[NeoLemmix] Lemmings Open Air [Difficulty: Medium - Hard]

[David]

I finished Soft rank !   Very good levels, well imagined ! I admire the work, really. I enjoy myself ! I really liked Soft 19, Soft 20, Soft 21, and especially Soft 25, but the others didn't "displease" me !

Levels Soft 16, Soft 18 and Soft 26 seemed rather easy to me, while levels Soft 15 and Soft 28 were very difficult to solve.

So I redid Soft 11 with the expected solution (well... I think).

For Soft 19, I recorded the replay before the last update, but I think it doesn't affect the solution I found.

For Hardcore rank, I understand, but we'll talk about that later... I doubt I will get that far, because Soft rank is still quite difficult for me !

Thank you ! Bye !

[Strato Incendus]

Responses to David (Soft 11 + 15 - 30)

11: This is the same alternative solution that namida found, as far as I recall: You removed the Stoner again so that the crowd could walk up to the water, but then the Stacker prevented them from drowning. In the intended solution, the Basher goes down the Fencer tunnel to widen it, with the Stoner further back, so that the Basher doesn't remove it as well. Then, the Basher (or one of the lemmings from the crowd) stacks under the Stoner in such a way that the Basher can get back over the Stoner without the crowd being able to get over it from the other side (just like on Soft 02). Now, because the Fencer tunnel has been widened by the Basher, the Disarmer can continue to shimmy after he has crossed the water, going over both the Stoner and the Blocker and to the pillar on the left. This is where he needs the Floater to survive the splat height. Since you didn't have the Disarmer shimmy that far, you spared the Floater.
15: Valid alternative solution. I think this is the first time I ever see anybody use a Shimmier to stop a Platformer early.
16: Intended.
17: Very close to intended.
18: One of the expected alternative solutions now.
19: Intended.
20: Intended.
21: Intended.
22: The more efficient intended solution, didn't need the Climber and Basher.
23: Pseudo-backroute. Well played - I can't make the fire area even higher, lest it would burn the feet of the lemmings who are supposed to shimmy along that ceiling.
24: Valid alternative solution. This is a way of crowd control (with the first step of a Builder staircase making an 8-pixel altitude 1 pixel too high for other lemmings to step up behind the Builder) that I've actually seen some people use on the previous level (Soft 23) at one point. I also already tried to enforce it on the level "Out of L.A." in Lemmings World Tour, but that level is way too large to enforce anything specific, because the size comes with too many degrees of freedom to do so.
25: Intended. You only placed the stacks to pen in the crowd in slightly different places than I did.
26: This is the first time I see somebody take the entire crowd along the path on the right. That requires only one Shimmier, though, so I don't think I should allow that.
27: Intended.
28: Intended.
29: One of the expected alternative solutions now.
30: Valid alternative solution. Why did you make that one lemming a Swimmer though if you just allowed him to swim off the map to the left and die right afterwards? You simply could have let him drown as well. You pretty much only used him to pick up the pickup skills, which he had already done at this point.

[Gronkling]

OK I finished all of hardcore except the last level (reason in spoiler). Very nice pack overall, I'd say it's difficulty is a 7/10, though that's with backroutes! Had a lot of fun playing it, I'll come back to the levels that got fixed soon.

Spoiler

• Nice "Steel-works" feeling start to the rank
• Saved 1 skill, 5 extra lemmings. Tricky!
• Saved 3 skills, 1 extra lemming
• Saved 6 skills, here's probably the silliest backroute ever
• Saved 2 skills, not a fan of this sort of button hunt level but the decor was really cool
• Saved 1 extra lemming. Nice trick but very easy for last rank
• Saved 1 skill, 1 extra lemming, and didn't really use the cloners, but it was fun
• Saved 8 skills, 1 extra lemming
• I liked this one
• Saved 3 skills, 8 extra lemmings
• Saved 4 skills
• Feels backroutey, nice decoration
• Saved 4 skills, 1 extra lemming
• Nice one!
• Saved 1 skill
• Saved 8 skills, 3 extra lemmings
• Saved 3 skills, 1 extra lemming
• Good!
• Saved 3 skills
• Saved 8 skills, 1 extra lemming. If the bit on the left is intended, I really like it
• Saved 1 skill
• Saved 2 skills, but it feels right
• Saved 10 skills, 3 extra lemmings, another horrid backroute
• Saved 2 skills
• Saved 1 skill, 1 extra lemming
• Saved 3 skills, 1 extra lemming. I liked this one, maybe the hardest in the pack.
• Saved 1 skill, 1 extra lemming
• Saved 9 skills
• One of the best in the pack!
• I had my fingers cross whilst finishing level 29. "Please don't follow the trend of having a mega-level at the end of a pack". I tried it a few times, finding I didn't have some skills after 10 minutes of fiddling, and having 0 motivation to try again. I guess most people like them since they always seem to appear nowadays, but they are just 100% not for me in the slightest. Maybe some day I'll come back to it, sorry!

[kaywhyn]

Congrats on finishing 99.2 percent (119/120) of the pack, Gronkling!

I must be a dummy, because it sounds like both you and Armani didn't find Hardcore 24 that hard. That's the only level I haven't been able to solve, at least the latest version of it. Both Armani and I have already backrouted it so many times in the past. So far, the best I have managed on the level is lose 1, which doesn't help since you need to save everyone, and that was when I finally came back to the level last night for the first time since Thanksgiving here in the U.S. I wonder if it might just be a shimmier trick I haven't seen that's preventing me from solving the level. Or, more likely, just not going about the level correctly. Will of course keep trying.

As for Hardcore 30, I can assure you it's not as hard as you're making it sound. Yes, certain skills running out quick will be a problem, but it's all about finding ways to conserve skills wherever possible. IIRC, I still had a handful of skills leftover. Well, since you're not a fan of huge levels, I know who won't be doing the final level of LWT then In short, standard height level but an extremely wide level. Might be the max width actually. Not sure. There's probably only 2 skills that can potentially be problematic due to running out quickly, obviously the builder is one of them, but otherwise I ended up having a lot of skills left. 

[Gronkling]

HC24 was pretty tricky! One of the harder ones. I guess I'll try on HC30 every now and then if its not too bad, just not something I want to try a lot at a time.

[Strato Incendus]

Congrats on finishing 99.2 percent (119/120) of the pack, Gronkling!

Indeed, from me as well! But as Darken Rahl said: "Do you believe the Keeper is interested in almost winning?"

I'm the first person to trash huge X-of-everything levels. That's precisely why I don't create them very often. Pit Lems still had the most of these in comparison, but they weren't very restrictive. My newer ones, the few that I make, are. So I felt more justified in having such a level at the end than it might be in other packs, if they already pack a lot of these huge X-of-everything levels at the very beginning of a pack, as well.

Well, since you're not a fan of huge levels, I know who won't be doing the final level of LWT then In short, standard height level but an extremely wide level. Might be the max width actually.

"The Grand Puzzle" is 4000 pixels wide. New-Formats has a width limit of 2400 pixels, so you couldn't even re-create that level in New Formats. Only the player can still handle it.
The Old-Formats editor didn't have a max width, as far as I remember. At least not officially. Of course, there was probably a limit at which the player would simply start breaking down.

Responses to Gronkling (Hardcore 01 - 29)

01: Almost intended. You only swapped the Blocker's and the Miner's position. And indeed, I tried to keep the tileset choices in line with the tilesets chosen on the same level number in original Lemmings, at least as much as possible. For example, I knew the last one had to be a Fire level instead of Dirt.
02: Almost intended. The crowd on the very right is supposed to be freed with a Miner from the top instead of bombing themselves out... but it didn't really make a difference, you still needed almost all the skills.
03: This is one of the unfixable ones... meaning, the intended solution is more complex than most backroutes people came up with.
04: Really? There was a 1-pixel-high gap in the one-way arrow trigger areas? Well, thanks for exploiting it in order to show me, but I'm sure you know this is not going to remain this way ... In fact, the editor had set the heights of all the OW trigger areas to 31 pixels (instead of the standard 32). I can't recall setting it that way... sometimes the editor seems to do this. I remember that at one point, I also repeatedly had issues with the skill counts of pickup skills being reset to 1 per object by the editor. That seems to have been fixed by now, I just mention it as another example where the editor sometimes does stuff you never actually told it to do.
05: Very close to intended, just some minor differences in the details.
06: Intended.
07: Semi-backroute. You bought yourself a lot of time by having the left crowd go so far over to the left before doing the double-Bomber turnaround. I'm not sure what to do about this one yet.
08: Close enough to intended. You did use one of the main tricks, namely, the Digger paying double duty to both get down and turn around the middle crowd coming down from the top. Except it didn't actually matter in your case, because you had sealed up the water gap tightly that this "turning around" should normally prevent the lemmings from the middle crowd from going into.
09: Intended.
10: Valid alternative solution.
11: Semi-backroute, close to intended. I think I've seen it before from one of my testers that somebody used the Fencer to slightly fence into the wall next to the right crowd, just to stall some lemmings. A lot of the other stuff you did was fine and as intended, but this mere stalling usage seems to be one of the things that allow people to completely ignore the bottom half of the level. So I slightly extended the steel to the left. You can of course still fence straight into the steel, but the lemming shouldn't keep going as long anymore as he used to.
12: Valid alternative solution, and potentially actually much more interesting than the intended one!
13: An acceptable alternative solution, although you saved a couple too many skills for my liking.
14: Very close to intended. This is the first time I see somebody bomb that vertical thin stripe before building - you can of course also build slightly through the stripe, as you did indeed on some of the later levels. This is a trick for which I realised a little late in development that I still wanted to use it, and as a result, I probably used it a little too much on the Hardcore rank. That's because enforcing it didn't really work in Lemmings World Tour, so I've been wanting to do so ever since I first discovered it by accident while playing "Ancient Temple of Lemming" from Lemmings Migration (a level that doesn't actually require this trick, but you can certainly use it there).
15: Very close to intended. I just used a temporary Blocker to turn around a lemming while the Basher was going through those triangles (which leads to the Basher automatically freeing that Blocker again eventually).
16: Semi-backroute. This one could be fine I guess, but I feel better with covering the entire deck between the two sails with steel as a result of this. And to my testers, yes, I probably should have done so earlier...
17: Acceptable alternative solution. Give people a solution involving a few Bombers/Stoners, and they will go ahead to exploit that more lenient save requirement to let innocent little worker lemmings die, just because they got trapped in the wrong place.
18: Intended. This is one I'm quite proud of, with my confidence being based on the testing replays looking the same. Lots of cool tricks involved, and apparently they're all being enforced.
19: Close enough to intended. These are the times I wish I had a type of one-way arrow that would allow Bashers to pass but not Miners looking in the same direction. Horizontal one-way arrows are just way too forgiving sometimes!
20: Much closer to the intended solution than the other hilariously obscure solutions I've seen so far! Especially that "bombing through the steel from the other side" part. You were just a little more skill-efficient than I was.
21: Almost intended. You used the Bomber at the beginning, I used it to stop the Fencer at the end.
22: Almost intended. You were just slightly more efficient in handling that trap on the right.
23: Arrgh, them Bomber backroutes again. And the Stoners do their part as well, of course. Getting used to seeing stuff like this coming before it happens is why we need the Grenader with its even larger craters... but then again, that doesn't mean I can stop this. Unless a wall is actually meant to be completely impenetrable (in which case I could use steel), there is simply no type of one-way arrow or other obstacle that could prevent Bombers from going through. One-way fields don't work either, since in most cases where you apply one-way arrows, you want the crowd to walk through the tunnel afterwards from the opposing side.
24: Valid alternative solution. I didn't expect there would still be one. But how you freed the Blocker who was just barely standing on the first step of that staircase, immediately canceling the Basher with a Shimmier afterwards, to prevent him from bashing through the staircase - that was awesome! In fact, I was similarly confused here as on Hardcore 04, where you passed through between the one-way arrows. Because here it looked as if the Basher was bashing straight through the trigger areas of the Blocker, meaning you'd think he should have turned around. It was only on the very last frame that the Basher's clubs hit the terrain underneath the Blocker's feet; the Basher himself was standing in front of the trigger area the entire time.
I don't want to incentivise people to actively look for this solution. Therefore, I won't make it a talisman to solve this with just 2 Climbers. But it would certainly be worthy of one!
25: Almost intended. You just saved one Basher, like one of my testers, simply because you chose not to go through the pillar on the right. I always took the lemming there to prevent the big drop, instead of just jumping straight towards the updraft. But that part of the solution was developed before the updraft was actually there. So probably I could remove that one Basher now, but I don't really see any harm in keeping it.
26: Close to intended. You used a Basher instead of a Miner at the start to make the dirt pillar climber-friendly. Also, you sent some Shimmiers along the bottom, one along the top side of that plank. Much like on Soft 28, both is possible! For the little "circle" you need to create in order to get the lemmings over the self-created tunnels again, you're the first one I see using two Miners for that, instead of one Miner and a Basher.
27: Semi-backroute. That way of crowd control seemed a little too easy for me, even though you still ended up using almost all the skills. So while it looks like an acceptable alternative solution, it seems to me like most of the skill placements were quite obvious, once the crowd had been contained. Of course, it's always hard to tell from a replay file alone how long it took the player to actually figure out that solution. But in this case, I'm comparatively certain this was too easy, especially for the end of the last rank.
28: Huge backroute. You're not the first to exploit the gaps I left between the steel pieces on this level, but you are indeed the first to use this particular vulnerable spot. Apparently nobody else wanted to bother with the hassle of going through a ceiling with Builders, because it always results in a lot of head-bumping. Anyways, now the entire ceiling is steel.
29: Intended.  Another one that seems to be fairly reliant at enforcing its solution! I'm glad I made it the second-to-last level in the pack. Even though that was mainly driven by tileset choice (being in the position of "Save me" in original Lemmings).

[Strato Incendus]

And with that, the next update is here!

Changelog

Soft 26: added steel

Hardcore 04: fixed the one-way arrows
Hardcore 11: added steel
Hardcore 16: added steel
Hardcore 27: added steel
Hardcore 28: added steel, also took the opportunity to add one-way arrows at one more spot

I assume a lot of people are still playing the very first version "silently" , given that the very first version was downloaded an astounding 48 times, but each of the updates only 2 times.

Still feel free to post your replays here, but don't be surprised if I tell you some of them no longer work in my version .

The better option would of course be to simply update your version of the pack again every once in a while and check with a mass replay check whether your solutions still work.

I completely understand that it's hard to keep up with every single update, but whenever you take another shot at it and haven't played in a while, it's always easy to simply download the latest version again.

[namida]

For example, David was the very first person to backroute Soft 11, nobody else had even considered doing that.

I'm not sure of the details of the exact case as I haven't been reading spoilers (or indeed, really, other people's comments in general) except where they directly relate to my comments, but - there's plenty of cases where the experienced players miss backroutes that the newer players find. This is a specific reason why I will usually include some of the less-skilled players as testers on my packs - they might indeed try stuff that experienced players dismiss as "too simple for this level" / etc.

[ericderkovits]

Ok, here are my Loud 11-20 replays. These 10 were harder than the 1st 10. but level 15 was the hardest of these.

and I got the Talismans too for 11,14 and 20

[Strato Incendus]

And yet again another small update! I took this as an opportunity to finally try and fix "Bonfire" (Loud 20). Hopefully it works this time!

Changelog

Loud 16: Miners are a pickup skill now
Loud 20: Fencer made a pickup skill, Basher pickup skill added, terrain and fire areas at the beginning extended, hatch moved back accordingly. This is a comparatively major change, so I even had to adapt my replay of the intended solution. The Talisman has been removed, since it should no longer be possible to attain it now (but feel free to prove me wrong if you can solve this without using any Bombers).

Responses to ericderkovits (Loud 11-20)

11: slightly more efficient alternative solution
12: Close to intended. You had the Climber bash against the steel to turn around himself, instead of turning around in a regular Walker's Basher tunnel. I would like to enforce this minor difference, but I'm pretty sure I can't .
13: Close to intended. The way you isolated the pioneer at the beginning was a little different, and you built over the trap at the end instead of digging under it.
14: This seems to be the new talisman solution, well done!
15: YES! Intended at last! Or at least the gist of it. You saved a few skills, but all the general ideas are there!
16: The left side was done as intended, but you completely skipped the right side. Now the Miner is a pickup skill on the right to force the player to go there as well.
17: Close to intended.
18: Valid alternative solution, used all the skills. How you contain the crowd (if at all) is really up to you here.
19: Intended. Nice way of spreading out the crowd a little to make the timing of the double Miner assignment at the end a little easier! Now I have a clearer conscience about this level.
20: You used the same backroute as many others; the reason I make another attempt at fixing it now is simply because the current option hadn't occurred to me until now. Hopefully the fixes are enough this time!
For this reason, the talisman has been removed, since I don't think it's possible to attain anymore. Feel free to prove me wrong! Sorry to those who had achieved it so far, but making the backroute a Talisman was really just the second-best option I had as long as I couldn't fix it. Maybe a talisman will re-appear if people find a way to backroute this one yet again (which wouldn't surprise me). However, I don't consider it likely anymore that a solution without any Bombers is possible.

This is a specific reason why I will usually include some of the less-skilled players as testers on my packs - they might indeed try stuff that experienced players dismiss as "too simple for this level" / etc.

I did that as well - I had two people I would consider expert solvers, one intermediate, and one casual player during early "open testing". However, if the less experienced players never make it to the hardest levels because the previous ones are already too hard for them, they won't get to reveal those "easy backroutes" on the harder levels, even if they are glaringly obvious - because they never get to play them in the first place before they see themselves forced to give up . Simply because the average difficulty is already too high for them at that point.

And also, it's not very fun for any tester to attempt a bunch of levels which they know will be too hard for them in general, only to randomly solve one every once in a while by backrouting it, upon which they immediately know that their solution most likely won't count because it's going to be fixed.

[Gronkling]

I tried again today and finished HC30

[kaywhyn]

Told you so. Granted, it's far from being the most difficult of the pack, but at the same time it's not trivial either. Anyway, congrats on solving 100% of the pack!

[ericderkovits]

ok here are my 2 new resolved loud level replays

Level 16 using both sides of level
Level 20 I couldn't do without bombers and I didn't come close to saving 39, only 35(2 over requirement)

Also I included Loud 5 Not using the climber, since a climber shouldn't be turning around on a stack when using a shimmier.


Just as a Note: Today is my birthday

[Strato Incendus]

Congratulations to Gronkling for beating the pack! - And congratulations to ericderkovits to his birthday  

@Gronkling: Hardcore 30 is an open-ended level, so your solution was more than fine!

Responses to ericderkovits (Loud 05, 16, 20)

05: Intended now. I guess now you understand why it's called "When I come around" - because when the lemming does come around, and he is a Climber... he dies. When he comes around and he isn't one, he turns around on the stack like everyone else. So "When I come around" is the crucial moment.
16: Intended now too! The only reason you had two skills remaining is because I didn't factor in during initial level design that every player would simply stack under one of the triangles from the ceiling; I provided extra skills so that you could have the Climber shimmy back across the water once more, and then back to the exit, assuming he would always go over the stack.
20: Unsurprisingly, my fix still couldn't enforce the intended solution. But at least you were now forced to use a majority of the skills (including Bombers). So I guess that's the best I could hope for!

One more thing:
I'm really curious to see whether Colorful Arty can beat this - because he was able to beat SEB Lems. Which is also ranked Medium - Hard, yet at this point I would still consider it harder than LOA.

I for one am currently still struggling with SEB Lems, and I do need occasional hints here and there to even have a chance at the Murder rank.

Between Flopsy and me, it seems like both of us are better at creating hard levels than solving them, because neither of us has solved the other's main pack(s) yet.

[kaywhyn]

I for one am currently still struggling with SEB Lems, and I do need occasional hints here and there to even have a chance at the Murder rank.

Between Flopsy and me, it seems like both of us are better at creating hard levels than solving them, because neither of us has solved the other's main pack(s) yet.

Now you really got me curious as to how much I'll be struggling with SEB Lems. Too bad it's going to be quite a while before I even get around to playing it due to the planned LPs I still need to do. One of them is almost done. Heck, I'll be amazed if anyone manages to beat all of United without hints. I almost did, but I think it was more to me giving up on a few levels quicker than usual. I think the only person who might had is josh, but since all correspondences was via PM, only Icho can say with certainty.

Then again, I'm not sure if I ever mentioned it, but save for a few levels in each rank, with LOA I felt no extreme real challenge with the pack. Even I thought the Hardcore rank wasn't all that very hard, except for Hardcore 11 that you showcased for the rank in the OP That was probably the hardest level for me in the entire pack. I still have the newest version of Hardcore 24 unsolved, but the solution will probably come to me eventually. The best I've managed so far is save all but 1, which doesn't help since you need to save everyone on that level. It's likely I'm simply missing something obvious or some trick I might not had seen before.