[ALL PLATFORMS] Pause-free Challenge [PF]

[WillLem]

Taxing 1-20, including 100% saved on "Tribute to M. C. Escher"

Great watch again. Very clever 100% on Tribute to M.C. Escher; I've given this a go myself - my solution is slightly different for the ending but uses your trick to free a worker lem from the crowd - this is a really great trick (replay attached).

Also, I'm super chuffed to finally have discovered a 100% solution for Mary Poppins' Land, so thanks for the tip! I found a video demonstrating it and gave it a go (replay attached). I might do a video of this myself which makes it very clear what's happening.

Also, you should defo wear some headphones next time so you can get your builder clicks, but well done for doing all this without them!

Have you seen my Amiga/NeoLemmix vid on Skill Shadows btw? I go for the hidden exit on X-Marks The Spot in that one as well.

[Proxima]

Great watch again. Very clever 100% on Tribute to M.C. Escher; I've given this a go myself - my solution is slightly different for the ending but uses your trick to free a worker lem from the crowd

ccexplore's trick, actually. I was completely stumped by this when he posted it in the Challenges thread on the old old forums (yes, this was back when Challenges was a thread instead of a board), and I never managed to solve it until the trick was revealed to me.

[WillLem]

Mayhem 21 With a Twist of Lemming, Please

Challenge Difficulty: Extremely Hard (the most difficult level of this challenge so far)
Number of Attempts: 28

The video features the successful attempt, plus a bonus explanation of the level's challenge solution and a few bloopers at the end for fun.

[WillLem]

P.S. The full challenge list can now be found in the OP.

[Proxima]

Taxing 21 to Mayhem 10

and the series finale: Mayhem 11-30

[ccexplore]

Mayhem 21 is much easier if you take advantage of the perfectness of release rate 72 (in Amiga/DOS) relative to the width of the pit.  The lemmings will naturally be compressed into just 2 groups so assigning skills to the correct-facing lemming is a non-issue.  72 is also fast enough to not run out of time even without multitasking (ie. to wait until everyone's out before sending the climber up), but not so fast as to make assigning the floaters challenging.

The only caveat is without pausing, you won't be able to get it all the way from 1 to 72 before lemmings start coming out (though on Amiga it won't let you change the release rate while paused anyway unlike DOS, so similar problem even if you can pause).  If you can use keyboard to change release rate then no big deal, otherwise there'll be some possibly hairy mousing back and forth at the start until you get to 72.

38 also has a similar effect (it's exactly twice as slow as 72) but not sure if fast enough time-wise.

[WillLem]

Mayhem 21 is much easier if you take advantage of the perfectness of release rate 72 (in Amiga/DOS) relative to the width of the pit.  The lemmings will naturally be compressed into just 2 groups so assigning skills to the correct-facing lemming is a non-issue.  72 is also fast enough to not run out of time even without multitasking

Sure, I'm aware I could have done it that way, but I wanted to take on the challenge of playing the level as a multitasker. In playing it this way, I accepted that I wouldn't be able to group the lems perfectly. However, as a bonus side-effect of increasing the release rate to 4, the lems did form a sort of wave, and within that wave it was slightly easier to pick out the last-drawn lem for the final basher!

I'll definitely give it a go with release rates of 38 and 72, it'll be interesting to see if it's possible to get the perfect crowd groupings in real time.

By the way...

The Fast Food Kitchen is an obvious one to see... Bonus if you can't use the keyboard either and have to actually click on the skills icons to pick the skill you want to assign.  If you do decide to do that level, I'd ask to see the whole take and not just the final successful attempt.

[edit: extra bonus if you manage a 100% solution without pause for that level]

Did you see my video for this level? I included footage of all attempts as requested; it's not the "whole take" as such, because as a rule I usually do stop the vid every few attempts to make sure OBS is capturing the footage OK, but I've cut it all together as an outtakes reel so you can see each attempt leading up the successful one.

[Proxima]

Mayhem 21 is much easier if you take advantage of the perfectness of release rate 72 (in Amiga/DOS) relative to the width of the pit.  The lemmings will naturally be compressed into just 2 groups so assigning skills to the correct-facing lemming is a non-issue. 

38 also has a similar effect (it's exactly twice as slow as 72) but not sure if fast enough time-wise.

Pretty much what I did in my playthrough (I used NeoLemmix RR 71 = old 43). I suppose the discrepancy is because on Amiga/DOS, lemmings will walk slightly into the wall, so in effect the pit is wider than it is in NeoLemmix.

That means that in NL, there is a very simple calculation for the desired RR: 103 - (2 x width), in this case 103 - 32 = 71. The value 103 represents the hypothetical RR with no space between lemmings.

[grams88]

Some really good solutions here. It does make it a lot harder when you are not pausing. The fast food kitchen is a good challenge and actually quite a good level in itself. It does feel like a fast food kitchen where everything is moving very fast. I never thought of that one for the (Tribute to M.C Escher) with the building bit at the end turning the lemmings around, such a small space to do all that in.  So many ways to do levels, that's what I really like about lemmings. The Mayhem one (No added colours or Lemmings) the solution tends to feel the same with this one but you have to admit the solution is kind of cool.

Thanks for posting videos about it.

[kaywhyn]

I haven't watched all of the videos, but since all of the original levels are up, this confirms my speculation that it is indeed possible to complete the entire game pause free. Well done, Proxima! This means that it should be possible to do for ONML too. Now I have to ask, which levels did you particularly find difficult to do for this particular challenge? Will you be covering ONML with this challenge too? Also, this is in no way a confirmation that it's entirely possible on Amiga, but even without the convenience features of framestepping, directional select, and skill shadows, it should still be very possible, albeit more challenging depending on the level.

I'm wondering if it's possible for the Mac's version of The Steel Mines of Kessel. For those not aware, it reduces the lemming count from the original 100 in the Amiga to 80, but the save requirement of 90% wasn't adjusted to account for the lower amount of lemmings and the fact that you can lose up to 10 in the Amiga version. The Dos version relaxes the save requirement and gives 20 bombers, 20 blockers, and 20 builders instead of 10 for all 3 skills. This means in the Mac version you can only lose 8 even though you have 10 bombers. This fact that you can only lose 8 in contrast to losing 10 on the Amiga version makes a huge difference! That's not where the problems end, though. Due to the higher res graphics, there are a few impassable stocks on the ground that the lemmings cannot get over without a bomber or builder that otherwise aren't a problem in other ports of the game. As a result, for those who grew up with the Mac version of the game, this level became very infamous for being way more difficult than intended. I grew up with the Dos version, so I didn't have this painful experience growing up, but sometime ago, probably 1 or 2 years ago, I decided to try the Mac version of the level, and boy was it very frustrating. Probably took me close to 100 times before I beat it. I'm sure I took the bottom route rather than bomb through the very thick wall (I think it's possible, but it requires extreme precision). If the top route is possible, the advantage is that you won't waste as many builders. Even then, the bottom route requires extreme precision too! I think it's safe to say that after several tries of failing you'll definitely be begging for framestepping and untimed bombers for this level on the Mac! Needless to say, you can probably consider this the ultimate challenge for purposes of the challenge. I can only imagine that this would require about an hour or more of recorded video footage, although it may or may not induce a lot of laughing at the repeated failed attempts.

For the record, yes I tried the black and white version of Pea Soup where the peas are invisible, but this level is nowhere near as frustrating and should definitely be possible without pausing. All I do is simply count how many times I need to build before I know that I'm over land in the bowl.

[WillLem]

I've been busy today...

Havoc 7 Creature Discomforts

Challenge Difficulty: Medium
Number of Attempts: 8
Suggested by: Ron_Stard

The video features the successful attempt, plus a bonus explanation of the level's challenge solution and a few bloopers at the end for fun.




Havoc 12 It's All a Matter of Timing

Challenge Difficulty: Easy-Medium
Number of Attempts: 3
Suggested by: Ron_Stard

The video features the successful attempt, plus a bonus explanation of the level's challenge solution and a few bloopers at the end for fun.




Havoc 20 LOoK BeFoRe YoU LeAp!

Challenge Difficulty: Very Hard
Number of Attempts: 12
Suggested by: kaywhyn

The video features the successful attempt, plus a bonus explanation of the level's challenge solution and a few bloopers at the end for fun.

[Proxima]

I haven't watched all of the videos, but since all of the original levels are up, this confirms my speculation that it is indeed possible to complete the entire game pause free. Well done, Proxima! This means that it should be possible to do for ONML too. Now I have to ask, which levels did you particularly find difficult to do for this particular challenge?

You can usually tell by which ones needed several attempts None of them were that hard (albeit with NeoLemmix features) but from memory, the ones that gave me the most trouble were:

* Mayhem 21 "With a twist of lemming, please" -- I felt I had to do this the multitasking way because WillLem had done it However, it's a lot easier if you assign all floaters at the start and then send out a worker lemming.
* Mayhem 22 "A BeastII of a level" -- I was expecting to breeze through this as it's a special graphics level, but that weird obstacle in the middle is surprisingly tough to navigate without pausing.
* Mayhem 28 "Mind the step" -- maybe not exactly difficult, but it's an endurance challenge, and it feels tough because you lose so much time every time you have to start over.

Will you be covering ONML with this challenge too?

I'll at least have a go at it, but no guarantees about being able to complete it

Also, this is in no way a confirmation that it's entirely possible on Amiga, but even without the convenience features of framestepping, directional select, and skill shadows, it should still be very possible, albeit more challenging depending on the level.

In particular, I would not like to do "Just a Minute (Part Two)" without walker-only select... fortunately, it feels entirely fair to use that feature, since it did exist on Macintosh Lemmings.

I'm wondering if it's possible for the Mac's version of The Steel Mines of Kessel.

That would be extremely hard! I don't exactly remember the solution I used when I originally solved this level, but it was definitely a low route. According to Ephraim Vishniac's infamous max-saved document, the high route is possible on the Mac version; I have never verified this.

For the record, yes I tried the black and white version of Pea Soup where the peas are invisible, but this level is nowhere near as frustrating and should definitely be possible without pausing.

Oh, sure, it's possible to complete when you know where the terrain is but when I was a kid, the Internet as we know it didn't exist, and my only source of information about other versions of Lemmings was friends who also had the game (and that was not the best source, as very few of them had gotten that far). Indeed, I remember one occasion when I visited a friend and tried to get up to "Pea Soup" to see what it was like on a colour machine, aided by the fact that Mayhem 9's password in the Mac version is easy to remember (NILEOGADIV, which happens to have vowels in the right places to make it pronounceable, and the level is "Curse of the Pharaohs" and the password happens to start with NILE). Unfortunately, we soon discovered that different versions of the game had different level passwords, so no progress was made.

[ccexplore]

I never thought of that one for the (Tribute to M.C Escher) with the building bit at the end turning the lemmings around, such a small space to do all that in.

Yeah, that's an interesting way to handle the exit part.  This is how I did it, when restricted to only builders:

Spoiler

1) build twice (facing right) until you just get past the exit's trigger.
2) after turning around, build once to again get past the exit's trigger.
3) stack 2 more bridges over the bridge (lower half) from step #1 above, to create a thick enough stack that it becomes a wall turning lemmings around at the underside of the bridge-stack.  This is how you finally get the lemmings to exit.

I think the above method may be a little less fiddly since you don't have to squeeze too many work on the small area right of the exit.

And if you allow yourself the basher, you can also just do this instead:

Spoiler

Start building as soon as you land floating off the one-way wall.  That way later when you bash, you can also bash out those bits of the build bridge that connected to the floor, so the crowd will not follow that bridge, they can just head straight to exit.  5 unstretched builders will nicely land you past the exit trigger without connecting to the wall on the right.

[ccexplore]

Did you see my video for this level? I included footage of all attempts as requested; it's not the "whole take" as such, because as a rule I usually do stop the vid every few attempts to make sure OBS is capturing the footage OK, but I've cut it all together as an outtakes reel so you can see each attempt leading up the successful one.

Yep, I've finally watched through all 11 takes.  Thanks for including them and good job doing that level! It's fun to see you gradually settle into the correct rhythm for the start after stumbling a little (as expected) at the beginning.  Definitely glad I suggested 100%; using blockers would've probably made it a bit too easy.  It's also fortuitous that the trickiest stuff are all at the beginning, though you still got caught on one of the later takes near the end due to lack of directional select.

Take #9 seems a little prematurely abandoned?  The dig pit you wound up with did not break through the floor.  It is a bit deeper than intended, but seems like maybe that can be compensated by having the climber dig down a little before bashing right?

In DOS/Amiga Lemmings there is actually a trick you can use to help with certain cases of directional assign, specifically when it can be assigned to lemmings that just turns around at a wall, like the walls of a digger pit for example.

Spoiler

Move the mouse cursor until it just very barely catches those lemmings that just got turned around by the wall.  You'll likely see it flickering between the crosshair and the square when a stream of lemmings gets turned around at the wall.  You know the position is good if shifting just 1 pixel further away from wall would cause the cursor to stop registering any lemmings turning around at the wall (ie. cursor stays crosshair).  At the boundary position where the cursor tends to flicker, due to how the game processes turning walking lemmings around, the cursor is guaranteed to only detect the lemmings that have just turned around facing away from the wall, and never the ones still facing at the wall.

[kaywhyn]

Oh yea, you're right. I could had answered that question myself by watching your videos and seeing which levels you restarted several times on. Indeed, you could had made Mayhem 21 a bit easier by waiting until almost all lemmings were out before assigning the climber. Similarly, for Mayhem 22, I usually build to the top of the fiddly-looking tree stump in the middle of the level on the ground so that you only needed to use a digger on the final circular section of the obstacle to get down close to the bottom of the level. Then you'll have all those spare bashers.

For the Mac's version of The Steel Mines of Kessel, from memory there's extreme precision regardless of whether you take the top or the bottom route, although the bottom not as much and with the top the most extreme due to the very thick wall. I don't remember how many bombers it's supposed to take, but one misplaced bomber, which is very easy to do since it requires several to get through it, and it's a restart.

Yea, for those who grew up with the Mac version and see the black and white version of Pea Soup for the first time and have not had experience with any of the other ports they will think the level is impossible, and similarly is much easier for those who have seen the colored version due to how the map is easy to memorize. In this case, pretty much the only things that would hint at the peas being there even though you can't see them is by the level title AND the skillset, where you don't have bashers. Even then, this will definitely escape a child and he or she would probably just outright say that the level is seemingly impossible at first glance.