It took 12 years, but I did it!!!

[Shvegait]

I just completed this more or less how Mike described it on the DOS version. I mined first instead of digging, though, so none of the lemmings got by. However, the builder should not become the climber/floater. Instead, the builder should just build to prevent others from falling (2 steps) and then turn around, then one of the lemmings who gets through after the basher bashes the whole way can become the athlete. With this solution the athlete can get down and dig before any of the lemmings get near the exit, and even with lemmings hitting the far wall after having bashed through, you can still complete this with 0:01 remaining (at least that's how much time I had left).

Mike, how do you not remember the skills? It's hero time... one of each!

As for the poll, the first time I solved this, I sort of did Ahribar's solution #1, except instead of having one lemming go over when the one bashes and making it a builder, I instead didn't let any go over, and made the basher the builder to turn them all around. The athlete part was done the same way though.

[Mike]

Mike, how do you not remember the skills? It's hero time... one of each!

hahahaha! It was 14 years ago thats why!! A lots happened since then!  

[Shvegait]

Of course, but isn't that the reason for the title?

[chaos_defrost]

I can't remember exactly how I solved "It's Hero Time!", but I DO remember it uses everything but the bomber and blocker. I think I mined the platform, bashed the wall, and builded to the platform with the lemming that goes over (turning it), and climbed/floated with the basher, digging the platform before the exit. It's one of my favorite levels in Lemmings (And if you look in my notebooks, you'll see a LOT of one of each skill levels...)

I never liked "All or Nothing" -- seemed FAR too easy for late Mayhem. Although, when I was about 8 and saw Fun 30 for the first time, I sat there thinking that there'd be a version later with 3 bashers, and thought of how hard that would be to pass. Heh.

I think you've answered this before, and I'm sorry for wasting your time if you have, but did you make the "easy" levels first or the "hard" versions?

[Shvegait]

Maybe it was on his site that I read it, but I'm almost positive that they made the hard levels first, and they added the easier versions to make the learning curve smoother. It makes a lot of sense, since the easy levels are the same but with (generally) 20 of each skill, while the harder versions clearly had thought put into them.

It makes more sense that way then making a bunch of layouts, giving 20 of each skill, then thinking "Oh, what's the least obvious possible route that uses not too many skills?" I could see this working, experimenting with all skills available and finding the simplest but non-obvious solution (I'm sure a good number of levels are designed this way), but not for all levels. Some were clearly designed for the harder version, like "It's hero time!", "Compression Method 1", and "Down, along, up. In that order" to name a few. Maybe it was a mix of the two methods?

[piainp2]

Here is how I (well my dad) figured Hero time about 10 years ago:

DIG the LAST lemming from the pack of thirty and make the FIRST lemming an athlete. Bash that other lemming through the one way block and build it under the thin ledge to stop it falling into the water. make the athlete a miner over the exit. Every lemming will (just) make it out on time.
Hell, I didn't even know about that other method until I looked at this board. Maybe I'm that 1% of people who didn't do it that way

[Proxima]

I think you've answered this before, and I'm sorry for wasting your time if you have, but did you make the "easy" levels first or the "hard" versions?

If you use ResEdit to look at the level resources on the Mac game, the easy versions are all saved as copies of the hard versions, except for the training levels.

Also, there are only two unique levels (3 Fun and 1 Tricky) in the "easy" part of the game, other than the special graphics levels. If the easy levels had been designed first, you'd expect that several wouldn't be appropriate for making hard versions of (as with my Simple set).

So my money's on the hard versions having been designed first, at the moment.....

[Mike]

I think you've answered this before, and I'm sorry for wasting your time if you have, but did you make the "easy" levels first or the "hard" versions?

Hard ones first. By the time we started doing "real" levels, we were all so good at it by then, that making a level that would take the others more than a couple of seconds to figure out was almost impossible.

But, this did mean that no one else would have even been able to START playing lemmings! So we had a stack of good, to hard levels, and no easy ones.

Gary made a couple of introductionary ones (first few), to get players used to skills, and they made some of the hard ones easier to try and give some sort of learning curve.

A good example of how we "jumped right in" were levels like "heaven can wait". Many found this hard to figure out, but I sure this was done almost first time by Gary and Scott.

Levels like "It's Hero time" did require a bit more thought, and some like the "fast food kitchen" just required you to do it all at once... as someone said, you tended to get it wrong at the same point each time.

BTW I did all the special ones... This was Daves idea. It started with Menace (A DMA Game), and then we looked for other 16 colour games.  These were ones that usually used dual-playfield. This meant we couldn't use BloodMoney (32 colours), and got some other Psygnosis games. Due to the lack of "metal" in the levels (no styles!), they were quite dull.