. A previous version of Forever Mine really frustrated Simon so it's already been improved quite a lot, but I think some of the timing difficulties are unavoidable. I was contemplating putting it in the sketchy rank for that reason, but in the end decided against that. Underground Club has a setup of the cubes which is a bit easier than what you did.
Please Come Home: I don't really understand why this is finicky, especially looking at your solution? Or do you mean you were pursing some red herrings that were precise? There's only the platformer placement where you only have a few pixels of leeway, and it's hard to gauge exactly how high it needs to be, but if you try 2 or 3 time and see where the basher ends up you should be fine. There's also a subtle placement hint of two 1-pixel lines on the rock but maybe it could stand out a bit more.
One is still not enough: I noticed this one is not on your list of solved levels, I'm wondering if you haven't seen the idea yet, or if I should give a tiny bit more leeway.

[WillLem]

@Simon

Got it!

[Simon]

Got it!

Nice! Just Mine becomes easier when you solve the wrappy rank in order. But I told you to look directly at Just Mine (and skip the preceding 5 wrappy levels), thus, well done!

-- Simon

[Simon]

Stream is over! I streamed geoo's Classy rank.

The Climber Predicament & The Floater Predicament: I have a meaty backroute including a finnicky trick near the exit to lose height. I have several spare climbers and floaters, therefore this replay (after you re-point it) will solve both levels.

Lab Map feels intended. Nice! Flopsy found the loose idea independently from me.

Steady Supply: The main idea of my solution feels exactly indended. Nice! I'm sure I can improve the details to make the timing easier for myself. I had 1 builder spare and could spend it to turn a mistimed lix.

Clam's Missing Cubes looks intended. That's a tricky skill-minimizing variant of our research on Clam's Pachinko, and to solve it now, you needs the right idea from the start. Flopsy believes he wouldn't have found it himself.

This Level Socks: Feels reasonably close or intended.

-- Simon

[geoo]

I just caught up on the stream, most solutions are intended.

In Steady Supply, I'm less efficient at the very beginning (needing 3 bridges), that's why you have one left over. I don't see it as a problem though.

This Level Socks: It's meant to be a bit open-ended. This mirrors one of the solutions I found, with the spare skill.

Lab Map and Missing cubes exactly intended.

The Climber Predicament & The Floater Predicament: I don't actually remember what the intended solutions are, given they are contest levels from a long time ago. I re-solved them recently, but I need to dig deeper to see if I can find some older replays. Either way, it shouldn't be possible to solve both maps the same way, so I'll need to take a closer look at some point.

[Simon]

Thanks for the judgements!

I agree, there were no problems on the other maps. Only the double backroute to the two Predicaments was fidgety: The double backroute had to squeeze two pixels of height from the bottom half.

Next stream is tomorrow, Sunday, 16th.

I'm 50:50 on what I want to play tomorrow. Option 1: More of geoo's Crafty. Option 2: The NeoLemmix levels for the current Contest #30. (I already know geoo's Lix entries for Contest #30, I was the pre-release tester.) Edit: I played geoo's Crafty.

-- Simon

[Simon]

Stream is over! Recording will remain for 14 days at: https://www.twitch.tv/simonnaar

Played geoo's Crafty rank.

Full Circle: Not solved yet. Progress on all fronts, but no unifying theory of the universe.

Day Care Center: Funky idea, with some difficult-to-find timings. Solution feels intended, and I can't see how to improve the fickle execution. I like it, but one has to be in the mood for pixel pushing and for haggling over timings on the level of individual physics updates.

Undercut: Lovely! Feels completely intended. Armani found one of the core ingredients in chat.

Cellar Dwellers: Cute. I believe I solved this before, when it was in the Wrappy rank, and you re-sorted it.

Construction Site Conuntrum: Looked easier than it was. I had a precise solution that feels like a backroute, but it wasn't annoying to find.

[geoo]

Thanks for playing! Notes on your solutions:

Day Care Center:

Spoiler

Intended, in particular the early jumper. The thing I find fidgety is having to bridge the miner tunnel with a platformer, especially while the miner is still at work and may destroy the bridge. It'd be nice to change that, but I'm too afraid to give a builder (or walker). I believe once you realize the goal (delay the second climber as much as possible), you can't overshoot (i.e. have the climber arrive too late) at least, right?

Undercut:

Spoiler

Close to intended. The 1 px ledge is actually only meant to break the deadly fall from the hatch, and you don't assign a miner there in my solution, so my solution is a bit harder probably but I'm not sure yet whether it bothers me enough to fix it.

Cellar Dwellers:

Spoiler

My intended solution is different, but it's needlessly complicated and harder to execute. I don't know if I want to enforce it or just downrank the level.

Construction Site Conundrum:

Spoiler

Funnily enough, I found this level in my WIP folder, but I believe I didn't have a recording for it, so I wasn't sure if it was solvable. The solution I found is the same as yours. I thought of moving it to the trashy folder, but I think it's unintutive but not hard to pull off, so maybe I keep it.

Btw, if you have suggestions for re-ranking levels, I wasn't confident in my original ordering so I'm happy to shuffle things around a bit.