Lemmings 3D Glitches

[namida]

Didn't seem to already be a topic for it, so I figured I'd start one, especially given that custom level designers need to be aware of some of these (as not only are some of them backroute risks, but some of them can interfere with the levels working as intended).

Unless mentioned otherwise, assume the glitch is only confirmed on the PC version.

Glitch List



Physics Glitches

Builder Collision Inconsistency - If a builder is 1/4 block below a flat surface, such that his next brick would be placed immediately on the surface (not 1/4 height above it), he will stop building if the surface is at a partial block height (and continue walking forwards), but place his brick and continue if the surface is at a full block height. It appears that on console versions, he always continues building in such a case.

Dig Through Dangerous Blocks - If a digger digs through a block that's above a water / electrified block, but the water / electrified block is not marked as steel, the digger will continue to dig through said block unharmed. Any lemming that later passes through the dangerous block will die, though, even after it has been fully removed. Confirmed on all versions of the game.

Extra Destruction Glitch, Variant A - A basher that begins bashing from 1/4 block height will take out three slices vertically, instead of the usual two. Debatable if this is a glitch or just a mechanics quirk.

Extra Destruction Glitch, Variant B - On levels which trigger, or are close to triggering, the missing faces glitch (see under comsetic glitches below), sometimes destructive skills will remove an entire block instead of just certain segments of it. This is inverted with the Bomber though, who under the same conditions will not destroy anything.

Failed Assignment Glitch - If you assign most skills to a climber immediately before they hit a wall (frame-perfect), or while they're bashing or mining a wall (not walking between blocks as a basher / miner), the skill will be consumed but the lemming will just start climbing the wall. One weird case is that this glitch is triggered when assigning a basher to a miner, but not when assigning a miner to a basher. When done with a non-climber, the lemming will usually turn around and then perform the skill as normal at the next suitable boundary. This does not always work; the direction the lemming is facing (relative to the internal coordinate planes) is a likely factor.

Infinite Dig Glitch - This is a console-exclusive extension of the Dig Through Dangerous Blocks glitch above. Should there be a block at the very bottom of the level that fits the criteria for that glitch, the lemming will dig on the block forever (without moving further downwards or removing any terrain; just stuck in one position). (Video) Confirmed on both Playstation and Saturn versions of the game; does NOT occur on PC.

Jump Glitch - If a faller, during the time they have forwards momentum, hits a block face, they will immediately jump to the top of that block, even if it's higher than a lemming can usually step up. From there they can further step up the normal 1/4 block height. This glitch is PC-exclusive.

Miner Height Glitch - If a miner is started on top of a builder bridge, at a full block height position, the first destruction segment will be placed one block segment higher than usual.

Replay Release Rate Glitch - If a level is played, then the minimum release rate is modified in the level file, and the level is restarted, the new minimum release rate is not enforced during the replay. If the user interrupts the replay, they can increase the release rate to any point between the current and minimum value, but cannot decrease it while it's below (or at) the minimum. Since this won't happen (outside of cases of cheating) while playing levels normally, it's only really relevant while playtesting your own levels.

Slide Glitch - An extension of the jump glitch above. If the jump glitch is used to make a climber jump, and there's solid blocks immediately above the block face that's hit (both above the lemming and above the block); after jumping, the lemming will climb through the solid blocks (multiple layers of them, if applicable) and come out the top. If there is an odd number of blocks above him, he'll face the opposite direction than he did before; otherwise, he'll face the same direction. It appears that whether or not this glitch actually triggers may depend how far up the block the lemming is when the jump glitch is triggered. This glitch is PC-exclusive.

Stuck Digger Glitch - Assign a digger to a lemming between two blockers (at each side of the same block). The lemming will register as a "digger", but will never actually start digging. I assume if you were to somehow remove the blockers without removing the terrain underneath the digger, he would then start digging as normal.

Transporter Bomber Glitch - If a bomber's countdown runs out and he explodes while in transit via a spring, damage to terrain sometimes (exact cause unknown) occurs near the spring that launched him, not near his current position. This glitch also occurs with rope slides. This does not occur with trampolines; bombers on those explode at their current location (after falling a bit during the ohno animation, that is). In the case of teleporters, cosmetic oddities occur but the destruction always takes place where the lemming visually appears to be at the time of detonation. The only official levels where this can be set up without the nuke (which may make it hard to see the effects), are Richochet (spring), Death Slide (rope slide) and Final Maze (spring). In the case of Ricochet, you must use builders to create terrain to see the effect with. The teleporter effects can be seen in Tower of Lemlab, by taking a slightly unintended route to get to the bottom with the bomber and at least one builder remaining (with the builder only being used to confirm the location of destruction effects; you don't need it if you just want to see the cosmetic effects).



Cosmetic Glitches

Miner Animation Glitch - When a miner is assigned to a lemming, the lemming retains its current animation until it reaches the edge of the block - this can be done easily with a builder (any of the three builder-related animations - walking builder, brick-placing builder or shrugger) or a digger, and with a bit more effort can also be done with a basher. This glitch does not occur with the basher, which correctly resets the animation to "walking" until the block edge is encountered.

Missing Faces Glitch - If a level has too many visible block faces, some of them will not be rendered (but will still function as if they were there). This is perhaps more of an engine limitation than a glitch as such; looking at official level data shows that active efforts were made on some levels to mitigate the impact of this glitch, and there is a byte in the level data that can be increased to allow more faces before the glitch occurs (although only to a certain point).

Missing Pyramid Textures - This is more to do with corrupt copies of the game than an actual game glitch, but the majority of copies found nowdays have this corruption so I'm listing it here. Due to a corrupt TEXTURE.000 file, some copies of the game black out most of the textures on levels 30, 34, 40 and 64. The other two pyramid levels use TEXTURE.010 instead so are unaffected. L3DUtils has a patch to fix this bug.

Replay Camera Glitch - Similar to the replay release rate glitch above, the same lack of bounds checking is also applied to camera movements. This can allow the camera to move outside the normal boundaries (which will result in a crash if it goes below the bottom of the level, although all other boundary exceeds do not cause any issues, and the camera will snap back inside the boundaries if / when the replay is interrupted), or to move through solid blocks.

See Through Walls - Sometimes, you can see through a wall by rotating the camera, while using virtual lemming on a blocker or turner placed against the wall. It's also possible that if the camera is moved while paused, it may pass through walls when replaying your actions, with much the same effect.

Transparent Destruction Mask - If a basher or miner (presumably a digger too, but haven't tested this) is destroying a block that has transparency on some/all faces, the destruction overlay will turn segments of the texture transparent, rather than black.



Misc Glitches

CD Music Fails To Loop - On the PC version, after a CD audio track completes, background music goes silent until either it's turned off and on again, or gameplay finishes. For some reason, this bug does not occur when using DOSBox's audio CD emulation with CUE + ISO + OGG files (but does when using DOSBox with a physical disc or a virtual drive from an external application). This bug is confirmed to occur ONLY on the PC version.

CD / Soundcard Music Discrepancy - Many levels have inconsistencies in which music they play, depending on whether the player is using CD audio or another type of music. Levels that use the standard track on soundcard / MIDI are unaffected, but levels that use the alternate track will instead get the standard track on CD audio, while those that use the remixed version of the standard track will get the alternate track on CD audio (the remix version doesn't exist in CD audio, but it would be far more logical to play the standard track here). L3DUtils has a patch to fix this bug.

Nuke Activation Glitch - It's very difficult to activate the nuke using the UI icon (which requires a double-click). Other means of activating the nuke (running out of time, or Alt+Q) do not have this issue.

[namida]

We'll start with a weird one I discovered yesterday. To set this up, you must place a turner or a blocker, such that it's standing at partial-block height. Then, release the turner / blocker by destroying the terrain it's standing on. The turner / blocker will jump up to the top of the block they were standing against, even if that's too high to normally step up. (If there's another block, more than one slice tall, on top of that, the lemming will turn around and fall back down.) And yes - you can use a builder bridge as the platform to do this on.

Levels where this can be set up fairly easily in the official game (although it doesn't seem to achieve anything interesting in any of these*) include Follow The Yellow Brick Road (dig away half or 3/4 of the first yellow cube, then block or turn, then have another lemming dig), Across The Network (build up to the block above the splitter, block or turn against it, release with the basher) and Tuther Circus Level (build up to either set of blocks around the entrance, block, use either the bomber or basher to release).

I've also attached a level which requires using this glitch to solve, as well as a replay that shows the solution. I've also recorded a video for those who prefer that / don't have access to the PC version of Lemmings 3D: https://youtu.be/G4Qlb7G1AVI

* Nope, this later turned out to provide some huge improvements to save records and skills-you-can't-live-without for "Follow The Yellow Brick Road" and "Snake". ^_^

[insulfrog]

One bug that I have discovered that in certain circumstances that the nuke button does not work when double clicking on it as intended. Instead, you have to use ALT+Q to actively 'nuke' the level or press the escape key to end or retry the level. Especially if you have blockers and/or turners about the level after the puzzle have been solved.

EDIT: The double click on the nuke button does work but due to high frame rate, you have to do your 'double click' stupidly fast to activate the 'nuke',.

[ccexplore]

EDIT: The double click on the nuke button does work but due to high frame rate, you have to do your 'double click' stupidly fast to activate the 'nuke',.

Hmm interesting, sounds like possibly a DOSBox emulation issue, maybe also related to the recommended setup of setting Cycles to MAX.  Or possibly just a game bug also repro-able on real DOS, where the timing involved scales with the CPU speed, and so simply becomes way too fast on modern PCs (just like Windows Lemming's fast-forward).

[namida]

EDIT: The double click on the nuke button does work but due to high frame rate, you have to do your 'double click' stupidly fast to activate the 'nuke',.

Hmm interesting, sounds like possibly a DOSBox emulation issue, maybe also related to the recommended setup of setting Cycles to MAX.  Or possibly just a game bug also repro-able on real DOS, where the timing involved scales with the CPU speed, and so simply becomes way too fast on modern PCs (just like Windows Lemming's fast-forward).

It's definitely not a DOSBox issue; I had that problem when playing on real hardware (a Pentium 1 133MHz running Windows 98) back in the day.

[LemSteven]

I remember having problems with the Nuke double-click in the past, as well.  I want to say it was on an old Windows 95 computer.  It matches what you guys are saying - you needed to double-click insanely fast in order for it to work.  I'm pretty sure it's a processing speed issue - If I fire up the game in DOSBox with Cycles set to around 30,000 instead of MAX, it works fine. (I wouldn't set it much lower than this, though, or it will be too slow)

[Pooty]

Regarding the jump and slide glitches, lemmings that are bashers or miners are eligible to be boosted (in addition to blockers and turners). Also, those two glitches do NOT work on the console versions of the game.

[namida]

I should have guessed that would work, to be honest - they stick to the very edge of a block in much the same way as blockers and turners do. (So do climbers, but they seem to fall correctly if their climb is interrupted by terrain removal.)

I wonder if it can be triggered with a shrugger too? EDIT: No, they don't stick to the edge, I was misremembering. However, a builder is on the edge during very narrow windows of his animation, so maybe there's something there...

[insulfrog]

Regarding the 'nuke' issue, I have been testing the cycles option in the dosbox config file. 60,000 to 65,000 cycles appears to be the upper 'ideal' limit (for me anyways) for comfortably activating the 'nuke' with double click. I suggest that you test this for yourself as different system configurations may yield different results.

[namida]

"Max" is the only value that, for me, doesn't either lag or have sound glitches. I'll accept having to use the keyboard for nuke if it means I don't have lag or dodgy sound.

[namida]

A new discovery yesterday:

Destruction Cancel Glitch - If you assign a blocker or a turner, to a basher or a miner during the bash / mine animation (not while walking to the next block), and the basher/miner is also a climber, the blocker / turner will be consumed but the lemming will revert to a walker (and immediately climb the wall in front of them). This does not work if the lemming is not a climber; in that case they will turn around, walk to the opposite edge of the block they're on, then block/turn as normal.

[ccexplore]

Interesting discovery.  But is it different from trying to assign a blocker/turner to a walker lemming who's already close enough to the wall in front of them?  Just trying to understand whether it's maybe more a natural consequence of actions needing to take place on block boundaries and the queuing of skill assignments to account for that.

[namida]

Interesting discovery.  But is it different from trying to assign a blocker/turner to a walker lemming who's already close enough to the wall in front of them?  Just trying to understand whether it's maybe more a natural consequence of actions needing to take place on block boundaries and the queuing of skill assignments to account for that.

After some testing, there does appear to be exactly 1 frame where you can assign a blocker / turner to a walker-climber and have the skill "eaten" with no effect just like this.

[namida]

Okay, after some more testing, I've found the more general case (I think):

Failed Assignment Glitch - If you assign most skills to a climber immediately before they hit a wall (frame-perfect), or while they're bashing or mining a wall (not walking between blocks as a basher / miner), the skill will be consumed but the lemming will just start climbing the wall. One weird case is that this glitch is triggered when assigning a basher to a miner, but not when assigning a miner to a basher. When done with a non-climber, the lemming will usually turn around and then perform the skill as normal at the next suitable boundary.

This probably has some implications for the challenge solutions, so I need to look more at them with this in mind...