OK, is it me or are would I be correct in seeing a massive tie in MARP's future in the lemmings prototype?

I suggest the following: All players start with x lives, probably three, but maybe five's better. Any lemming that should have been saved, but you didn't, is a loss of a "life". Any level that isn't finished in three minutes [not when the credit ends, when three lemmings minutes (about 90 seconds by my estimation) pass, even if it covers two credits] also accounts for a loss of a "life". However, if you COMPLETE level 4, 8, 12, etc., an extra life is gained. (8, 16, 24, etc. could be used, too - each "segment" is eight levels long though, right?)

It would be a bit interesting keeping track of lives - but it would generate the competition I think we want...

Do you think this suggestion has any merit or am I just smoking smog out the top of my head... which would require a lot of talent now that I think about it... :) GB9

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), February 12, 2002

Answers

So are you rescinding the one-credit rule?

It seems like you have to sacrifice 5 guys in the first 6 levels, unless I'm missing something. So you have to account for "necessary" deaths.

-- Tenchi (rpeng@usc.edu), February 12, 2002.

Well I can't personally rescind the one-credit rule, we have to agree by motion to do that. I think this is one of the rare times we can rescind that, however. Course, that's my opinion - I'll expand on it if required...

As for neccessary deaths - yes - there's a case where you have to put three blockers to save the other 22. That doesn't count as three lives lost, that would count for no lives lost. But if you put one lemming that little pit on the builder level and it doesn't get saved, that would be one life lost because the death was "unneccessary".

GB9

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), February 13, 2002.

I don't like the proposed scheme, since it requires everyone to know what deaths are 'required' and which aren't. I always used to think that on the first 'blockers' level, you had to use 4 blockers - now I find that the fall to the exit is not too high, and it is possible to only use 3. What I'm saying is that the proposed scoring mechanism is too hard to use.

How about if instead we score the game as the number of lemmings saved, full stop? You're allowed to continue as many times as you like, but if you fail to complete any level then it's game over.

Just a suggestion, of course. And to be honest, I've not played lemmings enough in MAME to know how the credit thing works - I just played it a lot on Amigas, Atari ST's and such like a long time ago.

-- Zwaxy (zwaxy@bigfoot.com), February 13, 2002.

We need to do something about the time limit on this game if we are going to see anything more than the first half dozen levels.

I agree that the number of lemmings saved should be the primary measure and then the time taken should be the tie breaker (fastest game wins). Saving the most lemmings is more in the spirit of the game and so should be rewarded the most.

I am uncomfortable with the idea of unlimited continues though. I'm also unhappy with the 'game over when you first fail to complete a level' idea. Later levels of the game are brutal in regard to mistakes - make one and you can't complete the level.

I'd be happier to see a limit on the continues - even if it is as high as 50 or so, whatever will eventually prove sufficient for a good player to finish the game. It will not be easy to work out what that number ought to be - anyone have some overall game timings for Lemmings on other platforms?

As for mistakes where you can't finish the level, I believe the scoring should permit some mistakes, say 3 before it is game over.

Cheers, Tim

-- Tim Morrow (tmorrow@bigpond.net.au), February 13, 2002.

Maybe we should do one point for every lemming saved and take say... ten points away from every additional credit over one you need to use? Maybe that would be better. Then we can screw the unneccessary life bit or any subjectivity... but I'll leave all of that up to you to decide. GB9

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), February 13, 2002.

Seems reasonable to me, every continue takes away ten lemmings from the total and game's over when you reach a negative score; of course you shouldn't count the ones that you are saving on the round when this happens and final score might be the total of lemmings plus (number of last completed stage * 10). Double-clicking the nuke to respawn the round should end the game at once or cause a big penalty (say -20 on lemmings total) I know this would break the "one coin per game" rule, but this game is too addictive and it would be a very boring playing with just one coin.

-- essekappa (benedetti.franco@tiscalinet.it), February 14, 2002.

Yeah - that scoring system works. I think it should be automatic game over for anybody who winds up repeating a level, frankly. I'll leave that for the "motion period" - shouldn't be too long before that starts. GB9

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), February 14, 2002.

I still think that a few mistakes should be permitted just like most other games on MARP. Later levels in the game don't have any margin for error. I completed the Sega Genesis/Megadrive version of Lemmings years ago. I recall that some of the levels took several retries even once I knew what to do. I can't understand the problem with restarting a level. You are already being penalised as the time doesn't restart so you've lost any time used in the previous try. I can't see anyone finishing the later levels under the proposed rules.

There is possibly a problem with the 10 lemming penalty per continue. If you can find a way to save 10 more lemmings at some stage of the game, it's not worth it if it takes more than a credits worth of time to do it (3 lemming minutes, 1.5 minutes real time). Not sure how often this occurs.

I believe the aim of the game should be to always have rescued the maximum number of lemmings at each point of the game. Any player that has rescued more lemmings after x stages than anyone else should be declared the leader.

The current scoring proposal appears to reward fast play over rescuing the maximum number of lemmings. Perhaps there should be two categories - speed play and max lemmings.

Cheers, Tim

-- Tim Morrow (tmorrow@bigpond.net.au), February 14, 2002.

Okay, here's how I'd rather see it scored:

You start off with some base value (100*starting level).

For each level cleared, you get 25 points minus the number of lemmings who didn't survive (so blockers that remain are still counted as surviving), and an additional point for each lemming that was actually saved.

The base value is ONLY awarded if the first level is completed.

This gives people an incentive to play some of the later levels, although it still short-changes the levels in the middle, and there's no multiple-credit requirement (if we do still want that, we can take each credit as a separate game and then the final score is the average of every game - which is how we should be handling multi- credit recordings anyway, in my opinion... yes, it's great that you broke the 1st place score on your third credit, BUT your other two scores sucked, and you should still be held accountable for that).

-- Matt Denham (mdenham@coinet.com), February 15, 2002.

I don't agree with you, Tim. If you do a little mistake (i.e. you waisted the only two floaters in the level) you can switch the game's speed to a complete stop. This would mean having to wait for time to expire and then getting new floaters with three minutes to go: this will cost you 10 points, and/or a fewer lemmings to save; doing a BIG mistake (so that you can't finish the round even with newly respawned "actions") ends the game at once; many other games tolerate some little mistakes but will have no mercy for bigger ones (I just recall wonderboy: some areas can't be done without the axe, so loosing it would be a fatal error). I just finished playing lemmings, ending the game with 1600+ saved, no nuke, using about 100-110 credits, and I did A LOT of little mistake, in some cases I only saved 1 or 2 lemmings using 2-3 credits (round 65 is a real pain, 10+ credits)

-- essekappa (benedetti.franco@tiscalinet.it), February 15, 2002.

Apologies, I'm confused. Specifically which of my statements don't you agree with? Can you explain it in another way? If you mean some games won't tolerate errors then I agree with you although I don't see wboy as an example nor why it's relevant for lemmings. I thought you could always get back after dying at any position of wboy (based on my experience of the console versions of the game) but I'm not the expert you are at the arcade version :-)

Finishing lemmings using 100-110 credits even if it was a quick dry run just reinforces to me that some margin for error should be allowed in the game. Level 65 is a case in point where an error should be allowed. If it makes the game too easy this way then the scoring should cover rankings adequately - those using less credits will have higher scores just as it should be.

Cheers, Tim

-- Tim Morrow (tmorrow@bigpond.net.au), February 16, 2002.

Let's try this scoring system thought: In the game, you start with 0 points. Every time you save a lemming, you get 1 point. Every time you have to continue a game, you lose 10 points. When your score goes BELOW zero, the game is over. Any time you are forced to repeat a level (which includes the super-nuke), your game is also over. Your MARP score will be: 10 points for each lemming saved.
100 points for each stage completed.
-50 points for each continue used.
So in essekappa's case, I approximatly guess he finished 72 stages saving 1600 lemmings in 105 credits. So his score would be (72 * 100) + (1600 * 10) - (105 * 25) = 7200 + 16000 - 5250 = 17950 What do you think about this thought? GB9

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), February 16, 2002.

Let's try this scoring system thought: In the game, you start with 0 points. Every time you save a lemming, you get 1 point. Every time you have to continue a game, you lose 10 points. When your score goes BELOW zero, the game is over. Any time you are forced to repeat a level (which includes the super-nuke), your game is also over. Your MARP score will be: 10 points for each lemming saved. 100 points for each stage completed. -50 points for each continue used. So in essekappa's case, I approximatly guess he finished 72 stages saving 1600 lemmings in 105 credits. So his score would be (72 * 100) + (1600 * 10) - (105 * 25) = 7200 + 16000 - 5250 = 17950 What do you think about this thought? GB9

Actually, it's (72*100) + (1600*10) - (105*50) = 7200 + 16000 - 10500 = 12700.

If we take out the continue penalty, but change it to a per-credit average, it becomes:

((72*100) + (1600*10)) / 26 = (7200 + 16000) / 26 = 23200 / 26 = 892 (roughly).

By the other scoring system listed there, the score is: 1600 - 25*10 = 1350 (or, doing a per-credit average instead of a penalty, 1600 / 26 = 61).

-- dissolute city (mdenham@coinet.com), February 17, 2002.

Oops... I originally typed 25 point penalty - but I thought the components would be more equal if I did 50 - so the original scoring I wrote was 25 - sorry :)

If we played per credit - he actually played 105 credits, so his per credit average would be like 225 points. We'd be back to the original situation - 170 * 10 + 7 * 100 = 2400 / 1 = 2400

In the other system, it would be 1600 - 105*10 = 550 - if by credit, it would be about 15 points - playing just the first credit like we've been doing would be 170 / 1 = 170. GB9

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), February 17, 2002.

If he used 105 credits, he did 104 continues, not 105. It looks like this scoring mechanism might be quite tricky for people to use accurately, judging by the last few posts...

-- Zwaxy (zwaxy@bigfoot.com), February 17, 2002.

Sorry, Tim, I read my message again and it wasn't that clear: in wonderboy dying will send you back to the last checkpoint without the axe and in some cases (7-4, 8-2, 8-4) it is VERY difficult to continue, if not impossible. I did many errors in the lemmings inp I sent but none of them forced me to use the nuke, so I could continue the game, assuming that you can continue only if you save one at least. I think that GB9 method should be used.

-- essekappa (benedetti.franco@tiscalinet.it), February 17, 2002.