Author Topic: glitches in other Lemmings games  (Read 22331 times)

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Offline ccexplore

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glitches in other Lemmings games
« on: December 16, 2011, 10:25:51 PM »
Since Lemmings and Lemmings 2 have their own glitch thread, I'm starting this thread for glitches on the other games (Chronicles, Revolution, 3D, etc.).  I don't expect as much traffic on those games, so I don't think we really need to create one thread per game like we had for L1 and L2.

I recently started playing Lemmings Revolution and here are glitches I've seen so far (undoubtedly more to come in near future):

Lemmings Revolution (PC)

[edit: this list is currently collected mostly using the patched version of the game, with key game files timestamped 6/26/2000 instead of 4/14/2000.  Once I finish the game I will update the list with all differences I find between patched vs unpatched]

Climbers
Summary: very similar to analogous glitches in original Lemmings, but some with a Revolution twist
  • When a climber encounters a ceiling and falls down, it comes away from the wall by one grid-cell, instead of falling down right next to the wall.  See climber-fall-offset.png on this post for a screenshot.
  • If the terrain that the climber is on is removed, it hoists immediately and converts to a walker in mid-air for one frame.  However, in general the game doesn't allow you to assign most skills whenever the lemming is standing on mid-air (or even on water for non-water lemmings), so unless you want to assign climber, floater or bomber at that exact moment (and likely you can do so at other times instead), this is probably not a very useful glitch.
  • If a lemming trapped inside terrain is made a climber, or a climber becomes trapped in terrain, it repeatedly begins climbing, gets stuck, and falls slightly (turning around in the process). It gains one grid-cell in height each time.  It also drifts horizontally to the right as it repeats this maneuver basically every 2 times.  This is because when the stuck climber falls, lands, and turns right (but not if he turns left), he is allowed to walk forward (despite being stuck in terrain!) for one grid-cell before starting to climb again.  This right-only extra walking creates the rightward drift.  So the lemming effectively moves diagonally up-and-right gradually during the maneuver, allow you to pass through walls not just vertically, but horizontally as well.  See this post for a set of zipped screenshots depicting the effect.

    [Note that when the stuck climber falls, turns left and climbs again facing left, this transition is directly from faller to climber, so you can't assign non-permanent skills to a stuck climber with him facing left.  Whereas you can with him facing right during his "extra walking" phase.]

  • When a hoister "oh-no" (explosion countdown reaches 0), he ends up one grid-cell away from the wall, and therefore will fall back down.  This works facing left or right.  See this post for a sreenshot.

Bombers
  • reset a bomber:  after a bomber finishes the countdown ("oh-no") but before he actually explodes, you can assign a non-bomber, non-permanent skill, and this will "reset" him so he doesn't explode.  This works on blockers about to explode too, so you can free a blocker this way.
  • The same glitch above also works with lemmings about to explode due to nuking, after the nuke countdown finishes when the lemmings start their "oh-no".
  • If a lemming transforms to "oh-no" just before he hits the ground, he will not splat regardless of how high the fall was. Together with the "reset a bomber" glitch, you can survive a high fall without floaters by using a bomber plus a suitable spare skill. (reported by LemSteven)
  • You can use the "reset a bomber" glitch on a right-facing climber who is in the midst of climbing a wall.  For some reason, this does not work for left-facing climbers.  This is why it is possible to save 100% on "Quick as you can", but not on "Can't get there from here". (LemSteven)
  • if you use the "reset a bomber" glitch on a lemming entering a teleport, the lemming won't enter the teleport, and he will start walking in a strange manner.  He still behaves like a regular walker, though.  If he returns to the teleport later, he will enter and return to normal. (LemSteven)
  • You can use the "reset a bomber" glitch on a drowning lemming.  Normally this isn't very useful since being in water, you can't even assign any useful skills, and even if you time it just right so that the lemming is at the very bottom (making skill assignments possible) when it "oh-no", there just isn't much you can do down there that doesn't end up re-drowning the lemming eventually.

    However, there is one awesome exception:  if you drown an upside-down (ie. antigravity) lemming in normal water, it will fall up and away from the water surface (since after all, up is down for antigravity).  This is shown in screenshot upsidedown-lem-triggering-objects.png (bottom-right) from this post.  Hence if you can arrange for the lemming to "descend" onto dry land during its drowning, and have it "oh-no" in mid-descend, he's ready to be reset once on dry land, for further usage.

    A drowner reset this way will have the following odd behavior:
    • For the skills of bashing, mining, building, and digging, the lemming will only carry out one full cycle of animation (ie. one stroke, one build brick, etc.), and then the lemming just stops and freezes.  The "frozen" lemming is still considered in the middle of carrying out the skill (so for example, if it is building when it freezes, you can't just assign another builder, you have to assign some other skill first, and then you can assign a builder to force it to build another brick).
    • Fortunately it can walk, climb, fall and float without "freezing".  Of course, getting it to start walking can be tricky, as you start the lemming off via reset-a-bomber (so it has to start off performing some sort of skill).  If the lemming faces left, using the "left builder block to walk" glitch is probably the most efficient way to revert it to walking.  Otherwise, I think if you can arrange for it to revert to walking or falling as the natural result of carrying out a skill for only one cycle, that'll probably work too.
    • The walking animation looks funny.  Basically the lemming often stops animating as it walks, so it kinda just slides around.
    • The lemming retains the translucency of drowning lemmings at all times.
    • The lemming can still trigger all objects in this state, including the exit, blockers, and the antigravity pad.
    • If the lemming is upside-down and tries to fall off the top boundary of the level, it will instead get stuck there without dying.  You can't do much with it though, since it's still considered in the middle of falling/floating, leaving you with very few useful skill assignment choices.  You can kill it with a bomber or nuke if needed.  This glitch doesn't work with the bottom boundary as the lemming, even in its weird state, will go splat off the bottom boundary.
  • When a lemming explodes, the game renders a sort of "gut splatter" onto the surface of the cylinder, near where the lemming is.  This splatter will eventually fade out.  But while it is being displayed, it may obscure other graphics that extend far enough into the cylinder surface.  For example, it will make a retracted wall look like some of its squares are gone (see screenshot explosion-graphical-artifacts.png from this post).  This is purely graphical and does not actually affect whatever objects are there behavior-wise.  It may even conceivably be dependent on your graphics card.
Blockers
  • (glitch arguable) When a blocker is assigned bomber, as soon as the countdown finishes the blocker no longer blocks (other lemmings can pass through).
  • In some cases it's possible to get a single lemming to pass through a blocker, by assigning him a skill like basher really close to the blocker, just before the lemming turns around.  More investigation is needed to work out the details, but I suspect it may have to do with the game grid-aligning the position of the lemming to fit with the skill action.
  • Mechanics of blocker fields:  to really understand all the unexpected cool things you can do with blockers, such as blocker-stacking, you need to understand how blockers work in the game.  Blockers work in Revolution by setting special "blocker-field" status to the vertical column of 4 grid-cells at the blocker's position, starting from head down to feet of the blocker lemming.  Grid-cells with blocker-field status (shortened henceforth to "blocker-cells") has the following properties:
    • Blocker-field status is orthongal to other grid-cell status, rather than exclusive.  This means you do not have "steel-canceling" or "trigger-canceling" glitches (as far as I know anyway, I haven't tested all combinations) like in original Lemmings.  A grid-cell can simultaneously have both blocker-field status as well as other existing statuses like steel, one-way, or whatever.
    • However, blocker-field status is not cumulative, meaning that if you set 2 blockers at the same grid-cell position, and free only one of them (eg. via the "reset a bomber" glitch, and doesn't matter which one), the moment that lemming is freed, the grid cells in question will have blocker-field statuses cleared, despite the fact that you still have that 2nd blocker in the same grid-cell position.  Simply put, while the 2nd blocker will remain a blocker, he will no longer actually block other lemmings from walking through him.  See this post for a screenshot of this.
    • Blocker-cells can be landed (even splatting) and walked on like regular terrain, allowing such tricks as stacking a bunch of blockers vertically, or to use a bunch of water-lemming blockers to "cover up" the water surface creating a safe path for non-water lemmings to walk on.
    • Walker lemmings (even those assigned climbers, obviously) attempting to walk into a blocker-cell, will turn around instead.
    • Blocker-cells can even be climbed on like regular terrain. Because walkers are turned around by blocker-cells, you need to have an already-climbing climber to see this; thus the best way to test this is to set a blocker at the top of a climbable wall.  See this post for a screenshot.
    • Terrain (eg. build brick) inside blocker-cells cannot be removed by bashing, mining or exploding, kinda like steel.
    • However, blocker-cells can be removed by digging!  You can thus dig away the blocker-field status (in addition to any actual terrain in the grid-cell) making the blocker ineffective, without actually freeing the blocker.  (See this post for a screenshot.)
    • Builders do not get turned around by blocker-cells, but the usual terrain rules causing the builder to stop building, works with blocker-cells as well. (Thus when building really close to a blocker facing it, the builder basically stops building as if running into a wall.)
    • Miners are affected by blocker-cells. It appears that at the moment the mining stroke begins to remove terrain ahead, if the grid-cell it tries to clear terrain from has blocker-field status, the miner gets turned around (and the terrain not removed from the grid-cell).  I think this applies on each animation frame of a miner stroke that removes terrain, not 100% sure though.
Builders
  • left builder block to walk: assigning blocker to a left-facing builder will cause it to walk instead of block.  You don't even need any special timing to do this.  Doesn't work with right-facing builder.
  • (glitch arguable) given the mechanics of how builders work and how blockers work (see above section on blocker-field mechanics), it's possible to build over a blocker in such a way that other lemmings walking up the bridge will still be turned around by the blocker underneath, even though the builder is unaffected by the blocker.  See this post for a screenshot.
  • When building left, during the short pause ("wait") after the lemming runs out of build bricks, you can't immediately assign him skills until he starts walking.  Whereas when building right, you can assign as soon as the wait phase starts.
  • (glitch arguable) The water surface acts as a ceiling for an upside-down (antigravity) lemming building "up" against it.
Bashers
  • A basher can remove terrain behind him.  Be especially careful when assigning a builder behind a basher. (reported by LemSteven)
  • On the level "Something fishy", when a lemming is bashing through an area and a builder starts to build through the area that was bashed through, the built steps will start to disappear slowly behind him, in a manner that looks like an invisible lemming is bashing through them (the actual basher is very far away from the builder).  This doesn't happen if the basher is finished and no longer bashing.  (reported by thick molases)
Miners
Summary: remarkably, the infamous miner glitch from original Lemmings lives on in this game too!
  • basic miner glitch:  Miners are positioned one grid-cell too low during the few frames of their animation when terrain is being removed. This makes it possible to have the miner fall through the floor while leaving it intact for other lemmings to walk on, by assigning a blocker, bomber or digger at the right moment. (It takes multiple frames to remove all the terrain during a mining stroke, and terrain is removed from top to bottom.)  See miner-glitch.png screenshot on this post for more details.
  • At the very frame when a miner stroke just breaks through (you can't be late, or you won't be able to assign skills anymore until he finishes falling), assign builder to the miner, and the first build brick will leave a gap in the terrain.  See miner-glitch-2.png screenshot on this post to see exactly what I mean.  This only works facing right; facing left, the build brick is positioned differently and does not leave a gap.
  • In some terrain setup where a left-facing miner is standing on terrain only one grid-cell thick, but the next "step" down has enough terrain so you aren't breaking through the floor, the miner automatically stops mining anyway after the mining stroke. He doesn't fall through the terrain though, so it's not the same as the basic miner glitch.  See miner-glitch-3.png on this post for a screenshot if you're confused by my poor description.  Appears to only work facing left (in the symmetric situation facing right, miner continues mining without interruption).

Interactive Objects
  • (glitch arguable) For some objects, you can easily avoid triggering the object merely by getting slightly below floor level of where the object rests.  For example, if a lever switch or teleporter is not resting on steel, you can simply dig down once and then bash through the entire length of area that would trigger the object.  This lowers the floor enough for you and other lemmings to bypass the object without triggering it.
  • direct-drop to exit: lemmings falling onto the exit's trigger area will exit if there is terrain under it, even if they would splat from the fall if the exit wasn't there. In fact in some cases, you may actually even see and hear the lemming first go splat, but then hear "yippie" and the number of lemmings saved go up.
  • Lemmings falling directly onto exit trigger can exit, even if the exit trigger is in mid-air with no terrain to actually land on.
  • aborted exit jump: when a lemming is in the middle of jumping into the exit balloon, you can abort the jump by making the lemming "oh-no", or simply assign skills to it.  If it is done too early during the jump, the lemming just ends up re-triggering exiting again.  However, once its jumping has moved the lemming sufficiently farther away from the cylinder's axis than the normal distance, this will apparently mess up the object collision detection, and the lemming will no longer re-trigger the exit after the jump is aborted.

    In this state, the lemming will react to terrain normally and carry out most skill actions normally, but:

    • The lemming won't trigger any objects! (eg. this and other exits, water, switches, etc.).
    • The lemming is stuck with the special 3D orientation of the exit-jumping (ie. basically 90 degrees off from normal orientation, ie. facing directly into or away from camera), as well as the abnormally farther distance-from-axis.  In other words, it moves funny.

    See screenshot aborted-exit-jump.png on this post for examples of the above effects.

    To revert the lemming back into normal state, assign it blocker.  A blocker will gradually move itself back towards the cylinder's axis (this is a normal side effect of blockers) until the distance to axis is back to normal.  Free the blocker and it's back to regular behavior.
  • During a lemming's jump into the exit balloon, its vertical position is in fact continually updated according to where it is at the jump.  In particular, at the final parts of the jump when it is dropping into the balloon basket, his vertical position will lie below floor level of where the exit trigger is.  Together with the "aborted exit jump" glitch above, you can take advantage of the vertical positioning as in these examples:

    • If the lemming goes "oh-no" at this point, and the floor is thin enough so the lemming, being below the exit trigger, is now in mid-air, he'll fall.
    • You can start digging or bashing from the below-exit position, if the skill assignment is permitted (ie. if there is terrain below the lemming's feet, as required in order to assign many of the skills)

    (This post has screenshots for the above effects.)
  • (glitch arguable) Triggered objects don't care whether the lemming is upside-down (ie. from an antigravity device) or not, so it's possible to achieve funny/unexpected things with upside-down lemmings like jumping into an exit balloon while upside-down, drowning in (normal) water upside-down (with the drowning corpse floating away from the water, as per the lemming's inverted gravity), etc.  See screenshot upsidedown-lem-triggering-objects.png in this post for some examples.
  • no splat on water (glitch arguable): water lemmings can land safely on water from any height, even heights that would splat when landing on normal terrain.
  • underwater mining etc.:  assign a water lemming miner while he's on water, and he will move diagonally downwards into the water just like mining through regular terrain.  However nothing is actually destroyed (ie. the water surface remains exactly where it is at, there is no actual mining tunnel created in the water).  Once the lemming starts walking, he will immediately snap back up to the water surface.

    You can also bash and dig underwater with similar effects, although the game doesn't let you assign digger when standing directly on top of water (you have to start on regular terrain, like building one brick on water surface and then dig from there).  Building underwater just lets you build one brick and then you stop, as if the lemming is stuck inside normal terrain.
  • The "underwater mining" glitch above also works with acid lemmings on acid.  However, the resulting behavior is rather different, in that unlike water, the acid can actually retain the tunnels created!  Moreover, lemmings react to acid material a bit differently from regular terrain.  The overall behaviors are complex enough that, due to my limited testing so far, I will not attempt to (likely incorrectly) summarize for now.  See screenshot acid-tunnel.png on this post to get a taste of the weirdness.
  • You may trigger an underwater crab merely by assigning a skill while near it, even if you can walk across the water surface safely without triggering it.  For an example, try assigning basher or blocker in the level "Kriss Kross" (5-2) near the crab.
  • (glitch arguable, but definitely annoying) The game's mouse-handling prioritizes entrance objects over lemmings, so it's easy to mistakenly change the entrance release rate when you simply mean to assign a skill to a lemming near an entrance.  Zooming in helps a little.
  • The entrance "box" object is a sort of special terrain, with the following behavior:
    • A walker can walk on/inside it, but a faller or floater will fall through it.
    • To confuse matters further, a falling/floating "oh-no"er can land on/inside entrance material, though this is not as useful as it sounds (see below on skill assignment).
    • It doesn't act as a wall for walkers though.  For example, if you build to mid-height of the box to reach the box, walkers won't turn around at the sides of the box, or try to step up or climb up the sides.  Instead you will just walk through the sides and through the entire length of the box at mid-height.
    • And yet, a builder will react to the entrance box like it is a wall or ceiling.
    • It is indestructible (I tested all removal actions including basher, miner, digger and exploder).  Actually, an exploder can affect the graphics of the entrance, but not the lemming-interaction behaviors.
    • It is not considered normal land for skill assignment purposes, so basically you can't assign most skills while standing on entrance material.

    The entrance-interactions.png screenshot in this post includes many of the behaviors discussed above.
    (Note: the "flaps" of an entrance are not special and basically has no interactions with lemmings AFAIK.)
  • Only walkers are affected by an anti-gravity device; lemmings performing most other actions (even things like "oh-no") are unaffected.  The easiest application is to pass through an antigrav by air-bashing.
  • The teleporter "beam" is turned on whenever one or more lemmings begin to enter/exit a teleporter on one side, and normally the beam turns off when all lemmings have gone through to the other side (for the entering teleport) or when all lemmings have finished exiting (for the exiting teleport).  However, if a lemming explodes in the middle of entering or exiting the teleporter, so that there's a lemming that never technically went through to the other side or never finished exiting, this will result in the teleporter beam staying on forever. (reported by thick molases)
  • (glitch arguable) A lemming cannot re-trigger a teleporter until he has left and re-entered the teleporter's area of detection.  So for example, if you set a blocker at the immediate exit point of the exiting teleporter, you can trap the exiting lemmings within the exiting teleporter's area of detection, and they won't be re-teleported (simply walking past the teleporter with no effects) until they can leave and re-enter the detection area.  See screenshot not-teleporting.png from this post if still unclear.
  • A timed door normally only allows a predetermined number of lemmings to pass, but you can sneak more through if you've got them bunched up tightly enough.  (reported by LemSteven)
  • Retractable walls will turn around a builder very similar to how blockers turn builders in original Lemmings.  This works even when the retractable wall is actually in the retracted (opened) state (ie. not a wall for walkers). (LemSteven)
  • Non-water lemmings can walk on water for an extremely short distance without drowning. (LemSteven)
  • When an acid pool is drained, the lemmings don't fall into the drained pool, but will instead walk across the top.  The exception to this is if an acid lemming is walking on the acid while it is draining, in which case the lemming will go down with the acid. (LemSteven)
  • If a sped-up lemming enters another speed up pad, it reverts to normal speed but retains the speedy blur behind him. (reported by thick molases)
Miscellaneous
  • If the timer runs out, it seems the game will determine win/lose based on number of lemmings at the moment the timer hits 0.  Even though the game will run on for a few more seconds afterwards, and any additional lemmings that exit afterwards will be included in the post-level screen's count of lemmings saved, the game will still say you fail the level if you hadn't saved enough when timer hits 0.  (See screenshot out-of-time.png from this post.)
  • At a fall distance equal to digging 30 steps down, some lemmings may survive the fall while others go splat at the very same fall (like, literally at the same location).  I'm still not 100% sure of the details, but based on some testing, it feels like the later (in terms of time elapsed) the lemming comes out of the entrance, the more likely it will survive such a fall.  But even then it's not like there's an exact cut-off before which all lemmings splat; instead it kinda alternates with no obvious regularity, except for splatting less and less frequently.  See safefall-imprecision.zip from this post for some example screenshots.  I did test that fall distances of 29 steps and 31 steps do behave consistently (ie. all survive for the former, and all splat for the latter).
  • Sometimes when you scroll around the level, you may cause a lemming to somehow pass through a blocker.  Exact circumstances still unclear (only happened twice to me so far). I think for this to happen, the level can't be paused when you are scrolling, but I'm not sure.  I've also encountered one time where this happens merely when I fast-forwarded the game for a bit, without any scrolling.
  • Once I had a climber get stuck for no apparent reason.  I can't remember what level it was but it was climbing up a straight wall and when it reached the top instead of falling, it stopped but appeared to keep climbing, even though he wasn't getting anywhere. I couldn't assign it any skill anymore, not even bomber.  It stayed there "climbing in place" for the rest of the duration. (reported by thick molases)
  • More than once I've had lemmings just vanished into thin air. Levels I remember seeing this are "Reduce and Simmer" and "Don't let them out".  In the latter I think it happened at a certain spot where a lemming was bashing near the exit balloon, and it just disappeared with no splat sound or graphic or anything. I couldn't investigate it because every lemming that got near that particular spot vanished. I can't remember if the ticker reported a change in the number of lemmings.  In "Reduce and Simmer" I had a climbing lemming reach a wall and it began to climb, but stopped halfway up and appeared to "mount" the wall when it wasn't at the top, then go into the terrain and vanish. It was always at a particular spot so maybe these are glitches with the levels and not in the game in general. (thick molases)
outside a level
These are annoying glitches/flaws I've run into during the non-level-playing parts of the game.  Some may be due to running the game on versions of Windows higher than when the game was released (ie. post-Win98).
  • The game doesn't save your audio settings (volume of music and sound effects), you have to set it again each time you play the game.
  • Using Alt+Tab to switch out of and back into the game almost always crashes the game when you try to go back into it, unless you're inside a level when you switch out.
  • Even when inside a level, using Alt+Tab to switch between the game and other programs leads to loss of music in the game, until you restart the level or go back to pick another level.
  • On Win7 I can't even get music to play at all no matter what.
  • On Win7, the first time you're on the main menu right after starting the game, no text is displayed on the menu buttons.  This corrects itself after you started playing a level and then go back to the main menu.  Does not repro on XP.
  • At the post-level screen where it shows you how many you need and how many you saved, the text is too dark, it's almost unreadable.

Offline finlay

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Re: glitches in other Lemmings games
« Reply #1 on: December 17, 2011, 01:53:42 AM »
I'm certain there must be some for 3D but I don't know what they are. I can at least tell you that there's no equivalent of the direct-drop, because Lemmings must enter an exit horizontally on the side of a block. You also don't tend to get placement glitches or anything like that, due to the fact that lemmings always perform their skills on the edge of a block.

I do remember seeing a video of someone digging through the top of an entrance, but I don't think it really affected the game or anything.

Offline LemSteven

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Re: glitches in other Lemmings games
« Reply #2 on: December 17, 2011, 07:41:33 AM »
Here's a few more Lemmings Revolution glitches that I know of offhand:
  • A timed door normally only allows a predetermined number of lemmings to pass, but you can sneak more through if you've got them bunched up tightly enough.
  • Builders will always turn around upon reaching a retractable wall, regardless of whether the wall is open or closed.
  • Non-water lemmings can walk on water for an extremely short distance without drowning.
  • When an acid pool is drained, the lemmings don't fall into the drained pool, but will instead walk across the top.  The exception to this is if an acid lemming is walking on the acid while it is draining, in which case the lemming will go down with the acid.
  • A basher can remove terrain behind him.  Be especially careful when assigning a builder behind a basher.
  • If a lemming transforms to an "oh-noer" just before he hits the ground, he will not splat regardless of how high the fall was.  Once he hits, you can use the "resetting a bomber" glitch to save him.  This essentially means that you can use a bomber plus one other skill instead of a floater to survive long falls.
  • The "resetting a bomber" glitch also works for lemmings who are being nuked.
  • You can use the "resetting a bomber" glitch on a right-facing climber who is in the midst of climbing a wall.  For some reason, this does not work for left-facing climbers.  This is why it is possible to save 100% on "Quick as you can", but not on "Can't get there from here".
  • This one is hard to describe, but you can use the "resetting a bomber" glitch on a lemming entering a teleport.  If you do this, the lemming won't enter the teleport, and he will start walking in a strange manner.  He still behaves like a regular walker, though.  If he returns to the teleport later, he will enter and return to normal.

Offline Clam

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Re: glitches in other Lemmings games
« Reply #3 on: December 17, 2011, 09:31:49 AM »
Some glitches in Lemmings Chronicles / All New World of Lemmings that I discovered back when I made custom levels for that game:

  • You can break steel by digging diagonally upwards through normal ground placed in front of the steel. The digger takes one swing too many, taking out a chunk of steel. There has to be enough terrain above the lemming before it takes this extra swing, otherwise it will just stop (so you can't just place a couple of bricks in front of steel to make the digger go through).
  • With a specific setup, it is possible for a lemming to survive a splat fall. The lemming has to be standing on disappearing ground, and unable to move left or right, with a long fall immediately below. If you assign the walker skill just as the last layer of ground disappears, the lemming will fall down, splat, respawn (!) and then turn around. After doing this, the lemming enters a glitched state where falling down even the tiniest step causes it to splat. You can observe this glitch on Egypt level 30.
  • Another way of bypassing the splat height is by falling into water with the swim tool, though IIRC there isn't an original level where you can do this. This also leaves the lemming susceptible to splatting from a short fall (if the lemming fell from above splat height), but not down a walkable step like the above.
  • If you stop a shimmier (using the walker skill) and it falls off the bottom of the screen, it will appear to splat instead of just disappearing off the screen.

Offline Minim

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Re: glitches in other Lemmings games
« Reply #4 on: December 17, 2011, 06:09:26 PM »
  • resetting a bomber:  after a bomber finishes the countdown but before he actually explodes, you can assign a non-bomber, non-permanent skill, and this will "reset" him so he doesn't explode.

Ah yes, I remember this trick. :) The trick has been mentioned as an alternative solution to the level "My finest moment" (Can be seen somewhere in the lemmings compendium, I couldn't manage to get a direct link, so I hope you all can find it.).
Level Solving Contest creator. Anybody bored and looking for a different challenge? Try these levels!

Neolemmix: #1 #4 #5 #6
Lix: #2  #7
Both Engines: #3

Offline ccexplore

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Re: glitches in other Lemmings games
« Reply #5 on: December 22, 2011, 09:19:31 AM »
A couple more for Lemmings Revolution:

  • no splat on water:  you can argue this is not a glitch, but water lemmings can land on water from any height without splatting
  • miner glitches:  remarkably the infamous miner glitch from original Lemmings lives on in this game too.  I've attached screenshots for 3 variations:
    • basic miner glitch:  this is just like how it works with original Lemmings.  In Revolution, the moment where the effective position is on air starts at the moment the breakthrough stroke begins to take out terrain.  It takes 3 frames of terrain removal to actually break through.  Assign a blocker at 1st or 2nd frame, and the miner falls through without breaking through.  The miner-glitch.png screenshot should make this clear.  Works facing left or right.  You can also substitute blocker with oh-no or digger for same effect.
    • miner+builder glitch:  this one doesn't have a clear analog in original lemmings.  At the very frame when the miner stroke just breaks through (you can't be late, or you won't be able to assign skills anymore until he finishes falling), assign builder to the miner, and the first build brick will leave a gap as shown in the miner-glitch-2.png screenshot.  This only works facing right; facing left, the build brick is positioned differently and does not leave a gap.
    • auto-stop-mining glitch:  this one is sorta like a similar behavior you can see in original Lemmings, but not exactly the same.  As seen in the miner-glitch-3.png screenshot, the miner stops mining by itself, but does not fall through either.  This seems to only work facing left.  The miner continues mining if facing right, mining from the symmetric left side of the terrain in question.
  • not sure to consider it glitch or not, but when building left, during the "shrugging" phase after running out of build bricks, you can't immediately assign him skills until he starts walking.  Whereas building right you can assign as soon as the "shrugging" phase starts.

Offline ccexplore

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Re: glitches in other Lemmings games
« Reply #6 on: December 23, 2011, 09:14:40 AM »
Having experiment around with miners in Revolution, naturally the next skill to do glitch-hunting on is the climber, judging on what we see in original Lemmings for that skill.  The results so far:

  • This is just like in original Lemmings, and is completely explained by screenshot climber-fall-offset.png:  when a climber encounters a ceiling and falls down, it comes away from the wall by one grid space, instead of falling down right next to the wall.  Works facing left or right.
  • Also like in original Lemmings, see climber-to-walker-on-air.png:  if the terrain that the climber is on is removed, it hoists immediately and converts to a walker in mid-air for one frame.  But here's one crucial difference in Revolution:  unfortunately, in general [ignoring the miner glitches which somehow isn't quite affected in this manner] you cannot assign most skills to lemmings standing on mid-air (or even standing on non-terrain things like water for non-water lemmings).  It seems the game basically does this extra check as a criteria of whether a skill assignment is allowed or not, and unless you're assigning climber, floater or bomber, you're out of luck.  So while the glitch "works" in a sense, it's not likely to be very useful.
  • But I guess the disappointment of the previous glitch is made up for by the following curveball:  so guess what happens to climber stuck in terrain?

    Well first of all, this is tricky to even set up due a number of differences, including inability to select any lemmings buried in terrain, and the build brick positioned offset of the lemming's position (so for example, the classic sliding-glitch setup in original Lemmings will instead leave a single-gridspace gap where the lemming is standing when he's building).

    Still, with a little work, it is possible to achieve a setup where a climber gets stuck in terrain, such as in level 7-3 ("how do we get up there!").  The result turns out to be quite unexpected, and I wish I could capture a movie of it, but I didn't try since I can only run the game well on XP on an old laptop, and it would probably be too taxing to run a screen-capturing movie program during the game.  So the climber-passthroughwall.zip set of screenshots to attempt to depict this.  You can use the screenshots as a guide to try it out yourself.

    But yes, the gist of it is, the stuck climber manages to pass through the wall horizontally!  The screenshot was a little late in capturing when the stuck lemming first emerges on the other side of the wall, but he actually starts appearing almost off the very top of the wall there.  So I have to conclude the lemming must have moved diagonally up and right while stuck inside the wall.  Unfortunately I can only guess since as mentioned earlier, the game cannot even let you highlight any lemming that's stuck inside terrain, so the lemming is literally invisible to me between the time it's stuck and the time it finally emerges.

    I don't know yet either whether this only works facing right, or may work in both directions.[edit: see next post]

Offline ccexplore

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Re: glitches in other Lemmings games
« Reply #7 on: December 23, 2011, 04:31:15 PM »
inability to select any lemmings buried in terrain

I was mistaken on that point.  Maybe the first time I tested it on some earlier level the lemming was too close to the top or something.  Anyway, as long as you selected a skill type that can be assigned to the lemming (floater and bomber are good options), you can still highlight a lemming buried in terrain, and assign skills to it.

So, I was able to track the movement of a stuck climber now.  It basically moves upwards just like in original Lemmings, but with the additional rightward drift.  I guess there's an asymmetry when facing left and facing right that ends up moving the stuck climber lemming steadily rightward.  (I can't quite tell for sure yet what exactly is the asymmetry.)

[edit: I have identified the asymmetry that allows the stuck climber to gradually drift rightward.  When the stuck lemming "falls", "lands" and turns left, he immediately starts climbing again.  But when he "falls" "lands" and turns right, he can walk forward for one grid-cell before starting again to climbing.  This extra bit of walking allowed only when facing right, results in the gradual rightward drift.]

[edit2: note that when a stuck climber falls and turns left, I mean it when I say he immediately starts climbing.  It appears the transition is directly from faller to climber, making it impossible (in all my tries so far) to assign skils to a stuck climber facing left.  For a stuck climber facing right, you can assign him skills during his "extra walking" phase.]

Offline ccexplore

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Re: glitches in other Lemmings games
« Reply #8 on: December 25, 2011, 01:13:14 AM »
The glitching continues with Lemmings Revolution. 8) From now on I'll keep the OP up-to-date on the latest Revolution discoveries.  I'll still make new posts down here so I can attach more screenshots.

First, I've done more testing with blockers and have finally really understand how they work.  The "blocker stacking" trick merely scratches the surface.  I'll explain in more details in OP, but the gist of it is below:
  • In original lemmings, the blocker field has 3 parts: a "force-left" field at the column roughly corresponding to the left arm, a "center" field corresponding to the lemming's body, and a "force-right" field corresponding to the right arm.  In Revolution, the blocker field just has a single center part corresponding to the body.  More precisely, at the column of grid-cells where the blocker is standing, the 4 grid cells going from lemming's head to lemming's feet will be the blocker fields.  There is no "force-left" or "force-right", the field simply causes walkers to turn around.
  • Grid-cells in Revolution can have multiple statuses (blocker, steel, etc.), so I don't think you'll find any "steel canceling" or "object canceling" glitches in that game, sorry.  (Though to be fair, I obviously haven't tested exhaustively.)
  • Revolution allows you to overlap blockers, so you can have cases like 2 blockers occupying the same grid position so their fields fully overlap, and then when you free only one of the two, you've cleared all the blocker fields at the given position, so the other blocker no longer actually blocks anyone.  See screenshot 2-overlapping-blockers-freeing-1.png.
  • Blocker fields act rather like regular terrain. As you've seen with blocker-stacking, lemmings can land and walk on them.  Turns out you can even climb on it, with a suitable setup (climb-a-blocker.png).  It is impervious to bashing, mining and explosions however (think steel, sort of), although diggers can take it out (dig-away-blocker-field.png).
  • Walkers and miners appear to be the only skills that can be turned around by a blocker field.
As a collorary of how builders and blocker fields work, you have the following (arguably not a glitch):  you can build over a blocker in such a way that the blocker can still turn around lemmings going up the bridge, but the builder itself is unaffected (builder-passthru-blocker.png).

Offline ccexplore

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Re: glitches in other Lemmings games
« Reply #9 on: December 25, 2011, 01:31:34 AM »
Of course I'm not done yet!  There's a spectacular one later in this post about the exit.  But first, let's get a few minor ones out of the way:
  • Unlike original Lemmings, in Revolution, lemmings falling directly onto exit trigger can exit, even if the exit trigger is in mid-air with no terrain to actually land on.
  • When a hoister "oh-no" (explosion countdown reaches 0), he ends up one grid-cell away from the wall, and therefore will fall back down.  See screenshot hoister-ohno-fall.png.  Works facing left or right.
  • Only walkers are affected by an anti-gravity device; lemmings performing most other actions (even things like "oh-no") are unaffected.  The easiest application is to pass through an antigrav by air-bashing.
Now presenting the cool glitch--aborted exit jump:
  • When a lemming is in the middle of jumping into the exit balloon, you can abort the jump by making the lemming "oh-no", or simply assign skills to it.  If it is done too early during the jump, the lemming just ends up re-triggering exiting again.  However, once its jumping has moved the lemming sufficiently farther away from the cylinder's axis than the normal distance, this will apparently mess up the object collision detection, and the lemming will no longer re-trigger the exit after the jump is aborted.

    In this state, the lemming will react to terrain normally and carry out most skill actions normally, but:

    • The lemming won't trigger any objects! (eg. this and other exits, water, switches, etc.).
    • The lemming is stuck with the special 3D orientation of the exit-jumping (ie. basically 90 degrees off from normal orientation, ie. facing directly into or away from camera), as well as the abnormally farther distance-from-axis.  In other words, it moves funny.

    See screenshot aborted-exit-jump.png for examples of the above effects.

    To revert the lemming back into normal state, assign it blocker.  A blocker will gradually move itself back towards the cylinder's axis (this is a normal side effect of blockers) until the distance to axis is back to normal.  Free the blocker and it's back to regular behavior.
  • During a lemming's jump into the exit balloon, its vertical position is in fact continually updated according to where it is at the jump.  In particular, at the final parts of the jump when it is dropping into the balloon basket, his vertical position will lie below floor level of where the exit trigger is.  Together with the "aborted exit jump" glitch above, you can take advantage of the vertical positioning as in these examples:

    • If the lemming goes "oh-no" at this point, and the floor is thin enough so the lemming, being below the exit trigger, is now in mid-air, he'll fall.  See screenshot ohno-fallthru-exit.png. (Note: this is done on level "Lems at Loggerheads" [4-6], and there the timing of the nuke needs to be frame-precise.)
    • You can start digging or bashing from the below-exit position, if the skill assignment is permitted (ie. if there is terrain below the lemming's feet, as required in order to assign many of the skills).  See screenshot dig-below-exit.png (yellow outlines added to make the digging tunnel easier to see).

Offline ccexplore

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Re: glitches in other Lemmings games
« Reply #10 on: December 26, 2011, 07:28:25 AM »
Merry Xmas (for those who celebrate, and happy holidays otherwise)!  Today's special is yet another plate of fresh new glitches from Lemmings Revolution ;P:
  • This only happened to me twice so far, and I don't know the exact circumstances for this to happen, but it seems that sometimes when you scroll around the level, you may cause a lemming to somehow pass through a blocker.  I think for this to happen, the level can't be paused when you are scrolling, but I'm not sure.
  • left builder block to walk: assigning blocker to a left-facing builder will cause it to walk instead of block.  You don't even need any special timing to do this.  Doesn't work with right-facing builder.
  • (glitch arguable): Triggered objects don't care whether the lemming is upside-down (ie. from an antigravity device) or not, so it's possible to achieve funny/unexpected things with upside-down lemmings like jumping into an exit balloon while upside-down, drowning in (normal) water upside-down (with the corpse floating away from the water, as per the lemming's inverted gravity), etc.  See screenshot upsidedown-lem-triggering-objects.png.
  • (glitch arguable): The water surface acts as a ceiling for an upside-down lemming building "up" against it.
  • revived* drowner: you can use the "reset a bomber" glitch on a drowning lemming.  Normally this isn't very useful since being in water, you can't even assign any useful skills, and even if you time it just right so that the lemming is at the very bottom (making skill assignments possible) when it "oh-no", there just isn't much you can do down there that doesn't end up re-drowning the lemming eventually.

    However, there is one awesome exception:  if you drown an upside-down (ie. antigravity) lemming in normal water, it will fall up and away from the water surface (since after all, up is down for antigravity).  See upsidedown-lem-triggering-objects.png screenshot (bottom-right) if still unclear.  Hence if you can arrange for it to "descend" onto dry land during its drowning, and have it "oh-no" in mid-descend, he's ready to be reset once on dry land for further usage.

    The "revived* drowner" will have the following odd behavior:
    • For the skills of bashing, mining, building, and digging, the lemming will only carry out one full cycle of animation (ie. one stroke, one build brick, etc.), and then the lemming just stops and freezes.  The "frozen" lemming is still considered in the middle of carrying out the skill (so for example, if it is building when it freezes, you can't just assign another builder, you have to assign some other skill first, and then you can assign a builder to force it to build another brick).
    • Fortunately it can walk, climb, fall and float without "freezing".  Of course, getting it to start walking can be tricky, as you start the lemming off via reset-a-bomber (so it has to start off performing some sort of skill).  If the lemming faces left, using the "left builder block to walk" glitch is probably the most efficient way to revert it to walking.  Otherwise, I think if you can arrange for it to revert to walking or falling as the natural result of carrying out a skill for only one cycle, that'll probably work too.
    • The walking animation looks funny.  Basically the lemming often stops animating as it walks, so it kinda just slides around.
    • The lemming retains the translucency of drowning lemmings at all times.
    • The lemming can still trigger all objects in this state, including the exit, blockers, and the antigravity pad.
    • If the lemming is upside-down and tries to fall off the top boundary of the level, it will instead get stuck there without dying.  You can't do much with it though, since it's still considered in the middle of falling/floating, leaving you with very few useful skill assignment choices.  You can kill it with a bomber or nuke if needed.  This glitch doesn't work with the bottom boundary as the lemming, even in its weird state, will go splat off the bottom boundary.
    *Technically it's a reset not a revive, because the game doesn't subtract the lemming from the total count until the drowning lemming disapppears, which only happens when it descends to the bottom without being reset by "oh-no".
  • The entrance "box" object is a sort of special terrain, with the following behavior:
    • A walker can walk on/inside it, but a faller or floater will fall through it.
    • To confuse matters further, a falling/floating "oh-no"er can land on/inside entrance material, though this is not as useful as it sounds (see below on skill assignment).
    • It doesn't act as a wall for walkers though.  For example, if you build to mid-height of the box to reach the box, walkers won't turn around at the sides of the box, or try to step up or climb up the sides.  Instead you will just walk through the sides and through the entire length of the box at mid-height.  See entrance-interactions.png screenshot if still unclear.
    • And yet, a builder will react to the entrance box like it is a wall or ceiling.
    • It is indestructible (I tested all removal actions including basher, miner, digger and exploder).  Actually, an exploder can affect the graphics of the entrance (again see entrance-interactions.png), but not the lemming-interaction behaviors.
    • It is not considered normal land for skill assignment purposes, so basically you can't assign most skills while standing on entrance material.  (Note: you can still test the indestructibility claims above by getting as close as you can while still standing on a build brick, while facing the entrance and still be allowed to assign the skill you want to test.)
    The entrance-interactions.png screenshot includes many of the behaviors discussed above.
    (Note: the "flaps" of an entrance are not special and basically has no interactions with lemmings AFAIK.)
[/list]

Offline Minim

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Re: glitches in other Lemmings games
« Reply #11 on: December 27, 2011, 08:04:50 AM »
I'm amazed about how many glitches you've found on Revolution (About 58, the last time I counted). :o No wonder why some people said it's a good game. I'm just wondering. I had a look at the review of the game at Gamespot and the reviewer said something like:

Quote
it shipped with a few sound, video, and input-device bugs that may cause problems for some players who are loading up the game for the first time.

I don't quite understand what is meant by "input-device" bugs. Are they related to any glitch shown here or is this just a different type of problem?
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Offline ccexplore

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Re: glitches in other Lemmings games
« Reply #12 on: December 27, 2011, 10:02:15 AM »
Quote
it shipped with a few sound, video, and input-device bugs that may cause problems for some players who are loading up the game for the first time.

I don't quite understand what is meant by "input-device" bugs. Are they related to any glitch shown here or is this just a different type of problem?
I'd say the review focused on a different type of problem than what I'm listing in this thread, although there's definitely some overlap.  I did note in my list that I have some problems with the music, but they can be tolerated or worked around for the most part.  I see video problems in my Win7 machine, but now that I think of it, it may be a difference in video cards rather than different versions of Windows, who knows?  "Input device" may be about joysticks?  Don't know, mouse handling seems fine to me for the most part.  Anyway, some sound and video problems may only come up with specific models of graphics cards and sound cards, or are more prevalent back on Windows 95 and Windows 98, the versions of Windows the game was originally designed for.

Given the history of the game's development (link to Lemmings Encyclopedia), I suspect it was indeed a rush job with less testing than usual, by the time they try to get someone to publish this almost-killed game.  So it's hardly surprising that on the game mechanics side of things there are many glitchy behaviors.  Some are probably just inherited from copying code/algorithms from original Lemmings.  Others are due to the vast increase in new object behaviors (water, acid, gravity, teleports, switches, you name it!).

Offline ccexplore

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Re: glitches in other Lemmings games
« Reply #13 on: December 27, 2011, 10:18:34 AM »
When it comes to glitchy behaviors in Lemmings Revolution, you know what they say--"LoTs moRe wHeRe TheY caMe fRom" ;P:
  • If the timer runs out, it seems the game will determine win/lose based on number of lemmings at the moment the timer hits 0.  Even though the game will run on for a few more seconds afterwards, and any additional lemmings that exit afterwards will be included in the post-level screen's count of lemmings saved, the game will still say you fail the level if you hadn't saved enough when timer hits 0.  (See screenshot out-of-time.png if still unclear.)
  • When a lemming explodes, the game renders a sort of "gut splatter" on the surface of the cylinder, around where the lemming is.  This splatter will eventually fade out.  But while it is being displayed, it may obscure other graphics that extend far enough into the cylinder surface.  For example, it will make a retracted wall look like some of its squares are gone (see screenshot explosion-graphical-artifacts.png).  This is purely graphical and does not actually affect whatever objects are there behavior-wise.  It may even conceivably be dependent on the graphics hardware.
  • Leave it to this game to screw up even the most basic of things, namely the safe-fall distance!  Either that, or it decides to go quantum with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. :P At a fall distance equal to digging 30 steps down, some lemmings may survive the fall while others go splat at the very same fall (like, literally at the same location)!  I'm still not 100% sure of the details, but based on some testing, it feels like the later (in terms of time elapsed) the lemming comes out of the entrance, the more likely it will survive such a fall.  But even then it's not like there's an exact cut-off before which all lemmings splat; instead it kinda alternates with no obvious regularity, except for splatting less and less frequently.  See the screenshots in safefall-imprecision.zip for some examples.  I guess we'll have to disassemble the game to figure out the exact details.  I did test that fall distances of 29 steps and 31 steps do behave consistently (ie. all survive for the former, and all splat for the latter).
  • The "underwater mining" glitch also works with acid lemmings on acid.  However, the resulting behavior is rather different, in that unlike water, the acid will actually retain the tunnels created!  Moreover, lemmings react to acid material a bit differently from regular terrain.  The overall behaviors are complex enough that, due to my limited testing so far, I will not attempt to (likely incorrectly) summarize for now.  I've included a screenshot (acid-tunnel.png) to give you a taste for now, and will note that miner acid tunnels seem to be somewhat more special than pits and tunnels from other terrain-removal skills.

Offline mobius

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Re: glitches in other Lemmings games
« Reply #14 on: December 29, 2011, 04:03:29 AM »
you talked about bashers being able to bash behind them but I didn't see this mentioned if you did, sorry

I only remember experiencing this a few times and possible only in one level; "Something fishy" but I'm not sure.

When a lemming is bashing through an area and a builder starts to build through the area that was bashed through his steps will start to disappear slowly behind him. Actually they disappear in a way that looks like an invisible lemming is bashing through them. It's been a long time so I'm not sure about the details but I think this doesn't happen if the basher is finished and no longer bashing. But when this happened to me the basher was very far away from the builder. I remember being shocked and trying the level again and it happened every time
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