Glitches in Lemmings

[namida]

Here's another glitch; while I was playing my levels in the LemmixPlayer (I'm not sure about the editor), I found out (I actually already knew this, it just occurred again) that you can raise the release rate with your mouse, pause using function11, and the release rate will continue being raised. This is more of a bug, though, because it's really easy to recreate it. Just thought I'd get this out here for people to see.

Hm, I wasn't aware of this - I did know this could happen if you interrupt a replay while the release rate is increasing. I'll have to look into whether this bug is still present in NeoLemmix.

[exit]

Here's something else (man, I'm on a glitch-finding spree!). . ..

So, I was playing the lemmixplayer, pressed the "flag" key, and clicked on the "show desktop" button (because I wanted to do something quickly). Now, I open up the lemmixplayer, and this is what I get: (the attachment has the picture)
The Lemmings taskbar is gone! It didn't fix itself.

[namida]

Interesting - I'll have to look into this at some point.

I am aware that if you switch to another window, then switch back, the mouse cursor is no longer confined to the game area, but can move to any point on the screen. This is relatively minor, however.

[exit]

Another glitch:
I was just messing around to see if this (the attachment)would work.
It's kind of funny how you can cut that deep into steel. That's almost a third!

This is sort of a "non-glitch trick", but I consider it a glitch if you can cut that deep into steel. No, that isn't a block that's only partially covered in steel.

[namida]

It's well known that such steel glitches exist. That's the reason why steel areas are set to cover some distance surrounding the block instead of just covering the block itself; but even then, there are ways to get around it (for example, placing a blocker temporarily cancels steel).

The major cause is that the engine doesn't check which pixels are or aren't steel when applying destructive masks; it just checks for steel at one or two (depending on the skill) specific positions and if none is found, it assumes the whole area isn't steel.

[exit]

I get how it works, so it's technically a trick. I consider it a glitch, though (and so do many other people). I just thought to get it out there.

[Clam]

In DOS Holiday Lemmings 1994, if you fail Flurry 1 (the first of the Holiday 1993 levels, which are included after the 1994 levels) you get the game-completion message that you should only get when you solve the last of the Holiday 1994 levels. The message tells you to try the 1993 levels, and in either case you end up on Flurry 1, so in a way it makes sense as a message for the start of the 1993 levels rather than the end of the 1994 set. But if you started on Flurry straight from the main menu then obviously it makes no sense to be congratulating you at this point http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/tongue.gif" alt=":P" title="Tongue" class="smiley" />

[Minim]

Wow. What an amazing find! Especially when you take into consideration that all players play the '94 levels when playing the '94 game, rather than the '93 levels. I honestly thought the same thing was going to happen to NeoLemmix, but fortunately (or unfortunately if you like being congratulated) namida has fixed this, so that's not an issue there.

[Clam]

More Holiday madness!

In Holiday Lemmings 1993, if you beat a level and return to the menu, the rating appears to go up (from Flurry to Blitz), but when you select Play Level again it goes to the next level as usual.

If you beat the next level and go back to the menu again, the rating goes up again. This game only has two ratings, so what could the next rating possibly be? Turns out it's "Wicked". From here there are two ways you can go:
1) Continue playing levels and returning to the menu to see your new rating.
2) Because you're "past" Blitz rating which is usually the limit, the game actually lets you explore further ratings by pressing the up key. If you try to start a level at a higher rating, you get the "Insert Disk" error.

The fourth "rating" is "Havoc", and all beyond that are glitched images. There are many ratings – I didn't bother to count, but I had to hold the up key for a while!

[ccexplore]

Most likely you'll end up with something like 256 or 128 "ratings", by virtue of what can fit in a byte (8-bit integer).  If it happens to use 16 bit instead than the limit would be something like 65536 or 32768.  Either way the value would eventually wrap around back to 0 which presumably would be Flurry (though I suppose it might also be that Flurry is 1).

If I recall correctly, there's a lookup table somewhere in the program that helps translate (rating, level number) to (level DAT file number, which level within the DAT file).  If your rating is too high then it likely causes the game to start reading outside that table, interpreting whatever happens to be stored next into (level DAT file number, which level within the DAT file).  Unless both numbers happen to be valid (the DAT file actually exists and the "level within DAT" number not too high), the game would try and fail to load the "level" and the result is the "insert disk" error you see.

It's a little surprising that Wicked comes after Blitz.  Logically one would've expected Wild, then Wicked and Havoc.  Kinda makes me wonder if you might see Tame if you up the rating past the wraparound to 0.

[namida]

It actually makes perfect sense, due to the way MAIN.DAT is structured. Specifically, the first rank sign stored in it is the highest rank, then the next is the second highest, and so on.

ONML's MAIN.DAT stores 5 ranks, so this order means Tame is the 5th image. However, while H93's MAIN.DAT would seem for that reason to have been based on ONML's, it only contains 4 ranks, which means Tame is dropped. Also, the highest rank is 2, so the slots that are actually used are the 3rd and 4th image (for the 2nd and 1st ranks respectively). When you get to a glitched 3rd rank therefore, it loads the 2nd image - and since there *is* no 3rd rank, they must've just left the previous one there, which is Wicked. Once you go past Havoc, I'd assume it attempts to load... well, whatever data comes *before* the rank signs in MAIN.DAT (I think it's part of the logo? but I don't remember off-hand). Hypothetically, by creating a customized MAIN.DAT, you could make actual coherent images show on the "glitched" ranks, although the side effect would be other graphics becoming glitched.

You won't get to Tame even if you wrap around. After the Flurry image, the next stuff in MAIN.DAT is the purple font, not a 5th rank sign.

[Clam]

Most likely you'll end up with something like 256 or 128 "ratings", by virtue of what can fit in a byte (8-bit integer).

It's 256. And when you get to the last one you can't go back, nor wrap around to the beginning.

[mobius]

I don't know if this is widely known but here's a useless fact that I discovered by accident (playing ISteve's "Hammer Time") I found it really funny:

You can have a situation where a basher is in between two blockers with terrain around and the basher keeps turning back and forth and bashing forever.  http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/laugh.gif" alt=":D" title="Laugh" class="smiley" />

[ccexplore]

I don't know if this is widely known but here's a useless fact that I discovered by accident (playing ISteve's "Hammer Time") I found it really funny:

You can have a situation where a basher is in between two blockers with terrain around and the basher keeps turning back and forth and bashing forever.  http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/laugh.gif" alt=":D" title="Laugh" class="smiley" />

That was discovered mentioned in the "old" glitch thread http://www.lemmingsforums.com/index.php?topic=34.msg5096#msg5096" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">here, back in 2009.  I can actually easily see making a level that requires making use of this trick--just think of it as a way to keep the basher from losing the skill while sending someone else over to prep ahead.

[DoubleU]

Can some of this stuff be stored elsewhere?