Least amount of time needed to beat levels

[Clam]

I'm pretty sure that was intended as a joke.


I guess I should stop holding my breath waiting for ccexplore to fix the LemmixPlayer, and post the results I've got (48 levels done now). But first I'd just like to confirm the timing error in the current version. Let's see if I've got this right...

In LemmixPlayer as it is, compared to PC Compatible mode:
- The pause trick gives you 2 frames too many (+2)
- The entrance opens one frame too early (+1)
- You don't get the opportunity to gain a frame by pressing Esc just as the last lemming is about to exit (-1)

And so to account for this, you need to add 2 frames to times obtained from using the LemmixPlayer. Is this correct?

[ccexplore]

Is this some kind of inside joke? 

Hmm, guess the joke is too obtuse.  The point is that since in DOS Lemmings it's 17 frames to 1 game second, if your result is good down to game seconds, then you're within no more than 17 frames from the least amount of time in terms of frames, so it shouldn't take more than 17 additional tries to nail it down to the least amount of frames.  That would seem to be relatively miniscule amount of work compared with however long it'd take just to get down to the least amount of game seconds. 

Anyways, I'm gonna copy Ramon's results into our list.

Not sure what list you're talking about, but keep in mind that the SNES game clock runs faster than DOS Lemmings, so it's rather pointless to mix results together like that.  Keep a separate list for SNES if you must.

[ccexplore]

I guess I should stop holding my breath waiting for ccexplore to fix the LemmixPlayer, and post the results I've got (48 levels done now). But first I'd just like to confirm the timing error in the current version. Let's see if I've got this right...

In LemmixPlayer as it is, compared to PC Compatible mode:
- The pause trick gives you 2 frames too many (+2)
- The entrance opens one frame too early (+1)
- You don't get the opportunity to gain a frame by pressing Esc just as the last lemming is about to exit (-1)

And so to account for this, you need to add 2 frames to times obtained from using the LemmixPlayer. Is this correct?

My latest finding also shows that the game clock is updated (ie. displayed) a frame later than the internal variables that keep tracks of the time.  Also, I believe it's actually giving you 3 frames too many from the pause trick--the frame count is currently being reset to 0 after the code that increments it, so in effect it "ate" that increment as well causing an additional 1-off in the counting.

In any event, you're probably better off just posting results now.  Keep in mind that (ignoring high-perf mode) your results in LemmixPlayer will always be better than or equal to the actual game, and I can guarantee you that all replays will remain forward-compatible, so you'd never need to redo a solution from scratch to find the correct best time once I've updated LemmixPlayer.  Instead you just need to replay the solution to see what the correct time should be.

[Dullstar]

Anyways, I'm gonna copy Ramon's results into our list.

Not sure what list you're talking about, but keep in mind that the SNES game clock runs faster than DOS Lemmings, so it's rather pointless to mix results together like that.  Keep a separate list for SNES if you must.

The OP currently contains results for Gameboy, DOS, Lemmix, and SNES.  A seperate list is kept for each one, although sometime I intend to merge the DOS and Lemmix lists.

[Clam]

In any event, you're probably better off just posting results now.  Keep in mind that (ignoring high-perf mode) your results in LemmixPlayer will always be better than or equal to the actual game, and I can guarantee you that all replays will remain forward-compatible, so you'd never need to redo a solution from scratch to find the correct best time once I've updated LemmixPlayer.  Instead you just need to replay the solution to see what the correct time should be.

Yeah, but in some cases I'm going to have to find even more "nuts" solutions, when they're already extremely nuts as they are. I'm trying to anticipate that here by adjusting my timing.

But anyway, my results up to now are attached to this post. 49 levels done now, in no particular order. The text file contains notes on my solutions, to get you up to speed with strategy if you want to try some speedruns yourself, and also my handy formula for working out how many lemmings you need when the nuke glitch is used. These scores assume a 2 frame difference in timing between versions.

EDIT: Reuploaded the zip since the notes were messed up a little. (Plus I improved one of the solutions.)

[ccexplore]

About once every month the results will be released in a spreadsheet and you can view them.  Two are provided - one in the MS Excel format, and another that's in an open document format (for those of us who don't like proprietary formats).  EDIT:  May be able to provide PDF instead.

Don't kid yourself, PDF is just as much a proprietary format as Excel, just because it isn't Microsoft doesn't mean anything.  For a truly simple and open document "format", just save it as ASCII text, you know, like something that opens even in Notepad.  Even Excel lets you save as text in its Save As options.

[Gronkling]

I would like to work on this challenge using Lemmix for more accurate physics to DOS however the methods for keeping track used here are really outdated (I mean it is from 2009, I was told to bump), the NL time thread is much more precise.

My way of getting a frame-precise reading of time from Lemmix is to nuke on the first frame possible where you've saved the correct percentage of lemmings (you would normally press esc to exit the level here, but the replay won't show this). You can then read the replay text file and read the frame where you nuked (it'll show up with N in the action section), giving you your final time in frames, which is how times ideally should be recorded (the current method here using the in-game clock is super imprecise for this challenge's purpose). You know when you saved enough as it's the first frame that the correct percentage is shown. I have checked and the pause-for-time glitch doesn't affect this number, so simple to just read off, no extra work needed.

Lemmix/DOS run at a rate of 17 frames per second IIRC, so it shouldn't be too hard to convert from frames to seconds (eg. 123 frames = 7 seconds, +4 frames).

To get things going here's an adaption of namida's NL solution to fun 1, giving a time of 302 frames (17 seconds + 13). I also attached the text file for this one so you can see where I got the number from if you are confused. Here I nuked on the first frame that 10% saved is shown.

[Minim]

Interesting and proficient way to record results this way! However, if you dig too deep into this idea you'll bump into Hail 6 of Holiday Lemmings: "Surprise Package?", one of the only levels I know that requires Nuke to beat it.

I've been working hard improving more levels in the NeoLemmix version of this challenge within the past week. This will be a big update as I've managed to break records for so many levels, but once I release the updated version feel free to have a look at these.

[Gronkling]

It shouldn't be a problem still, afaik you can just nuke again (but i doubt i'll ever get to xmas lems )
Anyway did a quick round over the first 10 fun levels, mostly seem to match or slightly beat the times in the first post
I'll add a marker (G) to solutions that use glitches

FUN 01 - 299 frames - 17s +10
FUN 02 - 339 frames - 19s +16
FUN 03 - 351 frames - 20s +11
FUN 04 - 626 frames - 36s +14
FUN 05 - 617 frames - 36s +5
FUN 06 - 379 frames - 22s +5 (G)
FUN 07 - 822 frames - 48s +6 (Definitely improvements to be made here, will be hard to implement NL solution due to lack of directional select)
FUN 08 - 409 frames - 24s +1
FUN 09 - 496 frames - 29s +3
FUN 10 - 205 frames - 12s +1