Lemmings Speedrunning

[ccexplore]

Yes, that's a good point I had forgot about. I'm not sure it would actually allow you complete the level faster

It totally would.  If the last lemming out has to dig, he would definitely be the last one to exit, and would always be slower to exit than any solution where he doesn't have to dig, since digging down the full thickness of the floor is slower than falling onto a partially-dug floor and then falling off from that.

So the ideal fastest solution would have the last lemming out survive falling off a partially dug floor without digging himself, while also not overtaking the last digger used (otherwise that last digger becomes the last one to exit, behind the last lemming out).  So to avoid the overtaking part, you want to find the lemming farthest ahead of the last lemming out, whose digging would not completely dig through before the last lemming out catches up.  (For ports where dig-canceling works, of course you would just exploit that way ahead in the front of the line and be done with it.)

[Forestidia86]

For safety Proxima's method to just assign from left to right seems to be best from what I encountered in my attempts. It still should generate a time of having 2:11 left. It's possible to solve the level faster as ccexplore indicated but I still have no reliable method to do that. Maybe someone else can do it/knows how to.

Edit: With pause glitch (pausing shortly after the level starts before the hatch opens) and increasing spawn interval while pause the Proxima method even has 2:14 left. The question is whether one should really take the ingame time.

[Nihilist Comedy Hour]

Yes, that's a good point I had forgot about. I'm not sure it would actually allow you complete the level faster

It totally would.  If the last lemming out has to dig, he would definitely be the last one to exit, and would always be slower to exit than any solution where he doesn't have to dig, since digging down the full thickness of the floor is slower than falling onto a partially-dug floor and then falling off from that.

So the ideal fastest solution would have the last lemming out survive falling off a partially dug floor without digging himself, while also not overtaking the last digger used (otherwise that last digger becomes the last one to exit, behind the last lemming out).  So to avoid the overtaking part, you want to find the lemming farthest ahead of the last lemming out, whose digging would not completely dig through before the last lemming out catches up.  (For ports where dig-canceling works, of course you would just exploit that way ahead in the front of the line and be done with it.)

Makes perfect sense to me. Just got to find out how many lemmings from the last one that is exactly; do that first, and then basically spend the rest of the level saving the rest, and that's pretty much... optimized, essentially.

[Nihilist Comedy Hour]

For safety Proxima's method to just assign from left to right seems to be best from what I encountered in my attempts. It still should generate a time of having 2:11 left. It's possible to solve the level faster as ccexplore indicated but I still have no reliable method to do that. Maybe someone else can do it/knows how to.

Edit: With pause glitch (pausing shortly after the level starts before the hatch opens) and increasing spawn interval while pause the Proxima method even has 2:14 left. The question is whether one should really take the ingame time.

Is that a really a glitch though? I assumed that was an innate function; pausing and then being able to use the F1-F12 functions while paused?

[Proxima]

The pause glitch is that (on DOS Lemmings; don't know about other versions off-hand) if you pause just when the level starts, then unpause, the hatch opens immediately, saving two seconds of in-game time.

[Nihilist Comedy Hour]

The pause glitch is that (on DOS Lemmings; don't know about other versions off-hand) if you pause just when the level starts, then unpause, the hatch opens immediately, saving two seconds of in-game time.

Oh, gotcha. That's uh... pretty interesting.

It is interesting question as to igt/rta I haven't quite determined yet. I'm tempted to say igt is more important on levels, and rta more important on multiple levels. But I intend on taking into account input from runners.

[Nihilist Comedy Hour]

Did a little testing this morning and it does appear that DOSBox cycle speed does affect the loading times. On the bright side, it has an upper limit. I'm not actually sure where it is, but it appears around 12000 cycles the loading speed tops out. This also affects the intro screen credits scrolling, which is a good way to measure if you have enough cycles to max out the loading speed.

[Nihilist Comedy Hour]

For safety Proxima's method to just assign from left to right seems to be best from what I encountered in my attempts. It still should generate a time of having 2:11 left. It's possible to solve the level faster as ccexplore indicated but I still have no reliable method to do that. Maybe someone else can do it/knows how to.

Edit: With pause glitch (pausing shortly after the level starts before the hatch opens) and increasing spawn interval while pause the Proxima method even has 2:14 left. The question is whether one should really take the ingame time.

(With Pause Glitch) I was able to complete with 2:15 left.


Basically to get that one extra second, you got to start digging with the right lemming in the middle. But then you got to start digging with lemmings in front of that one. It prevents any of the lemmings towards to back to end behind the original digger once they get to the bottom.

https://youtu.be/aOGb_l2ltoY

[Forestidia86]

Basically to get that one extra second, you got to start digging with the right lemming in the middle. But then you got to start digging with lemmings in front of that one. It prevents any of the lemmings towards to back to end behind the original digger once they get to the bottom.

Cool, this strategy works out really well and seems reasonably safe. But unfortunately you lose one second with the pause glitch. You can hold the timer when it is still 3:00.

[Nihilist Comedy Hour]

Basically to get that one extra second, you got to start digging with the right lemming in the middle. But then you got to start digging with lemmings in front of that one. It prevents any of the lemmings towards to back to end behind the original digger once they get to the bottom.

Cool, this strategy works out really well and seems reasonably safe. But unfortunately you lose one second with the pause glitch. You can hold the timer when it is still 3:00.

Interesting. My noise was being wonky for some reason. (I think the increased cycle speeds interferes with the audio, but need to look more into it). But it's hard to pull out the glitch with the audio cue to know the earliest spot to do it (and if you've done successfully. It seemed like I was able to pause until immediately once the igt hit 2:59, but I wasn't sure.

[Forestidia86]

Interesting. My noise was being wonky for some reason. (I think the increased cycle speeds interferes with the audio, but need to look more into it). But it's hard to pull out the glitch with the audio cue to know the earliest spot to do it (and if you've done successfully. It seemed like I was able to pause until immediately once the igt hit 2:59, but I wasn't sure.

Yeah, audio glitches out above a certain cycle count. Try starting off with a lower cycle count, where the proper sound is still there, and then increase the cycles when in the game.

[Nihilist Comedy Hour]

Added the Windows '95 Levels. Those can be ran now (at least the lemmings levels, not the oh no! more levels).


Btw, is there a Lemmings discord?

[Nessy]

Btw, is there a Lemmings discord?

We have a Lemmings Forums discord channel run by GigaLem. See this forum thread for more details

[Nihilist Comedy Hour]

Thx.

[Nihilist Comedy Hour]

So, after messing around with the backend of the leaderboard enough; it just made sense to allow DOS players to use whatever functions is necessary to get a better time. While means, basically allowing ESC.


Interesting thing 607 noticed on the runs. If you set the DOS settings to "High Performance PC" than the fade out of the level post hitting ESC takes longer.

Basically, whenever you hit ESC, the time immediately stops, but level will continue. Basically, if you need one lemming to beat the level, you can hit ESC a couple seconds before the lemming hits the exit. This freezes the IGT, and the fade out for the level begins. If the lemming makes it to the goal during the fade out, then the game will count it. So using ESC not only goes faster for any given level for obvious reasons, but it also goes slightly faster on all levels with 100% needed completion rate, because you hit ESC a couple seconds before the last lemmings enter, giving them just enough time to get in before the level ends. DOSBox cycles don't appear to affect the level fade out.

Curious if anyone had an idea why "High Performance PC" would cause the fade out to last longer?


Also, would y'all like or mind if put a link the discord on the speedrun forum?