Lemmings Speedrunning

[Forestidia86]

One can actually beat Fun 2: "Only floaters can survive this" (Dos) in 16 s IGT if you use pause glitch and "High Perfomance PC" with Esc early enough.
Just hit Esc when the timer is still at 4:44 (provided you have used pause glitch optimally).

[Nihilist Comedy Hour]

One can actually beat Fun 2: "Only floaters can survive this" (Dos) in 16 s IGT if you use pause glitch and "High Perfomance PC" with Esc early enough.
Just hit Esc when the timer is still at 4:44 (provided you have used pause glitch optimally).

Got to beat 607 to it when I get home.

I'm thinking Level 1 can be done in 16 seconds too honestly.

I imagine in most instances shaving off that last second will always come down to perfect execution of ESC and pause glitch.


Any tips on level 4? I got :36, he's done to :33. As far as I can determine, you got to get the lemmings that aren't digging facing the right direction at the right time. I was thinking about at work, maybe possibly setting the speed to 1, using the first lemming to dig, and seeing if he completes it fast enough for the next lemming not to get stuck in the top part.

[Nihilist Comedy Hour]

Interest is starting to pick-up.

One player got a 1:13:54 on the Fun Levels from a SNES emulated run 8 days ago.

Today a Japanese player was able to finish the Fun Levels on the SNES 44:04, which 1:19 away from being faster than the MS-DOS version.

[ccexplore]

I haven't looked at this in ages.  Are the current MS-DOS version solutions submitted for this thing even anywhere close to optimized?  I suspect many probably aren't, despite efforts that have already been made a long time ago on the challenge threads here (but never yet translated into the form of a video or similar that conforms with the submission requirements used here).

Also, are we measuring based on game time or real time?  Either way, there are difference in the two ports in terms of how many physics update occur in a game second, and also how long in real time it takes between physics updates.  As a result, the exact same solution involving the exact same pixel-level movement of the lemmings, will still take slightly different amount of time in each port, whether or not you are measuring in game time or real time.  As a result that will make timings from the two ports not directly comparable, until you adjust for those differences accordingly.

[Nihilist Comedy Hour]

I haven't looked at this in ages.  Are the current MS-DOS version solutions submitted for this thing even anywhere close to optimized?  I suspect many probably aren't, despite efforts that have already been made a long time ago on the challenge threads here (but never yet translated into the form of a video or similar that conforms with the submission requirements used here).

Oh, definitely not even close, I wouldn't think. Although I'm sure Fun in of itself is probably not too far from an the actual optimized time.

Also, are we measuring based on game time or real time?

For the purposes of running multiple levels, real-time takes precedence, so that levels have to be done in quick secession. For the individual levels, the IGT timer is more important. This is sort of important for MS-DOS because things like pausing and pause glitches and such for are useful for stopping the IGT, whereas it would be particularly slow over a series of long levels to have to do a pause glitch every level (and going slower in real time) in order to make the IGT work better. I haven't tested all the consoles yet, so it's not yet clear what sort of things like this can or cannot be exploitable.

Either way, there are difference in the two ports in terms of how many physics update occur in a game second, and also how long in real time it takes between physics updates.  As a result, the exact same solution involving the exact same pixel-level movement of the lemmings, will still take slightly different amount of time in each port, whether or not you are measuring in game time or real time.  As a result that will make timings from the two ports not directly comparable, until you adjust for those differences accordingly.

Oh definitely. The leader-boards are separately by platform because the number of ports and their minute differences are so numerous and often tiny but still important. That's actually kind of why I was shocked the SNES time for Fun could be done that quickly, given that I assume the console version runs slower.

When emulating MS-DOS, increasing the processing speed allotted to the program doesn't really affect in-game play. The internal timer for the levels keeps the refresh rate locked. However, it does speed up loading screens so that the transition between levels is quicker. This however is limited, so there is a limit to how quickly loading screens can move, which is naturally important for keeping the playing field equal for MS-DOS users. I suspect this allows one to get through loading screens faster than a SNES would, and that sort of stuff can add up.

If more runs get added soon on different consoles, could be fun to take the current records and put them in the same video for comparison.

[607]

... You were using a glitch for your runs!!
I mean, that's no problem, but I never realised! Now I get why some of your times seemed unbeatable to me... Wow.

[Nihilist Comedy Hour]

... You were using a glitch for your runs!!
I mean, that's no problem, but I never realised! Now I get why some of your times seemed unbeatable to me... Wow.

Ah, I thought you were too, but I see now you were just pausing.

Yes, basically, when the level starts, the IGT starts and the pre-open music starts. However, if you pause immediately, the IGT stops, but the pre-open music continues. Once you hear the door opening sound (but the door hasn't opened yet), you can unpause the game. The door immediately then opens, and IGT resumes. So it saves 2-3 seconds on every level (if you are playing on MS-DOS). It's unclear at the time what other ports have something similar, but SNES definitely has the option to leave the level early, and as long as you get the necessary lemmings, the next level will continue.

[Nihilist Comedy Hour]

Just a quick update. A run has now been performed for the Fun Levels on SNES, that is the fastest recorded run of the first 30 levels of the game thus far, beating out the record set by Usumgallu on MS-DOS 5 months ago. It's pretty impressive given it was also done on original SNES hardware. The new time for the Fun Levels (especially the ones that feature the full 30 levels) across platforms is 41:32, only 47 seconds faster than the previous MS-DOS run.

Also the first run for the Genesis version of the game (the Japanese release) was submitted a couple weeks ago as well. So for now the fastest run on Genesis is exactly 10 minutes slower than the new SNES run.

https://www.speedrun.com/lemmings/run/z033wloz

[ccexplore]

I'm sure the answer is "yes" but is the SNES run actually faster than MS-DOS due to actually better solutions, versus platform differences resulting in timing differences?  Also remind me, are we measuring in real time, versus some variant of game time or frames?

[Nihilist Comedy Hour]

So I did a very rough doubling of the video:

http://youtubedoubler.com/?video1=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DCFLCQ7A_bmU&start1=14&video2=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dkg5sUosg4TQ&start2=5&authorName=nch

And it appears for the most part, the reason the SNES version is ahead in this case, is because the MSDOS run (something I forgot about it) isn't exploiting the ESC button, instead opting for suicides to end levels. So that's definitely the main reason.

Additionally, it does appear the SNES version moves slightly faster. The IGT is slightly quicker... maybe about 10% more so it seems. I noticed certain Lemming animations are also slightly faster (such as builder), the frame rate of the IGT probably matches the movement speeds of Lemmings.

So given that, it's actually somewhat of a testament to the MSDOS runner, because he was only a minute behind, and it appears it's at a slight time disadvantage. But the MSDOS runner had a far cleaner run. No retries, no use of pauses, where as the SNES run did (which is somewhat understandable if you are actually playing with a SNES controller). But the ESC likely saved something like 6-10 seconds a run, and over 30 levels, well...

First multi-level runs we use real-time, as, trying to figure out how to do a frame rule thing and then adjust times appropriately would... well be a nightmare. For level runs, we do use IGT. Maybe I will go through and add players level times, and that might help paint a better picture as well.

[Nihilist Comedy Hour]

Also interesting the SNES version has a point system. I don't recall seeing that anywhere else.

[GigaLem]

I know there was a thread about it and I want see something like it come to life.
A Speedrun that saves every lemming possible in each level in the original Lemmings or to shorten it "Lemmings Max Saved%"

I'd like to see if someone could do something like that, or at least practice it.

[607]

I know there was a thread about it and I want see something like it come to life.
A Speedrun that saves every lemming possible in each level in the original Lemmings or to shorten it "Lemmings Max Saved%"

I'd like to see if someone could do something like that, or at least practice it.

That seems arbitrary. But it might not be, if we're rather certain on what's the maximum possible on each level.

[Proxima]

Max% records for DOS Lemmings are pretty firm by now, since ccexplore in particular thoroughly explored what's possible with all the glitches (and Ephraim's original list of records already saves 100% on all but 20 levels, so only those ones need to be looked at).

I'm not sure about other platforms. In the Challenges forum we keep track of max% on all major platforms, but records for those may not be as firm as the DOS ones (e.g. I found a saving on Genesis Present 2 that was missed by others, and I suspect that Mac Mayhem 26 is improvable but it hasn't been tested yet).

A max% speedrun would be pretty tricky given the requirements for some of the glitch solutions (Mayhem 2, Mayhem 10 in particular).

[ccexplore]

Yeah, an additional max % requirement would put the difficulty of some of the glitch solutions for max %, on top of the difficulty of the speedrunning itself.  Then again, I seem to recall Clam posted quite a few solutions involving the sliding glitch (not always related to speedrunning, but clearly the glitch can have speedrunning potential at times), so even the normal speedrunning w/o the max % condition would probably still have a few difficult spots where the fastest possible solution (with glitches allowed) happen to use the sliding glitch.  Outside of sliding glitches sometimes the non max-% speedrunning solution can still actually be much more difficult to execute than the max-% one; for example "Mary Poppin's Land", the fast solution (with the massive use of builders at the start followed by steel glitches to bomb down the drop) is quite frenetic and precise to execute, whereas the 100% solution, while having some initial trickiness setting up the crowd-holding gadget, is more relaxed-pace overall since you are forced to do relatively longer builds to create safe landings (aka doing the rest of the level the "normal" way).