Level Design Contest #WasteMyTime

[darkshoxx]

Hi everyone,

I'm happy to announce my little level contest. The rules may be a bit odd and very specific, I hope you're all on board with that.
The goal is to make a neolemmix level on a canvas size of 200x200 and a time limit of 8 minutes 20 seconds. 
While most of the global rules apply, the winner of the contest will not be determined by voting. Instead, your level will be assigned a score based on my playthrough. The faster I beat your level, the worse your score. It might be counterintuitive, but the goal is therefore to waste my time, and prevent me from "speedrunning" the level.

Per submission, I have one hour time to beat the level up to three times.
The moment I beat the level for the third time, the lowest time it took me in all three attempts will be your score. You're aiming for a high score.
If I can't beat the level within an hour, the level receives a score of 0, which is unfavourable (so you'll have to take my low skill into account). 
Here's a recap video:
https://youtu.be/omW5AZSSRa8
This is based off a contest I held in Super Mario Maker 2. It's also where some of the restrictions originate, for example, 500 seconds is the max timelimit in SMM2
https://youtu.be/QnCNm4yaxso
I was informed that there might be trivial solutions to get it down to the final second. That is fine, the winner in the original contest had a score of 500 seconds minus one frame.

The winner gets a twitch giftsub to two channels of their choice.
The runner up wins a twitch giftsub to one channel of their choice.

Levels can be submitted via PM here, via my discord, or via pastebin link to twitch chat (if it's only textfiles)

I'd encourage you to have a replay for the level that beats it, but it's not strictly required.
I will begin playing submitted levels on Wednesday, Nov 30th on my twitch channel:
https://www.twitch.tv/darkshoxx
Usually during the first hour of my stream (see schedule).
It is not strictly required for the submitter to be in chat while the level is played, but encouraged.
Levels can be submitted for one week, until Dec 7th. Winners will be chosen once I've played all the submitted levels.

Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated.
Should additional requirements/clarifications/amendments become necessary, I will post them here and in the description of the YT video.
Let's Build!

[Pieuw]

If I understand correctly, the level has to take a while to beat even if you know the solution ? This will make for terrible levels, especially on such a small canvas
Some annoying ideas come to mind

[darkshoxx]

Correct, since the level will be judged on in-game time. The score comes from the time of in-game execution, not thinking and puzzling. Hence a 1 hour time limit for me to beat them.

If they're "terrible" or "annoying" that's okay, and somewhat expected. Last time we did it, it was good fun for everyone involved (albeit on a different platform)

I guess the challenge is to design a "timer" that basically only lets you beat the level after a certain amount of time, but also almost forces you to be able to beat it. As a sidenote, I'm not super familiar with the rewinding yet.

[NieSch]

Fun idea! But I think you should add a rule that it should be possible to complete the level in say 2 minutes (and prove this with a replay). Otherwise you can easily create a level that can only be completed in 8 minutes or more. (You can simply set a certain amount of lemmings that take a certain time of entering the level. Or make an obvious route you must dig through that takes a certain amount of time.)

[geoo]

This is a fun idea. Wish I had time to implement a level.

Long time ago we already discussed how to create levels that take a long time to solve (penultimate paragraph in this post: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=1314.msg34071#msg34071)
This could directly be applied here: just have X lemmings on X platforms of different lengths (see post - some prime P times a fixed amount of pixels L) that need a certain time to synchronize, and require them to bash at the end of the platform to get out. If they are synchronized, they all cluster on the same spot, and can pass a squisher trap with only one lemming dying. Otherwise, some of them will be at least L apart, and if the trap is fast enough it is guaranteed to at least take 2.

But I feel like you could even make a level here that requires no skills and just solves itself, 200x200 might be enough to waste 8 minutes just slowly walking down a zigzag path.

[IchoTolot]

I will join in! 

To the normal ruleset (500 secs + 200x200 size) I will add an extra challenge for me:

- Make it a fun, easy, but serious lemming puzzle aka. no extremely cheesy design while coming close to/be exact  500 secs.

[∫tan x dx]

Hi!

When I first saw this post, I was immediately inspired to make something cool to really show off what NeoLemmix can do.

I would like to submit the attached level and replay files for this contest.

Good Luck. You'll need it.

[darkshoxx]

Thanks for all the feedback so far!

@NieSch
> add a rule that it should be possible to complete the level in say 2 minutes
that sadly goes directly against the core idea of the contest.
> Otherwise you can easily create a level that can only be completed in 8 minutes or more.
go for it, looking forward to it

Given that it was meant to be easy-to-participate from an outside community, I was aware that the core community might already have workarounds to these restrictive rules that worked well in a different game
If anything, I'm gonna learn a lot about edge cases
[also please let me know if I completely misunderstood your suggestion ]

@geoo
That is fascinating. Even if you don't have time to implement a level like that, I'd be very interested to see it in a level at some point. Using Lemmings as desynchronised clocks (if I understand correctly) is a really cool idea.

>But I feel like you could even make a level here that requires no skills and just solves itself, 200x200 might be enough to waste 8 minutes just slowly walking down a zigzag path

Ah, basically an auto-level. But that would at least still have to be fine-tuned to be as close to the actual 500 seconds as possible. Might not be that hard, but even if we do get a submission like that it will be entertaining. I wonder how small the frame would have to be for that approach to no longer work

@IchoTolot
Thank you very much, looking forward to your submission. Feel free to put as many creative twists on it as you want, gonna be great!

@log(|cos|)-1+c
Thank you for your submission! I will start playing levels on the 30th just in case you wish to resubmit a later iteration.

[namida]

You could also just make a series of long bashes that go the full length of the level, each one slightly lower than the last. Or a climber-digger wall with a similar concept, with a second lemming who must also be saved but only one climber.

[kaywhyn]

I might partake in this, but no guarantees. Honestly, a week's notice is not that much time, but as the size only needs to be 200 x 200, maybe it's not so much of a problem after all.

@log(|cos|)-1+c

Nice, however, I'm going to be pedantic here. The variable x with the cos is missing, and I think you meant to put the negative sign right before the log? I think it's clear you meant to write it so that it's being multiplied by negative 1 rather than subtracting 1 from the result Admittedly, I was confused why there was a minus 1 to indicate subtracting 1 when there shouldn't be. Math instructor here, for which calculus, along with algebra, is my favorite area of math, and yes, I have marked students down for not writing in the x with the trigonometric function

[darkshoxx]

@namida
Again I'm super happy to receive any forms of solutions. Though keep in mind that if they require perfect inputs from me, I'll have to be able to do (or learnd how to do) that within that hour .

@kaywhyn
fair enough, I didn't bother to work out the antiderivative so just googled it. Should've been suscpicious that a constant (-1) is added that isn't absorbed into the integration constant. Cursed google just pulled down the exponent ^-1 that was clearly in the page it links to. Since it was displayed directly outside as a subtraction, I added round brackets to clarify, which now make it horribly incorrect. It's listed as ln∣cosx∣⁻¹. I thought for a simple joke I might not be called out on looking something up.
I am fairly ashamed now.

Lemme try to at least rectify why I didn't put an x into the cosine function, as that was done fully intentionally.
To me, the term "∫tan x dx" is a function modulo constants, but it cannot depend on x. It represents the map y |--> _a∫^y tan x dx = F(y) - F(a) = F(y) + k where F is an antiderivative of the tangent function. While you can call that variable y or t or basically whatever you want, to me it is nonsensical to call it "x", as the term _a∫^x tan x dx doesn't make too much sense (which is easily seen when trying to make take the derivate of _a∫^x tan x dx  with respect to x).
Therefore, in a corrected version, I'd be saying -log(|cos|), and as a function, I'd refer to the function that maps y to -log(|cos(y)|).
It would've been clearer to write it as -log(|cos(.)|)

But to be fair, most people (including physicists) use ∫f(x)dx as notation for an antiderivative of f depending on x. Since that is commonpractice notation, I cannot argue against that. Just not the notation I'm used to.

Haven't gotten into that much trouble for integrals in a while

[darkshoxx]

General question (if there ever is a next time), would it have been more interesting (as in, ruling out more trivial solutions) to restrict it to something much smaller, like 50x50?

[IchoTolot]

General question (if there ever is a next time), would it have been more interesting (as in, ruling out more trivial solutions) to restrict it to something much smaller, like 50x50?

I think the size is not the big problem here. Let's say even in very tiny spaces people can get quite creative here.

I can already see things working with a slow + locked Release Rate and waiting for like 1000 Lems coming out.

[namida]

Here's an example of what I was talking about earlier with bashers. Feel free to count it as an entry if you like (though there's almost certianly room to fine tune it to take even closer to the full 8:20 without making execution too difficult - I'm only really trying to illustrate the concept here, of how a level can be time consuming but not remotely interesting).

I'd think you'd get more value, especially considering the general philosophy of NeoLemmix, if you were to base it on how long it takes you (from the start of your first attempt) to find a solution. Your call, of course, as it's your contest - that's just my general thoughts.

[Turrican]

I have made also , and attached here a level for the contest.

I have attached also , the replay of the solution.

I use also a custom music track with my level . If you want to use that track for your stream here is the link for that ( In that case  , you will need to
create a folder called "Turrican projects" in your music folder , and put the track inside that folder ) :  https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=177941