[Lemmings 2] Quest From Kieran 2 Development Thread

[kieranmillar]

Thanks again Nepster! Looks like I could do with making some of these levels a bit less precise or Hectic. Shouldn't be too hard. Speaking of precision I worry a bit about the new Outdoor 9 Life's Greater Porpoise, I might look to replace that one maybe.

Comments about comments

Highland 1 Introducing: Highland - Exactly intended, but probably no surprises there
Highland 3 A Drop of Scotch - Maybe I should just add another Attractor, make things a bit less hectic, and extend the bottom hatch's path a bit, or something like that. This level doesn't really benefit from being quite so hectic I don't think.
Highland 6 Highland Fling - I guess I should make it so that mortaring from behind the exit does not work, and maybe add an extra thrower to make things a bit easier. You are making this way to hard on yourself.
Highland 7 Scaling Lem Nevis - Exactly intended
Highland 8 Hopping Mad - I guess there's always gonna be a bit of execution going on here but looks like I could do with extending things a bit more to the right to make the mortar + thrower have more leeway. I think that will help the execution and I don't think it will cause any backroutes?
Highland 10 Telegraph Pole - Oh I should have known that decorative flag would cause a big backroute
Space 4 Space Elevator - Well I'm a huge idiot. I see what I've done wrong.

Spoiler

[kieranmillar]

I emptied my TODO list again, as well as made some other fixes after a bit more looking over of some of my other recent changes.

v29 changelog:

• Circus 7 Thinking Inside the Box - My ongoing blind spot for direct backroutes continues. Steeled up the middle-top of each box.
• Highland 3 A Drop of Scotch - Added extra Attractor and delayed Lemmings from bottom trapdoor to lower execution requirements.
• Highland 6 Highland Fling - Made minor terrain tweak and added an extra Thrower because I'm a cool dude.
• Highland 8 Hopping Mad - Extended platform to the right a little bit, slowed down the release rate, and added more time, all so that the execution is a bit easier.
• Highland 10 Telegraph Pole - Terrain changes, also 7 less Throwers!
• Outdoor 9 Life's Greater Porpoise - Simplified to remove a load of precision, removed Planter, removed a frog trap, moved down a slot to position 8.
• Space 4 Space Elevator - Added the small hole into the middle blue wall that I forgot because I'm a huge dummy.

[kieranmillar]

I went through the entire pack and recorded the author solution to every level, uploading them to Youtube (but currently unlisted) so when the game is released people can see what I intended for levels if they think they've found a backroute. As testing is not finished yet I expect it may be the case I may need to re-record some, but it is no big deal.

While doing this I ended wanted to make a small number of tweaks or fixes to some levels, so that's what this update is. Version 30 is available, as well as version 4 of the lost tribe. After this, all that is left is to convert NeoClassic to the new level format then wait for any further testing that I am aware of. Soon we will be getting close to the Release Candidate!

v30 changelog:

• Beach 4 What a Scoop! moved to position 2.
• Cavelem 2 Take a Quick Stab - Added extra time, a small mushroom and a Club Basher to remove extrmely tight multi-tasking. A 2nd slot level shouldn't need to deal with that.
• Highland 10 Telegraph Pole - Terrain changes to fix backroute, removed both Hoppers.

Lost Tribe v04 changelog:

• Lost Tribe 5 - Beating A Dead Horse - Extra time.
• Lost Tribe 6 - Jumping the Shark - Very minor terrain tweak to undo a mistake where a backroute fix left the level almost impossible without extreme precision (whoops!)
• Lost Tribe 9 - The Temple of Boom - Removed a Climber, Stomper and a Platformer as I found when trying to re-solve the level that these just confused me more than not having them and it turns out they are not necessary, plus extremely minor landscape tweak to fix theoretical backroute.

[kieranmillar]

Playing geoo's The Diver Level made me realise one of my Lost Tribe levels was not as immune to backroutes as I thought. If anything, my backroute prevention only made things worse. So I released a quick fix.

Lost Tribe v05 changelog:

• Lost Tribe 4 The Tourist - Better backroute prevention.

[geoo]

Race will start in 15 minutes (Wednesday Oct 18th) 18:00 UTC! Streams are live now!
Watch www.multitwitch.tv/simonnaar/geoouw

We'll decide whether Highland tribe or the Bonus-Egyptian tribe at the beginning of the race.

[kieranmillar]

Time for a whole bucket-load of fixes as usual after a stream.

Lost Tribe v06 changelog:

• Lost Tribe 1 Two Sides to Every Story - Layout tweaks near right-most exit to fix backroute, also moved to slot 6 as this level is pretty difficult
• Lost Tribe 2 (was 3) Tall Tales - Removed 2 Divers, added Shimmier and Filler. Added some steel.
• Lost Tribe 3 (was 4) The Tourist - Removed 3 Divers and a Stacker.
• Lost Tribe 4 (was 5) Beating a Dead Horse - More steel to fix backroute.
• Lost Tribe 5 (was 6) Jumping the Shark - More Steel
• Lost Tribe 7 Potheads - More Steel
• Lost Tribe 8 Secret Passage - Prevented embarassing direct backroute.
• Lost Tribe 9 The Temple of Boom - Layout tweaks and steel added (and removed) to prevent backroutes and remove precision. Added extra Bazooka. Increased time to maximum, because why not?
• Lost Tribe 10 The Great Hall of Egypt - Removed decorative pillar of crawler-enabling Doom.

[kieranmillar]

I have had a change of heart and decided that the backroute Simon found on Lost Tribe 7 Potheads was cool and so is now officially an alternate solution.

Lost Tribe v07 changelog:

• Lost Tribe 7 Potheads - Removed additional steel added in v06.

[Simon]

I'd like to find the Potheads intended solution, too. Where did you put extra steel in Lost Tribe v06?

Spoiler

If extra steel prevents my right-to-left scooper from the stream, then here's my alternative solution idea.

1. Scoop with first lem to trap crowd.
2. Cancel the scooper by assigning ballooner when hole is deep enough for list item #9.
3. Assign parachuter to a stray walker.
4. Balloon the parachuter to behind the exit.
5. Spear leftwards from behind the exit, to break the crowd's fall towards the exit.
6. Balloon the parachuter to the top right of the terrain.
7. Scoop leftwards, coming out of the the (hole between the final two pillars)'s right wall.
8. Rope leftwards to cover the hole.
9. Fence leftwards, connecting with the scooper tunnel from list item #1, freeing the crowd.

-- Simon

[kieranmillar]

The steel in v06 covered the surface of the floor between the first and second pot preventing you from

Spoiler

extending the fencer via the filler + spear. It was the thinnest possible steel, added to the left of the existing steel

Your proposed idea falls down at step 8. The gap is about 3 pixels too long to rope across.

[geoo]

Resolved Outdoor 8-9, and Bonus 2 and 6 for now.

Outdoor 7 attempt: https://go.twitch.tv/videos/183209854## at 11:45 (valid for another week or so)
The other levels, see attached.

Spoiler

Outdoor 7: I messed up at the end, but if you stop the first scooper earlier, you might be able to platform over the first second scooper tunnel. I haven't tried the level since then.
Outdoor 8: Bomber route saves a kayaker, due to lack of alternatives I almost think this might be intended.
Outdoor 9: Looks like another backroute. Note that you can also setup crawling at the end instead, then you don't have to flame through the wooden pillar (and can use it somewhere else). But it's more annoying to pull off. I messed up with releasing the crowd at the end,
but you can imagine how that's supposed to work.
Bonus 2: I fiddled around and got surprised by a variety of physics (can assign shimmier after sliding down platform, shimmier can't always shimmy 2 px down, but seems to shimmy 2 px up, climber doesn't slide down when hitting the ceiling) but in the end I managed to do it. The bottom spearer is actually not necessary.
Bonus 6: Another backroute, hard to pull off but works. Might be easy to fix if you can remove the slopey block that I spear against.

btw, would you be interested if I recorded videos of my attempts with commentary?

[kieranmillar]

Hi geoo, sorry it's taken so long to respond. Been a busy week.

Thanks for the screenshots. I'll provide comments as usual. If it is easier for you to just record your attempts, I am more than happy to watch. Sometimes it can be just as helpful to see what people try and fail at.

Comments

Outdoor 7 Rocky's Horror Show - This is actually the general gist of the old intended solution before I majorly revamped the level to remove the roper, you would have used a rope to get up your scooper tunnel. So if you do manage to pull this off, then I'm OK with it. Of course there's a slightly different solution now.
Outdoor 8 Take a Hike - Bah it's really looking like I am going to keep struggling to enforce this unless I remove the flame thrower and find some other way of doing what needs to be done. But with so many ropers and the scoopers, It's gonna be difficult.
Outdoor 9 Life's Greater Porpoise - Yep this is intended. I guess the level just kinda sucks? Maybe I should think about making something better. The last level of this tribe is fun, maybe another level kind of like that. Bombing people out of the water is a cool trick, but I'm guessing it wasn't all that fun to solve? I should try a bit harder.
Lost Tribe 2 Tall Tales - Honestly not sure here whether I should try to kill this off, or elevate it to Official Alternate Solution status. I like what you did, it's not even remotely right but it's still kinda cool.
Lost Tribe 6 Two Sides to Every Story - I think the only real solution now is to swap out the hang glider for something like a pole vaulter and associated layout tweaks to accomodate that, or something similar. Curse the fan's really strong effect on the hang glider! I's too powerful!

[geoo]

Broken two more levels of the lost tribe.

Spoiler

Bonus 6: I didn't actually pull off the backroutes, but I'm certain they work.
First approach involves fanning a parachuter into the wall and assigning a platformer from there. A lot of variations possible I think, could place the platform right enough that it starts right of the exit and the crowd will just go home. Or dig through it. Or seal the little gap and platform over the water and be less wasteful with platformers at the top (sending a climber out instead of closing a tunnel with a platform).
Second approach is glitchless, but involves more hard assignments. One variation could be having the swimmer/climber jump onto the belly of the bottom-most vase, and platform from there. Third climber mines through platform near the vase and fills the gap with two sand pourers. 4 pourers for the big pile is enough if you stomp two pixels deeper at the left (which means the stomper placement is actually pixel precise). There might be other variations that work. Elevating the second part of the long platform by 2 px by not assigning to a shrugger might also help a bit.

Bonus 8: I used the roper hook to from, but if you bomb low enough that's not even necessary. The runner currently dies, but by assigning the second lem a pourer to turn around you don't need the runner at all, thus saving 59. I also noticed a glitch that when you explode a lemming currently roping, you can't use the roper skill anymore. So no ropers for easing bomber placement

Comments on comments:

Spoiler

I actually enjoyed Life's Greater Porpoise, I first figured I somehow have to bomb (only extra skill) to get the platformer turned around, but then you have that branch so that if you bomb, you actually create a gap they get stuck in, and from the top doesn't work either. After some time I figured I can just fling the kayaker out of the water, which is kinda cool. The behaviour is a bit obscure,
but in its current state there's really not much wiggle room with the skills so sooner or later you'll have to use some lateral thinking.
So I think the level is just right the way it is.
Rocky's Horror Show: If my solution works then I feel the level is not very interesting and the solution just a matter of annoying execution, with one worker doing all the set up in a straight-forward way. I'm actually not 100% confident that it works, tbh I hope it doesn't, nevertheless it's very compelling to try but trying is expensive as it's at the very end of a long sequence of skill placements.
Tall Tales: I'm very curious what the idea is here and wouldn't mind a fix (if you can eliminate my solution somehow). Note that I tried a variety of things which failed, and only discovered the spearer setup at the very end, so this might enable also some of the variations I was working on.

[mobius]

I streamed a little bit of Shadow and sports today:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/186042808

the 1 level I solved was very fun

[kieranmillar]

Thanks geoo and mobius. Sorry you're finding it hard mobius, but glad you're ejoying it! By the way your solution to Shadow 5 Into the Hidden City was intended.

Responding to geoo:

Spoiler

Lost Tribe 5 Jumping the Shark - Regarding solution A, that bug is gross and will cause huge problems. I could fix it by finding a way to ditch the parachuter, but I don't really want to do that, so I think instead I will just say that like the blocker crawling glitch that's one bug I am not going to fix. It will be a shame if there can be no decoration at all, only a massive big gap of empty space, and I know the parachuter is not the only skill you can use this bug with. As for solution B, I definitely need to fix that one, but shouldn't be too hard.

Lost Tribe 8 Secret Passage - I think I'm going to have to get rid of the sand pourers here. Fortunately I should be able to manage some replacements to fill the same role.

Outdoor 9 Life's Greater Porpoise - Alright if you think it's OK then I'll leave the level as-is.

[kieranmillar]

It's time for yet another update. One day all the small tweaks and improvements will finally end. But today is not that day.

v31 changelog:

• Cavelem 5 Flappy Lem - Extremely minor terrain tweak to prevent the club basher from constantly failing to perform what you would think would be an extremely simple task for stupid reasons. It is a bad skill.
• Highland 1 Introducing: Highland - It turns out the attractor was not necessary, and also it was really boring waiting ages for the very slow release rate to get everyone to the exit. Both issues now fixed.
• Highland 8 Hopping Mad - This level was really fiddly, so I have replaced it with a new level that is a different kind of fiddly, Plot Twist. But to be fair, all Highland levels are fiddly.
• Outdoor 8 Take A Hike - Major skill changes and minor terrain changes.

Lost Tribe v08 changelog:

• Lost Tribe 2 Tall Tales - Raised water level ever so slightly so you can't jump over it.
• Lost Tribe 5 Jumping the Shark - Fixed non-buggy direct route backroute with minor terrain tweaks.
• Lost Tribe 6 Two Sides to Every Story - Removed a Spearer and the Hang Glider, added 2 Pole Vaulters. Changed landscape to accommodate this.
• Lost Tribe 8 Secret Passage - Replaced all Sand Pourers with a Filler and 4 extra Magic Carpets, because if there's one thing this Tribe didn't have enough of, it's Magic Carpets. Also some minor terrain tweaks.