Lix glitches and tricks

[Proxima]

In the same spirit as the existing Lemmings glitches and non-glitch tricks threads, I felt it's time we started a thread for known glitches and tricks in Lix. I haven't had much time to look for these yet, with so many levels coming out, so feel free to add to the list!

Glitches

• When a climber finishes an explosion countdown just as it transitions to walker, it will fall.
• When a jumping climber grabs onto a wall, it can be made to bash the wall.
• If a digger is changed to miner after the second "stage" of its stroke, the miner will trip up in the gap and stop.

Non-glitch tricks

Climbers

• A 16-pixel block can be made possible to ascend with an accurately placed climb-bomber.
• Climbers can jump and grab onto a wall.

Exploders

• Fling and non-fling exploders have slightly differently shaped bomb holes.

Blockers

• Blockers will turn miners. They will also turn diggers, if placed slightly ahead of the digger.
• Pass-through blockers can still be placed, but only if the blocker is assigned immediately when the lix land.
  
• Bashers and miners detect blockers more easily than in Lemmings, so more accurate basher/miner placement is needed to undermine them.

Platformers

• Platformers begin work one pixel above current terrain. With enough platformers, this can be used to make a staircase; it also provides a way to release the crowd from a shallow dig pit. On the negative side, it means that if you try to use multiple platformers to cross a gap without losing lix, each platformer will stop the one behind, and since bumped platformers continue walking in the same direction....

Cubers

• Lix can ascend through a cube in progress. (See "Compression Method 2".)
• To place a cube that lix can climb onto, dig for one stroke then make the digger a cuber.

Bashers

• Lix can climb out of an 8-pixel-deep bash tunnel in progress.
• Basher/miner mutual stop still works.

Miners

• Miners can be assigned to lix walking on steel, making them turn round. (Currently this works with diggers too; there has been some discussion in IRC about whether this should be retained.)

Diggers

• Terrain removal is no longer all at once. Left-facing diggers remove terrain from left to right; right-facing diggers, from right to left.

Runners

• A runner/jumper will jump further than normal.

Batters

• In a situation where the crowd are merged into a single position, if you assign batter to a lix in the crowd, then the rest of the crowd will step forward while he swings, allowing him to hit them.

Lemmings glitches NOT present in Lix

• Direct drop
• Nuke percentage glitch
• All steel removal glitches
• (Cheapo) Assigning basher on the last pixel before a trap trigger bypasses the trap

[geoo]

On flat terrain on which there is a bridge, it is no longer possible to turn subsequent lix by assigning builder on the last pixel before they step onto the bridge.

This is actually Cheapo-only behavior, doesn't work in the original game either (at least DOS).

Blockers turning diggers

This actually does work, as blockers, like in the original game, turn most things around (the most notable exception being climbers, as that resulted in weird behavior in the DOS version). With the digger taking a swing, this has the side effect that you can create a bump in the digger tunnel if you assign the blocker at the right time.

[Simon]

Glitches will be hacked out sooner or later anyway. ;-)

There is a lot of leeway and free decision-making when it comes to the exact mechanics. We might change the digger swing to a forward motion instead of the current backward one, especially so should we make one-way walls. Also in debate is whether steel-hitting diggers should turn or not.

-- Simon

[Proxima]

On flat terrain on which there is a bridge, it is no longer possible to turn subsequent lix by assigning builder on the last pixel before they step onto the bridge.

This is actually Cheapo-only behavior, doesn't work in the original game either (at least DOS).

Thanks, I just checked on Mac Lemmings as well and you're right. I'll remove this from the list.

Blockers turning diggers

This actually does work, as blockers, like in the original game, turn most things around (the most notable exception being climbers, as that resulted in weird behavior in the DOS version). With the digger taking a swing, this has the side effect that you can create a bump in the digger tunnel if you assign the blocker at the right time.

Okay, I've got this to work now; I think I was setting the blocker too soon when I tried it before.

[Simon]

Preparing a pot of green tea, and I'm feeling like writing again.

For the vast amount of Lix skills, I never looked at L1 or its source when programming their behaviors. I felt how they should/might work from playing Lemmings exhaustively as a kid, and from 2003 on in Dosbox. Differences will happen, and I'm happy about them. Most of them are about how a skill gets cancelled, the criterion was to be as flexible as possible here. Skills should be versatile.

It's better for a basher to continue in case of doubt, unless it can be proven there is an easily walkable area ahead. Basher, miner, digger terrain removal masks all depend on the sprite, which were drawn with only the target frame count and approximate stroke size in mind. Lixes falling at 6 hi-res pixels per update don't look very realistic, so they accelerate until they fall at 8, I think. Jumping climbers stick to walls and start climbing them, similar to the L2 rock climber. Jumping runners jump further than jumping walkers; this is also for versatility, consistency with L2 is basically just a bonus.

Throughout the game, I use "lix" as the plural of "lix" for consistency... People are of course free to use whatever plural they want, "lix", "lixes", "lixen", all fine. "lemmings" is also cool since it's clear what is meant, and we aren't doing marketing here.

Simon with ADmiral in Mumble right now:
ADmiral: What does "All steel removal glitches" mean?
Simon: The steel is horrible in L1. You can cancel it with blockers, and move their trigger areas in L1. It's horrible. It (L1) is the cheapest hack job.

-- Simon

[mobius]

[I thought I saw a "wish list" topic or something somewhere but can't find it.]
Anyway, is the 'walking out of a 8-pixel-deep basher's tunnel' thing intentional? If that's still in the works, I vote for going back to the old way (lix turn around in a basher's tunnel). From my own experimentation it just makes things easier if this is the case. You can trap lemmings by bashing then easily get out with one builder. Now in Lix, you have to dig deep enough first that the basher would leave terrain above him, forcing you to use more skills to free them.
-The reason (I'm guessing) is because the basher in Lix takes terrain away in a fairly smooth line from top to bottom, making the tunnel shaped slightly differently. In Lemmings the tunnel is rounded so there's a little terrain above preventing lemmings from walking out of the tunnel.

Then, if and when you you make one way walls, I wouldn't mind seeing downward directional walls. In other words, lix can only dig down through them, possibly mine as well idk. These were present in Revolution, but they weren't used often there. (not enough that you could even test out the capabilities really. But I think you could mine in any direction through them.

[ccexplore]

-The reason (I'm guessing) is because the basher in Lix takes terrain away in a fairly smooth line from top to bottom, making the tunnel shaped slightly differently. In Lemmings the tunnel is rounded so there's a little terrain above preventing lemmings from walking out of the tunnel.

Actually that bit of curve on the top side of the end-of-tunnel does nothing even in lemmings.  I'll have to study the Lix bash tunnel shape more carefully, but I suspect it is because with twice the pixels, more pixels are added to smooth out the bottom-side curve, which inadvertently allows the Lix to get up just a slight bit high enough to be able to get out the tunnel.

However, in Lemmings the bash tunnel is 9 (lo-res) pixels tall.  If Lix follows suit exactly, I would expect that you should still be able to trap other Lixes by simply waiting to dig down 9 times before bashing?  I'll have to test and find out.

Then, if and when you you make one way walls, I wouldn't mind seeing downward directional walls. In other words, lix can only dig down through them, possibly mine as well idk. These were present in Revolution, but they weren't used often there. (not enough that you could even test out the capabilities really. But I think you could mine in any direction through them.

Yeah, I think you could dig and mine, but I guess not bash?  It's kinda weird to be honest, I'm not sure if I've run into a level in Revolution yet where the downward OWW actually has any impact on the level, but then again I'm not quite even halfway through that game yet.

Cubers
* Lix can ascend through a cube in progress. (See "Compression Method 2".)

I feel this would be better if the cubing animation is revised, so that the in-progress cube height better reflects what is happening?  I seem to recall that right now it looks more like the entire height of the cube comes into existence in one single go, which makes the above behavior seem almost buggy.

[ccexplore]

However, in Lemmings the bash tunnel is 9 (lo-res) pixels tall.  If Lix follows suit exactly, I would expect that you should still be able to trap other Lixes by simply waiting to dig down 9 times before bashing?  I'll have to test and find out.

Well, Lix doesn't follow suit now that I observe really closely.  The lix digger is actually twice as fast as in Lemmings, digging down twice the equivalent amount in Lemmings.  What I said above would require the ability to dig down 4.5 times, so I guess no. http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/tongue.gif" alt=":P" title="Tongue" class="smiley" />

It does suggest that maybe it makes more sense to extend the height of a bash tunnel accordingly (or, adjust the bottom curve to go up less)?  It does seem a little unfortunate that with the current setup, the tunnel is either too shallow to hold back the crowd, or too deep to not have a ceiling, but no in-between.

I feel this would be better if the cubing animation is revised, so that the in-progress cube height better reflects what is happening?  I seem to recall that right now it looks more like the entire height of the cube comes into existence in one single go, which makes the above behavior seem almost buggy.

Once again, my memory is bad with this.  The animation is...well, interesting (and asymmetric wrt to facing direction?!?).  I still have no idea how accurate the animation is in terms of the terrain being added while in progress, but I can see it being at least plausible based on the animation alone.

[ccexplore]

While doing Lix level stuff today, I noticed something unexpected with the climber when the explosion countdown completes during the "transition to walker" phase.  Please see attached level and replay to see what I mean (put the level under "levels/single" folder).  ["climber-glitch-ccx.txt" is the replay file]

Mod Edit: Restored attachments.

[ccexplore]

Here's an unexpected behavior involving the jumping climber.  And no, I don't just mean that climbers can jump into walls to climb them.  [Put the level in folder levels/single for replay-watching purposes.]

Mod Edit: Restored attachments.

[Nortaneous]

I designed this for the levelpack, but deleted the post after I realized the intended solution relies on a rather strange climber/builder trick.

Mod Edit: Restored attachments.

[ccexplore]

I designed this for the levelpack, but deleted the post after I realized the intended solution relies on a rather strange climber/builder trick.

http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/huh.gif" alt="???" title="Huh?" class="smiley" /> Unfortunately I'm not seeing in your attached level and replay what you're saying, as there is no climber?  Unless you're talking about how the builder was used on the right side, but there's nothing strange about it?  Very confused.

[Nortaneous]

Wait how'd that happen. Digger/builder. It's a trick, not a glitch: with platforms of that size, it's possible to add one pixel and make a pit tha tblocks one way.

[geoo]

Wait how'd that happen. Digger/builder. It's a trick, not a glitch: with platforms of that size, it's possible to add one pixel and make a pit tha tblocks one way.

Well at least in this particular level, you can get the same effect basically if you dig/bash first and have some other lix do the building. Your level is pretty similar to TM's Italian Job in that regard, actually.

Anyway yeah, your method for that setup has some possible advantages. It's just making use of some detail in the digger mechanics and mask, but I see why you'd think it might be a bit too technical for the level set.

[mobius]

when I was testing out a level I was making; I discovered something. (you might already be aware of this but it wasn't exaclty clear to me from reading the posts here) the basher's tunnel dilemma is completely due to the diggers. In the attachment below I (unintentionally) bashed at the correct height so the lix are trapped perfectly like in original lemmings. (with opening above)

I also want to add; the way it is now with the digger/basher, if you have steel resting ontop of terrain and try to dig/bash under it with an opening, the lix will stop at the steel. (which is part of a level I had been making a few weeks ago and when I initially discovered this problem for myself in the first place.

Mod Edit: Restored attachments.