I made this post to ask your questions about Lemmings games to Mike! :D

So, here's my first question:
I know that the 1st version of Lemmings was on Amiga. But what were the next ones? I guess that the second version you did was on Atari ST, isn't it? Can you tell me more about this?

A question I have: Where do some of these level names come from? Some are self-explanatory(such as "Rendezvous At The Mountain", the training levels, "Turn Around Young Lemmings", "Cascade" and "Watch Out, There's Traps About"), some others need a bit of thinking but can be worked out("Heaven Can Wait(We Hope)", "Compression Method 1" and "Time To Get Up"), while some I have absolutely no clue about the name sources("It's Hero Time", "Save Me", "Mind The Step" and "Curse Of The Pharaohs").

(Those levels are just examples, there are more)

The ones I wonder about are ones like "Smile if you love lemmings" and "Keep your hair on Mr Lemming"; in ONML there are lots of titles that parody well-known slogans, like "Thunderlemmings are go!"; are these more of the same, it's just that I don't know the originals?

As far as I remember Mike already gave answer to "It's Hero Time". If I am right it's because one skill is only 1 time available. -> The lemming who uses it is a "hero".

"Mind The Step" - You don't see all the step pieces used in this level!? And there are times when you can fall pretty easily.

"Curse Of The Pharaohs" - The level is supposed to look like a pyramid.

"Save Me" - My only guess is that this has to do with how the small platform the lemmings start on is so far removed from any other land that you really do need to "save" them... Or perhaps they chose to give it an intentionally vague name as to not give any hints on the solution since it's supposed to be the hardest level...

"Smile if you love lemmings" - Yeah, "smile if you love _____" is a pretty common slogan. The blank can be just about anything.

"Keep your hair on, Mr. Lemming" - Saying "Keep your hair on" is to tell someone to keep calm and not to over-react or get angry. I've never really heard it used but I just looked it up. So this is an address to Mr. Lemming to keep calm, which is appropriate since Fun 11 is the first level that you actually have to think about (although of course it's not very hard, but to new players it might take a little time.)


Here are some I'm wondering about though:
"Bitter Lemming", "Luvly Jubly", "Diet Lemmingaid" (I get the reference, but why is it spelled "aid" instead of "ade"?), "From the Boundary Line", and "The Steel Mines of Kessel" (not sure of the reference)

Bitter Lemming -- from Bitter Lemon, a soft drink

Luvly Jubly -- a phrase meaning "really great", variously spelled

Die Lemmingaid -- I assume the spelling change reflects the fact that you have to aid the lemmings?

Kessel is a planet in the Star Wars universe. I'm not a big SW fan, but I think they had some kind of mines there, not steel ones though? (But changing it to "steel" fits Lemmings better, even though there isn't much on that level.)

One Way Or Another - I don't get this one. Sure, I get the implication, but I can only find one way to beat this level. So why is it called this?

Because there are two ways to beat it -- round by the left or round by the right.

Since we seem to be pretty good at helping each other without waiting for Mike, anyone know what "Konbanwa lemming san" means? What language?

Japanese for Good Evening Mr. Lemming, I think.

The first ever lemmings code to be written was on the PC. I've "just" found the disk with the actual demo on it. The next one was the Amiga, but only by a month or so.

The Amiga, PC and ST versions were all done side by side. The Amiga version took the lead, but the PC version at least had an effect on it (Lemming colours are an example).

After these... we did the spectrum version in-house. A guy called John dye did it. After that... it went out into the world to be ported to every system under ther the sun.

As to names.... sometimes they were hints, sometimes they were refering to things we were watching at the time ("Luvly Jubly" for example is from Only Fools and Horses), and other times they just sounded nice. ("Island of the Wicker people"; although this one was inspired from batman, and "Curse of the Pharaohs").

I wouldn't put too much stock into what a 20 year old thinks is a good name :)

When I did some levels I also named them after stuff which was just flying through my brain.

Most of my level names are either self-explainatory or just simply totally crazy. Some that don't really relate to the level, but do have a source, are:

Oblivion - This comes from the name of my favourite(at the time) attack on Final Fantasy 10.
All Your Lemming Are Belong To Us - Ever heard of "All Your Base Are Belong To Us"?
Sayonara Lemming San - Well, we've got Konbanwa Lemming San(Good Evening Mr Lemming), and on the SNES version, Ohayoo Lemming San(Good Morning Mr Lemming). So why not Sayonara Lemming San? (Goodbye Mr Lemming). Also, this fits the level's position, as it is(or at least was going to be) the last level of Lemmings Plus 2.

You certainly have some weird level names in your packs (such as "Oaluga Alemineg", if I spelled it right). Are those just nonsense, then?

In my packs I always try to fit the name to the level, but if I can't think of one that fits I have a stock of "general" titles that could fit any level, and I use one of those. For instance, I thought of the title "This title is a Lem pun" and I knew I had to use it, so I stuck it on the next level I couldn't think of a better title for.

One level on the original I'd really like to know about is "Tribute to M C Escher". I love Escher, and I've done my own tribute to him by naming a level after one of his works, "The Belvedere", but I don't see how that level is connected with him.

Gary did that level..... he had an Escher picture up at the time so....

Heh....... and I always thought it was because the way you have to build all the way up the one-way wall resembled Escher's many "house of stairs" pictures.........

Mike, why you didn't do the multiplayer feature for the PC version? It could be so great if there's the possibility to play with fans, online.

I know that there's already Clones, but Clones isn't Lemmings! (But Clones is a good game too, and luckely, there's a multiplayer lemmings-like game online)

Could be... I think that was the picture he had... the one with the stairs going everywhere..?

LOL! You mean in my spare time! :D

You could do it legaly you know... All you have to do is search for a correctly installed "windows lemmings", then use the data provided there. That way if anyone wanted to play, they have to buy the original.

Then you could get an "actual" networked version of Lemmings.

Add a x2 or x3 scale... (DX will do this for you), and it'll be like old times! You'd have to work something out with the levels... but as long as you dont "supply" the graphics, you could just make new 2 player levels.

Oh...and dont charge for it :)

Mike, why the song: "How much is that doggie in the window?" (Song number 11 from the Dos version of Lemmings and the 8th from Atari ST) is so different from each version? Which one is the REAL one, the BEST?

It's because I'm sequencing songs of Lemmings in MIDI from the Dos version (if you want to hear them, ask me) and I found that the song from Atari ST is better.

About the multiplayer feature, it's only on Lemmings95? Do you know if there's some players that are playing now?

The Amiga one was the lead version so.... I guess thats the one to copy. The other versions were converted by other musicians so...

I've never played any multiplayer other than the Amiga one...

Mike, I need you to do something-

If you could, please give me the following statistics and verify the ones filled in.

Conditions under which a lemming will change directions.
Rate at which lemmings walk
Rate at which lemmings dig
Rate at which lemmings bash
Rate at which lemmings fall
Rate at which lemmings float
Rate at which lemmings mine
Rate at which lemmings bridge
Rate at which lemmings climb
Length of all types of death animations
formula for how fast lemmings are realeased in accordance to release rate
formula for the order of trap doors lemmings come out of
span of a single bridge
tunnel shape created by miners
tunnel height bashers
tunnel width by diggers
area destroyed by a bomber
Conditions in which a lemming will pass a blocker when falling on it
Conditions in which a blocker will become a normal lemming again
height at which a lemming will fall and die-65 pixels
playing field area- 1584 x 160 pixels
anything else involving lemmings physics basically.

thanks

Mmmmm...

Conditions under which a lemming will change directions.
a hill of >= 5 pixels

Rate at which lemmings walk
1 pixel at a time

Rate at which lemmings dig
1 pixel every animation cycle

Rate at which lemmings bash
Depends on the animation+mask...

Rate at which lemmings fall
3 pixels I think.... cant remember this one exactly..

Rate at which lemmings float
2...?

Rate at which lemmings mine
Animation+Mask

Rate at which lemmings bridge
based on Animation

Rate at which lemmings climb
1 pixel.

Length of all types of death animations
lol... no idea... so many... just count the frames! :)


formula for how fast lemmings are realeased in accordance to release rate
frame rate counter I think... cant remember off hand!

formula for the order of trap doors lemmings come out of
Just loop round from the first to the last (up to 4) and start again

span of a single bridge
Cant remember... juct count from start to end of buyilding...

tunnel shape created by miners
Mask based..

tunnel height bashers
Mask based..

tunnel width by diggers
Mask based..

area destroyed by a bomber
Mask based..

Conditions in which a lemming will pass a blocker when falling on it
This was a "bug" really... based on the 4 pixel collision mask.

Conditions in which a blocker will become a normal lemming again
If the ground vanishes, be becomes a faller....

height at which a lemming will fall and die-65 pixels
Mmm.. dont know off hand.


playing field area- 1584 x 160 pixels
5 screens wide. 1600x160. Some might have been hidden as a scroll area.


anything else involving lemmings physics basically.
No idea :)

However, if you only have three trapdoors, the order is 1, 2, 3, 2 (loop), not 1, 2, 3 (loop).

Hm.  Uh, well, when you give me a number for falling rate, for example 3 pixel, is that per second or per frame?  Also, what of the masks?  I could use those too, even if they aren't numerical.  If they aren't numeric already, then they can be translated into a numerical state (but this would be very annoying).  Also, the thing with the lemmings falling onto a blocker still doesn't make sense to me really.  How much ground needs to be gone before the blocker turns back into a lemming?  I need more numbers.

Should be one pixel in the air to make a blocker a faller.
And the faller: Just think. 3 pixel per second? XD of course per frame.

If that was a "bug", then what is the intended behavior?  That lemmings can walk on top of the blocker?  Would you be able to stack multiple blockers like Lemmings 3D?

This seems rather pointless.  The lemming is destined for death and can't do anything or affect anyone, no matter how long it takes to die......

Incidentally, you probably know this already, but with deaths caused by triggered traps (beartrap, 10-ton, etc.), the lemming dies (meaning the number of lemmings out is updated immediately) as soon as the trap is triggered.  The "lemming" that you see in the death animation is actually just graphics included in the animation frames of the death animation.

The bug that (I think) he is referring can be seen more clearly when the blocker is right next to a wall that should not be passable. A lemming falling on the blocker can walk past it and through the wall.

<somewhat off-topic observation>
You can do this experiment if you have access to LemEdit:
Make a simple level in the Fire graphics set using the thing bar pieces for vertical walls. Have two windows, one that would be the source of the blockers below, and one above that would be the source of lemmings falling on top of blockers.

Experimenting with different positions (to the pixel) of walls and blockers, the outcome of whether or not the lemming will be able to walk past the blocker will change. Also, sometimes the lemming will walk past the blocker and hit the wall, and sometimes it will walk past the blocker, and past the wall. (I exploit the latter trick in one of my levels.) I suppose this has something to do with the alignment of the collision masks.

Let me be clear what I mean about different positions of the walls. I'm talking about their specific X coordinates, which changes the behavior of lemmings walking past blockers. (That is, by shifting my aforementioned level by 1, 2, or 3 pixels (I'm not sure which is the number that will prevent the trick from working) either to the left or to the right, the level can be made impossible.
</somewhat off-topic observation>

About your question, I think the intended behavior would be that the lemmings would always be pushed to one side or the other when falling from a specific position. As it is now, a lemming falling from the left and a lemming falling from the right that both land near the center of a blocker will both continue on their normal ways. The desired behavior might have them always be pushed in the same direction, but personally I think the "bug" has its advantages, and it's not too unrealistic either.

A lemming facing to the right would turn to face left after falling on the blocker, not that it would be able to walk on top of the blocker itself. This is just a guess though.

Actually, if that was the bug, I think Cheapo's current behavior makes the most sense.   (Lemmings at the center of the blocker will walk thru it, but are still affected by any walls nearby as usual.)

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

On a side note, it's interesting that even weirder behavior occurs with Lemmings 2 when you have a setup where a lemming land at the center of a blocker and walk towards a wall nearby.  Whereas in Lemmings 1 the lemming merely gets trapped inside the wall, in Lemmings 2, anytime a lemming gets trapped like this, he will start climbing up inside the wall until he's untrapped!  (This is basically an incorrect application of the behavior where if you had a lemming fill up a deep pit with glue/filler, he will be able to climb up out of the glue/filler when done.)

okay..... I might miss some but here goes... :)

All speeds are based on frame rates. The game runs at 3-50Hz frames per game cycle. Or about  16.5-17fps.
L2 runs at the same speed... but due to the interupt driven "smooth scrolling", its not nearly as noticable.

The MASK's were graphical mask that were applied to thge background mask. The background mask is invisible, but is what the lemmings walked on. This allows you to add or remove walkable surface easily. You could also easily add invisible ground if you really wanted to.. we never did BTW. I cant give these out as its part of what makes lemmings ... "lemmings" ... as it were. And thats owned by Sony. They were just solid graphics though, so you can probably extract them from the game.

Yes... Once the lemmings hit a trap, they were killed off, and the trap animation played.

The trap door thing sounds like a bug, one we never noticed.   :)

Blocker collision was based at his feet. So if a Lemming fell just to the right, he'd go right etc.

What "should" have happened, is a lemming should have turned round if it hit any part of a blocker. But this didn't happen, and the implementation we used, provided better playability so...

If you dig away 1 pixel at the blockers feet, he will turn into a faller, and then become a normal lemming again. This was to stop having lemmings floating in mid-air.

L2 did have a "fix" to stop lemmings becoming stuck. The "climing" thing was by design. It was too easy to get Lemmings stuck in Lemmings #1.

In ONML!, Havoc 12 "It's all a matter of timing" uses three windows, and the level is set up in such a way that takes advantage of twice as many lemmings coming out of the second window. Then again, that was ONML!, not the original Lemmings, but still, the original Lemming has "Triple Trouble" which has three windows... not sure if there are others off-hand.

My guess is that the game treats it like there are always 4 windows, but of course you would know better than me, this is just a guess.

1 window: 1, 1, 1, 1
2 windows: 1, 2, 1, 2
3 windows: 1, 2, 3, 2
4 windows: 1, 2, 3, 4

LOL in case it's not obvious from Mike's replies, a lot of details can be forgotten after 14+ years.  ;)

There's always the possibility to try to find certain things out by yourself, especially now you have DOSBox which makes screen capturing fairly easy, and LemEdit to create specific levels for testing specific stuff.  And there's probably some setting in DOSBox that allows you to slow down time (hopefully), in which case you can really just count the frames--if you have the patience.

Also keep in mind that the numbers you are seeking are, in some cases (or possibly many), particular to the PC version of Lemmings.  But there are many many ports of Lemmings out there, and while the PC version might be the most widely played one, it's not even really the "original" one per se.

Things like max safe fall distance or min turnaround wall heights will probably vary on different platforms depending on what screen resolutions are supported, for example.

Of course, I suppose the PC version does have the compelling advantage that it is the only version where a known, usable level editor is publicly available.

Is it possible that a sneaky level designer placed two windows one above the other so that they look like one? That's how I'd get that effect in a Cheapo level..........

Of course it's possible, but completely unnecessary! There's no reason to believe the designer placed an extra window, since I'm sure they would have been aware of the behavior from either "Triple Trouble" or experimentation.

Actually, this theory can be tested. Open the level up in LemEdit and see for yourself...

Or simply create a level with three trap doors . . .

Oh. That's if you're testing the mechanics behind it. I'm positive it works 1,2,3,2... But I guess others might not be convinced (even though there are 0 counterexamples to this rule, just look at all the user-designed levels with 3 trapdoors.)

But if you're wondering if the designers actually put the 4th window in that particular level, you'd have to open the particular level to find out...

There's an awful lot about counting frames here and I happen to have an interesting trick... In winlemm, look in the folder where all the main game files are(on the disc), and there should be a folder named 'GFX'. Look in there and you can find a .bmp with at least most of the animation frames in it!

Yeah, I saw that too...

hey...

where has Mike been anyway?

Mike:

1.Why there's some different version of original Lemmings under Dos? Here's the thing I mean with "version":
1. First level music reappears on other levels when there's a failure
2. Cheat code and Version number code don't work
3. Falling from too high height isn't the same
Why?

2. Was Customized Lemmings release on a CD? And why the CD tracks play in this order while playing the game: 9 - 10 - 11 - 13 - 14 - 7? Do you know?

Let's hope that you'll come back here soon, Mike!

Do you think he would respond to an email?

Dunno! Just try!

Are you sure they are "official" versions, as opposed to cracked versions?


Wow, a DOS version that does this????  That's a new.

Are you sure about this?  I guess "We All Fall Down" would be the litmus test.

Again, if it's a DOS version where you don't have to do anything to solve "We All Fall Down", I'm inclined to say your copy is a cracked copy that changes more than the copy protection......


I doubt it.  Customized lemmings is a hacked version of the EXE from ONML I believe.  I very much doubt it was ever released in any format except as a download--it would take money and time to make and distribute CDs and you can't legally charge anyone for the program, so it just won't be worth anyone's time to do release it on a CD.  I have no idea about the CD track orders--but it's possible (though completely speculative) that the hacker might have hacked in music-playing code from some other game that happens to have this CD track order.  (I seem to recall the L2 Tribes demo has a long, technical readme about CD playback, I wonder if custlemm ripped code from the L2 demo?)

In short, I highly doubt that Mike would know anything about the CustLemm question, and perhaps not much about the first question either.  Remember, he didn't even know about LemEdit until I mentioned it to him when he was talking about his Amiga floppy with DMA's official level editor.

Yeah, I once played it. In the first Level of Mayhem the Lemmings can fall down and won't be hurt.

Sort of related...

On my (cracked) version of Lemmings, the safe fall height seems to be normal.

But then I played Conway's "We All Fall Down" challenge level (fewer diggers), the lemmings safely landed in CustLemm. Now, I can't say for sure that the level layouts are the same in both cases... but if they are, then CustLemm has a greater safe fall distance than the regular Lemmings...

Wow, definitely news for me.  Gotta test this out...but still busy for next 7 hours.......

I wonder if the ONML game engine itself had the greater safe fall distance?  I remember peaking at the solutions from "The Lemmings Solution" site on certain ONML levels and thinking that the falling distance seems a bit higher than I'd think safe.  But I'm hardly a good judge of safe falling distances so this might mean nothing.

Very easy to test with LemEdit:  you should be able to transfer levels between the official .dat files.  Of course you probably want to make a copy of the files first so you still have an pristine copy of the game.

I take that back, I think I was just misled by the picture and the somewhat brief description of the solution.

But it is still worth testing how "We all Fall down" behaves in ONML and the Xmas lemmings.

Yeah, since CustLemm uses the ONML engine that would make sense. I'll try it when I get a chance.

Well, I tried it and the result is negative.

ONML still uses the same safe-fall distance as original Lemmings; We All Fall Down works as expected.

But yes, my copy of custlemm definitely has a different safe-fall distance, as tested on "We All Fall Down".

I haven't tested xmas lemmings yet.

I guess Mike could still answer the question regarding how many versions of original Lemmings were released to the public.  Just to see if there could be the possibility of an official version of the game having an altered safe-fall distance.

Or perhaps this is an unreleased version of DOS Lemmings that was at one point sent to the team responsible for making Lemmings for Windows?  In which case maybe the altered safe-fall distance in Lemmings for Windows is actually a by-product of the change in the DOS version?

The mystery deepens......

So the question is: What is the correct safe-fall distance and how high it is?

Clearly the safe-fall distance should be whatever makes the level "We All Fall Down" works.

So any version where you don't have to do anything to pass "We All Fall Down", a level that's repeated 4 times in the game, has what I'd say a wrong safe-fall distance.

Which is why I'm of the opinion that any versions of Lemmings that has such an incorrect distance must be the result of an unofficial hack.  But I could be wrong.  So, where are you, Mike?  ;)

Could this be why We All Fall Down is not in the Windows version?

It's not???  :???: I was under the impression that it is, this is how everyone knows the Windows version has a higher safe-fall distance.

The We all fall down level in Fun is not in the windows version. The other We all fall down levels are there. And I just tested it, you cannot complete "We all fall down" in the windows version by doing nothing. I don't know why the Fun one isn't there though

Boy am I confused then.  :-[ X_X

So the version of the game with the incorrect safe-fall distance is a DOS version then, I guess.

I remember it had been referred to as the "CD version" or something, which might also explain the CD-audio capabilities.

I am still of the opinion, until Mike corrected me otherwise, that the distance change is unauthorized, if not that entire copy of the game.

Well actually, I might not be as confused as I thought.

So I Google for "Lemmings" and "CD version".  I didn't found much, but there are 3 links where a CD version of Lemmings is mentioned:

http://faqs.ign.com/articles/369/369161p1.html

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=90847&item=8194910822&rd=1#ebayphotohosting

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=90847&item=8194242732&rd=1

Link #1 mentions the CD version and explicitly speaks of the incorrect safe-fall distance.  It did not however specify whether the game runs in DOS or Windows.  It did say it was "released by the Slash Corporation in 1995".

Link #2 is an e-bay item.  The title of this listing specifically says "Lemmings for windows PC CD ROM".  But it didn't mention anything about safe-fall distances or "We All Fall Down".  Because of the blurry photo it is impossible to make out who released this one.

Link #3 is another e-bay item.  Title of listing states "NEW Lemmings for Windows PC CD A Classic Bestseller".  It again didn't mention anything about safe-fall distances or "We All Fall Down", but it did mention that this version of the game has both the original and the ONML levels.

So clearly the Windows version(s?) of the game did come in CD-ROM format, and there was one CD version that has an incorrect safe-fall distance.  But it is not clear whether the CD version with the incorrect safe-fall distance is a Windows or DOS version of the game.

What might be of interest is if someone sent me the version of the DOS game that has the incorrect safe-fall distance.  Email guestlevels (at) yahoo.

Ah, I read it again and found something new, link #1 also mentioned that the CD version it's talking about has the ONML levels.

So it seems very likely that he is talking about the same version of the game as in link #3, which is a Windows game.  So at this point there is no evidence of a DOS version of the game that was released on a CD.

So ISU, does the Windows version of the game you tested have the ONML levels?

Yes, I recieved the windows version (PC CD) of lemmings in a 3-game box set called "Lets go crazy with lemmings". It included the aforementioned lemmings, lemmings Paintball, and Lemmings 3D.

I don't know for sure, but maybe there are different PC CD versions of lemmings. It would explain why the max safe fall distance on my version is the same as the DOS version.

Another thing worth mentioning, The PC CD I got was released by Visual Sciences (I think). Apart from the DMA and Psygnosis logos, a Visual Sciences and Dice computer games logo is also displayed on the box, don't know if this means anything

Here is what I found in the first link. Here is the answer:



For the level "Easy When You Know How", a huge strange trick O_o:


So, I guess that the "floppy disk" version is the good one, right?

Well if it has Lemmings 3D and Paintball, my guess would be that your Windows version must be one of the later releases.  perhaps the earlier Windows version(s) did have the bad safe-fall distance but they quietly fixed it since.

Yes, it most likely is, but the CD version I got doesn't seem to have any major flaws either.


Do you think so? I guess it's possible...

I have a question about the differences between WinLem and 'original' lemmings too:
In WinLem, an exploding lemming works like a blocker, i.e. he turns other lemmings around.
I found that out playing 'Five Alive' and thought it has to be in that way.
Now, playing original lemmings with dosbox, I see that an exploding lemming doesn't turn other lemmings around.
What is right, what was it supposed to be?

I think that due to the fact you are given 2 builders on the "Many lemmings make level work" level, The right process is for the bomber to turn the lemming.

Well, might be true. Is there a difference between original and ONML in that fact?
I haven't tried that out in ONML with dosbox 'cause I don't get it work.

However, I solved that level letting the bomber fall a tiny because I didn't see that I could turn the one around at the second time with building. :)

\edit: I looked up the solution of 'Five Alive' from the wanadoo solutions page and it seems that in that way the second lemming isn't turned around. :???:

Mike's really the only one qualify to answer, but I'd guess that unless you explicitly made him a blocker also, a bomber shouldn't be blocking anyone during any phase of its existence.

Indeed.

You don't need the bomber to turn lemmings to solve "Many lemmings make level work". Make the second lemming a builder as a delay; the first lemming will then explode before the next lemming reaches him.

In fact, bombers are not supposed to make other lemmings to turn around. I guess in WinLemm, they did that because of the blockers. I guess that exploding blockers make lemmings to turn around and when it's a walker that gonna explode, it takes the same "event" or the same "sequence" of the blocker, it reacts like if it was one, but it shouldn't. What do you think about this?

On many versions (including Cheapo) it's the other way round -- exploding blockers don't turn other lemmings in the half-second before they explode.

(I exploited this to backroute Insane Steve's "Survival Curve". Sorry Steve!)

I was only aware of Cheapo in this regard.  What versions of Lemmings also do this?

And indeed, I tested the PC version (both original and ONML), the SNES version, the Genesis/Megadrive version, and even the Amiga version (both original and ONML).

NONE exhibit the behavior found in Cheapo.

So rather than "many" versions, looks like it's just Cheapo and maybe the Mac version.  And maybe other lemmings clones but who cares?  ;)

Odd.... I was sure I remembered seeing that behaviour on the Genesis version. I'll check that and the Mac version as soon as I get a chance.

I feel sorry for Mike...being "bombarded" by questions

Hmm, maybe that's why he hasn't been reading any of this lately......  ;)

You know, I haven't really seen him around anyway.

A lemming was allowed to fall 60 pixels before he splatted. Any other number, and it was a hacked copy.

There was never any editor released, so any version with an editor is also a hacked copy.

On frame 1 of the explosion (when the background is removed, and the lemming starts to fly apart), the blocker collision is removed. Windows Lemmings was a "C" rewrite, so it might have bugs/new features in it that were missed. Its fairly simple to convert 68000 into x86, but when coding into a high level language, you sometimes miss bits.

This is the Amiga (and probably the PC DOS) behavior. The PC version was a line for line (virtually) conversion of the Amiga one.

B)

Close.  But examining the screenshot in "The Lemmings Solution" site shows that the distance actually seems to be 66 pixels rather than 60.

Still, Mike's statement would strongly implicate that custlemm hacked the falling distance.  Yet another reason to curse VTM.

Yaay! Mike is back! :D

And what about this, Mike:


Sorry to give you more questions to answer... Let's hope that it doesn't disturb you! :-[

I have answered these. There was only 1 version of Lemmings released on DOS (as far as I know), and so all others were either cracks, hacks, or extensions but persons unknown.  

In which case, Ive no idea as it wasnt done by us.

I believe I already said Mike probably won't be able to answer your second question, since custlemm is not an official version of Lemmings.  Unless he happens to know some code from some game of Lemmings that happen to use CD tracks in that order.

And even then, maybe the CD track order was hacked too.  For all I know, maybe those tracks were the the favorite songs from the hacker's favorite CD in his favorite order.  Maybe that's what he likes to listen to while playtesting custlemm to make sure his hacks didn't break the thing.  ;)

That seems a bit high to me..... looking at "Many lemmings make level work" (3 Crazy), the second drop is 70 pixels, and from what I remember you have to bomb right on the corner to make it survivable, so the maximum safe fall distance ought to be 62......

I counted it once pixel by pixel once on we all fall down, and I came up with a number and wrote it down somewhere.  I'll have to find it.

That's not a good test, since with a bomber and nothing else you are basically forced to eliminate a minimum amount of height on the fall.  You can only conclude that 70 is too high and 62 is low enough, but nothing about the heights in between.

The reason "We All Fall Down" is perfect is because the digger lowers the fall height pixel-by-pixel, making it very easy to tell.  My assumption is that lowering the height by 1 pixel on that level should be enough, but I could remember wrong.

"Steel works" would have been even better, except it's too hard to tell where exactly they start falling from.

-----------

Oh, and I miscalculated, it should be 65.  :-[

Never mind, I"m an idiot, I see what you mean now.

That being said, I don't know how reliable it is to depend on bomber location.  The curved side of a bomb hole is fairly steep, so you have to be extremely precise in your bomber placement to conclude for sure that you really can't be off by 1 pixel.

Ok, I took a measurement on Fun 11.  The fatal drop there is 68 pixels, and I seem to remember you need to build 5 steps to make the fall safe.  So this would mean 63 pixels.

So I guess you do need to dig down a little more than I remembered in "We All Fall Down".

That's ambiguous, though, because I'm not sure how you are measuring the fall. For clarity, I measure it from the pixel above the upper ground to the pixel below the lower ground.

A little experimenting with the first drop on 3 Crazy shows that they can survive when the drop is 62 pixels but not when it's 64. My earlier figure may have been one off because of the larger bomb explosion area on Cheapo. So it looks like we agree.....

Um, so it sounds like a non-falling lemming still counts as a 1-pixel fall in your system I think......  O_o

The way I measure it is effectively counting the height of the cliff.  So this is a 3-pixel fall for example (X = pixels of ground):

XXX
XXX
XXX
XXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXX


You can't possibly be testing with Cheapo.  Cheapo's max safe-fall distance is even higher than CustLemm's, and Custlemm's already higher than the original unadulterated Lemming's.

Unless you're mixing the bomb explosion mask of Cheapo with the screenshot from "The Lemmings Solution" site or something.  :???:

It's crazy! =8O

60, 62, 63, 65, 70... O_o

Yeah this is kind of insane.  Someone needs to simply open lemmings & lemedit, make a cliff starting at 60 pixels high and then test all of the figures Dragon stated.

Of course; how else do you expect me to do it? The Mac takes ages to start up, so I'm not going to do that just to test how many pixels deep a bomb hole is.

However, I should have been more explicit, because I was trying a couple more of the "Challenges" I did take the opportunity to experiment on the Mac, and that's what my last post refers to.

lol.... What are you lot like.... They should be 60 pixels, or its been hacked.

Heres the actual Amiga code, and the PC code will be the same (I can probably find it somewhere...)

Each time a lemming drops 1 pixel, it checks to see if its hit ground, if it has, it jumps to this.




StopAndCheck      cmp.b      #60,LemmingFallCount(a0)      the fall counter
     bls.s      FellOK
     tst.b      LemmingFloater(a0)
     bne      FellOK
     
     clr.w      LemmingAnim(a0)
     bset      #LemmingSplatting,d6
     bclr      #LemmingExploding,d6
     clr.b      LemmingCountdown(a0)
     move.l      #LemmingSplatBase,LemmingAddress(a0)
     clr.w      XDirection(a0)

     move.w      #$13<<8!FXSplat,FXNumber(a5)
     move.w      LemmingX(a0),FXPosition(a5)
     bsr      PlayFX

     bra      NextLemming

FellOK      bclr      #lemmingFalling,d6
     MakeWalker
     bra      NextLemming

PC Version.....  So there you go   B)


MaxFallCount            equ      60


StopAndCheck:      mov      [si.Lemming.yc],bp
           cmp      [si.Lemming.FallCount],MaxFallCount
           jbe      FellOK

           MakeSplatter
           jmp      NextLemming

FellOK:            MakeWalker
           jmp      NextLemming
ProcessFall      ENDP

So, the answer is: 60

Nothing else!

Hmm...well, anyone has a copy of PC Lemmings in its original disks to test it out?

It's hard to argue with Mike's source code, but......

(Of course, to be completely unambiguous we'll really need to see more source code, in particular to check whether it is really the case that each increment of fallcount corresponds visually to falling down by 1-pixel.  We also need to make sure fallcount is correctly initialized before a fall to 0 and not, say, -1.)

As much as I trust Mike, as I pointed out in the previous post, there are ways for which what that snippet of source code seems to say differ from what actually happens in the game.  I still think it'd be good to do a test with a copy of Lemmings from the original disk.

:)

okay.... for the curious....

A lemming "pixel" is the one right under his feet. This is the one that he walks on. When thats not there, and the one below that is, then he has fallen 1 pixel.  so...


***********
******************


This is a 1 pixel fall - except he'll walk this. A Lemming will "walk" down up to 3 pixels. 4 and over he turns into a faller. (he'll "jump" up 6 pixels BTW). So a drop of 60, should visually BE 60. This is EASY to test if your determined. Using Windows lemmings, you can easilly edit a level (by hand if you need to) to place blocks 60 pixels appart. You could then do one 61 pixels appart.

If you ask me, I'm happy to just go with sixty- I mean, what does it affect if it isn't?  If you need to know for level editing purposes then just adjust the cliff until it's good.  If it's for solving a level, then just test the cliff during play.  If the lemming dies it's too high.  If not then (state the obvious here).

Well, since LemEdit displays the coordinates of your pieces, having a precise number means you may be able to avoid having to guess-and-check your way to the height you want.

Other than that, just a matter of curiosity...well actually, no.  For the various Lemming challenges, sometimes it might be critical to know whether the falling distances certain parts of a solution rely on is universal or not.

Since Mike mentioned how the game treats a 3-pixel drop as a "walk" rather than a fall, my gut feeling is that, the fall count probably only starts counting when you go past the 3 pixel "walk", which would very nicely explain a cliff of 63 pixels that my numbers are indicating (60+3=63).  But then again my 63 pixels might be just for my copy of the game.

Hence the need for someone with an original-disk-condition copy of the game to test and settle......

I'm starting to think it is very likely that my 63 and your 60 are the same.  Since the source code you produce seems to specifically process fallers, if lemmings aren't turned from walkers into fallers until after heading down 3 pixels (which sounds like what you're talking about), then this would account for the cliff height of 63 I was getting, as 3 + 60 = 63.

Feel free to produce additional source code to support or refute.  ;)

Sorry to break the "fall height" discussion, but...
@Mike: Would you happen to know where the PC version of Lemmings stores the level order data?

The 3 pixels that a lemming "walks" down, are included in the 60 pixel drop. so it's 60, not 63.

-----------

There is an indirection table for levels. So when on level (say 4), it might tell you to load level 15 instead.

Below is the table I have. The numbers have to be divided by 2. If the bottom bit is set, then its a duplicate, and it gets the new skills from an "odd table", which is loaded in from "ODDTABLE.DAT".

These are levels that have new skills to make them easier. So if the indirection table has the bottom bit set, its a duplicate level, with overidden skills. The PD version, doesnt use an indrection table, and while the data disk does(Oh NO!), it doesnt use the odd table.


; Fun Levels
     db      147,155,157,149,151,153,159,14,22,54      
     db      70,16,29,32,38,42,48,72,84,104
     db      138,23,68,96,98,116,78,100,108,134

; Tricky Levels
     db      1,30,36,50,52,56,58,80,102,120
     db      128,130,136,5,148,152,154,156,160,7
     db      11,13,15,17,19,21,25,27,33,31

; Taxing Levels
     db      37,39,41,43,45,47,49,51,53,55
     db      57,59,61,63,3,65,67,69,71,73
     db      75,77,79,81,83,85,87,89,35,111

; Mayhem Levels
     db      91,93,95,97,99,101,103,105,107,109
     db      112,113,115,117,119,121,123,125,127,150
     db      129,9,131,133,135,137,139,141,143,145

Ok, I searched the disassembly of my copy of Lemmings.  To my relieve, I was able to locate the "cmp [si.Lemming.FallCount],MaxFallCount" line and MaxFallCount on my copy is indeed 60.

So I can now be fairly confident that my copy is not hacked with regards to MaxFallCount.  The discrepencies between my observations and Mike's assertions must then have to do with other parts of the code.

I try locating nearby lines of code that references [si.Lemmings.FallCount].  I found three more that come before the MaxFallCount compare line, but it's hard to unambiguously make out their significance without first understand all the surrounding code in between.

There is one line that compares [si.Lemmings.FallCount] to the value 16.  I'd guess this probably has something to do with when a floater starts floating.

There is one line that adds 3 to si.Lemming.FallCount.  This really doesn't say much though without seeing how the Lemming's y-position changes.  However, notice that even right off the bat, this means a fall of, say, 62 pixels, may still be survivable, depending on when exactly the "add 3" occurs.  Namely, if "add 3" doesn't occur until you've truly fallen 3 pixels beyond where you were after the previous "add 3", then if the fall is 62, you would still survive since the next "add 3" only comes on 63.

And the earliest line I found assigns the value 3 to si.Lemming.FallCount.  Again, doesn't say much without knowing how the Lemming's y-position changes.

---------------------

Intriguingly, whatever the resolution with regards to the falling distance, we now have the information necessary to hack (or in my opinion, fix) CustLemm so it obeys the correct falling distance.  We just find the cmp [si.Lemming.FallCount],MaxFallCount line and change the value of MaxFallCount there (back) to 60 and that should do it.

Of course, I doubt anyone would want this, since there are probably quite a number of CustLemm levels out there that depends on CustLemm's higher fall distance, but the possibility is still there.

Oh, so that's why it's called "oddtable" -- the number would be odd (as in, not even) when the bottom bit is set.

Unfortunately, it's the other way round! Levels with odd numbers are originals; levels with even numbers are duplicates. (Look at Mike's list of numbers. Fun 3, for example, has no duplicate, and is odd.)

On the Mac, if you open the levels with ResEdit, the even ones correspond to resources with no level data, just skills and level statistics -- these are obviously the duplicates, since they don't need level data of their own. However, the resource type for these is called an ODDL (as opposed to LEVL) so it still contains the word "odd".......

Another interesting fact is that, in most pairs, the harder level is the original and the easier level is the duplicate -- as expected, since the harder ones were made first. However, this isn't true for Fun 1-7 (the training levels). Were these made before the harder versions? (That would make sense, both because it's easier to imagine someone thinking "Let's start with training levels for the different skills" than "Let's make easier versions of these as training levels" -- and because, with the one exception of Fun 4, the harder versions slot neatly into place before the harder versions of the later levels.)

Yet something fishy is clearly going on, because that would make 3 Crazy (Many lemmings make level work) impossible..... though I guess if there was a mistake it would be spotted in playtesting and they'd make sure the fall was the right distance that it could be done.

Well, perhaps not. Your forgetting that as levels are put together and order+difficulty tuned, the harder ones might be dropped altogehter, so the "odd" table version might be the only one left. So this doesnt mean that there IS a duplicate, just that the level info+skills are different from the level stored on disk.

Yes, for the most part, all levels were hard versions, with the exception of (around) the first 7, which were made to be introductionary ones.

The reason for tha +3, is optimisation. Its faster to "inc bp" 3 times, rather than add to a memory location. So, for walkers/fallers, collision was checked "quickly", and only once it knew it was still falling, were the 3 pixels its already checked added on to the fall memory location.

Memory is slow in computers, registers are fast. So you use registers whenever you can.

Believe me.... its 60 pixels.  :mikelaugh:

I haven't played "oh no!" levels, but Im guessing that you bomb just as he drops off the ladder so that he blasts a hole in the ground allowing the rest to survive the fall?

Theres always the chance that in On No! they changed it, and my source is out of date.... but I dont think so. It has DataDisk code in it, so it looks final.

Gaah. Sorry, that was very stupid of me. Of course it would be possible that way; it doesn't prove anything one way or the other about whether it was intended.

Can't you just show a few more lines of source code before the stuff you did show?

All I need to know is how the 3 other previous lines involving si.lemming.fallcount fits in.

I've measured it again and it is definitely a cliff of 63 pixels on Fun 11 (ie. you dig down five times at the edge from the top to make a survivable fall, and four is not enough).  Since I also did found the 60 in my copy of lemmings, clearly the 63 results from other lines of code at play, whether intentionally or accidentally.  I already mention that if fallcount is only incremented by 3 and not by smaller amounts, it's conceivably possible to fall 62 pixels and have fallcount still be at 60.

Hay! We're all allowed to be stupid!! It keeps us honest! And I'm about to prove that!


Actually... after tracing through the walker code, as well as faller and splatter, it looks like it is probably 63(!) . The walker checks 4 pixels down before he becomes a faller, then "makefaller" is used (macro). It sets the fall count to 0. This means he has already fallen 3 pixels when he was a walker. (faller code checks the 4th pixel, so in effect he's only fallen 3)

A  "faller" falls 3 pixels at a time, and hence the "add 3" later. But when he's a walker, hes allowed to fall 4 first, before the counter is even set. But due to the faller checking the current pixel first, and not the one below him, its only 3

So there you go... even us tired old slobs get it wrong when reading others code :)  
(actually.... I get it wrong all the time.... and the only way to stay normal is to admit it!  :mikewinktounge: )
Well done! You may now run around feeling smug, and telling everyone how cool you are!  :mikecool:

Wonder if the Amiga one is the same.... probably.

Now it gets interesting.... The Amiga one is different!!

When a walker falls 4 pixels, he sets the counter to 3 to start with, not 0!

The first thing a faller does, is check the current pixel, so the 4th pixel the faller fell, doesn't matter. It DOES start with 3. In effect, a walker will fall the first 3 pixels, even though he moves down 4, the 4th is tested by the faller code... This allows you to "see" the animation, rather than it happening in a single frame.

This means the PC version does have a bug, and some levels would be easier to complete. ahhh.. knew the Amiga one was better :D

Wonder if Windows Lemmings has the same bug? It was a complete rewrite, but would be based on the x86 code. (I dont have this...)

You should get an emulator and test the Amiga one now.....since your so good at it!  ;)

Russell just had a look at the Windows Lemmings code. It looks like it has the same bug... unless theres a "fix" elsewere in it...he's going to check...

Quite nice actually.. All in C++, even though it was written way back in 94! Ahead of its time!

Although... its funny how ugly "structured" code can look compared to simple assembler. When you don't use goto's in C, nested IF's can look horrible.

So this is hard-coded into the Lemmings executable?

Edit: Also, what is the 'PD version'?

On the PC version yes.... I think the Amiga one loads it.

PD is Public Domain, or "free" demos.

I'm sorry, and I especially hate to re-bring this tired topic up, but I just checked the Amiga version and I don't believe it behaves differently compared with the PC version, in regards to the maximum height of fall.

The smoking gun is the Mayhem-1 test.  As some people here might know, on Mayhem 1, if you have the first lemming build immediately upon landing, that 1 pixel from the build brick is enough to lower the falling distance to become safe for everyone.

If the Amiga version has a shorter safe falling distance than the PC, then one of the following should be true:

1) This trick only works on the PC version and not the Amiga; or

2) This trick works on both versions, but on the PC you wouldn't even need this trick to begin with, since it supposedly have a higher safe falling distance.

Neither are true however.  The trick works on both versions, and on the PC the drop as-is is fatal as intended.

It's possible that maybe the level is layout slightly differently in the two versions, but to rule that out, I measure the distance from entrance to ground for that level, and they are the same on both versions.

------------------

Now I don't want you to go over the code again like you did last time (I was actually rather surprised that you even bothered).  But I think it's safe to conclude that reading code has proven not to be an authoratative way to settle questions regarding Lemmings game mechanics, especially when the code in question is written 10 years ago.  ;P

In other words, next time someone here has a question about game mechanics, please do everyone a favor and figure it out on your own.  Have pity on Mike the old man.  ;P

-----------------

I want to end this by posting the partial disassembly I got from my copy of the PC version of the game.  It matches what Mike said for the most part, but not in certain places.  In particular, fallcount seems to be initialized to 3 as far as I can tell, not 0 as Mike said.

I commented the stuff as best as I could, to show what I managed to gather out of the code.  If you understand my comments, you should understand why I believe the code, in the way it is written, accidentally allowed for the lemming to fall up to 63 pixels even though it probably intended only 60.

Because it is several screens worth of stuff, most of which would be gibberish to most people, I've posted it on my site instead of directly in this post:

http://www.geocities.com/guestlevels/lemmings/disassembly1.txt

This is interesting... and crazy too! =8O

But Mike, what about:
a. First level music reappears on other levels when there's a failure
b. Cheat code and Version number code don't work on some versions (sometimes it's only the cheat code that doesn't work and sometimes it's the Version number code).

I guess, still there, that it's still hacking, right?

Then finally, is it possible to get a fully originial lemmings where there's no bugs of whatever on PC only?

What app did you use to disassemble it?

Well, the lemmings EXEs are compressed with pklite, so you'll first need to uncompress them.  There's a "pkunlite" program out there that can do this, Google for it.

After that, pretty much any DOS debuggers can give you a disassembly, even the lowly DEBUG.EXE from the days of DOS.  Again, I suggest Googling to find one.

Of course, the entire diassembly has like probably over 10 thousands lines, so...well, have fun. :)  For the purpose right here, since Mike produced some source code, I have an idea what the corresponding assembly code is, so I just do a byte-search in the debugger to find what I'm looking for and go from there.  You'd noticed from my comments in disassembly1.txt that even after confining yourself to a small section, there's still a lot of guessing as to what a lot of the code actually does.

I'm not planning to disassemble it, I was just wondering what app you used... :P

But it could be interesting to correct all of these bugs in the Lemmings games. Instead to have a lot of hacking versions of Lemmings, why not getting the PERFECT version of Lemmings?

I would consider the version of Lemmings that came in the original disks as a "perfect" version of Lemmings.  There's no need to hack anything for that.

I was speaking to Russell today, and Lemmigs (as usual) came up. The version of the source I have appears to be "Oh No! More Lemmings", and he seemed to rememebr that there was a fudge needed in that one to make levels work.That means the 3 being added was only in Lemmings, and not Oh No.

So, my source is correct for Oh No, and wrong for Lemmings. Lemmings had a #3 in there, Oh no had a #0. (or so he thinks...) My Amiga source is from L1.

Dont have the ST source.. But being 68K, Id imagine it was just the Amiga one for all the processing....

I used LemEdit to import "We all fall down" and "Steel Works" into Oh No! More Lemmings.

In both cases, the levels behaved exactly as you would have expected. In "We all fall down", you need to dig several (3) pixels down before lemmings safely drop. In "Steel Works", exactly one step is required to save the falling lemmings.

Then I imported these two levels into a CustLemm pack. The result?

The drop in both cases is non-fatal. But by how much? The drop in "We all fall down" is a 66-pixel drop. I added builders to the level, and with a one pixel increase in height, the drop becomes fatal.

So, clearly CustLemm is the version with the buggy max fall distance.

Safe Fall Distances (DOS):
Lemmings: 63
ONML: 63
CustLemm: 66

Now if only we could fix CustLemm...!

It's probably within my ability to fix custlemm, but the question is, should we?  I don't really want to break someone's level due to the change.

Though hopefully with such a small difference, it shouldn't affect too many levels if any.

I think we should, if it wouldn't be too much of a problem for you to do. Besides, if a level is broken because of it, you can always play on the old CustLemm. Of course, you might not know if a level is broken because of it if it becomes impossible... Either way, it would be nice to at least have the option of playing with the correct safe-fall distance. :)

Should we? I want to answer YES!

For the broken levels, just modify them to make them work.

And by the way, why not changing the safe-fall distance of Lemmings CD version too, to be exactly like the floppy version?

I'm sure you'll answer: Why not playing the floppy version instead? I won't because the first level song always reappear when there's a failure, and not in the CD version.

When I was younger, I used to think that the repeating first level song was kind of a punishment for losing the level, and not a bug :P It did make beating a level and hearing the different songs a good reward :) Of course, it could get annoying...

From what Mike said though I got this:

Lemmings: 60
ONML: 63

Timballisto, the tests (for DOS), say otherwise.

With a max safe-fall distance of 60, you would need 4 steps on Steel Works, and you'd need to fully dig to have a safe drop (That is, you would need to use every single digger given to you, since only diggers can get as low as 60 pixels (I think). The lowest a walker can get is 61 pixels.)

Okay then.  Just saying...

Well, I don't think I have the CD version, so someone'll need to give me a copy of it for me to even attempt doing anything with it.

The CD version is the SAME thing than lemmings on floppy, excepted that the Lemmings musics are ok and the safe-fall distance isn't good. I have this version and it is possible to get it on some abandonware websites.

(I can't send it for now, I'm not at home!)

If you hack CustLemm, make sure you hack the version number (or something else) so that people are able to check which version they have.

Ok, here's a twist to this ongoing saga  ;P:

So, upon popular request, I went ahead and hacked CustLemm tonight.  I was expecting that the change was in the line that compares fallcount to maxfallcount, with the constant value of maxfallcount set to a higher number.

Imagine to my surprise, that particular line remains the same in CustLemm!

So I looked elsewhere and quickly discovered the source of the difference.  And guess what?  The difference is in the initialization of fallcount in [what I make out to be] the "MakeFaller" macro!  (ie. it's the stuff Mike's talking about with the #3 vs. #0 thing.)

What's really interesting though about this is that the same line actually appears a total of 7 times in the code, so there would've been 7 places for you to change if you hack the binary directly.  But in all 7 places it appears in the context of the "MakeFaller" macro, which means that, if you have the source code, only one change (namely, to the macro itself) would've been needed.

If someone is hacking the EXE directly and wanted to change the safe falling distance, it would've been far easier for him to change the value of maxfallcount (just one place in the EXE), rather than having to change 7 different places where fallcount is initialized.  To be sure, search and replace isn't really that difficult, but still.

So it seems to me that, rather than someone's hacking the EXE, it looks like the result of the higher safe-fall distance in Custlemm was more likely a change from the original source code.  So this points to 2 possibilities:

1) Someone obtained the source code to Lemmings/ONML, and did the modification to the "MakeFaller" macro there, and then compile to generate the EXE

2) There is already an EXE out there that has the changed falling distance, and the person who made Custlemm made changes on the EXE, but never actually touched the falling distance stuff himself

Coupled with what Mike said above, I'm leaning towards #2, and so it really does sound like that there is an "official" version of Lemmings or ONML out there that has the FallCount initialization changed, resulting in the higher safe falling distance!

I checked my copy of ONML and it is unchanged with regards to the fallcount initialization (ie. it uses 3 just like Lemmings), which would explain why Shvegait failed to find a difference.  But of course, my copy of ONML was downloaded from abandonia.com, so I don't know how authentic it is.  It's certainly not the exact original of ONML since there is no copy protection in my copy.

Oh yeah, and let's get back to what everyone's actually interested in:  ;P

As I've said, I've fixed the falling distance in CustLemm so it behaves the same as Lemmings.  The hacked EXE is now called CUSTLEM2.EXE.  To make it identifiable, I also changed a few text so that it would say something like "CustLemm v1.1", most notably in the first two text-based menus where you select VGA/EGA and machine type, and also in the scrolling credits on the game's main menu screen.

I've verified that it runs fine, but I didn't bother to check whether the falling distance really has changed as a result (or that it changed the right way).  It should, but I'm hoping one of you out there would do your part and test that out for me.

CustLem2 can be downloaded here:

http://www.geocities.com/lemmings/custlem2.zip

Notice it's only one m and not two m's, so it's CustLem2 not CustLemm2.  I did this so the filename fits in 8 characters as DOS requires.

Oops, THE URL I GAVE ABOVE IS WRONG.

Here's the correct URL:

http://www.geocities.com/guestlevels/lemmings/custlem2.zip

Cool, but why do we need another version of Custlem?

Looks like you missed most of the discussion here.   ;)Read page 9 of this thread.

Is it just to fix the fall limit?

guest, could you also "fix" the CD version- Original Lemmings?
You can grab it from:

http://membres.lycos.fr/createmania/download/Lemmdos.zip

Thanks!

Yes.  Well, it was Shvegait's suggestion:

The problem is that most fan levels are designed for Custlemm. If there are two versions, each new levelpack made will have to come with a note saying which version it was designed for. Having two versions, and therefore potentially two different types of levels, will only complicate things - not much, but it will complicate things.

I agree Conway. However, even one of your levels is BROKEN by the old CustLemm (The "We all fall down" modification.) It would be nice to play it for real without having to edit the level and shift the height up three pixels.

It is logical that any level that is a modification of any original Lemmings (and possibly ONML) level should have the correct max safe fall distance (where applicable). So this is just to have the option! Thanks guest! :)

Edit: I tested both "We all fall down" and "Steel Works", and they work properly :)


I think for new levels we should still probably use CustLemm as the standard for the reasons Conway stated.

Ok, after some thought, here's my current, totally speculative theory on the "falling distance saga":

It could be the case that, the ONML we download from abandonia.com is actually a hacked copy of the demo version of ONML.  (Does that exist?)

Since the demo version of ONML does not have copy protection (I think), it would make for a perfect candidate to convert to a full version of ONML that lacks copy protection.  I seem to remember hearing similar things having been done with the original Lemmings (ie. make the demo version of Lemmings run the full version's levels.)

Other possibilities include hacked copy of Xmas Lemmings, which I believe are also copy-protection free.  The Xmas-sy graphics are probably stored in the .dat files rather than the program itself, so as long as you switch to the ONML .dat files you'll get the regular non-Xmas-sy graphics.

This would then explain the discrepency with the falling distance as reported by Mike and Shvegait.  Since Mike said the change in falling distance occurs as a fudge to fix one of the ONML levels, it would probably occur late in the development cycle of the game, well after the ONML demo was released.  And so the official, full version of ONML would have a higher falling distance than the demo version.

Anyway, that's just my current theory.  The key evidence we need would be an official, from-the-floppy, unhacked, full version of ONML, if anybody has one.  And test out what its falling distance is.

As for why the CD version of Lemmings 1 has a higher falling distance, as well as the Windows version.  Well I'm not really sure at this point, but one strong possibility is that if they were made and released after DMA made the falling distance change in the source code during ONML development, then they too would get the higher falling distance, if nobody remembers (or deliberately decided against) to undo the change first.  It could even explain why the CD version supposedly handles the music playing correctly.  [Note:  I haven't downloaded the CD version yet, I'll do it later tonight.]

CustLemm would then probably have come from either the CD version of DOS Lemmings, or the official full version of ONML.

---------------------------

It still strike me as a bit incredible that DMA would choose to change something so fundamental as the falling distance (which, after all, potentially affects every other level) in order to fix a problem with a single level, instead of changing that level itself to accomodate.

The question I ask now is... WHAT LEVEL?

I managed to pass all ONML levels (save Havoc 20... I will get to that at some point!) with the max safe fall distance of 63, and I'm sure many others have, as well. It would be a great irony if the level they needed to be fixed has a glaring backroute that doesn't require a higher max safe fall distance, and I wouldn't be surprised either...

I also can't believe they would make this change across the board to all levels to fix a problem in one level... ONE LEVEL! They could have even removed the level and replaced it with another, I'm sure.

Possibly 3 Crazy, because they forgot that you can lower the fall still further by having the bomber explode just after he walks off the edge?

But could they not just moving the pieces for that level? It seems to me like they would have to have a REALLY good reason not to be able to alter a level for them to go through with this change. (I also believe it would have to be a difficult level... It seems otherwise they would just replace the level.)

Ok, I downloaded and examined the EXE.

Unfortunately, it appears that the EXE is compressed, but not compressed with pklite as is the case for most of the "official" demo and full versions of the game.  (Definitely raises some issues about the legitimacy of this copy of the game, I must say...)  Until I figure out what compression was used and how to decompress it, I won't be able to patch it.  So patience.

A quick (but uneventful) update:  upon further examination, I'm less sure about the assertion that the CD version of lemmings is not compressed with pklite.  The startup code that does the self-decompression looks to be somewhat similar (but not identical) to the corresponding stuff in the compressed EXEs of the official lemmings etc.  Of course, I have no time or interest to examine the full decompression code, so this might just be a superficial appearance.

But the fact remains that the "unpklite" program I downloaded to decompress the EXEs does not work with the CD version of lemmings, it claims that the EXE does not appear to be compressed with pklite.  It's also the case that I failed to find anything in the EXE that indicates what sort of compression was used (unlike the more common varieties of lemmings EXEs, which says clearly in the EXE that they use pklite).

So at the moment, I don't think there's much I would be able to do about that EXE.  Sorry.

Ok, good news:

I found a way to coax unpklite to unpack the CD version of Lemmings.

Turns out all I needed to do is to insert the "PKLITE" signature text at the place where unpklite expects to find it.  And then unpklite will decompress it just fine.

Almost sounded like someone trying (clearly none too successfully, I might add) to thwart you from decompressing the thing.  What an idiot.

Oh, and the mystery of the origin of this "CD version" of the game is solved as soon as I run it.  If you read the scrolling credits at the game's main menu screen, you'll see that there's an extra line that isn't there in the original Lemmings.  The new credit comes after the normal "PC Music by Tony Williams",  and reads "Code Maintenance by Mark Tsai".  (Oh, and also it was copyrighted 1995 rather than the standard 1991.)  Hmm....

So that explains it!  As some of you may recall, Mark Tsai is one of the co-authors who wrote the official "solution book" to Lemmings.  And that the book came with a CD with some extra levels (from ONML).  This must be the origin of this "CD version" of Lemmings!

What I didn't expect though, was that Mark Tsai was actually apparently given a role in making changes to the code of the program (ie. "code maintanence").  I would only hope that he wasn't responsible for the change in falling distance--of all the people on this planet, the guy who wrote the official solution book should know better than that!

So, hey, Mike, any comments on our buddy Mr. Tsai?

Ok, I hacked and fixed the CD version of Lemmings.

You can download it at

http://www.geocities.com/guestlevels/lemmings/vgalemmi.zip

Just put it in the directory where you installed the CD version of Lemmings.  Run by typing "vgalemmi.exe" instead of "lemmings.exe".

I've tested it on "Steel Works" and verified that it has the correct falling distance (ie. same as the original, "floppy" version of Lemmings).

Note that this EXE will work with the floppy version of the game as well, and you might want to do that so you get the music fix (no annoying repeating of the first music when you restart).

One final note:

You might now think that this CD version of Lemmings is also the origin of CustLemm.

But that's probably not the case since the size of CustLemm EXE is significantly smaller than the CD version of the Lemmings EXE when decompressed.  The decompressed CD EXE is over 100k, while CustLemm, which is not compressed, is only around 83k.  Moreover, the scrolling credits in CustLemm does not include the "Code Maintenance by Mark Tsai" line that the CD version does, and the copyright in CustLemm is 1991 rather than the CD version's 1995.

So it's still a little bit of a mystery where CustLemm came from and how it acquired the increased falling distance.

Thank you so much quest! :thumbsup:

Oh, and have you looked about the cheat and version number codes?

Mark created the Holiday Lemmings series, so would have had the source to enter level order, traps etc. Also to make final builds.

As to why we change things when a level doesn work... this is a fact of life in games with dead lines. A level that works on the Amiga one, might not work on the PC one for many reasons. In those days games were coder completly in assembler, and youd try and convert fomr 68000 to x86 in your head. This means understanding fully all the flags, branches and conitions that each langauge had. This usually works fine. But "sometimes" through the whole program (100,000 of lines worth), a condition is missed, or several that look to work, have knock on effects that you cant determain just by readin it.

So, this means when most levels work and a few dont. What do you do. Russell decided the simplest and quickest way was to change the fall count. It had minimal impact of the levels made. In L2 on the SNES, I had one level that didnt work right - for exactly the same reasons - and I opted to detect that level and change fallign for that one case. This isnt always possible...If there are many levels with problems, its just not practicle. And we certainly didn't think it would become an issue 15 years later!  :mikelaugh:

Wait a sec... I design my levels using lemmings original for testing...maybe you all should use the fixed custlemm for my levels.  I hope my levels worked despite the bug.

Hey I got a question...

WHY THE HELL IS THE DEVIL EXIT IN THE MAC VERSION SO SCREWED UP?

heheh im just asking cos IT IS UGLY!

roflcopter :P

ciao

Mike, why Lemmings 3 doesn't work well with the Sound Blaster card type?

Do you know hot to patch or correct the game?

Is this referring to running it in DOSBox, or without DOSBox?

If it's in DOSBox, Mike won't be able to answer.  It'd probably be a DOSBox problem.  It's well known that DOSBox makes an effort at emulating the hardware but the emulation isn't perfect and generally not cycle-accurate.

If it's outside DOSBox, it's still likely that Mike won't be able to answer, especially if you're talking about running it in Window's DOS window.  Again, it just isn't the same as running it in true DOS.

If you're actually having a problem running it in the real DOS that the game was written to be run on, then maybe Mike can answer.  Or maybe not, since as far as I know he was never the one who's ever involved on programming the sound and music of any of the lemmings games.

Actually... I did help with the sound in Lemmings3 :)

It does actually support soundblasters, gravis and Midi (from what I remember). It'll only work in "real" DOS, win9x (perhaps ME). I have no idea about DOS Box.

You'll have to use the DOS setup program. However, that was written in Pascal, and may have some problems on modern machines; theres a thread about that somewhere on here.

Without running the setup program, you'd have to manually set the environment variables up...

Heres the original thread....
http://eng-forum.lemmingswelt.de/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=tech_id;action=display;num=1101044298

I cant remember shows sound engine we used, but it drove the guy doing it mad! So I was asked to help out and get it running with him. I then did the installer and sound detection stuff...

I just installed L3 to see if sound would work, and with DosBox it does.  You will have to fix the installer though using that link.

Right out the box, it doesnt appear playable. There is a V1.53 that is supposed to work though.


http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/comp_list.php?showID=721&letter=L

In fact, there's the same problem on Lemmings 3 v1.53. This is because of the CD version. When playing the game using the CD, the Sound Blaster Music is replaced by the CD tracks, and the game works fine!

There's also the possibility to play the game without any sound, this works too.

So, the corrected installer should make the game to work perfectly? That way, I'll try!

By the way, I remembered this thread, it's just that I didn't know it was the installer that crashed the game, but the game itself. Thanks!

Ok, I want to come back on a point.

Now, Lemmings and Customized Lemmings are hacked. LemEdit too, it's ok for it. But what about:

- Oh no! More Lemmings
- Save The Lemmings
- The Lemmings Companion
- Xmas Lemmings 1991
- Xmas Lemmings 1992
- Holiday Lemmings 1993
- Holiday Lemmings 1994

These ones aren't hacked!

All I want is to get ALL versions to be ORIGINAL like the AMIGA ones! I'm dreaming to have all the versions to be corrected. I want the safe fall distance to be 60 for each one, VERSIONNUM and CHEAT CODE should work too, I also want the menu of selecting the type of the PC included, the music to be perfect and the skills menu should appear too at the bottom of the screen when not playing the game under Windows (for the older Windows versions).

I want ALL this for EACH version. Is THAT possible?

Sorry if I insist :-[, but I really want for these games to be perfect. If there's a possibility to improve the games, why not doing the maximum for them all?

If hacking all this could be too long, then can you send me the program you use to hack Lemmings (pklite)? Ok, I'm not a pro with the programming, but I could try!

Please! :D

The safe fall distance is never really 60 in the original version (even on the Amiga).  It has nothing to do with hacking or not hacking.  It's basically a bug in how they track the falling distance, so that even though the game tries to look for the number 60, the calculation can be off causing slightly higher numbers to still pass the test.

It's true that supposedly some of the games uses the number 63 instead 60.  At least Mike seems to think that for ONML they purposely changed the distance to 63, even though on my copy it's still 60.  So as you can see, we don't even know at this point what the intended numbers are for all the different games.


I have no idea what the heck the "skills menu" is.  Do you mean the skills toolbar where you select climbers/floaters/etc.?  I have never seen it disappear in DOSBox, or even when playing the game under Windows DOS for that matter.

It's quite possible they might have good reasons to remove the PC-type selection screen on certain versions of the game.  Forcing it back into the games where it is removed might do more harm than good.  Or maybe it'll be okay.  Who knows.

How do you know that VERSIONNUM and CHAET CODE is universal for all these games you listed above?  Doesn't ONML use SLAMRACING for example?  You are assuming way too much about the universality of the cheat codes.  Keep in mind that cheat codes are not meant to be an official feature of the game in the first place, there's no reason they have to work on every game, and there's certainly no reason they have to use the same one for all of them.


Please, don't embarass yourself. ;P Seriously, it's not something for the novice.  Actually, even if you were to pay me $1M to do this, I'm still not sure whether I'll be able to figure out all these things you want to change.

-------------------------------

So when's all said and done, the only imperfection that's really an imperfection is the music handling, as far as I can tell.  I don't want to promise anything on that, and it's certainly very low priority, but maybe I'll look into it sometime in the not-so-near future.

This happens to me (skill bar disappears. It's still functional, but there are no graphics there.) on Windows 98 (DOS) with the original Lemmings, along with XMas Lemmings 91 and XMas Lemmings 92. However, the skill bar DOES appear in CustLemm, Holiday Lemmings 93, and Holiday Lemmings 94 (I haven't tried ONML on that computer yet). So there appears to be some discrepancy as to how that is handled...

Interesting.  I'm pretty sure it works back when I only have a Win98 laptop, but maybe it was only CustLemm that I was using.

This really has nothing to do with the game being "perfect" or not though.  It would seem to be Window's fault that this happens, unless it actually happens when running under real DOS also.

How easy or hard this is to fix depends on whether there's a single place in the program responsible for drawing the skills toolbar.  Unfortunately, in any case I won't be of much help, since I don't have a Win98 machine anymore.

Mike specified that it is supposed to be 60. Ok, I don't know myself if this safe-fall distance apply to each version. But, I supposed that 60 is kinda an universal safe-fall distance. I mean, it could be weird to have a safe-fall distance of 70 in a game and a safe-fall distance of 50 in another one, even if it's only 3 of difference! ;P

For the skills toolbar, this is less important. Much people uses Windows XP and plays Lemmings under Dosbox. But, yep: The toolbar disappear when playing the game under Windows only. Under Dosbox or under the plain Dos (in older versions of Windows), the toolbar now reappear.



Still there I suppose that each game have both a cheat code and a version number code. The version number code is less important. In fact, if there's only one version of a game, just specify the title of the game, the date where it was made and the mention "Version 1.0" into. For the cheat code, I know that much of the games have one:
- Lemmings : BILLANDTED
- Oh no! More Lemmings : SLAMRACING
- All the Xmas and Holiday Lemmings : SNOWFLAKES (or, I would like to add this new one for the Holiday Lemmings (not the Xmas) : SANTACLAUS) ;P
- Save the Lemmings and Lemmings Companion, just use the original Lemmings code : BILLANDTED
- Customized Lemmings : SKIPLEVELS

For the menu of selecting the type of PC, it could be so great to have the possibility to select "High Performance PCs" and that this works perfectly... maybe with the next version of Dosbox!

For the program, yeah, forget it! ;P

Maybe I was being unclear.

What I was saying is that the number 60 doesn't actually mean the lemmings really can only fall 60 pixels, because of bugs in the game mechanics in how they keep track of the falling distance.  So that a lemming might actually have fallen 63 pixels and its falling distance is still calculated as 60 by the game and therefore passes the test.  That aspect of the game I believe should not be changed, especially since it seems the Amiga behaves in the exact same, arguably incorrect, way.

On the other hand, it's also the case that some versions actually replaces the number 60 by some other number, such as 63.  Your proposal to change them all back to 60 is not a bad idea, except Mike seemed to have said that some of the games were intended to use the number 63 instead.  Still, it seems that no levels actually require the 63 (except maybe CustLemm levels people made), so this change can be considered.  Maybe.


I don't really care much for these sorts of codes, and I certainly haven't found where in the program handles them, but I can try looking for them some time in the future.


Wow, good luck, keep dreaming.

Actually, funny you mentioned this.  I actually can think of a way theoretically for DOSBox to support the timed palette-switching that the high-perf mode uses.  But it is somewhat complicate to implement, so I don't think the DOSBox folks will try to fix this specifically for one game, so unless this fix would also fix a whole bunch of other games as well, you're probably out of luck.

Yah ok... I'll forget it too. ;P

This way, don't touch the menu. Let it like this! Let it start automatically in the compatble VGA mode / Tandy.

Anyway...

Shouldn't it be: if the bottom bit (Bit zero I presume) is NOT set?
For example Fun 8 surely is a duplicate, but the 8th entry (= 14) the bit is not set.
I don't understand.

Mike, how much work did you do on Lemmings 3?  Do you know anything about CAVExxx.RAW and CAVExxx.MAP files?

Not a lot really. I helped with the Audio, wrote the installer and the line draw for the map on the Amiga version.... oh and told them how to write the bouncing bomb....I think that was more or less it.