Community pack ratings

[geoo]

See these posts for more up-to-date information: http://www.lemmingsforums.com/index.php?topic=648.msg17098#msg17098" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">http://www.lemmingsforums.com/index.php?topic=648.msg17098#msg17098 and http://www.lemmingsforums.com/index.php?topic=648.msg17105#msg17105" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">http://www.lemmingsforums.com/index.php?topic=648.msg17105#msg17105


I'm not arraging levels just now, and you can still submit new levels. But I still want to think about difficulty rating names, and level ordering. And I'd like your input.


Firstly thing, there will be 6-8 ratings. So we have to come up with names for them. Of course, not knowing the number of ratings makes it hard to fix them, but some brainstorming to get names to pick from could still help. In the end, I'd like a somewhat consistent naming scheme, where the names are also sufficiently indicative of the difficulty, i.e., given two rating names, it should be possible to tell which of the two is the harder one.

Possible names:
Trivial, Easy, Medium, Hard, Difficult, Devious, Harrrrrrd, Vicious
Proxima's suggestions: Simple, Quirky, Zany, Lunatic, Manic, Carnage
[your ideas here]


Secondly, rating the difficulty of individual levels. My ratings are subjective, and especially unreliable when it comes to my own levels. If you want, you can input your ratings of the levels. I got a spreadsheet, in MS Excel and Open Office format, that you can use for this purpose.
https://github.com/geoo89/lixlfpack/blob/gh-pages/lixlfpack.xls?raw=true" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">https://github.com/geoo89/lixlfpack/blob/gh-pages/lixlfpack.xls?raw=true
There are two empty columns, Difficulty and Quality, both are on a scale from 0.0 to 4.0 in steps of 0.1. I don't know whether I'm going to use the latter, so it's definitely less important than the Difficulty rating.
There are columns for ratings and hints. I was thinking if there was agreement on some level being not that good, we might think of taking some out. You don't have to rate every single one.
I could average the data, or feed it to a database should something like this ever happen.

I just wanted to get this out, as perhaps you have some spare time while I'm away.

[Simon]

I'm in favor of the well-known Easy, Medium, Hard. Trivial is a good name for something easier than Easy. Difficult and Devious sound equal to Hard. Extreme and Vicious both sound much harder than Hard. Harder might sound easier than the above two, but of course harder than Hard.

Most of Proxima's harder names don't seem to be naturally ordered.

A possible order is thus Trivial, Easy, Medium, Hard, Harder, Vicious.

I'd refrain from using too many ratings. There will always be the pitfall of placing too hard a level in a lower category, and the chance for this is higher with more ratings. If you use 8 ratings for 200 levels, you have to use the 2nd page in the level browser anyway. You might as well put 40 levels in each category, exhausting the 2nd page fully, and go with 6 ratings.

-- Simon

[chaos_defrost]

I don't really like Trivial as a name at all -- it carries a slight sense of arrogance to it and will put off newer players if they find they can't pass even the "Trivial" set. I like "Simple" for the easiest set -- it gets the point across but doesn't make new players look bad if they get stuck.

Legit laughing at "Harrrrrrrrd" but I don't think anyone but us would get the in-joke. But I mean it isn't like that's stopped people from putting them in games in the past so yea

Something like "Simple, Easy, Moderate, Hard, Very Hard" for the first five, very basic titles that get the point across, and something very foreboding for the hardest set. I like "Lunatic" or "Carnage" -- that said, I also have a particular fondness for my 4th notebook set's "Hopeless" even though that might not be the most fitting name  http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/tongue.gif" alt=":P" title="Tongue" class="smiley" />

If I get Lix up and running I'll run through the submitted levels and offer my input on difficulties. I think rating them, if we have 6 sets, from 0-6 instead of 0-4 might be better -- 0-1, lowest difficulty, 1-2 = 2nd lowest, ... 5-6 = highest.

[mobius]

Do we have to use the system of decimals; 1.0 to 4.0? It seems unnecessarily complicated. Something like 1-6 or 10 or whatever would be more straightforward. (or just what Steve suggested)
I would propose either have the ratings be the number of difficulties, or, if you want it more detailed just do a 1-~10 rating and divide the rating up accordingly.

I also think trivial is a kind of offensive term when it comes to describing any Lemmings level. And I don't think there should be any trivial levels; even if a level is "fun" and easy it still shouldn't be trivial. Trivial means it was "of very little importance or value; insignificant: Don't bother me with trivial matters" -from the dictionary.

An appropriate title to a rating is good but it can also be fun and catchy without distracting.
I'd suggest looking through the thesaurus for names;
1 (easy)- painless, picnic, accessible, elementary

a few other names in no particular order; baffling, absurdity, frenzy, preposterous, confounding. 

[Proxima]

Well, we do have two levels that could legitimately be called trivial -- Insane Steve's "Any Way You Want" can be passed with just one skill in so many different ways that it's hard to fail, and "Lix Potion Number Nine" can be passed with zero skills, making it trivial once you know this trick. Of course, in both cases it's entirely intentional, so I wouldn't say calling these levels trivial is offensive; but I agree that it's not appropriate for the first category. Even really simple levels like geoo's "Minimalism" series take some thought to solve. And considering what the overall difficulty of our levels is like, definitely only the first category should have a name that means "easy".

I still cast my vote for the series I suggested earlier (taken from my Cheapo sets). I think they cohere as a series, and considering that Lemmings and ONML both have excellent memorable names for their categories, I'd be very disappointed if we went with something as bland as "Easy, Medium, Hard". Also, "Carnage" would be particularly appropriate for the last set as its literal meaning is the same as "Mayhem" and "Havoc".

I'll make an attempt at rating the levels when I have time. Unfortunately I don't have any spreadsheet software so I can't view yours.

[geoo]

Open Office is free and should work on various operating systems for viewing/editing the tables.

I don't see how a linear scale between 1 and 10 is any less complicated than one from 0.0 to 4.0, especially as it starts with 1 for no apparent reason, but whatever. 0.0-6.0 or whatever the rating number might be could work, though I think you won't manage to rate the levels in such a way that there's the same number of levels between any two consecutive integers, meaning the values aren't necessarily representing the rating the level will end up in, but if it makes rating more comfortable for you, that's fine with me too. I'll probably just scale all ratings into the 0.0-4.0 or 0.0-ratings.0 range in the end.

[Proxima]

I'd rather not install new software just for this 

Anyway, here's my list, containing nearly all the levels I currently have. I left out some that I don't feel merit inclusion -- a few of minimac's, and TM's harder version of Any Way You Want (since IS made a much better harder version of the level). I left out levels I haven't solved, or have been updated since I solved them -- except for a couple in category 7, since I don't need to have solved them to recognise a cat-7 level when I see one These are indicated with italics.

It turns out there are fewer than 240 levels, since some in my "wip" folder were duplicates of levels in the main folder. So cutting it down to six categories would be a possibility -- fortunately, I wouldn't have to restructure my list much in that case, since categories 2 and 3 are completely full, 4 is nearly full, so it would just be a matter of merging 6 and 7 and siphoning off any overflow into 5. However, I know there are a few levels I haven't downloaded, and a few I've played but don't currently have, so... yeah, this is only an overview, not a really serious attempt to arrange the levels.

Mod Edit: Restored attachments.

[mobius]

here's my pathetic list:

100% Built By Lixes - 3
100 Ways to Die - 1
A Towering Proposition – 2.5
Bobbed-Bobbed-Boo – 1.5
Come on Down - 1
Get Hype - 3
Logging your progress – 1.5
Logging your progress2 – 2
Thomas the Climber – 2.8
Top Gear - 4
No more Heroes – 3.5
Digging the Air – 3

notes: I understand it starts at zero, I just didn't find any to be zero so far.
(again, I know digging the air is easy to us. But I highly doubt it to a newcomer (may as well call me a newcomer) and it is difficult to execute).
-I'm not going to rate my own levels.

-----------------
In another note; I don't care if you want to discard Leap of the Locust--I think it's pretty dumb now. Besides you've already got tutorial levels.
Also, since ccexplore is not here right now, (if I get time (big if)) I'd like to try and fix his brickout. I know it seems doubtful for me to accomplish something which ccexplore couldn't but won't hurt to try.

[Proxima]

(again, I know digging the air is easy to us. But I highly doubt it to a newcomer (may as well call me a newcomer) and it is difficult to execute).

That's why I rate "The Razor's Edge" so much harder than geoo does -- it requires a lateral thinking leap that may not be easy even if you're good at solving "normal" Lemmings puzzles. But I think you're jumping to the other extreme with "Diggin' The Air" -- it's not that hard, because there's not much to try, the solution is an obvious consequence of the main functions of the skills involved, and the high number of builders is pretty conspicuous.

Leap of the Locust was never a good tutorial level -- too difficult in execution for that. But it's a good early-main-sequence level, so I definitely vote for keeping it.

I already made a suggestion for fixing Brickout: replace the skills used in the controversial turning manoeuvre with a single walker. (It would still be hard enough to be in the last 5 or 10 levels!) Possibly, doing so would mean some of the ad hoc backroute-fixes could be removed. I hope I'll have time to look further into this -- it's a really good level and we should made sure it goes in.

[geoo]

List of rating names in level packs

Thanks for bringing this up and compiling such a list, and belated happy birthday, Akseli!

Yeah, I thought about it a little more, and while I still think that it's important to be able to tell which names are which difficulty stage just from the names, maybe it can still be achieved while using more creative names than just easy/medium/hard/...
And I'll definitely be going for 6x40 levels, so 6 stages.

I definitely like the start from Proxima's list with Simple and Quirky. Carnage is pretty neat too, but I think Steve's Hopeless just beats it. I think Lunatic and Manic are a bit hard to tell apart difficulty-wise, so I'd rather use just one of these, and I kinda like Vicious as a stage name. I came up with Taunting and Elusive, both of which I quite like too, probably more than vicious even. So here's some suggestions:
Simple, Quirky, Zany, Taunting/Manic, Elusive/Vicious, Hopeless
Simple, Quirky, Taunting, Elusive, Vicious, Hopeless (too much of a difficulty jump from Quirky to Taunting?)
I also like about these that they are all adjectives, and none is overly long. Any opinions on these?

[Proxima]

Vicious is a good name. Less keen on Elusive, since it doesn't mean the levels are elusive, it's a roundabout way of saying the solutions are. The first list -- Simple, Quirky, Zany, Manic, Vicious, Hopeless -- gets my vote, though would still prefer Carnage for reasons stated earlier.

[chaos_defrost]

Thing is, I like Vicious, Carnage, and Hopless (in that order) for level sets, and really when you consider the difficulty cliff we've invented with our customs, they can all work.

I'd go: Simple -> Quirky (actually the 2nd easiest set is the one I'm having a hard time naming) -> Cunning (I'd imagine in set 3 is about where your lateral thinking skills are going to have to step it up) -> Gutsy (A harder name, but a good lead-up to what to expect in the last three sets) -> Vicious -> Carnage -> Hopeless (again, self-bias here, but come on you are making a puzzle game and you have the gall to call the hardest difficulty "Hopeless" -- this is going to make the very good players of your game just WANT to pass the hardest levels to prove you wrong  http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/cool.gif" alt="8)" title="Cool" class="smiley" />

[geoo]

As in the other thread for the Lemmini/Lemmix pack topic it was suggested I should finally get this done, and to avoid overlap with the names, (and I actually sorted a little more through the level recently), here goes...

I actually really like Steve's suggestion, but it has 7 stages. But that works out perfectly, as it seems Carnage will be used for the other pack, and what's left are all adjectives, so unless there are big objections I'll just go with:
Simple -> Quirky -> Cunning -> Gutsy/Taunting -> Vicious -> Hopeless

[Proxima]

Möbius hasn't yet responded, so at the moment my suggestions in the other topic are no more than suggestions. But both "Carnage" and "Hopeless" can only be used for the last set, so we can shelve that question and decide on the first five  http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/tongue.gif" alt=":P" title="Tongue" class="smiley" />

I still would rather not use anything that's been used before, but if you insist on "Cunning" over "Zany", it's not a bad name.

Definitely not "Gutsy", it's too colloquial and doesn't fit well with the other five.

[geoo]

Yeah, Gutsy was definitely the one from the list I was least fond of, that's why I suggested taunting as an alternative (which I actually like quite a lot, though didn't get any feedback on). Could also play on taunting/daunting.

Hopeless technically is a repeat too, but I'm not too concerned about repeats as long as it's not a repeat of some other Lix set, in the end few people will even be aware that something is a repeat.

The reason I prefer cunning/taunting over zany/manic is that I feel they fit the scheme better, they are more descriptive of the actual difficulty, while zany/manic are attributes going into a different dimension. So yeah, overall my current (strong) preference is Simple -> Quirky -> Cunning -> Taunting -> Vicious -> Hopeless.