More Experimenting with Phantom Rectangles
Although I wasn’t all that crazy with the results of my experiments for the previous set, I continued them anyway. This time, the results are much closer to what I was hoping for – particularly the last two images. I used many different settings – adding between 2 and 3 phantom rectangles with sizes varying from 1-4 and 2-8; in some cases the rectangles persisted for the 2nd line as well. On average though, the settings were roughly equivalent to the last set in terms of the time it took to generate the levels, the average number of dots per level, and how my program rated them according to their similarity scores.
Six Images for Six Levels
The six images/levels are the most for any new set since 111×109. I would like to say it is solely due to the quality of the levels – but a big part of the reason is that I couldn’t find four images that really fit together in a way I liked. So, I picked the six best images I could find anyway. Unlike the previous two sets, the isn’t really a theme, but at least I think each image is fairly distinctive in terms of either the pattern, the colors, or both. At least two of the images required almost no editing, which helped, too.
Edits and Image Notes
Image 1
Of the four levels I considered for the set with complex geometric patterns, this is the sole survivor. The problem with these levels is almost always the junk zones – odd shaped areas filled in with lots of short lines. This one has by far the largest and most centralized junk zone of any I considered – which you can see from the edits required a lot of darkening of odd, bright lines within the zone.
Image 2
One of the wackiest, big and thick borders I have seen – most likely a result of my reason phantom thing experiments.
Image 3
I really like the thin “stripes” covering most of the board and the glow emanating from the bottom right. Along with the interesting long green-yellow line, it’s just enough justification for me to include this relatively typical pattern in the gallery.
Image 4
Another relatively simple level with an image that required almost no editing (to be honest, I don’t think I improved the original). The big, inner thing is an unusual pattern that is done almost perfectly – if only it looked like something, this could be my favorite simple image of all time.
Image 5
The best “straight” level I’ve seen in… possibly ever – this is exactly the type of thing I was looking for when I experimented with adding phantom dots/rectangles. The only shame is that to maximize the contrast – the two longest lines are extra dark turquoise. The bright green line makes up for it, at least I hope.
Image 6
This is my favorite image of the set and currently one of my favorites of all time. I like to categorize levels – this one doesn’t really fit into any of my normal categories, which is a big reason why I like it.
The outer border consists of 5 lines of various shades of red – the pattern itself is one of the most interesting and perfect border patterns I have seen. Two of these lines make it inside the level, and forming the shape for the inner border outlined by the yellow line – which is much different pattern than you would expect given the shape of the red border.
My original complaint when I saw the level was that the interior section isn’t quite good enough. Upon closer inspection – it is about as good as you could hope for given the funny shape of the yellow border.
Color-wise, the red/yellow combination is the most over-used combination ever, but because the red is all on the outside, the image looks quite distinctive.
I spent a long time tweaking the line colors to get the final resulting image – particularly the 5 border lines. I think I made it roughly what I saw in my head when I saw the original.
Self-Evaluation
Currently it is my 2nd favorite gallery to date – not quite eclipsing 90+91 due to it’s lack of perfectness, but also a clear step ahead of any of the other galleries. There’s the usual caveat that my initial evaluation is almost always highly positive and often changes significantly as soon as I finish the following set.
Previous gallery: 91×90