Hey! I want to run SMS Lemmings, the console contained the pause button in the old days, I run things using a Genesis controller with a start button built in. Do I need to map my PAUSE button to something on the keyboard to replicate real world play, or is use of the controller to map PAUSE acceptable?

EDIT: I noticed Baldnate's run has the required level percentages written within his splits - I noticed playing through earlier that I am utterly incapable of remembering the percentages, so clearly writing them somewhere would be helpful, but can you clarify where this falls regarding extra information? I might sound stupid to ask but I'd rather be sure since for me at least, having the percentages visible during levels would be a significant advantage.

Sorry for late reply. Holidays all in the way.

I haven't tried the SMS version, but presumably their is likely a way to map your Genesis controller's start button, and that would be perfectly acceptable. No need to map it on a keyboard unless you prefer that way.

I also use percentages in the split names for myself. This is perfectly acceptable, or any use of notes regarding the levels would be fine, so long as we are talking values that are clearly visible at the beginning of the level.

Ah lovely. I switched straight away from Fun to Tricky, I'm working out all the fastest possible times with some very aggressive strategies and once I finish that I'll go back to optimising Fun, since there is likely a bit I can do there as well. I've started recording my optimal single-level runs so I might bosh them on Youtube over the next day or two.

That would be great. At some point I will likely be willing to add the IL runs from people's full game runs so that the IL board starts getting filled up, since I realize it's a bit of a pain to upload 30 individual videos. That being said though, if it was played immensely enough, I'd imagine that the best times would eventually be IL runs just from grinding the level over and over.

Mm, I mean I've just done a practice of the first 15 levels, and it isn't that hard to perform the optimal strategies in a full 30 level run to within a very high degree of accuracy even at 60fps. Over the course of those levels I only lost maybe 10 seconds game time from small inaccuracies, and I managed to come up with an incredibly fast strat for level 9. I'll upload that video to my youtube later. IL runs would definitely need to be timed manually though (not from level time subtraction) because it's imperative to use lots of pausing. 30 small videos isn't a bother for me, my upload speed is dire and I can't stream so I typically leave full run uploads overnight. I feel like once I utterly master the set of levels, I can replicate the best times in a full 30 level run.

I agree it for the Fun levels it wouldn't be too difficult a pull off a ridiculously optimized run. Tricky could probably be done too. To do it on Mayhem seems like it would be mind shattering. Then again, if someone put in the time to do, and managed to get through 20 runs of the game, I imagine that might be a best position to do so, so long as they have good notes. Especially given that certain maps get reused, it can be pretty difficult to quickly recall all the important details of 30 straight levels fast enough to ensure optimal strats are being used each level, but good note taking could probably ease that burden to a large extent. Just having the percentages down for a necessary win in your notes alleviates a lot of the cognitive stress of trying to remember so many numbers.

I'm lucky because I'm blessed with a ridiculously good memory; once I work a strategy out it's easy for me to remember it when the level is distinct in some way, and if I find myself with any weird blind spots I can just have a few lines of notes or some such. I don't intend to look at Mayhem at all, not sure what Taxing will be like but I'm very pleased how smooth Tricky is.

When I upload the video I'll add info in my notes, but among my discoveries so far for SMS lemmings: -You cannot change the drop time of the first lemming - RR increases only affect the second onward, and are best done by heading to RR, then dropping to RR-1 straight away, which tricks the game into going faster. Even changing up to 99 then dropping to 98 is better - explains it. -Bridges take 750 frames to complete -You can invert the usual 'make blocker, make him a bomber' in a level such as Careless Clicking Costs Lives, which greatly speeds things up.

I found some good playthroughs/TASes of the game, SMS and other formats, and I'm looking through them for inspiration or little pointers, though the SMS is so different anyways because of fewer lemmings that solutions will inevitably become distinct regardless.

http://giovanniviglietta.com/files/lemmings/Glitches.html seems to be useful as well.

woow that page is an amazing discovery!

Maybe it should be on guides or resources so it doesn't get lost

I've done a lot of optimising Tricky levels so now I've gone back to Fun. In Level 3, with an initial RR of 50 the first lemming will drop after 400 frames. BUT, what if I pause and amp that up to 99 first? In my published run this level took ~34 seconds real time, with a game time of 4:33. If I use this new method I can finish the level in ~33 seconds, but the game time ends at 4:40. Clearly if I want to get the final answer to things I'm going to have to make SMS tases for each level >.< It does however raise a point, what is the reason that runs have a sub category of in game time? :) My concern is simply that keeping this metric in, even though it's now very likely you can benefit from pausing in Fun levels, might be either misleading or to casual viewers confusing, since if they only see that my level time was 4:40, they mightn't realise how I did it, get a 4:33 themselves, and smell something fishy.

So, for the multi-level runs, RTA is ranked above IGT, which invalidates some strategies, such as presetting the release rate on a pause, or using the pause glitch in DOS to adjust the first release start directly at IGT starting. But for IL runs, IGT is used for simplicity reasons. It's easier to verify, given that their isn't a great RTA starting and ending point. RTA starting at the first frame the beginning screen fades and the first frame on the ending level in which the Lemming Counter hits zero, or the first frame the level fade out can be determined in the event the escape button is used (for DOS mostly). IGT as far as multi-level runs is only available because it's needed for the IL runs. It's not particularly needed for full runs, and requires a lot of additional work for runners when submitting.

Mm, from my research so far it seems plausible that with the vagaries of the SMS controls, some 'fastest IGT' IL timed runs might not be the fastest way to complete, or it might be very close, because you can't adjust the release rate and perform other actions simultaneously. If I end up with concrete evidence I'll share it because it would be a shame to have any category or subtype of run being a fudge involving epic amounts of pausing, I'm not sure I agree that IGT is needed for IL runs in this case especially since one can either use a frame-counting emulator, or just manually time. I understand that simplicity is good but in my runs of any game I always strive to be maximally precise. I timed my RTA from the moment I pressed 2 on Level One screen. Between that and level start, there are some red frames, and you can move the cursor one frame before trapdoors open. I know that many games time their runs from moment of first control gained on a level, perhaps this could work.

I suppose the root question is, for SMS Lemmings at least (since it's so different to all the others), where do we think the boundary should lie for RTA multi-level runs. That may depend on how easy I find it to be accurate during a 30 level run, compared to a 15, or a 10. Frankly the idea of IL runs doesn't appeal, because it would be sort of self-defeating for someone out of the blue to practice one level over and over without having to show skill in a range of them. I do think that certainly for Tricky, it might be useful to split runs into tens or fifteens.

I wouldn't be surprised if it were the case the fastest IGT IL time would actually be slower. In the MS-DOS this is absolutely the case, since the player can pause to 1.) release the first lemming right as the IGT timer starts, as opposed to letting the intro to a given level and more importantly 2.) can also change release rate before IGT timer starts. Assuming this can't be done with perfect accuracy, there will always a tiny bit of RTA loss when pausing and preparing these things. IGT is definitely not necessary; like I said, it's more just convenience given that measuring multiple minute timeframes is a heavy load, the lack of interest in IGT runs, and the proliferation of tiny differences that occur on each given port of game including various.

The RTA start time is good... for SMS, pressing 2 on Level One Screen. For the purposes of verifying, I generally use the first frame the colors change in the fade out. It's literally the only verifiable moment player control has been established. Outside the Fun/Tricky/etc. delineations, I don't have any particular plans to make smaller segments of multi-level runs. The main reason being that different ports can have different number of levels. It would be difficult to make something that was consistent. (Most ports stick with the normal 30 levels per difficulty, but someone are missing a couple levels effectively making like 28 levels, while NES has 25, etc.) The one exception I will probably make into this in the future is when including the arcade prototype, since there has been some interest expressed on a major Lemming forum for such an option. That will likely be it's own set of categories and misc categories for sections of game play.

I hear what you're saying but having just done the set for Tricky, certainly getting through to 30 unscathed feels like it's going to be quite an intense job, because it's very possible to lose 5-10 minutes just if one level goes pear shaped a few times as happened to me. I suppose we can give it a few months to see how optimised I can make a full set run, but I feel like if after that, the best I can do is significantly worse than sum of optimal levels taken individually, it might be worth considering accepting runs of 1-15 and 16-30 separately, at the least if only to show the full potential there, and since a group like that will probably get more traffic than a 30 vid playlist of best solutions. Tell you one thing though, it was a big mistake to switch between Fun/Tricky in the same night xD

Thinking about it, I could possibly add groupings in the IL menu relatively easy. SMS 1-15, and so fourth if it's really desired. That at least wouldn't require a complete reworking of the back end for full game runs. Yeah, I can see how trying to switch from Fun/Tricky in the same night would complicate things.

Out of curiosity, what made you decide to go with running the SMS version of the game?

I'll give it time to see how my runs peak in terms of performance - if anything, actually, the latest Fun record is an encouraging sign that 30 at once is NOT too much, it may just be that the breaking down of each record category to its maximum takes longer than I am used to with other games, and since the run takes 2-3x as long as anything I tried before, that's only natural.

I run SMS because it's the version I played as a child :) My uncle introduced me to the game on his computer and in Europe the SMS was always much more beloved/popular than the NES, so I had a large range of games for it. I had been looking for a third game since starting Mercs, and preferably one whose secrets hadn't been discovered yet - Mick and Mack on the Mega Drive seemed ideal then I remembered what a ludicrously bad game it is for speed. All the games I run have been influential or special in my life on some level, but a great driver of my motivation is breaking new ground, making discoveries, working stuff out where nobody has been before. I did get a giggle though to see that Baldnate was the SMS holder, since he and I are both Mercs players too. To be honest I had even been wanting to run Bubble Bobble SMS, but 200 levels at once would be utterly unwieldy, which is a shame.

Also interestingly I was practising Go For It the other day and managed to unintentionally execute the Slide Glitch which is mentioned in DOS and which I've seen on TASes such as

If I find a method to reliably pull this off any good percentage of the time it would leave mega amounts of time in the bank as a way to save in a few levels for Tricky and possibly Taxing!

And I just found this little gem too:

Just let me know. Yeah, it's shorter than some of the games I have run in the past, but it's a particularly taxing run even for how short it is. Just lots of memorization and execution, with large time losses for missing them. I didn't know the SMS was more popular than NES in Europe. I had a NES/Genesis/N64 growing up, but I never even knew lemmings was ported to those systems until much later, but I had the DOS version from a very young age.

That glitch is also very cool, and I could see how if it's reliable in terms of execution how that could save minutes over the entirety of the run, particularly on any level were bashers are pretty essential.

Oh yeah, basically Sega licensed the marketing rights for the SMS in North America to Tonka Toys, and they didn't do a great job with it not to mention the NES and Nintendo had much greater cache there with a few years headstart. That market was more fractured in Europe with the huge popularity of the home computer scene like the ZX Spectrum and C64, where games were cheap and lots of people did home coding, an impossibility on the NES. While the library for the SMS is way weaker generally, the slightly higher technical specs and quality probably helped, as did games like Alex Kidd and Sonic. The console still has a huge following in Brazil to this day actually! The SMS Lemmings port was a great achievement but of course that's why we only have 20 per level (which I thank my stars for lmao).

So far I have managed that bash glitch once in about 100 tries >.< It may be pretty much impossible in real time. No easy method found with the slide glitch yet. So I thought I'd destroy Lemmings in The Attic in a different way... :D Not sure whether there's time to blow up there in other versions but you'd be welcome to try and use the idea.

It's hard me to imagine that world. In the US the story is so much more linked with IBM and DOS, with NES being the only game console I had actually heard of from birth to the Genesis/SNES came out. I didn't know what a SMS was until I was an adult. Of course, I am but one American. There's a whole European/Japan computer realm out there I hope to dig into at some time.

As far other glitches you may be trying to find and utilize, you can try ask at https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?board=2.0 as well. I keep a speedrunning topic open over there as well, but there are a lot of non-speedrunners who know a great deal about this game and keep active lists of things discovered. It's possible someone may have some useful info.

I've created an account under the same name at Lemmings Forums :) Meanwhile I made improvements to a few more levels, keep an eye on my Youtube if you wanna see them. I'll keep improving all the Tricky levels for a week or two before making another attempt, to avoid tiring myself out.

I have had one of my trademark berzerk thoughts.

https://segaretro.org/Sports_Pad

This is a valid SMS control pad. Apparently it works on normal games if you buy the North America version and is super responsive.

https://segaretro.org/Sega_Mouse

This is a control device for the Mega Drive. It's a mouse.

Can you give me a judgement on whether one or both of these are valid for use? My understanding would be that the the Sports Pad might be a grey area because while it's a valid SMS controller, if we presume it allowed lightning fast response (I'm not sure how accurate it would be though...), it might radically change how the game is played. I would imagine the Mouse would not be allowed since it isn't an SMS peripheral.

I would ask about the Light Phaser but I don't have a big enough CRT to do it justice unfortunately!