Undamaged Levels

[Luis]

I managed to beat Tricky 26 in the PSP and it really wasn't easy and it took a lot of thinking to figure out. When it comes to beating a level without destroying the terrains in the PSP, this has to be the hardest one by far. I will post step by step with pictures on how the level was beaten, once I managed to do it again because the solution is very unusual. What's interesting (also annoying) is that the solution requires all 20 builders.

This is how the level looks like. No walls or ceiling on the edges to turn a builder around. It looks impossible at first sight.

[ccexplore]

Here's a DOS undamaged-level solution for Walk the Web Rope (Taxing 20), courtesy of the glitchy powers of the blocker as previously demonstrated by ClamSpammer.

Also, I have previously posted a 100% DOS solution for Taxing 22 using only builders and floaters, which would work for this challenge as well.

[Luis]

I now have the pictures that shows how the level was solved. It can takes hours just to beat it because I keep messing up.

1. When the level starts, build a stair wall that uses two builders to create a terrain that works like a free blocker, so the Lemmings won't get killed by the trap. Turn one Lemming on the right a builder, as soon as he turns around from the pillar.


2. After the builder on the right finish building and the crowd passes by, make one of the Lemmings on the left build stairs to the pillar and turn around and use two more.


3. Turn the Lemming that was building to the pillar a blocker, after he falls at the edge of the stairs.


4. Make one of the crowded Lemmings on the right a builder to close the gap, so they can reach the stairs above. Turn one Lemming into a blocker and as soon as one of them turns around, make him build over the pillar. Bash the stairs, so the crowded Lemmings won't get caught by the trap. Only two builders is needed to get over the trap on the pillar.


5. When the Lemming makes it over the trap and land on the pillar, make the crowd fix the stair, so they can all go home to the exit. Delay one Lemming with a builder.


6. Free the above blocker with a miner.


7. Make stairs on the edge of the left side of the one that was made earlier.


8. Send one Lemming to the exit by turning him into a builder on the destroyed stairs above, so he can turn around from it.


9. Dig through the stair and bash the one under the blocker to free him. Make the basher a builder to stop destroying the stairs immediately and turn around. Quickly turn the Lemming that was freed a digger and let him dig through the stairs until he makes a wall on the left that is big enough to make him turn around with a builder.


10. Turn the two last remaining around by making them build under the stair on the left side.


11. Do the same on the other broken stair.


12. That's the end of it.

[Clam]

Oh my With no wall and no control features like Lemmix has, that's quite an effort. Great work!

---

I had a reasonable go at Mayhem 8 (last one out is a rotten egg), but no success. Thanks to the awkward placement of terrain and steel grids, it takes all 5 blockers to glitch through the wall, plus most of your builders to get the blockers in the right places.

[ccexplore]

Oh my With no wall and no control features like Lemmix has, that's quite an effort. Great work!

Good point, I have forgotten how much more painful it is to do these things w/o the features of Lemmix.  This harkens back to the dark old days where I had to do the likes of Taxing 16 100% on DOSBox Lemmings .  (Actually that one was tolerable, but I'm sure there are worse examples that I don't remember offhand.)

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Mayhem
<snip>
8. Last one out is a rotten egg! (DOS Glitch)

I know it is a rare occurence when it comes to what Clam can do , but if you read carefully, in this case he actually said he could not made Mayhem 8 work even with using the glitch.

[Luis]

I miss read his post, thanks. Yeah the PSP Tricky 26 solution is hard to the point where even if you watch or read a walkthrough of it, you're still gonna end up restarting the level a lot. It's a good thing it's not the real solution to the level. The world will hate it. Replace the pillar with small steel terrains and make it look like a T. Make the brown terrains steel too. That's how the level would look like.

[ccexplore]

File another one under "seems okay on DOS; does it work on PSP?", I have confirmed Taxing 28 for DOS, no glitches.  It barely saves the required minimum of 56 out of 80 on DOS Lemmings, so I can see how timing differences can easily keep it from working on PSP.

Most of it is pretty straightforward so only one attached screenshot is enough to explain it.  Some key details below in spoilers:

- when you build left to get up onto the platform above the entrance trapdoor, bash as soon as you get high enough to do so non-destructively.   This avoids wasting time building steps that you don't need.

- The bridge under the entrance connects at 5 pixels under the top of the pillar on DOS Lemmings (6 pixels is the highest a lemming can walk up on DOS).  To make sure the builder stops exactly when enough steps are laid (so he doesn't turn around causing another loss of lemming), interrupt after first 10 steps with a basher and quickly assign back the builder, and you'll end up laying 34 steps instead of 36, and won't turn around.  You can also start building 2 more pixels to the right, and then you can complete the bridge slightly faster but finishing lower (ie. laying only 33 steps, with the step going up onto the pillar's top being 6 pixels tall instead of 5).

- There are ways to make the bridge reach higher in DOS, but I'm not sure with PSP game mechanics, whether it will work out without causing builder to turn around, or causing the bridge to connect too late to prevent losing another lemming
.

[edit: forgot to mention (although pretty well-known for DOS Lemmings), obviously you want to assign the floater as late as you can to minimize amount of time wasted on floating down slowly.  Not sure how that plays out in PSP]

[ccexplore]

Okay, I can't help myself and took a look at Luis's PSP walkthrough on Youtube to see what Taxing 28 looks like on the PSP.  It's practically the same.  Also it is 70/100 on the PSP so you can lose up to 30 rather than just 24 like on DOS.

What really caught my eye though, was that Luis just uses a miner to get through the final trap.  I don't remember that as possible on DOS, but after some testing just now, I've found that it is possible on DOS also, provided you start mining at a very precise location.  Is it just me who remembered wrong, or is this news to other people?  Too bad that can't be used for this challenge.

[Luis]

Lemmix has the wrong numbers. I looked at the level properties for Taxing 28 in Lemmix and the number of Lemmings is set to 80 and 56 needs to be saved. Then I looked at the Encyclopedia and Planet Lemmings to see the original numbers for the old game and both of them have Taxing 28 with 100 Lemmings and 70 to be saved, just like the PSP. Mayhem 4 in the PSP has 50 Lemmings instead of 100, due to their walk speed being slower, so they can't make it to the exit in one minute, but there was no point in putting only 50 if their gonna add more time.

Taxing 28 is possible in the PSP. I turned the climber around by using a builder on the round terrain. I thought it would be faster, but I haven't test if building to the ceiling is better. The floater thing works here. I build the bridge the normal way to save enough and let the climber die, when he turns around. 71 Lemmings were saved.

[Proxima]

Lemmix has the wrong numbers.

No, it's just that the Encyclopedia shows the stats from the Amiga version, whereas Lemmix is based on the DOS version. Both the DOS and Mac versions never have more than 80 lemmings on a level, and the number to be saved is reduced accordingly so that (on levels requiring up to and including 90%) the percentage rather than the number remains the same. (Above 90%, the Mac version keeps the number you're allowed to lose the same, e.g. Mayhem 15 is still lose-4, while the DOS version does this on some levels and inconsistently relaxes the requirements on others.)

Hmm, we need to look at those 100% tags. You can add it straight away to Fun 10, 16, 27 since their harder versions were solved (Taxing 22 does not require 100% on DOS, but ccexplore said that his solution is 100%, so that's all right) and to Fun 14, 15 since Clam achieved that. Fun 2, 7 are obvious. I'm sure Fun 19, 20, 24, 28 will be possible, so I'll check those. (EDIT: All confirmed.)

Fun 11 / Taxing 18 is an old, well-known (at least on these forums) challenge.

Got Fun 12 (Yes, I have Lemmix installed now -- ccexplore may have missed this news)

Tricky 22 100% is old news, but I hadn't done or watched it before, so I made a replay anyway (And this seems like as good a place as any to mention an anomaly in the records for this level. The "minimum skills for 100%" topic says 11, by ccexplore, so that's trustworthy. His replay uses 10 builders, 1 basher. The "skills you need for 100%" topic says 9 builders, but without a replay. )

[ccexplore]

(And this seems like as good a place as any to mention an anomaly in the records for this level. The "minimum skills for 100%" topic says 11, by ccexplore, so that's trustworthy. His replay uses 10 builders, 1 basher. The "skills you need for 100%" topic says 9 builders, but without a replay. )

Not sure what happened to the 9-builder replay, I've attached it here.  It's still 11 skills total though because I needed to use the floater to delay a lemming.

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Back on topic, here's a glitch undamaged-level solution for DOS Fun 17, saving the minimum of 20/50.  It's not often that you see blockers (effectively) pulling in lemmings instead of the usual pushing away.

[Minim]

That Fun 17 replay was absolutely amazing! You certainly know how to get some lemmings out of a sticky situation.

I am just wondering if we should list some PSP Special Levels on this thread. I believe that the first two levels are possible, along with Level 8.

[Proxima]

Here's Tricky 10 100%.

Tricky 3 is easy, 7 is guaranteed by the hard version, 8 (and Taxing 23) is possible because you get no terrain removal skills and the level is known to be 100%able, 12 is easy, 13 (and Mayhem 25) was solved 100% in the builders-only challenge, 26 requires 100%.

[Clam]

Solved Mayhem 30, nothing spectacular, but a decent builder-conservation challenge (suddenly 30 builders doesn't seem like much! )

[Luis]

I am just wondering if we should list some PSP Special Levels on this thread. I believe that the first two levels are possible, along with Level 8.

I'm more interested in the original levels right now. Maybe I'll do those after everything about the 120 levels has been discovered in this challenge.