would having a level set in SuperLemmix, divided into groups named for each of the L2 tribes, that visually resembled the L2 levels, had the same music/sfx, etc but just using the closest equivalent skills that are already available in SLX - thus avoiding extensive new skill coding/interaction coding/testing - be a feasible option?
Yes, absolutely.
This has
previously been suggested by Strato as a project for NeoLemmix, but that was back in 2020 and not much has happened towards it since then, as far as I'm aware.
Given the scope of SuperLemmix to introduce more L2-like skills, features and mechanics, such a project may be better suited to SuperLemmix anyway.
The bulk of the work then would be recreating the levels themselves and SLX-tweaking them as required.
This is indeed the rub. It would require a lot of manual conversion work, since there doesn't yet exist a way to rip the level maps directly from any version of L2 (that we know of).
Ideally, we'd have a team of as many people as there are tribes, and each person would recreate all levels from just that tribe. Even then, it's a lot of manual effort, quality control, testing, etc. It would be an enormous project, and so far there simply hasn't been enough sustained interest to get it off the ground.
With that said, I'll keep nudging the idea forward now and again, and might begin work on the Beach levels at some point if I have enough time. That should help to get things moving if it ever happens, and it isn't a promise by any means.
I don't know if a similar plan would work for L3 as I have hardly ever played that, and not for many years.
I imagine it would involve essentially the same process: manually recreate the levels, assign suitable skillsets to make them playable.
Just going to throw this out there one last time: does
anyone know of a way to rip the maps directly from one of the many L2 source disks?
DOS, in particular, seems promising, and we can rip .lvl files from L1's Amiga .adf so I wonder if the same thing can be done for L2 and L3?