[Lemmings 2] Quest From Kieran 2 Development Thread

[kieranmillar]

Thanks for the comments geoo.

Spoiler

Egypt 6, Inner Sanctum: I've essentially officialised Simon and Nepster's basher extension solution for this level because it's so cool, so it's not going to get fixed. I will take another look at fixing your miner abuse though.
Egypt 9, A Sticky Situation: Yeah I was a bit worried that it was a bit similar to Tiny Tomb, but looking at your solution I realise that actually the whole level needs a major do-over, because in practice some of this stuff simply isn't going to work as I thought it would.
Egypt 10, Crypt of Infinite Echoes: So I realise now that I've been a bit dumb in terms of thinking I can't block your minerless solution, I totally can, but blocking the massive pile of sand solution is not really going to work. And in practice, the combination of sand and glue is really very easily abusable due to the odd way glue works with 45 degree slopes, and Nepster found an unfixable basher staircase solution. So maybe, this level is not really so great, and I should look to remove it and replace it with something else. Maybe that's for the best. I mean, it was always kind of slightly tedious anyway.

Beach 4, What a Scoop: Yeah, this level is easy and you got the intended solution , but I hadn't really done much with the scooper so wanted a level about it and despite its easiness it's still way way better than the level it replaced. Not bad enough to do anything about I think.

All of your cave solutions there are intended I agree that level 10 with the builder and runner dropping between the steel feels a bit hackish, but I think it's OK. I mean, I don't think it's too obscure for people to figure out or anything.

Classic 8, A Tight Squeeze: Completely intended, well done I've already extended that pillar a bit and am worried that doing it too much might draw too much attention to it, it already extends far beyond the rest of the level. I think at the moment it's got enough leeway in it to not be an issue, if anything the precision of the miner is probably worse. Maybe I'll steel up the wood floor near the trapdoor.

Sports 10, Pass the Baton: Argh! Of course! Well easy enough to fix with some steel.
Sports 9, The Home Stretch: At last! The intended solution is found .
Sports 5, Tour De Farce: At least people are now getting a lot closer, and this is an easy fix.
Sports 4, Rise to the Challenge: The first version before this level saw it's proper release had accounted for this but then I thought I'd rendered it impossible with the gap near the top, but nope looks like that particular mine is still possible. Hmmph. But I know how to fix it!

[kieranmillar]

It's time for another Tribe! Neoclassic has also been updated. As always, downloads and new Tribe blurb in the opening post.

v12 Changelog:

• New Tribe: Polar Tribe!
• Classic 8 A Tight Squeeze - A little bit of quality-of-life friendliness.
• Egyptian 6 Inner Sanctum - Fixed geoo's backroute.
• Egyptian 9 A Sticky Situation - Is now an entirely different level, but with the same sort of central ideas as before.
• Egyptian 10 Crypt of Infinite Echoes replaced with new level, Keynes' Marginal Utility.
• Medieval 3 Roll With It - Made Simon's suggested tweak.
• Medieval 4 Ye Olde Cavern - Made quality-of-life terrain tweaks.
• Medieval 5 Laying The Foundations - Backroute fixes + moved to position 10, all other levels in-between moved down a position.
• Medieval 6 (was 7) The Castle Cellar - Terrain tweaks + remove need for one particular archer shot for quality of life. Two archers removed.
• Medieval 8 (was 9) Crate Expectations - Removed staricase and added second exit.
• Medieval 9 (was 10) Medi-Upheval - Terrain tweaks to fix backroute.
• Sports 4 Rise to the Challenge - Backroute fix. Also realised that intended solution was actually luck based! So, made tweaks to fix that.
• Sports 5 Tour De Farce - Backroute fix.
• Sports 10 Pass the Baton - Backroute fix.

Levels destined for the bin:

• Cave 5 Flappy Lem
• Medieval 7 Castle Invaders
• Space 6 Hull Breach

[Simon]

Re-solved Introducing Cavelem, solved Laying the Foundations.

Spoiler

Introducing Cavelem: I don't assign the runner. I blow the worker behind the exit, turn him with a builder, then spear. The spearer feels precise, but I got it first try.

Laying the Foundations: This looks 100 % intended, even though I don't assign one shimmier. This has become much easier because no more red herrings in the dragon area. I knew the basic layout already, therefore I don't judge this level easy overall. I have more trouble with Medi-Upheaval now.

Kieran: geoo and I plan to race Polar on Sunday, June 4th, 18:00 UTC. Would that suit you?

-- Simon

[Nepster]

Solved the Polar tribe and resolved (most) of the updated levels, except "Laying the Foundation".

Polar tribe

1) Nice intro level and of the right difficulty.
2) I am not a fan of this one. The first digger has to be almost pixel-precise, because the ice acts as steel. Then one has to platform/stack over the decorative moon, where the contrast between bricks and the moon is very low, and finally one has to assign the last digger at the left edge, but not touching the steel blocks. As the lemmings in the right crowd are not grouped, this is very dependant on luck.
3) Next level with assignment-rage. At the start one has to assign lots of skills next to each other to different lemmings. With the L2 assignment, this is extremely hard. Again one has to assign a platformer over the moon, where one cannot really tell when the lemming has finished his previous platform. Finally I would give one more minute: After having "solved" the level for the first time, I forgot the lemming upstairs and turned him too late into a climber. So I had to do all these assignments again.
4) Excellent level. But I would remove the iglu on the left side. At first I took this for another exit and moved all the lemmings to this one, only to wonder why they all die... And perhaps consider making the first miner block slightly smaller, because currently this level seems impossible if one has saved only 40 or 50 lemmings in the previous levels.
5) Pretty easy and nothing really special here.
6) Great idea.
7) Nice level. I suspect that my lower basher on the second block is not needed, because the delay of going all way to the left end of the level and back again is enough to finish the bridge over the second gap.
8) Great level idea, but sooooo much assignment-rage:
a) The platformers have to be placed at the very edge of the ice, because otherwise lemmings on the ice, who stand up will move left (on the latest platformer brick), then slide on the ice farther to the left, where they won't be able to reach the last platformer brick.
b) The timing at the top is very precise, because the digger has to be fast enough to stack at the next platform.
c) The placing of said digger is very precise: On the ledge won't work, because the digger will leave a ledge at the bottom of the digger tunnel and the crowd will move over the stacker wall. Too far to the right and the crwod will be too early and there won't be enough space to place the digger on the next platform between the ice and the stacker wall.
d) At the second platform digging down is very precise: First of all one has to place it in the small space between the ice and the stacker wall, and secondly one has to time it so that the non-platforming ice-skater will move to the left at the bottom of the digger tunnel. Alternatively one has to turn this ice-skater into a digger, but assigning to it in the crowd of usual lemmings again depends on being very lucky.
e) At the third platform, a crowd of lemmings will move to the left and here one has to assign the ice-skater.
f) Finally at the bottom, one has to turn a lemming with a stacker-skier combination. This is fine, but then turning the skier into a platformer at the edge of the ice is very annoying. Especially as this has to be done pixel-precise, see a).
9) Pretty easy.
10) Nice level, but again pretty easy.

Updated levels

Classic 7) I don't use one of the diggers and very likely this can be used to lose only 2 lemmings, instead of 3.
Classic 8) Here is a save-all solution. The miner coming from the left is pretty precise.
Classic 10) But this looks intended now.
Egypt 9) I suspect a backroute here, because I don't use two of the glue-pourers.
Egypt 10) Very good level. My first (also very neat solutions) failed because climbers don't turn at sand-pourers and neither can one fill a miner tunnel using a sand-pourer and two glue-pourers. Perhaps consider removing the sand-pourer altogether? The miner tunnel on the left can be filled with two or three fillers instead of the sand-pourer.
Medieval 4) Nice level, but I don't need the climber.
Medieval 5) Here is a potential solution, which failed for me only due to the time limit. But I started the shimmier pretty late, too. So there might be a good chance, that this solution actually works. I liked my previous solution much better.
Medieval 7) Not too much difference. I still don't use two of the shimmiers and one archer.
Medieval 9) I am not a fan of this level. First of all it is really not obvious that the roller hops over the gap at the left. But one expects him to hop over the exit due to the ledge at the top. This however doesn't work. Finally the last builder is very non-trivial, because there is a big crowd and one has to place him very precisely to reach the one pixel of the exit trigger area.
Medieval 10) Not solved again, because none of the three solutions that I found in V0.11 still work. The only approach that I have requires several more shimmiers.
Sport 4) I didn't like builder-stretching in L1, and I still don't like it in L2. And turning at the right edge with a basher-shimmier combination looks like a hack-job solution.
Sport 5) Here are two way to move the crowd over the top.
Sport 9) I feel stupid for not seeing this backroute earlier.

[kieranmillar]

Thanks guys for the feedback. I'm most interested in fixing up Polar in time for the stream, so will focus my responses to your comments solely on Nepster's Polar Tribe playthrough right now, and will come back and respond to the rest once it is all fixed up.

Polar

1 Introducing: Polar - Exactly intended but I imagine that's not a surprise.
2 Snow Drops - I will remove the moon, I thought it was cool but you're right that it's hard to see. For the rest of the level I'll make some changes, as this is an alternative solution that wants you do to luck-based things, so would like to remove that.
3 Snow Motion - Oh right, of course, you can just stack by the digger pit. And it's horrible to do too, also can stack underneath the trapdoor too. I can't do anything about the latter, so this level should just go. Will come up with a replacement.
4 Eskimomentum - Intended I'm surprised you thought the igloo was an alternate exit but I'll remove it, also I should be able to increase the release rate to give leeway for less than max lemmings rather than mess with the layout.
5 Preparing for a Fall - This is a backroute, but unfortunately it seems to be impossible to fix because you never actually need to assign a climber, can just knock out the bottom of the stack with a digger, so unfortunately this level concept simply does not work. Will have to trash it and build a replacement.
6 Living Life on the Edge - A cool solution Mostly intended, but you didn't use the second exit so I'll need to make a small tweak.
7 Forging Ahead - Another cool solution I'm happy with your solution here, even if it's not quite the same as what I do. I was a bit worried about this level because L2 really wants you to just do lots of Hero levels and I wanted a level themed around digging and chaining skills and slowing down crowds, but thought it could end up super frustrating due to assignment rage. So the fact that you've enjoyed this level means this works for me and I don't want to risk changing anything. We'll see what happens in the stream.
8 Ice Ice Babies - I had major doubts about this level and should have listened to my own concerns. This was the first Polar level I built and wanted a level themed around freeing crowds from ice, but the ice has an issue in that the lemmings very slowly do move forward, about 1 pixel per "loop" so I had really big issues making it work.  Basically the core concept had issues and the whole thing ended up as a mess, so this will be Polar level #3 to go straight in the bin and be replaced. If you're interested in the intended solution here, you free the first lemming at the bottom, use all of your stackers in one big massive stack, then start to dig down, you then free a lemming at the top and use him to bounce off the stack, free the lemmings, and they go down a step and join the next group of sliding lemmings. This process repeats. The timing sucks, so not a very good level anyway :p
9 Snow Drifts - A clever backroute, but not even remotely close to the right solution, so will need a big reworking.
10 Santa's Big Dig - A big backroute, needs a substantial fix, but maybe I'll find a simple change to make.

[Nepster]

Regarding Polar 8:

Spoiler

If I had the NeoLemmix assignment tools, then this would have been a great level and I still had fun finding the solution, even though it wasn't the intended one. So I am rather unhappy that you plan to throw this level away.
Perhaps just add something like 16 pixels more snow to the ledges and replace the spiky ends by something rounder (assuming your intended solution still works then)? I think this would already reduce the assignment problems a lot.
And then test it with geoo and Simon. If they rage too much, you can still replace the level afterwards.    

[kieranmillar]

New update in the opening post. I call this "The Cool Update" because every level changed is Polar. Haha get it? Cool, because all of the levels are cold themed? You know what, forget it. My jokes are wasted on you lot.

v13 chagelog:

• Polar 2 Snow Drops - Quality-of-life changes and backroute fix.
• Polar 3 Snow Motion replaced with new level, Ice And Easy, and swapped position with level 2 Snow Drops.
• Polar 4 Eskimomentum - Changed decorative igloo, and significantly reduced release rate.
• Polar 5 Preparing for a Fall replaced with new level, Catch a Snowflake.
• Polar 6 Living Life on the Edge - Made minor tweaks.
• Polar 8 Ice Ice Babies replaced with new level, Grotty Grotto, and moved to level 10.
• Polar 8 (was 9) Snow Drifts - Major reworking. Skills changed in a number of ways.
• Polar 9 (was 10) Santa's Big Dig - Backroute fix.

[Nepster]

Solved the updated Polar levels again:

2) Very nice, but not overly hard level.
3) Much better now. I would just relax the time limit: I had exactly 2 seconds left on the clock when I finished.
5) Another nice level. I found the main idea rather quickly, but then stumbled on the trick to build the upper platform already with the climber.
6) This should now be intended.
8) I have great hopes, that this is now closer to the intended solution, but probably is still not quite there.
9) Still doesn't need the climber.
10) Likely a glaring backroute.

[kieranmillar]

Thanks again Nepster. I'll try to fix up what I can and push out another update before the stream. I'll also finally respond to a portion of the other comments I received for version 12.

Nepster v13 Polar

2) Exactly intended
3) I'm fine with this solution , a lot slower than the intended one but I'm happy to raise the time limit to make it easier.
5) Exactly intended
6) Exactly intended
8) You're right that this is much closer, but looks like I still need to make a minor tweak.
9) Ugh, I can't believe I missed this. Time for some steel I guess.
10) Wow, yeah, that's a massive backroute.

Simon v12

Introducing: Cavelems - Looks like I need to make a tweak here. Hopefully there's a straightforward fix for this.

Laying the Foundations - This is not 100% intended and still avoids the central trick of the level. I thought something you did here simply didn't work, but looks like it is not the case. Will need to think about how I can make this level do what I want it to do.

Nepster v12 updated levels (except Medieval)

Classic 7 - I need to stop going in circles with my attempted fixes here, and instead just either completely rethink this from scratch or totally ditch it for something else entirely.
Classic 8 - This is a backroute, and a pretty precise one to boot, but I have an idea to fix it.
Classic 10 - Yes, this is intended
Egypt 9 - I know what I can do here to fix this.
Egypt 10 - Well done on this solution Almost exactly intended, except I don't save the early glue pourer by cutting out the ground beneath him with a precise miner, instead I turn him around with the sand pourer. Your solution is extremely cool, but given the sand pourer seems not to break anything I think I'll leave it in to avoid this precision. There are also spare fillers, but similarly I don't see any way the level is broken by them. I think I'm happy with this level without needing to make any changes.
Sports 4 - Indeed it's a hackjob solution. I should be able to prevent this with some steel.
Sports 5 - I have tried to backroute fix this so many times that I think it would be best to majorly rewrok this to better focus on the central idea.
Sports 9 - For some reason lgl2 does not like putting certain objects like steel on the left-most grid squares, hence why that was unsteeled. I thought this didn't work, but that might have been before I moved the exit in an earlier update. I believe I can fix this by extending the steel, just not all the way to the screen edge.

[kieranmillar]

In preparation for tomorrow's stream, v14 is attached to the opening post. I'll wait to update NeoClassic until the next major update. I expect another update will come within a week after the stream.

v14 changelog:

• Cave 1 Introducing: Cavelems - Fixed Simon's Alternate solution.
• Classic 7 Escort Mission replaced with new level, Walk the Planks
• Classic 8 A Tight Squeeze - More steel to fix backroute.
• Egyptian 9 A Sticky Situation - Backroute fixes.
• Polar 3 Snow Drops - Extra 30s on the clock.
• Polar 7 Forging Ahead - Realised I could make this more puzzly by making some changes. Removed miner and substantially raised height of exit. Swapped positions with level 9.
• Polar 7 (was 9) Santa's Big Dig - More steel to fix backroute.
• Polar 8 Snow Drifts - Landscape tweak to fix Nepster's alternate solution.
• Polar 10 Grotty Grotto - Numerous revisions, skills have also changed.
• Sports 4 Rise to the Challenge - More steel to fix backroute.
• Sports 9 The Home Stretch - More steel to fix backroute.

[kieranmillar]

It's time for a new Tribe! Version 15, and also NeoClassic is updated to version 5. Find them both in the opening post.

v15 changelog:

• New Tribe: Circus
• Classic 7 Walk the Planks - Attempted a fix.
• Polar 4 Eskimomentum - Significantly more time on the clock.
• Polar 7 Santa's Big Dig - More steel to try and fix Simon's backroute. Returned to position 9, with levels inbetween moved down.
• Polar 10 Grotty Grotto - Level is wider, digger and platformer removed, climber added.

Minor TODO list:

• Polar 3 Snow Drops
• Polar 7 (was 8) Snow Drifts
• Polar 8 (was 9) Forging ahead
• Medieval Tribe

Major TODO list:

• Cave 5 Flappy Lem
• Medieval 7 Castle Invaders
• Space 6 Hull Breach
• Sports 5 Tour De Farce

[Nepster]

Solved V15 with the super powerful (read backrouty) SuperLem in the Circus tribe.

Circus tribe

1) Nice beginning and of the right difficulty for a first level.
2) SuperLem-backroute number one: Assigning the miner from the builders is very fiddly, but doable. Getting the SuperLem to the exit (and facing left there) needs some tries, too.
3) I don't need any builder here and could probably do without the club-basher, too (because the miner may free the attractor).
4) I am not a fan of this level, because it isn't obvious at all that the laser blaster gets through the ceiling after two builders. And apart from this trick, there is not much else to do here.
5) Nice level, but I have lots and lots of skills spare (6 jumpers, 1 climber, 9 attractors).
6) Very clever level. The question one has to pose is: Why the heck is there a trampolin below the hatch?
7) Long live the L2 glitches: If you assign the club-basher at the very edge, it leaves a one-pixel wall of terrain. This separates the worker lemming from the right crowd.
8) SuperLem-backroute number two: Getting the SuperLem through the laser blaster gap is not trivial, but doable. So I can solve the level without the club-basher, one of the miners and 8 jumpers.
9) Same nice idea as in "Lifeguard to the rescue". But unfortunately there are two very annoying parts: getting back over the middle gap, i.e. jumping from the lower stair on the left to the higher one on the right is possible, but almost pixel-precise. And of course the long SuperLem flight needed a lot of tries.
10) I like this solution, but as I only use one the miners and one of the club-bashers, this is likely a backroute.

Updated Levels

Classic 7) Timing the second builder is pretty precise, but otherwise a nice level.
Classic 8) My solution is now lose-2 (possibly even doable with only lose-1), so probably another backroute.
Egypt 9) Excellent level, but execution made me rage. Even the try you see on the screenshots saved only 49 lemmings, because the final glue-pourer platform is 2 pixels high instead of only one pixel (therefore creating it is slower than a walking lemming and they fall into the gap). So here are the precise places:
a) The two miners from the top must create a 1-pixel ledge at the bottom. This is possible, but very precise.
b) A carpet must hit the middle block almost at the left edge, so that the miner removes almost everything of the triangle in the middle. Otherwise the glue-pourer platform will hit this triangle and not continue to the exit platform.
c) After the miner removed terrain from the middle block, he must fly with another carpet to the top to fall to the exit platform. Again there is only barely enough horizontal space to do that.
Polar 9) Probably still not intended, because I liked my previous solution better.
Polar 10) I totally overlooked that you gave us now a climber . So I solved it without the climber, which is probably not quite intended.
Sport 4) Excellent level! Should be intended now.
Sport 9) Excellent level! Should be intended now. I only didn't expect the shimmier to move along the top of the miner tunnel, because the tunnel has small bits of 45° slopes in it.

[kieranmillar]

Thanks Nepster. Sad news, I didn't realise you could cancel the laser blaster so some of these levels are unfixably busted. Will have to come up with replacements.

Circus

1) Exactly intended
2) Well alright then, I can fix this. However I can use this idea for one of the replacement levels.
3) Pretty much intended, but I thought using the club basher from the miner always required you to use a builder to get back onto the miner tunnel, but looks like it doesn't? I think I'll fix the fact that the miner can free the attractor (I didn't realise it could) but leave in the builder.
4) Largely intended I also didn't realise you could just barely blast out from the height from exactly two builders and thought you needed more height. Not sure I want to make that ceiling a bit higher as I'm limited to a full 8 pixels, which is higher than I wanted, but given the precision of the miner and trampoline that are needed here I guess it's not so bad. Maybe there's a better fix here. Will try something. I mean your solution is fine and really you're just making things a lot harder on yourself here, but I'll try to make things a bit nicer if I can.
5) I should of guessed that trying to be nice and provide those tiny blocks to prevent extreme precision would open up major backrouting. Let me remove them and see how people feel.
6) Intended
7) Boo! That bug sucks! Will try a fix, hopefully it won't bust anything.
8) Unfixably busted
9) I cannot believe that jump works. Gross! Fixing that jump will fix this level, but actually fixing that jump is gonna be tough.
10) Unfixably busted EDIT: No wait! No it's not! Hooray!

Updated levels

Classic 7 - Wow, talk about getting exactly the right idea except making things significantly harder on yourself. You can do this almost exact solution without taking more than 1 lemming over the initial bridges. I guess no changes are really needed here.
Classic 8  - Now for some reason I thought that digger + builder trick couldn't be made to work here and am pretty sure I even tried it, but honestly I'm now a bit confused as to why I ever thought that. I think I can fix this by adding a climber and swapping the digger for an exploder, and allowing an extra loss. It's trickier to execute, but it should work!
Egypt 9 - An exceptionally precise backroute? Well I definitely need to fix this!
Polar 9 - I'm beginning to wonder if this level is worth keeping. I can fix this, but it just slowly gets more and more dumb, and the level as intended is a bit boring anyway because the digs are so long. Another fine replacement candidate I think...
Polar 10 - Smart solution, but this is a backroute that needs fixing.
Sports 4 - Exactly intended
Sports 9 - Exactly intended I too was pleasantly surprised that it seems to work always and without luck given the nature of the slope created, but hey I'm not complaining

[Simon]

Walk the plank save-all (video, 6 MB)

-- Simon

[geoo]

Not many new solutions, and all three of them look a bit backrouteish:

Spoiler

Polar 10: Crawling is gonna be a big issue here I'm afraid.
Egypt 9: Exploiting the little ledge of the pillar here.
Egypt 10: This one actually looks somewhat legit, but saves 4 fillers (3 in my solution because I misplaced the last miner).