The Lemmings Remake Level List Order

[STT]

Okay, I think its time we really got this show on the road. This thread is for the discussion of the levels to be placed into the remake. Antythig else should go in the other thread to avoid being cluttered.

Below is the list and order the of levels to be placed in the lemmings remake. Each level is abbreviated using the first three initials of the author, and then a number, eg STT00 or STT01. There are links to these levels at the bottom of this post. Each level is a single .DAT lemedit levelpak level (so it is easier to cram together when the game is assembled, and easier for someone to look at, just rename to levelpak.DAT and whack it into Custlemm).

A guide to the table:
LvNo. - The level of the set.
ID. - The id of the level there, eg STT00.
Save - The number of lemmings to be saved eg. 60/65
BR - Backroutes - How many backroutes have been found and not delt with (some might be perserved as "alternate routes".
Updated - The date it was last updated (please use dd/mm/yy to avoid confusion.)

This table is currently "Dibs". Levels will be swapped later when we get more or less a comlete set..
This table assumes that graphic sets 0-8 are DEFINATELY going to be used. Also assuming 26 levels in a set (i know I'm wrong with this, please edit instead of commenting if you are mod/admin), and six sets in total. The last 3 levels are reserved for now, as are the first eight for training levels.

Some misc. things you should know:
1. Fall distance is 66 pixels.



The table is now on wiki format, so that everyone can edit it. - (Thanks Mindless)
http://it.travisbsd.org/lemmings/lemmingswelt/wiki/doku.php?id=remake:levels


EDITS:
11/10/06: Fixed links, fixed misc spelling errors, added note about fall distance, added special level table, shifted level category names (eg, BASIC, ect.) to middle colum, cut number of training levels to 6, adjusted number of levels/set.
12/10/06: Removed table, added three glitch training levels.

[tseug]

Great idea!

However I'd like to point out: berserk is spelled wrong. None of the links work (they all have quote marks at the end). There are 10 links and you only made 9 levels...

Also I don't think OS BR should apply to levels before cunning. Since at that level it doesn't really matter.

[STT]

Fixed links + spelling. OS BR will stay for those levels though (no real point removing them as they may be nescessary somethime). I will put up a tenth level, and leave it at that for me so it doesn't become Twigger Lemmings.

Shall we call the fall distance 63 pixels?

[tseug]

Shall we call the fall distance 63 pixels?

We should use the same distance as custlemm (66) because most levels are made for it.

[Shvegait]

I'd also like to point out that "training" is spelled wrong  :tongue:
I don't think we really need 8 training levels. After all, if you are playing the Lemmings Remake, you have probably played Lemmings before. We could do it more compactly with 4 levels (2 skills per). Might also help to make them not quite as boring!

The numbering is wrong beyond #130. (Goes to #141 next.)

I'm not sure that we decided on 6 ranks of 25 levels each (maybe I missed it?)
And I thought that the glitch-required levels were going to be a Lemmix-only extension, thus the last few levels of the non-glitch-required levels should be --RESERVED--, as they will be the end of the DOS version.

(Or something? Was a decision on this made? I protest them being in the core version on grounds of continuity, but as an optional extension it could work. I know there are people who enjoy the glitch-required levels... I enjoy them on occasion too, but in my humble and obviously subjective opinion, the satisfaction at completing a (blatant) glitch-required level is not quite the same as solving one based on "reasonable" rules. That is, if you don't know the glitches. If you do know the glitches, then the added complexity can be interesting. But remember who we are making this for. In any case, if we are to include the "training" levels for the glitches, it does not make sense to include those after the "very hard but glitch-free" levels in the same package. It breaks the continuity. It would make more sense, in my opinion, to go straight into the glitch-required levels (this approach is obviously problematic) OR to separate out the glitch-required levels.  Then our two remakes would not be Lemmings vs. ONML, but non-major-glitch-required Lemmings Remake vs. ONGL, Oh no! Glitched Lemmings! Then these extra levels would be a separate download, and the players would know what they are getting into. And if they don't, they will surely find out right away :smiley: )

I do think we need a system like this in order for determining what levels go where, and for keeping track of them. However! more important is deciding what levels go in the game at all. Of course everyone could just claim dibs on their favorite levels, and we'll eventually populate the list, but is that how we want to do it? I envisioned a system where you would nominate levels to be added to the remake, then other involved members could second them or veto them (with reasoning of course!) Instead of assigning a specific number, just nominate it for a difficulty rating. Then when we have about enough for each difficulty rating, we can order them in a way that makes sense (mixing up levels from different terrain sets, separating levels that focus on the same skills, etc.). Then we can decide what levels would be the ideal "level 1" and "closing level" for each difficulty, as those are obviously important decisions. Hmm, we would need a programmed system for managing the nominated levels and allowing votes. Maybe I will look into learning how to do that if people are interested...

[Tim]

My pack of levels I have posted onto the file portal includes 8 training levels put into Tame, as my set of levels had replaced all of the Oh No! More Lemmings levels, a total of 100 levels with graphics from the original game, oh no and holiday lemmings.

I dont know if that is going to work for the lemmings remake, though.

Tim.

[STT]

However! more important is deciding what levels go in the game at all. Of course everyone could just claim dibs on their favorite levels, and we'll eventually populate the list, but is that how we want to do it? I envisioned a system where you would nominate levels to be added to the remake, then other involved members could second them or veto them (with reasoning of course!) Instead of assigning a specific number, just nominate it for a difficulty rating. Then when we have about enough for each difficulty rating, we can order them in a way that makes sense (mixing up levels from different terrain sets, separating levels that focus on the same skills, etc.). Then we can decide what levels would be the ideal "level 1" and "closing level" for each difficulty, as those are obviously important decisions. Hmm, we would need a programmed system for managing the nominated levels and allowing votes. Maybe I will look into learning how to do that if people are interested...

Fixed spelling + reduced no. of trianing levels to 6 as comramise, reinserted levels.

I took the initative of 26 levels/set, as it was decided to be 160 levels and 6 sets -> 26 each.

This is a rough list that is to be swapped and changed pretty often. I shouldn't really call it "dibs", but the basic process works like this:
1. You post a link to your level and desired place for it.
2. I put it on the list.
3. People test it. If they don't like its placeing, it gets moved, if it is a really bad level then it is cut.

So its sort of the way you've just described.

The reason why the last there levels are reserved is so that noone tries to claim one just yet.  I'm thinking we place the last three levels using a poll or a vote.

[Mindless]

Treat this as a wiki.

I can set up a wiki quite easily if we want one.

[chaos_defrost]

Wiki is good for this, actually.

Wouldn't it be better overall if the other players were to select which of an author's levels are to be used in this remake? I mean, generally your viewpoint of your own levels may be skewed a bit by your design processes. Hard to describe.

[Mindless]

http://it.travisbsd.org/lemmings/lemmingswelt/wiki/doku.php?id=remake:levels

[geoo]

In my opinion, the glitches and non-glitches levels shouldn't be mixed together. I'd rather prefer, as already said, to make two extra stages, maybe as a kind of 'extension'.

[...]
I do think we need a system like this in order for determining what levels go where, and for keeping track of them. However! more important is deciding what levels go in the game at all. Of course everyone could just claim dibs on their favorite levels, and we'll eventually populate the list, but is that how we want to do it? I envisioned a system where you would nominate levels to be added to the remake, then other involved members could second them or veto them (with reasoning of course!) Instead of assigning a specific number, just nominate it for a difficulty rating. Then when we have about enough for each difficulty rating, we can order them in a way that makes sense (mixing up levels from different terrain sets, separating levels that focus on the same skills, etc.). Then we can decide what levels would be the ideal "level 1" and "closing level" for each difficulty, as those are obviously important decisions. Hmm, we would need a programmed system for managing the nominated levels and allowing votes. Maybe I will look into learning how to do that if people are interested...

That's also how I'd do it. For each rating, a list is set up which everyone contributes to by adding unlisted levels or approving ones already in the list (with at most 12 levels or something like that per rating, and overall at most e.g. 50). Then the multiply selected ones get in, and over the rest is decided via a separate voting (perhaps 0 - 5 points) or something like that, perhaps allowing shilghtly shifting levels between the ratings to make sure that no better ones are sorted out while worse ones from other ratings are left in. And then doing the ordering by discussion perhaps, or again voting (1 - 20/30). Just my thoughts.

[Shvegait]

I took the initative of 26 levels/set, as it was decided to be 160 levels and 6 sets -> 26 each.

26 is a very awkward number to end on. I don't see why we can't just round up to 30 levels per set. This is not a technical constraint...

This is a rough list that is to be swapped and changed pretty often. I shouldn't really call it "dibs", but the basic process works like this:
1. You post a link to your level and desired place for it.
2. I put it on the list.
3. People test it. If they don't like its placeing, it gets moved, if it is a really bad level then it is cut.

So its sort of the way you've just described.

My issue is with the way in which levels are presented and requested to be removed. Your way is more like... "I want this level in and I want it here..." then that stands unless someone says "I don't think the level should be in" or "I think it should be moved here...". The nomination way is more like "What do you all think about this level?" and finally "Now that we have the levels, how should we order them?" At the core, it's not very different, but the way the communication is handled is different.

Difficulty rating and level number are relative. But you are requiring people to nominate levels for an absolute position. It makes more sense to have a system where you say that a level should come after another level, or before a certain level. If you are familiar with databases, state diagrams, graphs, etc., it would be like you have some dependencies. For example, some levels might require a similar trick to another level. It wouldn't make sense to have the more complex level first and the simpler level later; that would be redundant. You get a more logical ordering when the simpler level comes first. Then, the more complex level would build off of the trick that you hopefully learned in the simpler level. A very trivial example is that "We all fall down" with 80 lemmings should come after "We all fall down" with 60 lemmings, and so on. So you'd wind up with a list of levels and these dependencies, which would help to come up with a logical ordering and eliminate redundant levels. Then, only at the very end, when you have the list of 120, 150, 160, or however many levels we have, divide them into difficulty ratings, and assign them numbers. Maybe swap a couple of positions at this stage to configure the "Level 1" and last level for each rating.

To me this method is more logical and more structured, with less potential for argument over individual level positions--maybe someone's favorite number is 23 so they try to claim all the level 23s, even though this wouldn't make sense in the overall structure. Now I'm not saying people will act like that, however, analyzing where the levels should go based on some criteria would make more sense than just guessing where they should go and changing it later... If you are going to have to change it later, anyway, why bother setting it in the first place?

[ccexplore]

Maybe it's instructive for me to talk about the system the Chip's Challenge community used to create remake levelpacks.

Basically they hold a huge vote where people give each level a "fun" rating and a "difficulty" rating.  The "fun" rating actually measures, essentially, "how worthy is this level to be included in the remake levelpack?".  The "difficulty" rating of course measures the level's difficulty.

In the case of Chip's Challenge, the original game has 149 levels, so naturally, after the voting/ranking finished, we pick the top 149 levels as determined by the total "fun" (or maybe it was average, I forgot exactly) value of each level.  Then the level ordering is based on the total "difficulty" values for each of the 149 chosen.

Actually I wasn't around back when they applied the process, so the details might be slightly off, but you get the basic idea.

A web-based voting website was created to keep track of the voting data.

==============

I believe a similar process can be carried out for the Lemmings Remake.  The only major difference is that since we're having four glitch-free ratings and two glitch-ful ratings, we probably need to apply the process separately for the glitch-free and glitch-ful levels.  Or something like that.

There's also the fact that we've been talking about possibly creating a few new levels specifically for this remake (no such precedence exist for the Chip's Challenge remakes which are strictly on already-seen levels).  Say we decided for N of the total T number of levels to be new levels.  Then we'd apply the above process, but keep T - N "most fun" old levels and N "most fun" newly created levels, and then rank the resulting set of T levels by difficulty.

Hope this is of interest and helpful.

[STT]

The big thing is, that there has been a lot of talk and not much being decided  :winktounge: .

I'm simply taking the initiative here. I'm thinking we use this to get a rough bunch of levels together and then we switch them around and cut them, whetever. Just because there's only 160 slots, doesn't mean we can have more than those levels on the page.

There a few things I am confident on though:
+ Each level should be submitted as a single level in dat format - this makes it easier to cram into levelXXX.dat and to test in cutemlemm.
+ We need to get a bunch of levels together, even if roughly.

Once we get the levels together, then we can vote or whatever our way is to sort them out. We've  got a wiki now, so anyone can edit it.

I took the initative of 26 levels/set, as it was decided to be 160 levels and 6 sets -> 26 each.

26 is a very awkward number to end on. I don't see why we can't just round up to 30 levels per set. This is not a technical constraint...

I agree, 26 is very awkward. I thought there was and that was why it was decided that there would be 160 levels. IMHO, 180 levels would be nicer ==> 30 per set.

And for the matter of to make levels or to include pre-done ones. I see no reason why people should be prevented from including their favourite levels, but i think there should be a ratio of, say, 1:3 (Favourate:Custon Made). I dunno, we should hold a poll on this.

[Shvegait]

I've already stated my reasons on why I think most of the levels should be existing favorites, so I will ask you then: What is the purpose of the remake in your mind, and why should the large majority of levels be newly created?