Yep, correct.

Answer to the first question is 53. At RR 99, the spawn interval is 4. RR 99 minus RR 1 is a difference of 98 RR points = 49 physics updates. So RR 1 = spawn interval of 4 + 49 = 53.

Answer to the second question is RR 51. An even RR is the same as the next faster odd RR.

-- Simon

I guessed Rendezvous at the Mountain from memory, and geoo confirmed I was right.

Edit: Solve at least any one of the following. Don't force yourself to look up all three if you know just one before answering, I'll post answers to all three later anyway.

• At release rate 1, how many frames/physics updates have to pass after a spawn until the next lemming spawns?
  
• RR 50 is the same as either RR 49 or 51. Which one is the same?
  
• If a lem spawns at RR 1 and you immediately raise to RR 99, do you have to wait until the next spawn as long as like with RR 1 or RR 99?

Extra question out of interest, not necessary to advance the quiz: If you click the rate buttons or press the hotkeys, the RR changes by an erratic amount (sometimes 1, sometimes 3 or 4 I think). How does the game determine this amount? I don't know it myself, maybe an L1 disassembly guru knows it.

-- Simon

To aid the player with such building, the miner tends to be best. The first swing is executed extremely fast, and it removes a considerable amount of overhead terrain. But 1993 doesn't look nice anymore when the digits are on non-adjacient buttons.

-- Simon

Yes, replays will not work forever, even if the general idea of the level will still work. With focus on multiplayer, bugfixes, and physics that feel good all around, there will always be some changes over time.

This is the main reason I point to L1/Lemmix for really serious challenges, because conditions are clear-cut with those games, and pixel-precision achievements/ideas will remain the same for years.

-- Simon

If you don't want to compile yourself: Read the Wine installation page for Mac OS X, especially the section about prebuilt binaries. Maybe one of the third-party projects listed there suits your needs. Consider reading ccx's link before deciding to use Wine-based third-party packages, it doesn't seem that hard to follow.

If you search the web for "wine mac easy", you'll retrieve a video which I didn't watch, but a ton of people commented with "thank you".

The forum talk is mainly about challenges right now, which is healthy. I feared the multiplayer stuff would have torn the community apart, since it's not something for everyone, and also not Lemmings; but it hasn't. Level building isn't popular currently, but that would also be Lemmix-replay-centric. There's the occasional fan corner topic, but it's hard to make a fresh fan topic interesting enough to spawn several answers. Small talk usually happens via IRC (geoo: "It appears that my new neighbor is called P. Wurst"), very little smalltalk reaches the forums, especially since the rabble box is gone.

There are also less programming projects discussed in the forums than a few years ago. The major editors aren't hacked on (Lemmix, Lemmix 2 due to lack of time, lgl2, pcL2ed, and Mindless's L3 editor). The file formats of most games are figured out, and several functional resource extractors have been written. Lix is nearly IRC-only.

-- Simon

Yeah, both the ONML and L2 music is catchy and long-term memorable.

The design of the demo version is flawed if they don't include a terrain-rich 20-of-everything level early on. Basher and consecutive builder placement aren't obvious at all for a newcomer. "They just keep on coming" is a horrible level to introduce bashers.

Just keep 'em coming, noble fellows of the forums out there. geoo hadn't played Lemmings until he was 14, but others might have something?

-- Simon

Nostalgia topic, share your stories.

I first played the game at age 6 or 7, and most of these episodes are indeed from about that age.

I got stuck in Fun 11 (Keep your hair on Mr. Lemming). I didn't even guess what one-way arrows meant. The friend who first showed me the game saw I got stuck there, and claimed "You got stuck in that world? That's one I consider really easy...", proceeding to solve the level for me.



I got some kind of retaliation though. When the same friend played Tame 18 (Lemmings for Presidents), I told him the green crystal pieces (see above screenshot) in the ground were rockets, and you could have your lemmings shot high into the air if you went into them. He dug into the crystals -- nothing happened, of course -- and continued to dig out of the level, having to restart.

We weren't sure what the minus/plus buttons on the left of the skill panel did at first. Our dads initially suggested these buttons had some effect on worker lemmings. It took a while to see how they changed the release rate.

I drew large versions of the eight L1 skill icons once, one per sheet of paper, and decorated my room with them. My brother tore some of them apart (he was 2 or 3 years old back then) and hung up the floater icon at the top of the wall.

I played many times through the Fun and Tame levels starting from level 1, also many times through Tricky up to From the boundary line. (A huge jump in Tricky difficulty, never solved it as a kid.) I played the higher difficulties whenever I felt like it, and also managed some progress through them. However, I had huge respect of the hardest difficulty in each game. After all, the L1 Mayhem opener level is a huge steel-only level with a death drop from the entrance and massive steel walls to build onto, and the ONML Havoc opener level has a hidden icicle. My dad also solved levels back then, we worked together on our level code lists.

When I read in the L1 manual that there was a two-player mode, I tried to get a second mouse to work, but the PC version doesn't have the two-player mode. The manual was merely written to explain all L1 ports at once. Looking through it years later, I see the English section of the manual actually mentions that there's no two-player mode in the PC version, but the German translation doesn't have this note. MS-Dos/Windows 95 themselves are able to use two mice though, I've played split-screen Settlers 2, an RTS/economics simulation, against a friend.



I played endless hours of practise mode in Lemmings 2, almost always on the medieval map. When I loaded up the game in Dosbox over 10 years later, my mother came by once and stated "I vividly remember that catapult!"



As kids, my brother and me also played the Lemmings 3 practise map several times, mostly throwing grenades into "other people's lawns", i.e. from the bombs/grenades group into the spades/bricks group. Does anyone actually do much other stuff in the L3 practise level besides playing with the grenades? I suppose the L3 practise level doesn't get played much at all nowadays, as the L2 practise mode is so much better with the free skill choice.

I've finished L3 with zero losses a few years ago, but as a kid, I usually just saved one lem. There is a certain L3 level in the last third of Classic, it has two hatches, one must save the other, and the spawn order is second hatch first. I don't think I made it past that as a kid. I reached the end of another tribe, but couldn't understand the subsequent English message telling me to save more lems per tribe. ;-)

I wasn't able to run Lemmings games properly after getting rid of MS-Dos at first, especially L2 is a beast to get to run natively. This added a layer of mysticism onto the fond memories, and I'm sure it has contributed to how I view the games these days.

(Apropos Tame 18 earlier... geoo should deduct a point from his quiz score: He claimed that Tame 19 was Lemmings for Presidents, and answered so quickly and securely that I took it for granted when scoring the answers later. )

-- Simon