Level of the Year: 2018!

[IchoTolot]

For a list of nominated levels so far, please see the nominated levels topic.

And it's this time of the year again!

This is a bit different from the usual contests. You don't create a new level for this one; instead, levels released during 2018(ish) get nominated and a winner picked from them. To be precise, the eligible dates are from 1st December 2017 to 31th December 2018.

The following conditions must be met in order for a level to be eligible:
1. The level must have either been part of a large pack released during the eligible timeframe (1st Dec 2017 to 31th Dec 2018), or in some other way had its first public release during the timeframe. Private releases (such as sending to prerelease testers) do not affect eligibility either way. *
2. The level must be available for an engine that is usually eligible for the contests. Or in other words: NeoLemmix (new format version, levels which are/can be converted from old format levels are eligible though - mainly radiation and slowfreeze stuff is therefore affected), or single-player Lix.
3. The level must be designed by a single author; collaboration levels are not eligible.
4. The creator of the level must not have specifically requested it be excluded.
5. The level must not have been nominated for LOTY2015/2016/2017.

* To clarify here: If it was released publicly prior to Dec 1st 2017 as part of a demo or preview, but the full pack was released during the eligible period, the level is fine (as long as it wasn't nominated for LOTY2015/2016/2017).

Being a derivative of an ineligible level (as long as it's from the same author) does not disqualify a level; as long as the level in question is clearly intended to stand as a seperate-but-related level rather than a newer version of the same level.



To nominate a level, please PM me with your list of nominations. If you wish to modify your nominations at a later date, please resend the whole list of levels you wish to nominate, not just the changes.

Each user may nominate up to four levels from authors other than themself, up to a maximum of two levels per author. Anyone who nominates at least three levels by other authors may also nominate one of their own levels. (These self-nominations do not count towards the four nomination limit.)

So the maximum nomination value is: 4 levels from other users and 1 level of your own.

Note that levels that won a level design contest during the eligible timeframe get an automatic nomination, unless their author requests otherwise.

Nominations will be open until the beginning of February 14th 2019 (UTC). No additions / changes to nominations will be permitted after this date, with one exception: If a level someone has nominated is found to be ineligible for any reason and this is not discovered until after the deadline, they will be offered a chance to nominate a different level in its place.

Similar to last year, the voteoff will occur in three stages:

Stage 1
This will be done similar to how the first rounds of the voteoffs for the official games were. The levels will be put into random brackets, and the top ~50% from each bracket will qualify for Stage 2.

Stage 2
This will also be done in regular voteoff style. The aim here will be to get down to around 4~6 remaining levels, so exact details will depend on how many levels are entered.

Stage 3
This will be done in an elimination format over multiple rounds; each round, one level gets knocked out, and the others continue onto the next round, until we have a winner.



The prize on offer will be US $10.00 for first place.

Also note that, in the interest of being reasonable, the "don't discuss levels involved in contests anywhere on the site during the voting period" rule does not fully apply to this contest; instead, it will be "do not discuss them at all within the LOTY2017 topics during voting, and don't discuss them in relation to the contest anywhere on the site".

So, that's about it! Any questions, ask here; and feel free to start nominating levels!

[IchoTolot]

Eligible Level Packs

This is simply a rough list of levels that are eligible. They have not nessecerially been nominated, and the majority probably won't be. Please note that this is probably not a complete list, especially in regard to Lix levels; if you can think of anything that should be added, let me know!

New format NL and Lix

Level Design Contests: Lemmings Forums Level Contest #14, Lemmings Forums Level Contest #15

Namida: Lemmings Plus VI 

tan x dx: Integral Lemmings

GigaLem: Festival Millas 2018

LB999: Classical Lemmings (the parts made in 2018)

Proxima: GemLems (rank 1)

kieranmillar: Quest From Kieran {levels that were available in v02}

Nessy:  Lemmings Destination (8 Level Demo)

Strato Incendus: Lemmings Open Air (The first 30 levels released on Dec 31th 2018)

Simon and Forestidia: xmas2018 (levels that only have Simon or Raymanni as an author)

Old Format NL Packs (if the level in question is convertable to the new format)

Strato Incendus: Lemmings World Tour

Duuddu: A Master Degree in Lemmings, An Unnamed Level Pack

Alberto Fernandes: Be Smart!


Don't forget to check out the Random level sharing topic as well!

Excluded Levels

Möbius (or rather Clam and Insane Steve):

Clammings, Insane Steve's World (due to them mostly beeing conversions of old levels, if there are brand new levels under them: Tell me the names and they will be made eligible)

Forestidia:

Every level by Forestidia, due to a personal request.

Flopsy:

Any Contest 14 or 15 entries, due to a personal request.

[Proxima]

(These self-nominations do not count towards the eight nomination limit.)

That presumably should be "four"?

2. The level must be available for an engine that is usually eligible for the contests. Or in other words: NeoLemmix (new format version, working conversions of old format levels are eligible though), or single-player Lix.

I wonder whether this rule is necessary. I can understand it for the contests, since you want to make the levels as accessible as possible for playing within a short timespan; but for LOTY, voters may be familiar with levels through having played them earlier in the year.

Of course, the reason I ask is that this rule will have a big impact this year, since it will make Lemmings World Tour levels ineligible for nominations.

[IchoTolot]

ince you want to make the levels as accessible as possible for playing within a short timespan

This also goes for LOTY.

Most people have only played a part of the nominations. So the process of getting a clear opinion of all nominated levels shall be as easy as possible over the timespan.

Also I've noticed quite a few people just played a part of the levels and then ignored the rest, while voting for the ones they knew. The only thing I can do in terms of trying to get every voter to at least get a quick look at every level is to make the access to all as easy as possible.

1 new format NL compilation pack and 1 zip archive with Lix levels is as easy as I can make it.

Also I think quite a lot of Lemmings World Tour levels will be eligible as all convertable levels are allowed. Mainly radiation and slowfreeze levels are affected.

[namida]

Just gonna point out there's only about a week left for nominations, and not many are in yet.

[IchoTolot]

The nominations are slowly trickling in, but keep them coming as there is less than a week left.

[namida]

I have to ask re: contest #15 levels - within the rules of that contest they were treated as two levels, but LOTY doesn't usually do such a thing so - shouldn't they be considered two separate levels here?

[IchoTolot]

I have to ask re: contest #15 levels - within the rules of that contest they were treated as two levels, but LOTY doesn't usually do such a thing so - shouldn't they be considered two separate levels here?

I think then I will split them up for the nominations. Yes, it's better to have them split up here.

[namida]

Only a few hours left to get nominations in, if anyone who wants to hasn't submitted theirs yet.

[Simon]

I've seen the lack of nominations, but sadly, I don't have reasonable nominations myself.

I've played several new-to-me Lix levels, mostly by mobius, but they were all made in 2017 or before. Apart from that, I played all 3 maps from the solving contest, but it would be unfair to nominate those merely for the allowance to nominate an own level. The own level would have been Japanese Winter from xmas2018, the 24-level pack that I co-designed.

Good luck to all the nominees!

-- Simon

[IchoTolot]

I think for the next year I will go back a little bit to the middle ground:

8 nominations resulted in way too many, 4 nominations resulted in a bit too few. I will try out 6 next time.

[Crane]

How do you plan to split them all up?

[IchoTolot]

I will make a group plan and split them up accordingly. You will see.

[Akseli]

I think for the next year I will go back a little bit to the middle ground:

8 nominations resulted in way too many, 4 nominations resulted in a bit too few. I will try out 6 next time.

Last year we had 88 nominations in total and maximum 8 nominations per person (at least 11 people nominated levels) and this year 26 nominations in total and maximum 4 per person (at least 6,5 people nominated levels). The small amount of nominations isn't entirely because of restricting nominations to four, but actually very few people nominated levels at all this time, I'm not sure why.

[namida]

I personally didn't nominate anything in either of these years IIRC (I definitely didn't this year). I haven't been playing enough packs to really make fair nominations.