KS Level Competition

Yeah, I'm the nightmare of LoCP members. I just can't make 'em easy

The Jack: Consider an extention given. You have 'til the end of this day GMT

In other news, my laptop broke down on me. This is why I stopped posting This also means I have no internet connection (apart from this one, which is from school..)

As I can't download and play the entries I propose a voting process. What do you think? How long should the voting go on?

OK, cool. 

I think a voting process is a great idea anyway. Possibly we should make a separate thread about that, or at least post elsewhere (especially in level previews/level releases) pointing people who might not otherwise read this thread to the call for voters?

Someone is going to have to count the votes, in any case. Internet polls are, alas, invariably prone to manipulation. Voting could be public, but the 'secret ballot' might be preferable, and could be accomplished by having voters PM their choice to the vote-counter. That could be you, Bulbapuck, if you'll have enough alternate computer access...?

Speaking of which, my sympathies on your laptop. My last laptop died on me twice last year (once with a structural failure, then again after I "zombified" it by picking up another of the same model second-hand that just had a dead HD & swapping my good HD into it and the AC-adapter jack crapped out -- I have the worst luck with hardware, apparently) but on the bright side, I now have this incredible tablet PC which, when I got it on sale, was bundled with the external CD/DVD drive and a laptop dock for under US$300. It's still a ridiculously good deal, a computer that was over US$1500 new for the price of a netbook. I can attest that the handwriting and speech recognition on it are jaw-droppingly awesome. I may never buy another computer that's as kick-ass.

Er, that went sort of off-topic! Sorry. 
Seriously though, Bulbapuck, if you're going to replace your dead laptop (or depending on how much fixing it would cost) I can't recommend that tablet highly enough.

Thank you for your concern but by "broke down" I actually meant "taken over by virus" so I just need to reinstall windows. Sorry to hear about your last laptop.

PMs is probably a good idea. I can go online every day as I'm in school every day. But for how long should the voting take place? I suggest until Friday as that should give everyone enough time to play through the levels and still get the next one going pretty soon. (Which would be cool since I'm planning on joining that one )

Wow, I now have so much (additional) respect for everyone who's shared levels. I can't believe how hard it was to get my knytt.bin uploaded. 

I have a whole sad saga -- can a comedy of errors be a saga? -- of upload time-outs and outright failures, at the archive and two of the 'usual' file-sharing sites. I was starting to think my poor level was cursed!

tl;dr tt;sv (too tired; short version) 
The problem was at least mostly that my fiancée was hogging our upload capacity unbeknownst to me. Why she didn't realise this right away once I convinced her to let me try uploading from her computer... anyway.

My level is now up at the archive!  Which Way Out? v1.0  It was done (enough that I quit fiddling with it & started trying to upload it) before midnight. If the uploading delay knocks it out of the competition... well, I had a lot of fun making it, at least.

My level is now up at the archive!  Which Way Out? v1.0  It was done (enough that I quit fiddling with it & started trying to upload it) before midnight. If the uploading delay knocks it out of the competition... well, I had a lot of fun making it, at least.

You should put this up in the level releases part of the forum. That said, everything looks and sounds gorgeous, but I can't for the life of me figure out what I am supposed to do.

I found some unsolid walls in my level.  New linky: 
http://knyttlevels.com/levels/Headgrinder%20-%20Well%20of%20White%20Waters%20v1%202.knytt.bin

And while I'm at it, I like the graphics in your level Jack.  I just can't figure out what the heck to do. 

Great that you made it The Jack ! I could never have the heart to remove a level from the competition.
I am most impressed and thankful that we got 3 entries for this one. So for now:

Let the voting commence!

How to vote:
Simply post your vote here or send me a PM if you want to keep it private. It's that simple.

I'll count the votes and announce the winner on Friday.

I'm working on a post for the Level Releases thread. Attentive forumites may have noted I'm something of a perfectionist, and I want to get it just right. 

It drove me nuts having to call the level done-enough-for-release without the more-complex puzzle I originally planned, and without being able to run it through a thorough enough beta to avoid -- well, issues like the one yohji pointed out. (I checked that area, too, and I couldn't get up; ah, the pitfalls of letting sig-carrying LoCP members design / beta-test levels...) I'd already noticed two issues myself since finally uploading the file -- a minor SGE on an important screen, and the fact that the level icon somehow disappeared out of the .knytt.bin file -- and I fully expect I've bollocksed up an ambiance track somewhere. If we're allowed to post edits to correct non-game-breaking errors, I'll give it a day or so to let other people find more boo-boos I overlooked, and upload version 1.1; otherwise, I'll wait until after voting is over.

The icon at least I can fix now, and I don't think it counts towards the competition. (Though it would be pretty funny if a level-design contest was decided by which level's icon was best.) "Icon.png" is attached to this post; just save it to your computer inside the \the Jack - Which Way Out\ folder (not a subfolder) in the \Worlds\ folder in your Knytt Stories directory, and it should show up in the KS level selection screen.


Well, I'm glad that the puzzle elements are successfully puzzling people -- and thanks for the compliments on the aesthetics, Headgrinder and yohji. I wasn't expecting people to find it that hard, though. (I was worried that it was too easy for a Normal rating, but now I'm wondering if 'Normal' implies that it's easier than it is. When I playtested it, it felt like normal-level challenge... but of course I don't have to figure out the puzzle.) Once someone manages to beat it, I'll want your feedback on what difficulty level it felt like...

Some hints to point players in the right direction:

Love the look of both Headgrinder's and the Jack's level; am also stumped as to what to do in the Jack's... Anyway: awesome visuals, both of you; just what my eyes and soul needed after a day at the office. :-)

ETA: @the Jack: actually, never mind that: I get it now. *Very* clever idea!

And, OMG, the green, crowded almost-jungle feel of your level is just... invigorating!

Ooh, seriously clever, yes. Since you're still working on it (yes?), I guess I'll reserve my comments for the post on the level releases thread, then.

Some more feedback for the Jack, who, oddly, seems to refuse to open a thread for hir level (no, you didn't misread, that is indeed a gender-neutral pronoun *g*).

I love all the areas of this level, really, but the lowest part, especially, is now one of my favourite KS landscapes ever. I love how it feels as if it's literally teeming with all kinds of life - the dense plant life, the critters in the air, the birdsong - it's AWESMOE. (I know some people will disagree, but this is *just* the kind of crowded screen that I love. This is crowded done well.)

If there is anything wrong with that area, it's that it's so small - I'd like to be able to take a longer walk in it! (Couldn't you at least put one of the islands on the right edge of the map on layer 3, so one could stand there and contemplate nature or something?)

Oh, and concrit:

Oh, one more thing (I'm not putting this into the previous post because I'm not sure if the Jack has, maybe, already read that and therefore will not see my later addition):

You achieve a rather convincing sense of depth in that green, forest area - both by the layering of the vegetation and by the use of colour perspective. The fireflies in the air also help. I'm currently writing a cover letter, and I have the text editor window minimized so I can simultaneously keep KS open, and in KS I'm having your level open, and it's like a small window into another world that seems quite real and almost three-dimensional, even though the hills/mountains are perfectly rectangular (which, after all, doesn't happen a lot in the real world). *g*

@Purple Pineapple: If you thought the gameplay was trial and error, you're doing it wrong. It's a puzzle.