Impressions playing Winlemm 95

[Forestidia86]

In the last time I from time to time played primarily ONML and a bit L1 in Winlemm 95 and tried to speedrun primarily Tame and to a lower extent Fun for myself for a bit. (It's the Winlemm version where they splat in "We all fall down" (but don't splat in "Steel Works").)
As a kid I only played the first two ranks of Dos and Winlemm ONML/L1 and am still not through with it but nevertheless encountered some things.
Although it's nothing new I just want to share my observations, experiences etc. Simon helped from time to time to understand them.

What I make use of
I use all of the conveniences that Winlemm has to offer:

- Action Replay
- Fast forward, which is brokenly fast on modern PCs
- Pausing and being in a very limited way able to assign a skill while pausing
- Directional and Walker priority selection as I got to know through this thread

Assignment one frame delayed
One general problem I have is that for some reasons for me all the assignments are one frame delayed. This is especially nasty if you want to assign a skill upon landing since you have then to click on the lemming while still in the air. This is a bit mediated by the possibility to assign skills while pausing. I often mess up basher assingments as well due to it and have then the turning basher.

Fast forward (ff) and Pause
Fast forward is blazingly fast and finishes the level in no time. So you can only use it to finish off a level or you can try to make a selfbuilt, very unreliable frameskip.
You can perform this quasi-frameskip by either pressing ff twice in quick succession or use ff in combination with pause.
The first method seems more elegant and faster but also less controllable than the second, since you can almost simultaneously hit ff and pause. If one uses the second method, one should not forget to first disable ff and then pause.
With fastly mashing pause you can have selfbuilt framestepping.

Action Replay (AR)
Action Replay can be used in combination with ff(+pause) to get fast to the point where you've made a misstep. This makes dealing with levels much more convenient for me, although it is hard to pull off properly for me. Unfortunately there are instances where AR can desynch, which can lead e.g. to the situation that skills are used up but not assigned. But fortunately that hasn't happened that often to me up to now.

Other mechanics/pecularities:

Exploder behaves like blocker
In Winlemm an exploder which starts to explode lets other lemmings turn around as if it were a blocker.

Falldistance to the wall of a climber after hitting ceiling
If a climber hits a ceiling it seems to have a higher distance from the wall than in the Dos version. You can build a stair that way that a climber can climb past it but lands on it when falling down after hitting the ceiling. 

Digging
Digging seems to be slower than in the Dos version. The digger seems to fall down as soon as the hole opens (unsure if that is true in any instance).

Concerning ONML:

Time limits and RR
In ONML there are a couple of levels where you have to increase the release rate at some point to keep the time limit. I think there is at least one level where they have not even spawned before the time limit has expired. That's especially nasty when I'm using ff to finish off the level since I have a proper route. That way I have no incentive to increase the RR and if I use ff, the level is lost because of that. Increasing the RR to keep the time limit is in many levels just a pure formality and winning or losing shouldn't depend on it I think.

Hidden traps
In ONML are levels that have hidden or only barely visible traps, often close to the exit when you think you have your route. I have to admit that it has that surprise effect and shows you that you shouldn't be too sure about your route. So it has its dramatic effect but it is nasty as well since you have to do everything from the beginning in the worst case although you were close to solving the level. In Winlemm it is a bit mitigated via AR+ff.

About some levels

Spoiler

I had so much issues with "KEEP ON TRUCKING" for some reason. Generally the Crazy rank seemed quite nasty (executionwise) to me.
"It's a tight fit" seemed ridiculously hard to execute for me and you have to think of increasing the RR on top of that. Maybe the frame delay for assignments played a role for that. "It's all a matter of timing" was affected by that as well.

[Nessy]

Very interesting read here.

Winlemm 95 was actually the port of lemmings I played when I got back into Lemmings but before these forums. The main annoyance I had with this was the fast forward functionality, which was pretty much rendered useless as it went way too fast on modern machines for regular play and only useful to complete a level once the route was completed. Using fast forward and pause mashing was basically what I did as well, especially during a replay (although I would often times fail and skip over the part that contained the mistake that was forcing me to use the replay ).

As for the hidden traps in ONML, they seem to be more unforgiving than in the original game. A glaring example is Havoc 1, where I think the placement of that hidden icicle trap was 100% unnecessary and stupid

Time limits overall never really bothered me. Of course, if I had the choice I prefer infinite time on levels that don't rely on a time limit as the main idea of the level (for example, "Just A Minute" is a level that does rely on it).

As for your thoughts on certain ONML levels:

Spoiler

"KEEP ON TRUCKING" is probably one of the hardest levels in the entire ONML game in my personal opinion, even considering the general nastiness of the Crazy difficulty. The Crazy rank was a huge difficulty spike in the game, especially considering the fact that it comes after the lackluster Tame (at least, lackluster compared to Fun where at least the terrain was more interesting and required more than just a couple of skills to solve). I would usually skip "KEEP ON TRUCKING" or "cheat" the level as Winlemm would say and come back to it later .

Regardless I still love ONML and it contains some of my favorite official levels ever such as Wicked 1 ("LeMming ToMato KetchUp fAcilitY"), which seems like an odd choice... only to realize that a lot of my own levels are similar: small with two entrances

[Forestidia86]

I've played through all of Winlemm 95 by now.
Some later levels I could faintly remember from childhold but everything is so long ago that I can't say what I've already seen and what not.

Some further remarks:

Basher splats although other lemmings land safely
In some instances the lemmings can land safely from a basher tunnel but the basher itself splats nevertheless.

Graphic glitches on big maps
Sometimes on big maps I had weird graphic glitches that the terrain shifts into each other.

Level solved but nevertheless have to redo levels
I actually don't know what was happening but in two instances I think I've fulfilled the save requirement but pressing the button that should bring you to the next level just restarted the level.

Some further remarks on the already brought up points
The time limit and having to increase RR thing really bothered me over time. Even in the cases where the limit was about finishing the route, it was often less about the route itself but about the execution of the route.
I still don't master the ff+pause thing properly; it's really straining for my fingers.
Directional select seems to undermine some of the RR puzzles.
The frame delay was generally nasty for precision builder assigments but helpful in one or two levels.

About some further levels and ranks

The Tricky rank was strange: It was a weird mix of easy levels at the beginning, some levels solvable with Mayhem route and some interesting, sometimes even tough puzzles.
The Mayhem rank was too much building for my like.
Wild and Wicked were tough ranks.
"Temple of Love" and "Take care, Sweetie" were the hardest levels puzzlewise for me I think. Although the "Just a minute" levels were tough as well. They are one of the few instances where the time limit was about the route itself.
"Look before you leap!" was just exploder hell and "Lots more where they came from" was extremely strange and fiddly.
"With a twist of a lemming please" was just mashing floaters at the hatch; directional select took the the main puzzle with clustering away but it wouldn't have changed the mashing aspect with the puzzle.
"We all fall down" (Mayhem) was nasty mashing as well but that's related to how I attempted to do it.
"THE SILENCE OF THE LEMMINGS" is a scary name for a level.

I generally think ONML is tougher (puzzle- as well as executionwise) as L1. I liked the tilesets and the general level design of short concise levels of ONML better.

[Simon]

Winlemm-specific bugs: Thanks for writing them down. The basher-to-faller transition seems to have a weirdness like the DOS miner-to-faller, where the finished miner splats sooner than the walkers. Rarely makes a difference, but important to keep in mind.

General impressions: This is very close to my own experience from DOS Lemmings 1 and DOS ONML. Levels in ONML tend to be shorter and the puzzle density is higher than in L1. Towards the end, the ONML designers often substituted fiddliness for puzzle difficulty -- acceptable if you consider Lemmings a dexterity game, often annoying.

The release rate is often a required fast-forward to finish a level in time; this doesn't add anything to the puzzle either. I'm overly sensitive to these issues because I conciously removed from Lix both time limits and variable spawn interval in 2016.

-- Simon

[Forestidia86]

Just one addition I noticed just now: You can stack blockers in Winlemm.

[ccexplore]

Falldistance to the wall of a climber after hitting ceiling
If a climber hits a ceiling it seems to have a higher distance from the wall than in the Dos version. You can build a stair that way that a climber can climb past it but lands on it when falling down after hitting the ceiling. 

Maybe I missed something you are saying, but this actually also happens in DOS Lemmings as well.  You can have a 1-pixel gap between the build bridge and the wall, and the climber will land on the build bridge after hitting ceiling and fall.

Not sure if they "fixed" it in NeoLemmix or not, maybe that's why the behavior might seem new to you.  I'm pretty sure Lix doesn't have this unexpected behavior.

Basher splats although other lemmings land safely
In some instances the lemmings can land safely from a basher tunnel but the basher itself splats nevertheless.

This can actually also happen in DOS Lemmings even with bashers, but I think the difference there is only 1 pixel, so it may be a lot harder/rarer to achieve compared to WinLemm.  It doesn't help that a basher has a tendency to stop bashing and revert to walker when it runs out of things to bash, so it can be tricky to arrange a basher to fall before that happens.

To test it in DOS Lemmings, try it on Fun 10 ("Smile If You Love Lemmings") with a very specific setup:

1) have a lemming dig down such that there are 4 (5 might also work?) pixels remaining between right edge of dig tunnel and right edge of the cliff at the start.
2) (optional but helpful) set a blocker just before the dig tunnel, to temporary divert other lemmings away from the dig tunnel, so you can clearly see it is the basher who fell and splat in step 3 below.  Blow up the blocker afterwards to see how regular walker lemmings fare.
3) after digging down exactly 37 times (exactly that, no more, no less), bash right.

The basher will splat but the other walker lemmings will survive the fall.  The reason we leave some amount of terrain during step 1 is so that a single bash stroke is not sufficient to break through, and we take advantage of the quirk that in DOS Lemmings, bashers will only stop after odd number of strokes unless interrupted by steel or a fall.  So the arrangement prevents the basher from reverting to walker first before falling.

Again, this might be something that has been "fixed" in NeoLemmix, and I assume this unexpected behavior doesn't happen in Lix either.

[Forestidia86]

Thanks for the insights ccexplore.

I've attached a comparision picture to show what I mean with higher distance from wall when falling after climb.

The basher-splatting happened to me from time to time with the steel digging route in "Easy when you know how"/"Compression Method 1".

[ccexplore]

Interesting, so maybe the gap between the landable build bridge and the wall can be even larger with WinLemm. Will have to try it out one of these days.

[namida]

Not sure if they "fixed" it in NeoLemmix or not, maybe that's why the behavior might seem new to you.  I'm pretty sure Lix doesn't have this unexpected behavior.
...
Again, this might be something that has been "fixed" in NeoLemmix, and I assume this unexpected behavior doesn't happen in Lix either.

Both of these are fixed in NeoLemmix, and yeah, pretty sure Lix doesn't have either behaviour either. Pretty much every known L1 glitch is fixed in NL (though from time to time, entirely new ones have appeared).

[607]

I find it strange how the game uses a file-based system instead of a password-based one, but you still need to unlock the levels in order to play them, by beating the levels before them. It would be nice if you could play any level you wanted from the start.

[Leo]

It's easy to enable access to all levels. Just copy usr00000.db from the attachment over the original file. On Windows XP it is located in "C:\Program Files\WinLemm\" folder. I don't know where it is on some more recent Windows version. But, it should be easy to locate that file by searching the file name.

[Forestidia86]

Since I've dealt with this game recently.
I have two gifs attached which show what I mean by frame delay.
delay1 with builders: The assignment is in the air, neverless the skill is performed then on the platform.
delay2 with the floaters: When one looks at the skills one will see that the skill count declines though the action is not performed, the lemming splats despite using up the skill.

[namida]

In regards to that basher dies / others survive thing - at least on DOS / Lemmix, this happens with Miners too, and is in fact much more noticable with them. It took NL quite a while to properly iron out this one back in the early days (whereas basher was solved relatively quickly). In fact, I believe it happens with any skill that can transitition directly to a faller without becoming a walker first; because the walker moves down a few pixels (as if he was just stepping down a slightly-steep slope) before transitioning to a faller, and these pixels don't get counted towards fall distance. (NL addresses this by making those step downs count towards fall distance, if the lemming transitions to a faller afterwards.)

[Forestidia86]

I think I encountered in Winlemm 95 as well that the miner dies and the rest survives. 

Just one addition I noticed just now: You can stack blockers in Winlemm.

This blocker stacking leads to cases where the blockers stand so close to each other that the lemmings can walk through the second blocker. This already happens at a distance where it's imaginable that the blocking effect still takes place which is nasty.
I have attached another gif to demonstrate that.

As a sidenote this exists in current (0.9) Lix as well and is called dancing since at some instances in Lix it looks like the lix dance through the second blocker.