Improvements to Lemmings

[Anatol]

Even though the original Lemmings is one of my favorite games, there are still things about it which annoy me, or I think could be improved. Here's some of them that come to mind:
1) fast forward button
2) save game, instead of having to write down codes to access levels
3) highlighting a lemming (like in L3)
4) records! Lemmings would have almost unlimited replayability with this feature. The record would be determined first by % of lemmings saved, and if there's a tie, by time remaining in the level. There could even be an online table of records, where people could compete with one another!

Some of these things were, of course, improved in later Lemmings games. I think it'd be nice if when people make ports of the original, they might consider adding some of these features!

What are some things you guys would like to have seen added/changed in Lemmings?

[Mr. K]

We need to be able to choose whether to click only on a Lemming going right or left (ala Cheapo, you can hold right or left while clicking to do this)

[Mindless]

1, 2, and 4 are implemented in Tundra

[zennehoy]

Since I'm working on a PocketPC clone of Lemmings...
1) The GUI button is there for it, just has to be implemented.
2) Check. Actually, I'm planning to allow both, so you can start at any level you have a code for even if you haven't made it that far in Pocket Lemmings.
3) What's planned is selecting a lemming, then double-clicking an action to cause that lemming to perform that action. The lemming is surrounded by a box while it is selected, the box moves with the lemming. Selection of just left-moving or right-moving lemmings is a great idea as well, and much easier to implement, only problem is: left and right arrow keys are already mapped to scrolling...
4) There'll be two values saved for each level, the least amount of time to successfully complete the level, and the total number of lemmings saved. Lets you do each level at least twice, optimizing for different things.
Any other suggestions?
Cheers,
Zen

[Mr. K]

Maybe this is going a bit too far, but skill limits spread over multiple skills?

So for example, if it's spread over bashers, miners and diggers, you could say, have 10 for these combined. So you could split it however you want, but altogether only 10 uses.

Not so much for the original, but it'd be interesting for custom levels.

[Anatol]

Another thing I thought of...

I always found it annoying how the amount of lemmings you have to save is given as a percentage. I find I have to play with a calculator! I'd prefer just a plain number. And also, it'd be nice to have something tell you not just the number of lemmings that are out and how many in, but how many have died so far.

[EricLang]

Interesting ideas....

[Ron_Stard]

The best of the improvements is to let the player click with the mouse on the habilities, the release rate & a certain lemming when the game is paused. In -for example- the MS-DOS games and Lemmix, is frustrating can't do those simple things with the mouse; I hate searching the keyboard keys.

By the way, another good improvement could be the possibility to choose the shortcut keys.

[The Lemmings Encyclopedia]

Another thing I thought of...

I always found it annoying how the amount of lemmings you have to save is given as a percentage. I find I have to play with a calculator! I'd prefer just a plain number. And also, it'd be nice to have something tell you not just the number of lemmings that are out and how many in, but how many have died so far.

So you need math lessons

[Simon]

Yup, these improvements are what I miss in some originals as well.

I already use the fast forward in any Lemmings game like mad, so I added a "Damn Fast Forward Button" in my own programming project. Regular FF makes the game 4 times as fast as normal speed, and DFF is again 8 times faster than regular FF. It's probably only usable to cut the crowd's time to the goal.

However, more important than super-fast speeds is slow-motion - to pull of pixel-precision tasks. A lemmings game should feel like a tool to write your solution with, not something that makes solving in practice even more difficult than solving in theory.

Another important point are action replays. This saves a lot of boredom and luck-dependence. I missed it a lot in the longer levels of Lemmings Revolution. In the other hand, it might acutally be a challenge of skill to play shorter levels without the replay feature.

L3D was the only game that showed you the number of lemmings required during the game. For L1, ONML, Xmas 91-94 and Revolution, you had to remember this number from the overview/the map. You should always be able to see no. of lemmings at start, no. of lemmings required, and the "in" and "out" values. If the trapdoor is empty, you can then calculate the no. of deaths via lems_at_start - (lems_in + lems_out). :-)

The highlight feature is very nice, but I found directional selection an almost equivalent solution, i.e. holding the left arrow will only select left looking lems. Together with holding the right mouse button to select the lem with the lowest priority, can anyone think of a case where highlighting is still better? Walkers with climbing ability should have a higher priority than regular walkers, but a lower one than builders without climbing ability. Heh...

What I really want to see someday is a networking mode, inspired by the two-player mode on the Amiga. You can't count this as an improvement of the original game, though, as it alters the game's goal: Thinking is way less important than reacting on the opponents' actions. If I ever have network support in my game, I'll let you know. ;-)

-- Simon

[zennehoy]

Since on a PDA there's no way to mouse-over, highlighting with a select tool was intended as a way to show Lemmings status (e.g. Climber/Floater/etc.). Does anyone actually use this functionality? Otherwise I may just revert to using the up and down arrows to assign to left or right moving lemmings respectively.
Shameless plug: please help me beta test my Pocket Lemmings clone
Cheers,
Zen

[The Lemmings Encyclopedia]

Maybe it's possible to distinguise the lemmings in a other way then highlighting. Give the climber graplinghooks in a backpack. Let the floater carry an umbrella, etc.

[zennehoy]

Maybe it's possible to distinguise the lemmings in a other way then highlighting. Give the climber graplinghooks in a backpack. Let the floater carry an umbrella, etc.

I like this idea in theory, but my drawing skills despise it in practice... One of the reasons I made a lemmings clone, all the graphics and animations were readily available (actually I just load those from the original game).
I think what I'll end up doing is moving lemming selection down in the list of things to do, and simply implement direction based skill assignment for now.
Cheers,
Zen

[Simon]

I forgot about non-mouse control. Highlighting might make life easier on a PDA, even if there's directional selection. I'm sorry I can't judge this as well as you, I've never played a game on a PDA... but I tried SNES Lemmings, where highlighting seemed even more useful. It's a nice usability feature, even if it costs a lot of extra code.

If you don't want to draw a lot of extra stuff, then you could color the lemmings with permanent abilities different from everyone else. L2 did that, I wonder why they dropped this simple idea later!

-- Simon