Glitches in Lemmings

[ccexplore]

That's neat, I didn't even realize fast forward exists on the Mac version.

[finlay]

I can't remember how I learnt it although it must have been early on. I saw an addendum note along with the version of Holiday Lemmings that I downloaded noting its late addition to the game – hence it may not have been in the manual. There was a lot of trial and error involved, I think, because there are quite a few hidden hotkeys: ` and P both pause, Z/X and the left/right keys select the next skill in line, and the up/down arrows control the release rate. Handily, on British Mac keyboards the shift, `, Z and X keys are all in a line. It definitely took me a while to find out about P, because I remember my dad hacking the application to create a menu shortcut command+P (disclaimer: this used to be piss-easy on OS <9, and on OS X it's actually even easier because you don't have to do any hacking), because we hadn't had the forethought to try just pressing P. We actually only found out later when we realised it was sometimes pausing when we hadn't pressed the command key anyway.

Anyway, downshot of the whole thing is that I am very impatient with versions of Lemmings where you can't fast forward at all and can't quite understand how you can possibly actually wait for the lemmings to walk across at their slow speed on levels like Crazy 4 or Taxing 14. I get trigger-happy with Lemmix's 10 second jump, for instance, because the FF function doesn't work very well for me on Wine (it works by literally speeding up the processes to the maximum rather than frame-skipping like the Mac version, but doesn't work at all if the game is lagging, which it does when there's 80 lemmings out).

[ccexplore]

idk if this could be considered a glitch but in the windows version of original Lemmings, the speed up button is WAY too fast. In other words it speeds up the level to a point where its impractical  to use.

Fast forward isn't intended to be useable, though – it's just supposed to mitigate waiting time after you've cleared a path to the exit but your lemmings still have to walk there.

I'll have to see if I can dig up Windows Lemmings on my machine again, but I do distinctly remember (way back when I played around with it briefly) the WinLemm FF being quite freakish.  I think specifically for WinLemm, it may be a case where back when the game was released, machines were slow enough that the FF wasn't quite as exaggerated.

====================

because the FF function doesn't work very well for me on Wine (it works by literally speeding up the processes to the maximum rather than frame-skipping like the Mac version, but doesn't work at all if the game is lagging, which it does when there's 80 lemmings out).

I have an opposite problem with Lemmix's FF, it goes too fast for me sometimes on my Win7 machine to be useful, inevitably going past where I need.  Lemmix should've implemented it as frame-skipping with some constant factor instead, to minimize both lag issues as well as the speed being too variable on different machines.  Oh well, good thing there are things like the 10-second skip.

[mobius]

idk if this could be considered a glitch but in the windows version of original Lemmings, the speed up button is WAY too fast. In other words it speeds up the level to a point where its impractical  to use.

Fast forward isn't intended to be useable, though – it's just supposed to mitigate waiting time after you've cleared a path to the exit but your lemmings still have to walk there.

I'll have to see if I can dig up Windows Lemmings on my machine again, but I do distinctly remember (way back when I played around with it briefly) the WinLemm FF being quite freakish.  I think specifically for WinLemm, it may be a case where back when the game was released, machines were slow enough that the FF wasn't quite as exaggerated.

that makes sense! newer computers are working faster so it makes ff faster. (well makes sense in computer logic).
Seriously, if u press the fast forward button on WinLemmings there's a flash and the levels over. The screen that says you saved no lemmings comes up because the time ran out. First time I tried to use it I was like... I had 10 minutes left!
I use fast-foward on Lemmix often to speed up a long digging operation or something like that, works fine

[finlay]

Oh, right, I get what you mean now. I thought you meant that you couldn't click on a lemming while it was speeding along, which you're not really meant to be able to, not that they went so fast that you can't even see them...

[Clam]

I'll have to see if I can dig up Windows Lemmings on my machine again, but I do distinctly remember (way back when I played around with it briefly) the WinLemm FF being quite freakish.  I think specifically for WinLemm, it may be a case where back when the game was released, machines were slow enough that the FF wasn't quite as exaggerated.

that makes sense! newer computers are working faster so it makes ff faster. (well makes sense in computer logic).

As further evidence to this theory, I tried this on two different machines and found a considerable difference in the time taken to fast-forward through a level. On a 5-minute stage, it took 5 seconds on the slower machine, and just 1 second on the faster machine . Maybe for optimal play it's a good idea to have some bulky programs running in the background

---

Now back to glitches . I've found a few in WinLemm that aren't present in the DOS version:

• Bombers during ohno act as blockers, regardless of whether they were blockers beforehand. This potentially means you can save blockers by using bombers instead (though I haven't checked to see if any of the official levels let you take advantage of this). It also means they behave in the same way as blockers for the purpose of other glitches (see below).
• The walker and faller graphics appear one pixel further to the left than in DOS, while most (all?) other sprites appear in the correct places. This looks quite strange at times, for example when lemmings turn at walls.
• Lemmings can sometimes pass through multiple blockers placed close together. This game seems to let you place blockers closer together than in DOS (for example you can sometimes assign a blocker in a crowd stuck between two blockers), so blocker triggers can overlap, and this behaviour may be a direct result of that.
• When digging through terrain and into steel, the digger goes one pixel too far and takes out a row of steel. Curiously, mining into steel doesn't destroy it, even when it would in DOS (eg. when building one step and mining to turn around). (edit: this last part turns out to be false)
  
  
  Testing so far on whether DOS glitches work in WinLemm (I plan to go through the whole list eventually):
  
• Climber comes away from the wall when falling - works (1 pixel either way, as in DOS)
  
• Climber ignores overhang at the top of wall - works, and as with DOS it's sensitive to the exact height of the wall. For example, on the first brick obstacle on Tame 1, a climber will ignore a build brick placed on the edge, but if you dig down one pixel and then build the climber will fall down instead. The opposite glitch (falling down when climbing into a 1-pixel hole) doesn't seem to work, though I'm not sure if I tested it right.
  
• Blocker steel-cancelling looks as though it works just as in DOS (not all cases tested yet) - and here it works with bombers too, resulting in very destructive nukes
  
• Bashing through top of steel works
  
• Direct drop works
  
• Cursor-digging doesn't work
  
• Inert trigger area cancelling steel (Mayhem 12) works (but no direct route since cursor-digging fails). I tested this by going the normal route, and then building over the exit and bashing into the wall.

[Clam]

I've had a productive day's glitch-hunting in WinLemm . Here are a couple more that aren't in DOS:

• You can assign the bomber skill to an ohnoer (labeled in-game as a 'flapper' ), thus wasting the skill.
• Bomber particles change colour randomly when you pause and scroll across.

I've also investigated the level boundaries. These behave quite differently to the DOS version:

• The map extends further to the left and right than in DOS - this is noticeable on levels like 'Rendezvous at the mountain' and 'NO PROBLEM'.
• As mentioned already in this topic, lemmings can walk over terrain at the top of the map, which opens up some nasty backroutes
• If you assign a builder within 11 pixels of the top of the visible area, it builds up to a height of one pixel above the top of the level, and then dies (spooky! D:). Other lemmings can still walk up this bridge and off the end.
• The left edge doesn't turn back lemmings like in DOS, instead they just fall off.
• Lemmings positioned beyond the right edge of the map turn around on every frame. The terrain gets cut off there, so to see this in action with anything besides fallers, you have to build across the boundary. Once the builder enters the glitched turning-around state, you can assign another skill and see what happens
• Attempting to place a build brick completely off the left or right map boundaries causes the game to crash.

And finally for now, continuing with the DOS glitches list to see which ones work in WinLemm:

• Climber-shrugger glitch doesn't work, unsurprisingly since it was fixed in DOS ONML already.
  
• Climber transitions to hoister then walker when terrain removed - doesn't work, the climber transitions straight to faller instead.
  
• Climber stuck in terrain ascends slowly - doesn't work, the lemming climbs and falls repeatedly but stays at the same height.
  
• Blocker flips climber to other side of a 1-pixel-wide wall - works!
  
  
• Floaters and ohnoers enter exit without terrain under trigger - works, and even better, direct-drop sans terrain works for regular fallers too!
  
  
• Bomber destroys steel if not positioned on steel - works, as well as the opposite (removes no terrain if positioned on steel)
  
• Bomber shifts upwards on explosion - doesn't work, not totally conclusive since you can't highlight the exploded lemming with the cursor, but its position on the minimap doesn't change.
  
  
• Blockers push lemmings into walls - works (also works with bombers' blocking areas)
  
  
• Builders are asymmetric, but the extent is completely different. The positioning of the build brick relative to the lemming's position is 2 pixels to the left of what it is in DOS. This means that left-facing bridges can be stretched by 4 pixels (leaving a diagonal-pixel gap between bridges - note that lemmings can cross these in this version!), and right-facing bridges by only 1 pixel. This difference would make the Holiday level 'The Search for Lem' unsolvable if these levels were included! Another consequence is that lemmings can build considerably further into walls when facing left.
• Giant leap - doesn't work . As with Lemmings 2, there is no jumper/ascender, lemmings take just one frame of time to go up a step.
  
• Building through one-pixel-wide overhangs - works.
  
• Builder skips ceiling-check on last pixel - works. As with DOS, the floor check still triggers on the last step.
  
• Forcing builders into ceilings - works. Building when stuck in terrain raises the lemming by one pixel as in DOS.
  
• Builders get stuck at top of map - doesn't work, see 'level boundaries' above.
  
• Blockers force builders through one-pixel-wide wall - works!

[finlay]

I think the PS1 version was sort of based on the Windows version, although I'd have to check that. It shares the high-res graphics and level list (for the most part – it doesn't contain the special levels, one iteration of We all fall down, Tricky 21, Tame 17-20, and Wicked 2). Anyway, you can certainly have lemmings walk over the top of a level, which I find very annoying (Mayhem 23 is suddenly a lot harder!). They also disappear and reappear when their feet are within a few pixels of the top, and there's a glitch in the builder skill when you reach a few pixels from the top – any step placed will just disappear and the lemming will immediately become a walker. This is noticeable in Taxing 5, and someone made a video on youtube complaining about it. You essentially have to stretch the bridge in order to cross from the top of the metal to the bars at the top, although this is actually slightly more difficult than it is on any PC version.

Another glitch is that a builder will always turn around at a wall before you have the chance to bash through it, and you have to time your bridges so that he places the last step to connect with the wall and transitions to a shrugger, which stops him from turning round straight away.

What levels would I go to to test these glitches, by the way? Particularly the sliding glitch and direct drop. I would also quite like to confirm whether they work on the Mac.

[Clam]

I think the PS1 version was sort of based on the Windows version, although I'd have to check that. It shares the high-res graphics and level list (for the most part – it doesn't contain the special levels, one iteration of We all fall down, Tricky 21, Tame 17-20, and Wicked 2).

I just checked through the level list in WinLemm, and it matches this exactly (specifically, the Fun version of WAFD is missing).

What levels would I go to to test these glitches, by the way? Particularly the sliding glitch and direct drop. I would also quite like to confirm whether they work on the Mac.

For the sliding glitch I used Tricky 28 ('Lost something?'), which has a root directly below the exit that's perfectly shaped for the sliding setup. Direct Drop I tested on Fun 10 ('Smile if you love lemmings'). For most other glitches you can take a Fun/Tame level and use the abundant skills to create the required setup.

[ccexplore]

What levels would I go to to test these glitches, by the way? Particularly the sliding glitch and direct drop. I would also quite like to confirm whether they work on the Mac.

I tested both already a while ago, sliding glitch works, direct drop doesn't.  For sliding glitch I just picked some Fun/Tame level with straight vertical wall, used an interrupted basher to create a dent only 1 pixel thick height-wise, RR 89, and have a lemming build after jumping up to the dent, causing the following lemming to slide.  Clam's Tricky 28 suggestion is probably good too, assuming it's not affected by the hi-res graphics.

[Clam]

• When digging through terrain and into steel, the digger goes one pixel too far and takes out a row of steel. Curiously, mining into steel doesn't destroy it, even when it would in DOS (eg. when building one step and mining to turn around).

Correction: the miner does take out a pixel of terrain, but it has to start an even pixel height above the steel (rather than odd, as in DOS). This is because, strangely, the miner only goes down by one pixel on the first swing.



More DOS-glitch testing in WinLemm:

• Bashers/miners/diggers take out incidental steel along with terrain - works.
  
• Bashers check for terrain only on odd strokes - works.
  
• Bashing along top of level to bypass steel - works, and without the random stopping issues experienced in DOS. The downside, of course, is that you don't need it in most cases since lemmings can just walk over the level - but, you do still need this on Mayhem 28 because the lemming is unselectable while it is off the screen.
  
• Blocker flips basher through wall without breaking it - works.
  
• Basher falls through terrain without breaking it (Tricky 5/Taxing 8) - doesn't work. Unlike in DOS, the basher doesn't 'slide' downwards if it is standing on downward-sloping terrain, which is essential to making this glitch work. Instead the basher moves straight across until there is too much empty space below it, and then falls. On the plus side, you can use this difference in mechanics to make a basher continue bashing as it floats a couple of pixels off the ground .
  
  
• Miners don't check for steel above them after first assignment - even better, they don't even check for steel above or in front of them on the first assignment, so you can take a big chunk out of it from below.
  
• Miner positioning glitch - works, but because the miner positions itself one pixel too high after the first stroke, you can't activate this glitch immediately on assigning the miner skill.
  
• Miner quits at right one-way wall - doesn't work, or rather, works as it should
  
• Miner crosses one-pixel gap - works.
  
  
• Diggers can enter exit without terrain under trigger - not applicable. The digger doesn't 'cling' to terrain beside it like it does in DOS, so you can't dig to where the trigger is unless there is terrain over the trigger to begin with. Given that direct drop works without terrain in this version, this isn't so important anyway
  
• Glitch-sprite when pausing at digger assignment - pretty sure it doesn't work, hard to be certain though since it is a random occurrence in DOS.
  
  
• Triggers cancel steel areas - works, for instance I'm able to bash through the steel on Crazy 10 where the water/vine stuff goes through it.

[Clam]

I just found out it's possible to assign skills during pause in Lemmings for Windows. It only allows one skill assignment per pause, but that's still much better than nothing .

On with the list:

• Basher/miner backstrokes remove steel - yes (sort of) and no, respectively. Bashers can only remove one column of steel, and subsequent bashers can't remove any more. For reference, the largest possible backstrokes in regular terrain are 2 columns for bashers, 1 column for miners at a left wall, and nothing for miners at a right wall.
  
  
• Object with no effect still have trigger areas, which cancel steel - yes, as seen already on Mayhem 12, but I also confirmed it with the left entrance on Taxing 4. You can dig when above the upper-left corner of the entrance, where the trigger is, but you can't dig from a position further to the left.
  
• Marble tileset water/acid trigger is too high, lemmings appear to drown above it - yes, no change there.
  
• One-way wall triggers are too high - yes, you can still bomb and bash under the wall on Fun 11 / Taxing 18 for example.
  
• One-way wall on Wild 12 does nothing - nope, it works in this version!
  
• Brick one-way wall trigger is twice as wide as the object itself - yes, eg. on Wicked 1 you can't bash to the right after the one-way wall.
  
  
• Nuke glitch - doesn't work. Oh well.
  
• Pausing for time - doesn't work. I did notice though that pausing immediately on starting a level prevents the "Let's Go!" sound effect.
  
• Can't click skills/RR during pause - nope, this version lets you select these items during pause .
  
• Terrain off the left of the level appears on the far right in the level preview screen - nope, the preview screens are different in this version and don't seem to have this issue. Example level: Taxing 24.
  
  
• Right-click bug - not applicable, this version lacks the ability to right-click to select a non-worker, as far as I can tell.
  
• Lemming mouseover info remains on level restart - nope. However, if you pause immediately on restarting, the timer doesn't reset until you unpause.
  
  ---
  While testing basher backstrokes, I stumbled across another steel glitch:
  
• If you bash towards steel from the right distance, the lemming digs away an interrupted-basher ramp in the steel.

---

That leaves a couple of glitches that I don't know how to go about testing:
- Release rates outside the 1-99 range - I don't know where to go to edit the level stats, or even if it's possible to do so.
- Drowners being swept through terrain, which I never understood, despite building a custom level around it . Drowning does appear to work in much the same way as in DOS though (the lemming floats across unless it is next to a wall), so it's plausible that it could still work.

[finlay]

I can't remember how I learnt it although it must have been early on. I saw an addendum note along with the version of Holiday Lemmings that I downloaded noting its late addition to the game – hence it may not have been in the manual. There was a lot of trial and error involved, I think, because there are quite a few hidden hotkeys: ` and P both pause, Z/X and the left/right keys select the next skill in line, and the up/down arrows control the release rate. Handily, on British Mac keyboards the shift, `, Z and X keys are all in a line.

Just remembered the other one: the Mac version uses option (alt) instead of right-click to select a non-worker, mainly because Apple was and is still too stubborn to produce two-buttoned mice and trackpads. (I use a logitech mouse...)

It's just, if Simon is reading this, I'd like to suggest using a hotkey for non-worker selection in Lix rather than the right mouse button, or have a choice. It's just I occasionally have problems with it... not least that I literally cannot press both without my external mouse, because my trackpad has only one bloody button. (you have to place two fingers on the trackpad and then press the button in order to get a right-click)

[Clam]

Thanks to a tip from geoo that WinLemm uses the same file format (.LVL) as Lemmix, I'm able to test 'out-of-bounds' release rates and find out the following:

RR100 = 1 spawn per 4 frames (same as RR98-99)
RR101-102 = 1 spawn per 3 frames
RR103-104 = 1 spawn per 2 frames
RR105 or higher (anything up to 65535 = 2¹⁶ - 1, the highest the file format will allow) = 1 spawn per frame

For rates over 99, only the first two digits show, eg. RR105 displays as '10'.


Now to test the boundaries of the other level stats :

• Winlemm can handle up to 116 lemmings, the game crashes when attempting to spawn the 117th lemming.
• The game can handle any time limit you can input, up to 65535 minutes (that equates to a month and a half!)
• The game can handle any input for number and percentage to be saved. If you set more than 100% required, and save 100%, the game gives you the congratulatory message for saving every lemming, but doesn't let you advance to the next level.
• Skill counts can be set up to 65535, again the first 2 digits show.

---

Also, I found the following completely unrelated glitch:

• You can use terrain-destruction abilities to remove parts of the entrance graphic.

[Simon]

It's just, if Simon is reading this, I'd like to suggest using a hotkey for non-worker selection in Lix rather than the right mouse button, or have a choice.

Yep, took note of it. You want a mappable key that must be held during the assignment, and which does nothing when pressed on its own, i.e. without a simultaneous left click? I might actually make such a key do whatever the right mouse button does, such as scrolling if the user has enabled that.

The game can handle any time limit you can input, up to 65535 minutes (that equates to a month and a half!)

Edit:

<Clam_Spammer> SimonN: what's with the spinning guinea pigs?
<SimonN> absolute joy about the long long time limit

-- Simon