Gronkling's animal packs development thread (pack 1 in testing)

[Gronkling]

Working on a large-scale project doesn't agree with me, so instead I'll be releasing my levels 10 at a time just like the old days. This way I can focus on getting a batch of a few levels perfect at a time, instead of dealing with over 100 levels which stressed me out.

Introducing Gronkling's animal packs

• Each will have 10 20 levels, the standard number of a classic pack before big game-sized projects became the standard
• There will be 2 versions of each pack! The standard version with my set solutions, and an easy version with extra skills and open-ended solutions for beginners, or people who like looking for challenge solutions. Both versions will share the same terrain.
• Each pack is themed after a different family of animals, because who doesn't like those cool critters . There's a fun sculpture of an animal hanging around at the sides of each level
• I'll keep a 'compilation pack' going where you can find each mini-pack bundled together in one easy mega-pack (only applicable when I release more than 1 pack)
• The levels will be a mix of levels I liked from my old unreleased game-sized pack, and newly created levels using new neolemmix skills.

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Animal pack 1: Rodents!
Here's a squirrel

[INITIAL LEVEL CREATION finished]

[Pieuw]

How great to know you're still making levels!
This is a great project, and you're so right about making a small amount of levels at a time instead of making dozens of them and then trying to sort them all and losing your mind.
Will you use custom tilesets or original tilesets with added animal sculptures in them?
Cool squirrel! At first glance I though it was a llama with a bell on its neck

[Gronkling]

I'm just using already existing tilesets, with the sculptures made out of various terrain from the same tileset as the level.

[Strato Incendus]

Awww, that's cute! Glad to see another level designer join the club of people who "paint" with level tiles. This looks amazing! I can't imagine how much time it must have taken to place all these overlapping trees from your Beast II tileset and cutting away the excess parts. Must have been a bit like stone-carving, but with terrain pieces.

I guess those animals are going to be completely peaceful towards the lemmings wandering around all over them?

Not like in my levels, where usually every animal is a trap, be it an object or terrain...

[Gronkling]

They're mostly just an optional to look at decoration of the level that are on the sides as a kind of frame right now, though I might add a few into the level themselves as terrain decoration once they have been tested (so I don't have to put loads of work into a decoration then remove it when a backroute goes right through it!)

[Gronkling]

I finished the initial creation of all 10 levels of the first pack, so testing will begin. I currently have 2 testers, if you feel like testing I'll take one more.
I have all the testers I need

[WillLem]

Happy to help if you need

[Gronkling]

I decided I'm going to release 20 levels per pack so it's a bit more substantial, and it makes each pack the size of a standard rank.
Also I could do with 1 more tester I think! So let me know if you want to test some hard levels.