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...and yet another wip, now up to level 16 (out of 30)! Level 14 was the most tedious level in the game so far to make, but isn't bad to watch as multiple lemmings are being juggled at once. Enjoy!
http://tom.seufert.googlepages.com/tomsneslemmingswip.smv
BTW, perhaps this thread should be under SNES games? It seems like it started out being about NES Lemmings, but no serious attempt was ever made on that port...
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My two cents:
1. I agree with having one number as a ranking for each movie; either decimal 0.0-10.0 or 0-100, whichever is easiest. For me personally, a game's "technical" rating has always been nebulous if I haven't TAS'd the game. How could anyone know how "close to perfect" it is? Just because there are no obvious mistakes? Runs with obvious mistakes don't really seem to get published, so I end up giving out a lot of 8's, 9's if I know the game and am really impressed. With one number, it's more 'how impressed was I watching this run,' and it's my little secret all the little components that go into that number.
2. This may have been suggested, but how about listing a user's previous ratings on the 'rate a movie' form. For users who've rated hundreds of movie's, a subset of movie's rated at various levels could be generated. It could even be driven by the tentative rating typed in, ie I put in 8.7 for the new LoZ 2nd quest, the following shows up below:
You rated "Awesome Run #1" 8.8
You rated "Lame Run #1", "Lame Run #2" 8.6
Rate "LoZ 2nd quest" 8.7? [submit]
This way your previous rating behavior is very transparent at the time you're rating without any effort or memory required.
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Another wip, now up to level 12. Of the new levels, each of 9-12 has significant aspects where tool-assist is on display, but I have to say level 10 is a HUGE departure from how the level was intended to be attacked...at least, I think so...
Also, I'd like to mention I'm revising my goals for this title a bit in light of a new (for me) discovery. Previously, I'd aimed for fastest time by the in-game clock, thinking that was a reasonable way to allow for some lag while still making an entertaining run that was fast in real-time.
However, as it turns out, one can press start to pause the lemmings and timer while still moving the cursor; thereby pausing in-game time at the expense of real-time. Since I think a run with lots of pausing to move the cursor around would be too easy and against the spirit of a good TAS, I'm now aiming for fastest real-time, with some time-entertainment trade-offs. Specifically, I allow some lag on most levels when avoiding it would require having the main body of lemmings off-screen when they're doing something interesting, e.g. moving toward the exit.
Any comments/questions on the goals or the wip itself, as always, is appreciated.
Here it is:
http://tom.seufert.googlepages.com/tomsneslemmingswip.smv
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Bravo! Looking at the list, it seems like a very reasonable result. Even though my idea didn't get chosen, (sniffle), I'm very pleased that this was done.
Randil: Too bad Baxter chose such round values for his constants (2.5, 0.5)...had he so narrowly edged you and the values were (3.4752, 0.232877) you'd have been entitled to some serious indignation...;)
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Thanks, Inichi. When I started this run, I tried a bunch of things to start at Mayhem but couldn't figure out how to do it without using the password. I'll try that when I get a chance and hopefully splice it in before submission.
Glad you liked level 8...using that tiny ledge (and being able to dig through steel) was, like so many TAS tricks, discovered purely by accident while testing an entirely different strategy.
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Slow, but steady progress continues...I've done 8 of 30 levels in SNES Lemmings.
http://tom.seufert.googlepages.com/tomsneslemmingswip.smv
Levels 7&8 make use of diggers to get around not having bashers; because of how collision detection with the floor works, it is possible to get through a wall by having consecutive lemmings dig. The result is that these 2 levels are beaten MUCH faster than even a segmented real-time run could accomplish.
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This trick was known and discussed back when Walker Boh did his run. When I was designing my run, I also thought it might be a faster way to earn gold. Alas, the king is just too far away, and talks way too long...it's something like 20s faster to earn the gold by killing monsters outside the 3rd town.
Incidentally, a much faster way to get down to 0 golds is to buy just what you need and then die on the spiky creatures. You can lose most of your life en route to see the king the 1st time so it only takes one hit after you're done shopping. Buying/using items in this game is very slow because of all the messages.
Another fun challenge is to skip buying the dagger...
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Raiscan wrote:
while I agree with the concept, I disagree with the names of the ranks you've given (though I appreciate they were probably just off the top of your head). For example, someone can have 4-6 movies published and be quite inactive. Also, I can't help but feel that the rank of "Superstar" might go to some people's heads :)
Yeah, the names were just examples, though I think they're along the right lines. Perhaps we could replace 'Superstar' with 'Jerk' to discourage people from sitting on one or two highly ranked runs...;)
I think that inactive user's ranks will self-correct (perhaps over years) as other players obsolete their movies. And if no one does obsolete their movies, well, IMO they deserve to keep their rank.
As to not having a rank for 90% of the users, my system was for players only. I personally don't see merit in giving descriptive terms based on forum posts (the # of posts is right there!) but don't object either. I prefer to use movie rating because, imperfect though the rating system may be, it's all we have and could be improved in the future.
For non-players, I think mmbossman's ideas are right on, though.
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There's a lot I like about Baxter's idea, but share Bisqwit's reluctance to distill players down to a single 'score.'
My idea for player ranks is separately assign keywords for number and quality of movies made, and combine then to construct a rank.
Thus (for example):
# of movies currently published:
1-3: Contributing
4-6: Active
7-9: Workhorse
10-15: Prolific
16+: Super-Prolific
Average (or median) rating of all published movies:
<6.0: Dilettante
6.01-7.0: Achiever
7.01-8.0: Afficionado
8.01+: Superstar
Some players' ranks then would be:
Adelikat: Super-Prolific Afficionado (27 movies, average rating 7.25)
Cardboard: Prolific Afficionado (10 movies, average rating 7.6)
Aqfaq: Workhorse Achiever (9 movies, average rating 6.8)
Me: Active Afficionado (5 movies, average rating 7.55)
Chamale: Contributing Dilettante (2 movies, average rating 5.45)
Scumtron: Contributing Superstar (3 movies, average rating 8.3)
I like this system because it's descriptive; rather than a system with a clearly identifiable "best" and "worst" TAS'er. For instance, who is a better TAS'er, Aqfaq or Scumtron? I don't know, and using this system the site isn't shoving an answer down people's throats.
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Re-posting just to note that the link above is now a wip of the 1st 4 SNES Mayhem levels.
I was pleased to see that there were tricky ways to save time in levels 1, 2 and 4 that would basically be impossible for a human player. Level 3, alas, was apparently designed to be beatable in exactly 1 way...:(
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If you haven't already, I would make certain to specifically test that it is sufficient to speak to that one guy & have tremor made available.
I say this because Faxanadu had a similar situation where it seemed that a step could be skipped, based on flags that were set, but there was specific logic in the source which enforced actually doing everything.
Hopefully it works, just didn't want you guys to do a bunch of planning and find out later it didn't...
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Wow, I'd love to see a run of this game. Spent a sick amount of time playing it as a kid before I finally beat it.
From everything I've read, it was just as rich and complicated as I remember...;)
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SNES; the NES version limits each level to just 14 lemmings, so I haven't noticed lag being a factor.
EDIT:
So, finally, a wip of SNES level 1. I'll update this file occasionally as I progress and try to make note when I do so.
http://tom.seufert.googlepages.com/tomsneslemmingswip.smv
Compared to NES, there are (at least, for the 5 levels I've tried so far) more lemmings which are dispensible, which makes some of the strategies I use possible.
I decided against trying to play music with the lemming job switcher...I tried it, and found it annoying on top of the existing music.
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Nice, I was waiting a long time to see this one. I recall this game being very difficult. The run looks pretty tight, with good entertainment choices where it was feasible.
I would also find a stealth-whenever-possible variant preferable, since the combat isn't really exciting and the alarm claxon is really annoying.
Definite yes vote for this submission, though. Good job!
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Interesting...is there a re-recording JS app? ;)
Yet another perplexing item for this game...I'm doing Mayhem-only, using a password, in the SNES port, and it lags miserably (to ~30 Hz) whenever a bunch of lemmings are onscreen, even if they're all on top of each other. It's easy enough to minimize this, but requires keeping the main body of lemmings offscreen as much as possible, which I'm guessing will be a big entertainment hit. Alas, it's also not great for entertainment to have building a bridge take 24 seconds, instead of 12...
EDIT: New idea...would anyone object to the run being centered on speed by the in-game timer (per-level)? I seem to recall Punch Out being done like this. It makes a lot of sense in this case because it takes lag out of the equation, but doesn't really change anything else about the run.
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Glad you like it. Yeah, it'd be nice to do a ROM hack and quadruple the building speed.
Level 4 (with the spider web) is also my favorite. Having the Lemmings take 3 different paths actually wasn't done by choice, though; it's the only way I found to get all of the "lead" lemmings in ahead of the last one. The direct path taken by the last lemming isn't available to the early ones because it has to be dug.
The issue with the builders on level 2 is a bit mysterious. For the 3rd bridge, I don't think it's possible to line it up perfectly b/c the ground is jagged. For the 4th, it appears to be lined up, yet he still builds past the corner. Contrast that with level 5, where the builder stops halfway through the final bridge. So...it IS possible in this port, but depends on either random or unknown factors.
I've been looking at the SNES port...it looks promising entertainment wise, though will be more difficult to TAS (more lemmings, variable speed of lemming appearance, no 8x8 grid for all actions, etc). Will try to get a wip up soon.
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Argh...the SNES version requires a password to skip right to Mayhem, unlike the NES or Sega Master system versions. So doing mayhem-only for SNES would violate the rules. The Sega version seems comparable to the SNES otherwise, so maybe that's the way to go.
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Yeah, I think you're right about other systems' versions being the way to go. I was pretty astonished at how lame the NES one is...no sound effects at all, limit of 14 lemmings, etc.
I'm totally convinced that, whatever its drawbacks, Mayhem-only is the only feasible way to do this game. Doing all levels is just waaaay too long, repetitive, and not at all appealing to me.
I also agree with the idea that having a good TAS will require impossibly quick timing. My solutions to the 4th and 5th mayhem levels actually require such timing, but it may not be obvious because there's no sound effect when a lemming is assigned a task.
Does anyone prefer a port other than the SNES one?
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Here's a test run of the 1st 5 mayhem levels.
http://tom.seufert.googlepages.com/tomlemmings.fcm
The aim of the test run is to find the fastest (but not most entertaining) way to finish each level. My plan would then be to go back and edit in entertaining cursor/camera movements.
I think the 1st 4 levels here are optimal. I think it may be possible to improve the 5th slightly by having the extra builder (who builds to nowhere just to delay him) build against a wall instead of into thin air.
Since this is a new game for the site, I'd love to hear feedback on its potential, or people's potential for voting for it to be published were a high quality run finished. The major drawback, as I see it, is that so many levels require one lemming to go off and do all the work; if this work involves building multiple times, things get SLOW.
Anyways, love to hear what people think, yea or nea (or mea)
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Have started poking around in this game (mostly just mayhem 1)...some observations...
1. It really, REALLY sucks that all lemming actions must take place in alignment with an 8-pixel grid. At least, it sucks in that it limits one's actions; it actually makes finding the optimal solution easier since there's fewer possibilities.
2. It SHOULD be a game where a good TAS makes it obvious that no human could have done this, ever. Knowing down to the frame when to blow up a blocker, for instance, displays the kind of precise timing a human could never achieve.
3. This game is long and bit slow. Hopefully not too slow. A movie of all 25 mayhem levels would certainly be over an hour. On the good side, most of that hour will be action (unlike, say, Bubble Bobble where level transitions eat like 4/5 the times). Also, the pace runs at a speed such that someone who's never played the game can follow what's happening (unlike, say Lolo).
4. I'm thinking that moving the cursor in time to the music could add some entertainment and make some of the waiting parts go by faster. Or maybe I could trace pictures and have people try and guess what they are?
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Interesting. I would normally have expected Samus to be stuck by freezing the metroid that early; perhaps a bug in collision detection due to so many metroids so close together...
Good stuff!
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Blublu: Don't worry about nit-picking, that's the name of the game! I thought of using the morph jump at that point in Tourian and tested it looking at Hero's run, but found it faster to drop into the pit.
BUT...I really thought it should be faster to use the morph jump, so perhaps I was just not executing it optimally. I can't test it now (at work overnight), but will look at it once I get a chance.
A question and a caveat...
1st, as I recall, in my run I freeze that 3rd Metroid while falling, which requires being unmorphed, which prohibits the morph jump. Did you freeze the metroid so you were stuck inside it, but still able to roll off once you morphed?
The caveat is that I timed this section out according to the frame on which the blue door opened after the screen transition. I found this technique the most reliable after finding many discrepancies (i.e. 1 method was faster at point x, but slower at point y, after a door transition, for no apparent reason).
Most likely, though, is that you're right and I screwed it up somehow. If so, good catch!
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Spider-Waffle wrote:
I noticed when entering a lot of doors the screen had to auto scroll but no morph+unmorph or jumping higher was used when it could have been. Is this because of idiosyncrasies.
Yes, I believe I used morph-unmorph everywhere it was faster to. As to intentionally jumping higher, I didn't recognize that as a possible technique until after the ice beam. Two places it could have been used were in the blue and gold corridors en route to the ice beam. In the blue corridor, I was unable to make it faster (as measured by when the door opens after the screen transition; the most reliable timing technique I found). In the gold corridor, however, I was able to save 1 frame by jumping a bit higher, so whoever does the next one should definitely do that. SIGH...perfection is ever just out of reach!
Spider-Waffle wrote:
There is a trick with the sweet spot glitch where if you can get the screen to scroll great than one screen down, then enter the door, the screen will scroll down two screens below the door and put you in that row usually (maybe always) off the screen.
I have used the sweet spot glitch to scroll 1 screen down, but never 2. Any details you could give on how to get it to scroll 2 screens down would be appreciated.
Spider-Waffle wrote:
Also, how were you getting into kraid's room without kraid being there?
Basically, above Kraid's lair are 2 horizontal rooms where the door-glitch doesn't work (because the scrolling is horizontal). However, using the trick to enter a door and have it put you 1 row below, I entered one of the horizontal rooms, and the game placed Samus far to the left offscreen, with the scrolling mode set to VERTICAL. By watching Samus' x and y on the memory watcher, I was able to navigate Samus such that she was visible, then door glitch down 2 screens to Kraid's room, coming up from beneath. I was able to get the energy tank, but Kraid was a no-show. I'll see if I can find/make an .fcm demo.
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Right. But in this case, the question is whether it's possible in this run without losing *any* time. Or, if one decided to do a time/entertainment trade-off, how much time would be worth losing?
It is more difficult for this particular run because it is the 1st (that I know of) to operate under such stringent missile requirements. Also, the trick of freezing the zoomers to jump on them means that they can't be killed for missiles or energy without losing time.
So...absolutely it could be done. It would probably (not definitely) be slower, though.
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Yeah, it would be fairly difficult to avoid the danger beep by manipulating energy because I use every available opportunity to manipulate missiles. The one place it would be possible that I can think of is by killing bugs just in front of the statue room. However, I freeze the bugs to cut lag, so it would may well cost time to do so. That said, it could be tried if someone makes an improvement, since having the beeping on all through Tourian is a bit annoying...
