Level Design Contest #29 - Playing Phase (Discussion Topic)

[IchoTolot]

I plan to play through the levels after I am back from my hometown where I stay over Christmas.

It seems the worst backroutes are patched now.

[Armani]

For those who want to see the intended solutions to my levels, here it is

youtube link

[kaywhyn]

@Armani

Sorry for the huge delay in getting back to your solutions on my updated levels. I needed that break from fixing my own levels again so as to not stress myself out. Not to mention that I've been quite busy with recording my LPs

R1 - It's not the intended route as you might have guessed, but I call this an acceptable solution. Your solution is kind of more efficient than my intended one in some ways, and so far the skills you had leftover I don't see them really breaking the level in any way. So, unless severe backroutes start showing up with the leftover skills or possibly even one of the skills you used, your solution is fine for now, and I'm not going to be super picky about completely enforcing my intended solution. I do see at least see the main tricks I want in your solution. Plus a fix might do more harm than good. I've attached my solution for you to compare

Spoiler

Tricks needed: Laser from below to make a path for the swimmers, and cloning a builder and a fencer and extending the latter because of the former. The third was what I used to hit the button as well, but you use a miner to reach it instead. That's fine, it's not too much different from my solution and is still used in about the same area as mine.

R2 - Yea, this one still needs some more work. I've changed some of the up OWAs to left and right ones, as well as added more of each of the latter ones at the top. Definitely the major source of all the backroutes I've seen thus far are at that part of the ship at the bottom left where the rope trap is.

I plan to play through the levels after I am back from my hometown where I stay over Christmas.

It seems the worst backroutes are patched now.

Have a wonderful holiday!

Not quite, just my R2 left needs some work, which hopefully will do with this version that I just released, but let's see!

[Simon]

I haven't submitted levels for Contest 29, but I'd still like to try all your entries. I'll play the 12 NeoLemmix entries when I'm back at my main desktop with the huge screen.

Attached is a wurschtelei for geoo's Dangerous Goods and a functional pipeline for geoo's Origami Master.

-- Simon

[IchoTolot]

Here are my solutions to both the NL and Lix levels.

[Armani]

@IchoTolot
Everything is intended.

[kaywhyn]

@Icho

Finally got around to watching your replays to my levels and here is my assessment.

R1 - I originally called this an acceptable solution, but then I just realized a fix that I never thought of that could probably enforce my solution a little better. I feel bad because I called Armani's solution acceptable from a while back, and you pretty much did the same as him, only more efficiently because you managed to save an extra skill on top of the same two he did. For V4, I simply added a water pit at the top and two steel blocks. This kind of reminds me of your slider level from several contests ago where one of my solutions was originally acceptable but then you later found a way to enforce your intended way better It's kind of the same here, only I realized a way for my level much later

R2 - Yea, that's still a backroute. The only change here for V8 is I extended the OWAs on the wooden pillars. This probably makes the solution too obvious now, but what do I know? Given my feedback history from both you and Armani telling me that my levels are still tricky and difficult regardless of the fixes/changes

R3 - 100% intended! Great job As I mentioned to Armani, I got inspiration from two space levels of yours from United, one from the Tension rank, the other in the War rank It's also my very first L2 Space level, and I hope you liked it!

[kaywhyn]

All rightie, I finally found some time to record videos of my solutions to the contest entries except for my own, which I will cover at a later time, after I get intended/acceptable solutions to all of them

Video links:

Part 1 (Lix Entries) - https://youtu.be/0c8e7APytNg

Part 2 (NL Rule 1) - https://youtu.be/DAumj1ehUpE

Part 3 (NL Rule 2) - https://youtu.be/57WenqpLlZA

Part 4 (NL Rule 3) - https://youtu.be/gjx8Zccw4mU

[IchoTolot]

Got new solutions.

[kaywhyn]

@Icho

R1 - Your solution is about 98-99% intended, and one of your earlier solutions did contain an element that I wanted which isn't present here. For V5, I simply added more terrain near the middle exit area. You'll be able to resolve this new version very easily TBH, yes I know I could had easily blocked off what you did at the very end with OWAs or steel, but this ended up taking me a while to come up with a suitable fix while not making the level look too peculiar in that area Yea, strange but true, backroute fixing sometimes takes me far longer than it should That's why it stresses me out more than it should.

R2 - Still a very bad backroute. It's the fact the hatch is a pre-assigned swimmer one, but due to my intended solution using the max of 10 skill types that's why it is what it is For V9, I changed up the wooden staircase terrain in the middle left area and in turn removed a platformer and a builder. The solution has changed up quite a lot already and I knew this level was going to be very problematic to backroute fix anyway due to how very complicated the solution is. I should had kept it simpler like yours and Armani's for both of your R2's

[Armani]

resolved the most recent versions of the levels

[kaywhyn]

@Armani

R1 - Ah, nice find. For V6, another steel block added and now this should finally be it, so both you and Icho should be able to resolve this one very easily

R2 - Ack, curse that pre-assigned swimmer hatch! For V10, added another needles trap. Something tells me that it won't cover all the problem spots, but well, this level has proven to be very problematic to patch!

[Armani]

Here're some new solutions.
r1 level shoud be good now

[IchoTolot]

I also got new solutions.

[kaywhyn]

@Armani, @Icho

R1 - Both of your solutions are 100% intended. Nice job! Not sure why I didn't think about those fixes sooner, especially that quicksand addition. I find it very interesting that Armani pretty much did the exact same thing I did in the first several seconds of the level, though that might had been because I leaked and attached my intended solution for him to compare when I called his solution acceptable several posts above Anyway, hope you gentlemen liked it and that the timing with the climbers isn't too tight! I really tried to ease that part and made it as forgiving as much as I could!

R2 - Ah, you gentlemen play hard! All right, I really could had avoided all that trouble from the very start by simply adding more OWAs in the area that keeps getting abused all because of the preassigned swimmer hatch, but I really thought I could get away with not needing to do so Looks like I'm out of options now, and I was thinking of resorting to pickups, but let's try this first before I might need to. For V11, just more OWAs and also shifted the ones near the entrance up some more and also extended them.

edit: I noticed the R2 got 3 downloads, but I have reattached it as apparently the ones near the entrance needed to be extended too. That's what I get for thinking moving them upwards would be enough and not actually testing it to see if it blocks off Armani's really cheesy backroute