Lemmings 2 glitches

[ccexplore]

Oh okay, I misread.  You said something about the lemming doesn't get drowned, so I missed the part at the beginning where you said the lemming was assigned swimmer, since I was thinking swimmers can't drown anyway.

So I guess the surprise is that non-swimmer magno booter do apparently drown, but swimmer mango booter doesn't transition to swimming upon reaching water.  So when you said it doesn't work in SNES, does it mean the lemming will transition to swimmer instead?

The limits on L2 practice level skill usage on certain ports are actually worse than described.  On the PC version when selecting skills to try for a practice level, as I recall, skills you've already selected (especially if you select 20 of them each) may prevent you from adding other skills (you get some sort of "not enough memory" error or similar), with no easily discernible pattern as to what exactly trigger such cases.

[Leo]

Yes, only SNES version works as it should, Swimmer Mango Booter just start to swim in the water and after he came out of the water is just walker (and Swimmer as it is permanent skill) again.
On the practice skill selection screen you can't select 20 of them. It's only possible to select each skill just once. But when the practice level starts there are 20 (or 99, depending of the version) of each selected skill to use.
There is a problem with selecting skills for practice on the PC (and just on the PC) "Insufficient Memory" message can occur on some skills depending on which skills are already selected. Like, some skills require more memory then others. But, the PC version is the only one where it's not necessary to select all 8 skills for the practice.

Time given for the practice levels is also not the same in all versions.
PC and FM Towns 9:00 (except Egypt 9:01, strange isn't it?)
Amiga, Atari, Archimedes 9:00 (except Egypt 9:01) but timer doesn't counting, so it's actually endless.
SNES 5:00
Mega Drive 3:00

And some more interesting facts:
SNES, Mega Drive, GB, GG and SMS do not have color inversion for the permanent skills.
Atari ST is only version without Intro animation and End animation.
SNES is only version with the background graphics on the levels (except for the Classic tribe) and only one with snowfall on the Polar tribe (simple but nice effect).
FM Towns is only one with a 'real' flame on the Jet Pack skill. Just dots on the other versions or even nothing on SNES, GB, GG and SMS.
I have already mention left and right Twisters on the Mega Drive.
And certainly plenty more details, I don't want to bother everybody with that things any more.

[kieranmillar]

Rollers appear to have a massive trigger area for exit objects, only on the bottom row of pixels, but it's really wide. This means that a lot of the time they will display the exit animation in the wrong place, but it does allow you to e.g. just barely build over the exit, assign a lemming that passes over it to be a roller, and he will suddenly exit while a walker keeps walking.

At first I thought it was the entire bottom row of pixels for the exit area, but it appears instead to cover 1 or 2 grid spaces, exactly aligned to the grid. For the medieval tribe, it appears to be 2 grid spaces while it's 1 for most other tribes, I think this might be because the medieval exit trigger is pretty much bang on the border of 2 grid spaces (or may even be 2 pixels wide and is present in both), so it seems that rollers expand the exit trigger area to the width of the grid space(s) that it is on.

[ccexplore]

Cool find! I have long noticed the part about exit animation being in the wrong place for rollers, but did not realize there is an actual, exploitable physics glitch behind it that allows the sort of things you described.

[DoubleU]

The link for the glitch thread is broken. Where can I find that thread?

[ccexplore]

Probably this one.  Unfortunately links that were made for the old forum (lemmingsforums.com) seem to not have migrated correctly when we moved the forum to lemmingsforums.net (or maybe they were correct at one time but then something later changed on the current forum breaking the links).

[kieranmillar]

One I recently discovered by accident playing Tribes of Steel:

The crawling glitch does not apply to Rock Climbers, who instead just get stuck inside the terrain.

[Ste Woz Ere]

I wonder if this one is related, but here's a fun fact that I've just discovered:

Q. What is the one thing that regular climbers can get over but rock climbers cannot?

Spoiler

A. Vertical arrows in the ground.

(whether that's a good or bad thing I dunno, we'll see how the Sports tribe develops with it)

[Ste Woz Ere]

Another rock climber glitch - the dangling animation disappears when a steam valve is on the level. (the actual steam vents are fine)

(doesn't affect gameplay as you can still click the lemming, but it has put me off using rock climber -> shimmier combos on the 1 Sports level that has all three things)

[kieranmillar]

Another rock climber glitch - the dangling animation disappears when a steam valve is on the level. (the actual steam vents are fine)

(doesn't affect gameplay as you can still click the lemming, but it has put me off using rock climber -> shimmier combos on the 1 Sports level that has all three things)

I think this is because the steam valve contributes to the sprite memory limit and animations start disappearing when you have a certain number of animations possible in the level. For example, the Builder shrug is usually one that vanishes.

You may be able to salvage this by having less skills on the level, or picking some less sprite-intensive skills. Some skills use little sprite memory but there are some that eat up loads, like Superlem, Magno Booter and Canoer.