Editor, Player (69)
Joined: 6/22/2005
Posts: 1050
I have recently given some thought to making a TAS of Lemmings for the NES. There are several factors, however, that may not make the TAS very interesting. For example, there are 100 levels in the game, 25 for each level of difficulty. As far as I can tell, the levels are all different, but I haven't played them all. It could easily become boring to watch the little things do basically the same actions for 100 levels. Furthermore, the actual lemmings are only 8 pixels tall with the default settings of FCEU (blip), so there's not that much to actually see of them. As far as speed goes, the menu system is apparently set up in such a way that you can only switch jobs every 8 frames. If you miss the frame on which you can switch jobs, you have to wait for the next one. I've tried to speed this up by pressing other buttons in between and then trying to switch, but it still works only every 8 frames. When viewed at full speed, this still appears somewhat fast, but it won't have an "instant" look like some other games. One thing that might make this interesting is the fact that switching between jobs causes different pitches of sound to be played, so the player could make some music while waiting for the lemmings (thanks to Acmlm for the idea). Note that, on the NES, you can either have these musical SFX or a predetermined track of music playing. You can't have both the SFX and the music at the same time :(. BTW, some levels have the same musical tracks, which could make the game boring if the music is selected. In summary, I'd like to know how much interest there is in a TAS of NES Lemmings. I'd also like to know of any ideas that could make the game interesting. EDIT: I'll put the most recent WIP in this post. Here's up through level 10.
Current Projects: TAS: Wizards & Warriors III.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
I say go for it. Make one or two levels just to show the game's potential. Lemmings is a game so well-known I believe there's got to be at least some interest. I for one, am interested to see how this turns out.
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Joined: 3/9/2004
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Any reason you're not going for the SNES version? It's 30 levels per difficulty. About a dozen levels get repeated but when they are, the items supplied are different so it's harder. Sunsoft also added 5 of their own levels IIRC.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Editor, Player (69)
Joined: 6/22/2005
Posts: 1050
Omega: I have a short movie of the first level on Mayhem. It's probably close to the fastest possible solution, but there are some places in which I had extra cursor movements. I would upload it if I knew where to do so. Nach: Simply, I don't have the SNES emulator, and I don't know if I want to get it at the moment.
Current Projects: TAS: Wizards & Warriors III.
Active player (494)
Joined: 11/14/2004
Posts: 169
Location: Mirabel, Québec, Canada
This beats the first 3 levels on the SNES version, done earlier this year as a test: http://acmlm.cjb.net:2/Emu/snes/Snes9x/smv1/Lemmings-1.smv It has both music and sound, variable release rate (99 can save time), I can play music with the job select to make it more interesting (which I did), there's no delay there either ... There's 120 levels (4 sets of 30) in the SNES version, they seem to be about the same as on NES (not sure what the extra ones are), but larger and the Lemmings go a little slower. I never beat the game, but I know some levels repeat with harder settings, and doing all levels would make a long run (about 2 hours), so only doing the hardest set might be a good idea.
XkyRauh
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Joined: 6/9/2005
Posts: 171
Location: Southern California
How's the cursor movement speed in the console ports of Lemmings? The PC version was a real test of dexterity, unless the player was talented with the pause button. I'd imagine a TAS of the PC version, if possible, would look mind-blowing simply because it would never pause to gather its bearings. :-) I'm all for musical shenanigans in the NES version, if you're up for it. That sounds awesome.
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XkyRauh wrote:
The PC version was a real test of dexterity
I thought the same at first, then I realized I can swap items using the F buttons. Only in a few cases did it get wild, where you had to do several things at once. And then there were four... Edit: If you want to see some crazy dexterity requirements, play Lemmings 3.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Editor, Player (69)
Joined: 6/22/2005
Posts: 1050
XkyRauh wrote:
How's the cursor movement speed in the console ports of Lemmings?
On the NES version, you have to hold B and use left/right to select the job. You can't use the cursor to select the jobs. This only works when the game is unpaused, btw, so I assume the level difficulty must have been adjusted. The actual cursor movement is weird, because sometimes it moves one pixel after pressing the direction for a frame and sometimes it moves two pixels. It also moves diagonally if you press the correct directional combos.
XkyRauh wrote:
I'm all for musical shenanigans in the NES version, if you're up for it. That sounds awesome.
Compared to Acmlm's SNES version, it wouldn't really be as awesome on the NES. Since you have to select jobs as described above, you can't skip any notes of the scale. This means you would just be doing runs and tricks with alternates notes (trills, turns, mordents, etc.).
Current Projects: TAS: Wizards & Warriors III.
adelikat
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Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player (3576)
Joined: 11/3/2004
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the only version I'm familiar with is the PC version. In that one you can skip directly to mayhem. If that is possible on the NES then you should do so. Especially since the 1st 10 levels or so are introductory and only have one job per level. They would be pretty boring to watch. I don't think any levels prior to mayhem would demonstrate any cool events that couldn't be shown off in a mayhem only run.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
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Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
adelikat wrote:
I don't think any levels prior to mayhem would demonstrate any cool events that couldn't be shown off in a mayhem only run.
You think wrong. Taxing has a ton of cool things. Not to mention What an awesome level.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 3/25/2004
Posts: 459
I'm interested.
Former player
Joined: 5/31/2004
Posts: 375
I'm only familiar with the Genesis version, myself (being a big Sega fanboy back in the day), which has 180 levels (there's an added SUNSOFT difficulty on top of "Present")
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Dacicus wrote:
Omega: I have a short movie of the first level on Mayhem. It's probably close to the fastest possible solution, but there are some places in which I had extra cursor movements. I would upload it if I knew where to do so.
Any reason why you're not linking to it, now that you've made it?
Editor, Player (69)
Joined: 6/22/2005
Posts: 1050
Okay, I've decided to do all 100 levels. I decided to stick with the original music because it would require more time to switch to SFX on the main menu, but I'm willing to change that. I'm still open to suggestions for making it more interesting (and for anything else), btw.
Current Projects: TAS: Wizards & Warriors III.
adelikat
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Joined: 11/3/2004
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so you can increase the drop rate in this version? how dissappointing
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Former player
Joined: 4/16/2004
Posts: 1276
Location: Uppsala, Sweden
Dacicus wrote:
Okay, I've decided to do all 100 levels.
Awesome! I too want to see this. I remember playing Lemmings at SNES maybe, but I never got very far because it became hard pretty fast. I also tried the last levels with a password but I don't think I saved one poor lemming there ;)
/Walker Boh
Joined: 4/30/2005
Posts: 199
I love Lemmings!
adelikat
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also on the PC version you had a fast foward button. I'm not familiar with the SNES version but if it has this feature or the rate drop increase I would strongly suggest you use that version as it reduce the length of this run considerably.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
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Joined: 3/9/2004
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Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
adelikat wrote:
so you can increase the drop rate in this version? how dissappointing
You can in every version, it's required to use it in the later levels if you plan on beating them within the time limit.
adelikat wrote:
also on the PC version you had a fast foward button.
Only the Windows version has the fast foward button. Neither the DOS or OS/2 versions have a fast foward.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
nesrocks
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Player (247)
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
I think that Lemmings: Chronnicles (lem3) had a ff button
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FODA wrote:
I think that Lemmings: Chronnicles (lem3) had a ff button
And that's not the game "Lemmings" is it?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
nesrocks
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Player (247)
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
just saying maybe there are other versions of lemmings more interesting to TAS
Editor, Player (69)
Joined: 6/22/2005
Posts: 1050
adelikat wrote:
so you can increase the drop rate in this version?
You can't increase the drop rate in the NES version. I have more comments, but I just got back to college, and I don't think I'll have any time to work on this for a while. EDIT: I think it may be faster to purposefully kill the unnecessary lemmings in some levels than to nuke them. I've tested this on the first level so far (I'll post the updated movie later), and I think it may be possible in some other levels.
Current Projects: TAS: Wizards & Warriors III.
Joined: 6/20/2004
Posts: 292
Location: United Kingdom
I started a run on the SNES planning to get all possible lemmings in as fast as possible on all levels, although I stopped after the 7th level as I find it hard to concentrate on TAS runs sometimes.
Former player
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<small>My big signature was cleared by admin; i should read <a href="http://tasvideos.org/ForumRules.html">forum rules</a>. But... who does?</small>