Lemmings 2: The Tribes | Hacker News Reader

Lemmings 2: The Tribes

filfre.net

141 pointsdoppp53 comments

What a great game... spent many hours on this back in the day.

> The ultimate Lemmings 2 achievement, needless to say, is to collect gold stars across the board.

Turns out this isn't quite true... I (and many others) achieved that long ago, but a few years back I found someone had gone through the whole game without losing a lemming on any level, which is pretty astounding; in many levels that seems completely impossible. Never underestimate what dedicated gamers will achieve...

I didn't play Lemmings 2, only Lemmings, but it seems completely impossible there and very constraining on the design space, if you want to make sure that's always possible (you can never have a level that requires a blocker or a bomber, which are two of your 8 abilities). I see from the article they added a lot more abilities in the sequel.

However, the article suggests getting gold stars across the board is mostly equivalent to not losing a lemming

> To wind up with gold at the end, you usually need to have kept every single one of the little fellows alive through all ten levels.

What, you never dug under a blocker to release her from her duties? As soon as they fall they turn back into normal lemmings.

Oh yeah. Just rules out bombers, then, unless there's some other trick I don't know about.

I think that pretty much every level with bombers available could be solved without one, if you were sufficiently versed in the edge cases of how the game worked. I could be wrong, it’s been decades.

No, sorry :) there are levels which absolutely require the sacrifice (regular levels and the special ones too)

Your statement directly conflicts with the initial comment that said "but a few years back I found someone had gone through the whole game without losing a lemming on any level"

Who's right? Who got the sources to back themselves up?

I think they are talking about Lemmings while the initial comment was about Lemmings 2?

Ah, that might be, it's unclear to me. Thanks for trying to clarify!

Yes, the subthread is about the first Lemmings

For sure, many fond memories of playing this! I’m not sure what the secret sauce is, but it was but it was so much fun. Might be worth dusting off and see if it holds up.

Did that, and had Lemming dreams for weeks...

> someone had gone through the whole game without losing a lemming on any level

Do you have a source? I tried searching but haven’t found anything.

The pixel perfect terrain deformation of Lemmings and Worms will always be impressive, and something that 3D can’t do as well as 2D (yet?)

I wonder why there haven’t been any modern sequels or mobile ports of Lemmings..

> I wonder why there haven’t been any modern sequels or mobile ports of Lemmings...

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmings_(video_game)#Legacy

In 2010, it was announced that Lemmings would be ported to the iOS operating system by developer Mobile 1UP. On 29 June 2010, Mobile 1UP reported that Sony Computer Entertainment Europe had presented them with a cease-and-desist letter, forcing them to halt development of the port. In April 2011, Mobile 1UP has released a re-worked version of the work done in 2010 with a prehistoric setting (new artwork, sfx, music, levels) under the name Caveman, available for the iOS and webOS platforms. Brutal Deluxe, the developer who did the porting of the Apple IIgs version of Lemmings, has released the games' source code.

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmings_(video_game)#Ports_an...

I played a mobile lemmings game on Android just last year. It was completely uninspired and not actually a lemmings game loop.

I have the same opinion as it relates to 2D RPGs, e.g., FF6. The level of detail that could be added into the most benign piece of background art added so much more weight into the entire scene.

There was this crazy game ‘Vangers’ that, apart from the most-otherworldly feel I've ever encountered, had terrain in voxel graphics and permanently destructible — and I don't mean shitty Minecraft voxels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9R7QJ5Sh1o

That was '98. Still wondering why I haven't seen anything like that anymore. I vaguely recall one dude working on a super-detailed engine, down to individual blades of grass and such, but not sure how's the damage model there (that's possibly related to this, but probably not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00gAbgBu8R4). There's also the ‘Teardown’ game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc_QC25RM44, and a search for ‘voxel graphics’ on YouTube suggests a few others in this vein. Still not quite the same.

As for mobile Lemmings, the Play store tried to sell them to me just yesterday.

Interesting. Judging from the video, I can't tell, but does it use a height map, or true voxels? I don't see any instances of hollow spaces or overhangs, which could be done with voxels but not with a height map. A height map would give good performance and destructibility, without using a huge amount of memory. The top-down view would let you hide that from the players, such as for bridges.

There are under-surface nooks and overpasses, also destructible (in fact, most of the nooks are accessed in just that way).

Notably, the terrain is optionally permanently destructible, but you could switch it to temporary if the machine didn't have too much ram (by the standards of '98). In practice, having a sizeable fraction of the world(s) destroyed, as a side effect of normal business, did hamper the vibe, so having the damage be temporary was just saner.

> had terrain in voxel graphics and permanently destructible

Isn't that a feature of several 'modern' games, like Space Engineers, Stationeers, Astroneer and maybe more?

Rabbit Escape[1] is similar; I like the scribble aesthetic.

[1]: https://artificialworlds.net/rabbit-escape/

Predating both: https://archive.org/details/GorillasQbasic

You might also enjoy Noita, a modern roguelike with per-pixel terrain destruction -- as well as liquids, gases and fire.

It is not in any way a roguelike.

It can be considered a roguelite,though personally I'd just say it is a platformer with permadeath.

Noita does interesting things with terrain deformation, and this is a good GDC talk about how it does so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prXuyMCgbTc

Sony has owned Lemmings since the early 90s. They have actually released Lemmings games somewhat regularly for their consoles. Most recently, in 2018, they did a version for iOS and Android: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lemmings-the-puzzle-adventure/...

Unfortunately it’s a typical free-to-play mobile game where you buy gold to keep playing.

Red Faction, which was mostly taking place in underground mines, had generic deformable/destructible terrain reminiscent of Lemmings terrain, but 3D. It was artificially limited in some ways, otherwise you'd just drill your way straight to the level end (similarly to some Lemmings levels with unpiercable material).

Drilling through was not just a gimmick but actually part of the game, e.g instead of finding a key à la Doom/Descent, you'd have to detonate a rocket, a mine, or a grenade at walls near locked doors to create holes big enough to go around them (took me a surprisingly long time the first time to figure I was supposed to do that, especially as the level is intentionally deceptive as you have door with buttons/keys before).

There were also actual boring machines to help you drill through big time. You could make bridges fall into a chasm by blasting both ends. In enemy-crowded open areas you'd have to create your own cover by carving holes in walls or in the ground.

Trivia: Red Faction was initially due to be Descent 4 (as a prequel to Descent), but turned into a on-foot FPS in a different universe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Faction_(video_game)

Thanks for mentioning that, I think do this date it's one of the very view 3D games with destructible terrain. I remember in particular one testing level (maybe it was just in the demo), where you were put in a hall with some explosives to experiment with (probably to showcase the engine). When I was a kid I remember that I wanted to create a U-formed tunnel around the hall and was pretty impressed when this was indeed possible (and had respect for tunnel engineers as it's hard to get the direction right).

      #####################
     #                     #
    #   +---------------+   #
     #  |               |  #
      # |               | #
       #|               |#
        #               #
        +---------------+

    +|- ... original hall/room
    #   ... tunnel

I was really impressed at that time and frankly I still am. Good times.

EDIT: The level was called glasshouse. This video might be useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8KeFgzqsPQ

Glass House is a sandbox level on the PC version, to fool around with the engine!

There's a port of Lemmings 1 on the Windows store. A few things like the bomber explosions were changed, but it's otherwise the same game.

I know this may sound cynical, and I know it's a whole different kind of work for the authors, but I could use a YouTube channel with these stories. This kind of content is quite perfect for losing myself in it while meditatively chomping on spaghetti, strand by strand.

I mean, I regularly watch channels like ‘Technology Connections’ and others that dissect some ultra-nerdy topic for twenty minutes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/

You may enjoy the “War Stories” series by ArsTechnica. It follows a developer of an early game and what it took to create it.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKBPwuu3eCYkScmqpD9xE...

There are some really well produced 'making of' videos on the Splash Wave YouTube channel: https://m.youtube.com/user/strafefox

Had an Amiga 500 with (among other games) Lemmings... Great times even though, honestly, for me as a 5 year old the levels / understanding of the game was a bit too much.

In the same boat. I have fond memories of spending many hours watching my older brother play these games.

To this day I consider myself a professional video game watcher.

I remember watching my parents play. I would have been 5 or 6, and I think I could do a good number of levels.

Once or twice, I remember waking in the night and going downstairs to find one or both parents playing the game in the middle of the night.

Wow, I had no idea that the Lemmings developers went on to become the Grand Theft Auto devs. That now becomes the craziest connection I’ve learned about in this blog series. (Previously it was that a weird French shareware game called “Popcorn” was made by the same guy that later did Alone in the Dark.)

When I was like 10 years old I did a commercial and bought a PSP with the money.

One day my grandma offered to buy me a game, so I picked Lemmings off the shelf. She was very concerned whether it would be age appropriate, but I reassured her that the E for Everyone ERSB rating meant it was totally fine, and my mom would have no problems.

Turned out the ERSB mislabeled that game. I mostly avoided the gore after getting bored of it though. The level creator was a lot of fun, and I'm sure the gameplay in general lent itself to my brain being wired for programming.

I totally understand that you got bored of it on the PSP - I was a great fan of the original Amiga game, then years later I tried the SNES version, and found it much less enjoyable to play without a mouse...

I meant of the gore. There were a lot of uh, creative devices for killing lemmings.

Never got bored of the game :)

The concept video of Lemmings for Augmented Reality is lots of fun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vluX8rrWlNY

https://futurism.com/videos/this-classic-90s-game-is-making-...

I think it was one of the first PC game I ever bought. But I never could play all levels because I had trouble with the copy protection :-(

Does anyone remember Supaplex?

I loved this game as a kid and wish I could get a version for my Android phone. The current Lemmings available for Android is awful.

Yeah, Lemmings seems like a prime candidate for a modern remake for mobile/touch screens. I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet!

The original Lemmings games really work best with a mouse, which allows pixel-perfect clicking. But I've played some Android games over the years that reminded me of Lemmings, the first two that come to mind are World of Goo and Spirits...

Brings back memories! Thanks for sharing the game.

I'm pretty sure the original lemmings had 30 levels, at least on pc. The author is multiplying the 4 difficulty levels, to get 120, which I don't agree with. I had a housemate who got through all the levels of Mayhem difficulty. I couldn't do one at that difficulty.

Here's his article on the original: https://www.filfre.net/2017/10/games-on-the-mersey-part-5-th...

The levels are different at each difficulty. You can see them here: https://lemmings.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Lemmings_Difficult...

"Mayhem 1" is nothing like "Fun 1", for example.

Some harder levels were variant of easier levels (often with small changes), but yes, most levels were original.

What a great game.

The small changes being that instead of saving 80% of the Lemmings you had to save 100%. Or some skills which you had the first time around were missing. But yeah, the original Lemmings fit on 2 Amiga floppy disks (1,76 MB), and they also had to fit in four "Easter Egg" levels with exclusive graphics and music, so they had to do some optimizations...

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