Fun with WAFD

[Clam]

This topic is all about the levels titled "We All Fall Down" (hereafter, WAFD) from the original games. These levels follow a simple formula and yet are highly sensitive to variations (just look at the versions where safe-fall distance is a little higher ), so I thought it might be fun to tweak the level in various ways and see what you can do.

Predictably, this idea arose from a discussion on IRC

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If there were unlimited lemmings, diggers, and time, how many lemmings could you save? (DOS physics)

The limiting factor here is the length of the platform. I propose the following setup to maximise the number of lemmings saved per column of platform removed:

• Release 11 lemmings at RR99 (intervals of 4 frames)
• First lemming digs at the second-to-last column. (If you dig at the last column, the next two lemmings have to dig here too and they go through the platform too quickly.)
• Second and third lemmings dig at the last column, to save themselves. (The first lemming still has a pixel at the left to hang on to.)

Three diggers - the first in the second-from-right column, and the next two in the rightmost column.

This method saves 11 lemmings per 6 columns of platform, or 1.83 lemmings per column. If you start your digger at the extreme right, you only get 1.80 (9 per 5 columns). The overlap between the upper and lower platforms is 511 columns, so you can repeat this 85 times for 935 lemmings saved.

But we're not done yet. There's still one column left! You can dig on this and the digger will survive - but you can't do the second-last-column setup as before, and you lose a few frames at the end because the digger's range extends to the left of the lower platform. However, you can still save 9 lemmings with the above-mentioned method of digging right at the edge - the 9th lemming makes it just in time. (The 10th lemming in this setup gets there just too late to use the ledge - otherwise we'd use this setup all along and save 1030 lemmings!)

So in all we save 935 + 9 = 944 lemmings, using 258 diggers. The time taken is about 4 minutes 20 seconds.

[Simon]

Nice result!

In DOS L1, it's not possible to cancel a digger with another digger. They dig at the very end of their animation.

Clam, in IRC, you mentioned that the Amiga version works differently. What's the issue there? Specifying a fixed version to do research on is normal anyway, we did the L2-minimum-skills-for-gold challenge only for PC L2.

-- Simon

[namida]

Nice result!

In DOS L1, it's not possible to cancel a digger with another digger. They dig at the very end of their animation.

Clam, in IRC, you mentioned that the Amiga version works differently. What's the issue there? Specifying a fixed version to do research on is normal anyway, we did the L2-minimum-skills-for-gold challenge only for PC L2.

-- Simon

It is possible to cancel a digger with another digger, because the first dig occurs on the exact frame they're assigned. However, on DOS, they need to be in *exactly* the same position, and not both doing the actual dig on the same frame. In practice, the only real uses for this are either (a) digging in the same position with a lemming facing the opposite direction, or (b) if the diggers have different combinations of permanent skills, so you're making one dig to release the other. Certianly neither is applicable to this topic.

As for the version difference - in Amiga (and Genesis, and IIRC SNES too), a digger ignores the outermost pixel on each side when determining "do I still have terrain to hang on to, or should I become a faller now", whereas in DOS, it checks those ones.

[Simon]

It is possible to cancel a digger with another digger, because the first dig occurs on the exact frame they're assigned.

Oh right, they dig at the very beginning, not the end. Yeah, doesn't improve the results here.

As for the version difference - in Amiga (and Genesis, and IIRC SNES too), a digger ignores the outermost pixel on each side when determining "do I still have terrain to hang on to, or should I become a faller now", whereas in DOS, it checks those ones.

Thanks. I see how this can lead to worries with the above solution.

-- Simon

[Clam]

The time taken is about 4 minutes 20 seconds.

In response to some comments (), I worked it out exactly. The last lemming exits with 0.37 left over from 5 minutes. So, 4:23. (Not accounting for pause-for-time or high-performance mode fade-out.)

[grams88]

My dad hated those We all fall down levels.

[nin10doadict]

They were annoying, yes. So... much... pausing... Funny how you could technically optimize it to save so many when just getting 80 in the Mayhem version felt like a chore.

[Colorful Arty]

Am I the only one who liked We all fall down? Especially on the CD version where the splat distance was increased.

[Gronkling]

Am I the only one who liked We all fall down?

(On the genesis version and any others that cancel digging even if not exact you can save infinite lemmings with two diggers by cancelling the first one with the second to create a small step, but this thread is old)

[WillLem]

Am I the only one who liked We all fall down?

I like these levels too, but to be fair they're best played Pause-free

[grams88]

I felt like pausing it on the atari st didn't really help that much as you couldn't really change anything. There's a big difference with the windows version when you pause it you can get another skill ready for the lemming or do more things compared with the amiga or the atari st ones.

[Proxima]

This thread seems to be discussion of WAFD without a challenges focus, so I'm moving it to Lemmings Main.