Lemforum outtakes/replacements, 0.10.x

[chaos_defrost]

wrt the levels I wrote for this game:

Snowjump is.... odd, but it's kind of meant to be a "how do you do this with *that* skillset" type of level. Cunning is the right difficulty for it but where it goes or not I don't care really.
Watch Ye Step is late Cunning to mid-Daunting imo, upranking or not is fine.
I honestly don't know how 3.1.1.1 wound up as V38. Agree to drop to Daunting.

Removing Too Much Stepping Stones is fine. Derailed Level kinda does this kind of route better, anyways. I personally think Derailed Level is late-Daunting to mid-Vicious, but yea this type of solution is odd and plays well with the way my mind thinks as a player.

PS: Ferry Tale is way too hard for Lovely. I'd put it in Cunning before Lovely, but late Quirky feels right?

[Forestidia86]

6 gaps 5 builders is basically broken with current physics. Since the removal of builder backstepping it lost its original trickyness. See this thread.

[Simon]

Removing Too Much Stepping Stones is fine. Derailed Level kinda does this kind of route better, anyways.

Thanks for the opinion! I'd leave it to you whether to keep or remove Too Much Stepping Stones. As I wrote above, the considerations to cut levels are mainly to improve how level authors appear in Lix. If we cut Too Much Stepping Stones, lemforum will still have many excellent puzzles by you across all difficulty levels.

I personally think Derailed Level is late-Daunting to mid-Vicious, but yea this type of solution is odd and plays well with the way my mind thinks as a player.

100 % agree that the fundamental idea isn't too unnatural, and would fit well into late-Daunting to Vicious. My reason for late-Vicious to early Hopeless: Even if you know the main idea of Derailed, it's still hard to make it work and tie all ends together. Last week, it took me a few evenings to re-solve it after ~6 years even though I remembered the main trick. The skillset is scarce.

PS: Ferry Tale is way too hard for Lovely. I'd put it in Cunning before Lovely, but late Quirky feels right?

Quirky or Cunning is conceivable, yeah. I've just made Ferry Tale even harder than it had been: I've fixed the cluster-then-bat backroute. See attachment: Now, we must save 5/5 (was 5/10) with 0 blockers, 0 batters (were 1 and 1) and instead builders 2 -> 3. Terrain is identical to how it always has been since 2012.

This is now in Lix 0.10.2. It still sits in Lovely. We'll uprank it within the next few weeks, as soon as we have a plan for it.

Intended route

From the start, build towards the crane, with the aim of containg the crowd here. The bridge takes a while, and some lix will slip by.

The 2nd-to-last lix that slips over the unfinished bridge will bash, hit steel, and turn. The last lix that slips over the unfinished bridge will be the worker.

At the end, bash the initial bridge to free the crowd.

-- Simon

[Proxima]

Quirky or Cunning is conceivable, yeah. I've just made Ferry Tale even harder than it has been: I've fixing the cluster-then-bat backroute. See attachment: Now, we must save 5/5 (was 5/10) with 0 blockers, 0 batters (were 1 and 1) and instead builders 2 -> 3.

Actually, I considered adding to my post a suggestion to remove the blocker and batter to make the level a bit easier. Not only are there fewer possibilities to try out and get lost in, but bashing inside the mesh is easier when you aren't working with a packed crowd.

[Simon]

Interesting that you deem this change to Ferry Tale an easing, hmm. It may well be. I didn't even think of the bashing in the mesh, that part for sure is easier now. Let's sleep over where it should go, I believe anywhere in Quirky up to mid-Cunning is okay. I don't have anything obvious to fill the open slot in Lovely, either.

Another Funeral: On stream, Ramond had fewer problems than I had. He didn't consider Another Funeral out of place in Cunning. I steel believe it's got what it takes to be ranked in early Vicious, but I'll accept it if it ends in Daunting. This year brought so much feedback.

I feel that Another Funeral is easier than Elixir, and I had lots of trouble with Elixir; I suggested Elixir move to Hopeless. Elixir ended in early Vicious. Maybe Another Funeral is another of these where I'm the lone player to get stuck on it for months.

-- Simon

[mobius]

Interesting that you deem this change to Ferry Tale an easing, hmm. It may well be. I didn't even think of the bashing in the mesh, that part for sure is easier now. Let's sleep over where it should go, I believe anywhere in Quirky up to mid-Cunning is okay. I don't have anything obvious to fill the open slot in Lovely, either.

Another Funeral: On stream, Ramond had fewer problems than I had. He didn't consider Another Funeral out of place in Cunning. I steel believe it's got what it takes to be ranked in early Vicious, but I'll accept it if it ends in Daunting. This year brought so much feedback.

I feel that Another Funeral is easier than Elixir, and I had lots of trouble with Elixir; I suggested Elixir move to Hopeless. Elixir ended in early Vicious. Maybe Another Funeral is another of these where I'm the lone player to get stuck on it for months.

-- Simon

I can agree. Seeing as i had trouble solving Elixir myself after geoo altered it even though it was my level. Lol

Another funeral looks to me to have many possibilities but perhaps only cause i had many ideas in mind before finalizing it. Idk how to rank that one.

[Proxima]

Interesting that you deem this change to Ferry Tale an easing, hmm. It may well be. I didn't even think of the bashing in the mesh, that part for sure is easier now. Let's sleep over where it should go, I believe anywhere in Quirky up to mid-Cunning is okay. I don't have anything obvious to fill the open slot in Lovely, either.

Okay, concrete suggestion for Ferry Tale: We accept mobius's new level Private Room Without Room for L25, remove 6 Gaps, move 100 Ways to Die to Q6, and move Ferry Tale (the new version) to Q15.

This is separate from reordering/replacing other levels, but I need more time to look at all the levels under discussion before making suggestions for those.

[mobius]

'Ups and downs' a new (old) level to replace Babylon Fading. I think the difficulty is about the same, but I'm unsure. The level can be made easier, if desired, by changing the requirement to 37, making other interesting solutions possible. If nobody likes this level I have others I could use as a replacement instead.

EDIT: Just realized this level is kind of similar to at least one other in the pack; "As Good as dead" I might look for another one instead.

regarding: replacing "Stuff in the way"; Leave No Lix Behind may be a good contender for that position? Maybe that's too high, but then Stuff in the way, as it was (backrouted) was probably too high as well.

[mobius]

Purely out of curiosity; has anyone solved Locked ans Loaded? The level by Ben Bryant i uploaded here several posts back. If so id like to see a replay

[geoo]

Pretty sure this is a backroute.
I also suspect that there's more backroute potential using the fling bombers, so it might be better to replace them with normal bombers.

[mobius]

Pretty sure this is a backroute.
I also suspect that there's more backroute potential using the fling bombers, so it might be better to replace them with normal bombers.

thanks. Yes it is. I'm forgetting about this level entirely and eventually I will make my own level conceptualizing this idea better for my own pack.

[Simon]

Okay, concrete suggestion for Ferry Tale: We accept mobius's new level Private Room Without Room for L25, remove 6 Gaps, move 100 Ways to Die to Q6, and move Ferry Tale (the new version) to Q15.

Good with me!

Private Room Without Room needs some final touches then:

• IIRC I found a backroute in December. Have to re-investigate.
  
• 40 lix is a lot. Let's stop spawning new lix when the route is finished.
  
• The flat spot on the rocks where we feel like assigning basher should be the proper spot to assign the basher. I'll fine-tune the spot with eraser pieces.
  

I'll see what I come up with tonight, and discuss the results with mobius.

-- Simon

[mobius]

Okay, concrete suggestion for Ferry Tale: We accept mobius's new level Private Room Without Room for L25, remove 6 Gaps, move 100 Ways to Die to Q6, and move Ferry Tale (the new version) to Q15.

Good with me!

Private Room Without Room needs some final touches then:

• IIRC I found a backroute in December. Have to re-investigate.
  
• 40 lix is a lot. Let's stop spawning new lix when the route is finished.
  
• The flat spot on the rocks where we feel like assigning basher should be the proper spot to assign the basher. I'll fine-tune the spot with eraser pieces.
  

I'll see what I come up with tonight, and discuss the results with mobius.

-- Simon

any modifications you make to that level are fine with me.

[Proxima]

Okay, I've had time now to look through all of mobius's new levels. Haven't solved them all yet. My thoughts on each one:

Spoiler

Private Room Without Room -- This is a good, easy level. We can definitely find room for it in Lovely, whether we end up removing 6 Gaps, Golden Steps, or some other level. The only thing against it maybe is that it feels similar to some existing levels, such as Q22 Every Which Way But Loose -- it's a bit like a simplified version of it. Still, overall a good choice.

A Break in the Platform -- Really nice level. Early Cunning would be about right for it. The main route is fairly clear but you have to work out exactly how to rescue the crowd without making a hole in the route to the exit. Good puzzle with a clear linchpin.

Leave No Lix Behind -- This is simply beautiful. A lot of the skill assignments are obvious, but when you try to put them together, the real puzzle reveals itself. Definitely one we should make room for -- late Daunting feels about right.

Locked and Loaded -- Haven't found the intended solution yet. I was able to backroute it by building/bashing to get up the second miner obstacle from left to right. Since this seems clearly impossible without hacks, I believe mobius when he says there is a really nice main solution. I'll keep trying to solve it, but the level would need more backroute-proofing before we could use it. If it does get fixed, it could go in late Vicious, maybe even Hopeless.

Niche -- This is a "make the destructive skill continue" level similar to H28 The Lix Lies Down on Broadway, but much more fiddly, and what you have to do is pretty obvious, whereas the reason Broadway is so hard and so highly ranked is that it hides very well the fact that it's a skill-continue level at all. So, not wild about it, but it could go somewhere around Daunting if we end up with enough levels we want to cut.

Try Climbing That! -- Seems very similar to 100% Built By Lixes, just more annoying because everyone must climb. Not sure this is worth including.

[Simon]

This has fallen by the wayside also. Thanks to Proxima for evaluating the suggested entrants.

It's two issues: Reorder existing lemforum, and replace weak levels with mobius's strongest suggestions. Feel free to post a complete plan (what levels go where), otherwise I'll comb through this thread and post one.

-- Simon