@Simon Lemmings seems like one of the more interesting TAS games because even the tools don't eliminate the sheer calculus. So itself seems like a competitive challenge even as a TAS (which I guess all TAS's are but). With TAS the optimal thing to do is always increase release rate by 99 and play in that manner (which would clearly be impossible for a human).
With DOSBox, setting the cycles can be quite painful for games that don't have internal timing systems, whereas you can run the processor as a simulated dead stop, or as fast as your actual computer processor can allow it. However, games like Lemmings (and some other MS-DOS games I've run thus far) have an internal timer which limits the speed the game can operate, no matter how many cycles you give it. For gives like this, it becomes however many cycles you need to eliminate the lag (because it won't go faster).
Regarding hitting the ESC instead of nuking. THANKS! for that heads up. Now I'm actually sort of torn. I was going to use beginning of level until count hits 0 (and use the frame 0 appears as the end time). If you can, in effect, play the round, have 20 lemmings left, and then hit EXT, and the next screen just goes to the "Level Complete" page, then I'm going to have to make a decision; require Remaining counter to hit zero, or end time on another frame... presumable the first frame that the victory screen level appears. I'll play around with this later.
I guess I should probably ask if there has been or was any sort of Lemmings speedrunning up to this point... if there have been established rules on the matter in the past, I'd go with that. If not, I wouldn't mind some input from y'all regarding what you guys think is best.
@Colorful Arty I'm familiar with NeoLemmix a bit. Just by how speedrun.com is set up in general though, NeoLemmix runs couldn't make it onto the original game page. In essence, I'd have to create a new page for the NeoLemmix software (which I may be willing to do in the future, because I realize that could open up custom levels and the like to speedrunning). However, I still got 2 Xmas Lemmings, and Oh No More Lemmings to get through first.
@forestidia86 I haven't played the '95 Version yet. I would accept a run (of what I understand to be 116 levels for whatever reason), though it'd be a category of its own. I'd also have to spend sometime to make sure all the levels are the same or not, or which ones or the same or are new, and what order the levels are in. Will look into that some next.
In other news though:
https://www.speedrun.com/lemmings/individual_levelsI've completed the individual levels list so far... which includes the 120 originals, the 12 additional from ZX/CPC releases, 5 Sunsoft for SNES, 60 additional levels for Genesis (I also painstakingly went through all Genesis levels, and separated the exclusive levels from the copies). So those should be good to run, as of now, more or less. I haven't looked yet, but I'm assuming SMS/GameGear is the same original 120 levels as Amiga/DOS/ST, but not 100% sure on that yet, so will check that one next.