Commodore Free 29/Commodore_Free_Issue_29_2009_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/lemmings

Text File | 2023-02-26 | 15KB | 504 lines

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* The Complete History of Lemmings  *
*   By Mike Dailly (revision: 8)    *
*      Copyright Mike Dailly        *
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Lemmings started life as a simple
animation back in August 1989 when
DMA Design had just moved into their
first office (which only consisted of
2 small rooms), and were beginning a
new game called Walker (based on the
walker that was used in Blood Money).

Scott Johnson (author of Hired Guns
on the Amiga) had just been hired as
a freelance artist after being
rescued from a 2 week stretch behind
the counter at McDonalds, and
assigned the task of creating the
graphics for Walker. After building
the walkers head, he set about
drawing little men for the walker to
shoot at in a 16 by 16 pixel box.

I however maintained that they could
be done in less; 8 by 8 - or so I
thought. One lunchtime I borrowed
someone's Amiga (probably Gary's,
although it might have been a spare),
and set about trying to prove him
wrong.

The resulting image which only took
an hour or so to make, I created the
men, the gun, and the 10 ton weight.
Once everyone had seen it they had a
good old laugh, Gary Timmons added
the mouth, the clapping hand and the
rotating thing - and everyone had
another chuckle.

Gary also made significant
improvements to the character, and
you can see Gary's almost complete
lemming, just right of the chewing
mouth. My one, is a bit "stiff",
while Gary's is clearly the one that
was used in the game.

Part 1
------

It was actually Russell Kay (author
of PC lemmings), that first laughed
"There's a game in that!" rather than
Dave Jones, he's also the one that
did the first demo which was shown to
Psygnosis in late September of 1989
at the PCW show. It was also Russell
that coined the phrase "Lemmings"
when talking about these little guys.
The demo itself came about for a
couple of reasons; first I had just
done the animation, and Russell was
keen to use the little guys in
something, but the second reason is
probably the more interesting.

Russell and Dave were having a
discussion about weapons in Blood
Money, and Dave was thinking of
adding "salamander" style missiles
that followed the landscape, but
didn't really know how best to
implement it. Russell however, had
figured out a way, and used the
Lemmings to demonstrate it. Dave
decided against it though, and added
the bombs that are in there today.

There's been much debate over the
choice of colours as well, but the
colours were selected, not because
they were the easiest to choose, but
because of the PC EGA palette. With
the limited choice, it was decided
the green hair was nicer than blue,
and with that, the final Lemming was
born. I was actually the next person
to code up a demo on the Commodore
64, but I only got so far as having a
single Lemming walking over the
landscape before Dave put me onto
another project.

Dave was now at a lose end after just
losing the race to build the first
Amiga Action Replay cartridge, and so
decided he now had time to start
another game, and finally picked
Lemmings - which is probably the best
decision he ever made.

After coding the defender style
explosion, Brian Watson (who wrote
most of the Atari ST version - I
started it... he did most of it),
almost fell backwards off his chair
laughing!

Gary did all the animations, and
Scott drew all the background. This
was mainly because Gary insisted that
he couldn't draw backgrounds, so
Scott produced the first earth and
rock style, and Dave decided to let
him do them all. Gary meanwhile, set
about creating the animations the
game needed.

PART 2
------

The level editor was built around the
Deluxe Paint interface; a program
everyone at DMA was very familiar
with. It was incredibly easy to use,
and being built directly into the
game it allowed for a very quick turn
around on level creation. Gary,
myself and Scot were the ones that
did the bulk of the levels, But Dave
did manage to sneak a couple in as
well; although it was probably
because he told us too and we
couldn't really argue with him.

Having said that, it did take him
ages to get any that were even worth
while considering! He used to try and
beat us, and after proudly stabbing a
finger at the screen and saying
"There! Beat that!", we'd calmly
point out a totally new way of
getting around all his traps, and
doing it in a much simpler method.
"Oh...", he'd mutter, and scramble
off to try and fix it.

Of course, this was the beauty of
Lemmings; there were so many ways of
completing a level. I can't remember
if anyone else managed to get levels
into the final game, Steve tried hard
- since there was money to be had!
But just couldn't get to grips with
it.

We all actually had great fun doing
levels, and were always trying to
beat each other by doing the most
fiendish design we could. This never
happened of course, and by the end of
Lemmings we were all so good at the
game, it would only be a matter of
seconds before we figured out how to
complete a new level.

We did manage to fox Psygnosis now
and then, and I can lay claim that it
took John White an hour to figure out
"Its hero time". When ever Psygnosis
did some testing, we'd get back a fax
with the level name, time taken to
complete, and some comments and a
difficulty rating. These were usually
around 3-6 minutes, and some general
comments on how they found it.

Every now and again though, the fax
would be covered in scribbles with
the time and comment's crossed out
again and again; this is what we were
striving for while we were designing
the levels, and it gave us all a warm
fuzzy feeling inside.

You could always tell the levels Gary
did, as they were very "minimal", a
few blocks and that was about it. My
own (and Scott's to some degree)
tended to look like pictures, or at
the very least pretty. Scott's levels
tended to be packed together better
than mine, but I liked drawing huge
levels; "Hunt the Nessy" and "The
Steel Mines of Kessel" were mine for
example.

I also loved making the user do
multiple things at once. "The Fast
Food Kitchen" was one of mine, and
required the player to jump back and
forth to complete the level.

After I created the "The Art Gallery"
Dave did in fact tell Gary to go and
make them a bit more pretty, as he
could now see what was possible, and
couldn't imagine people  paying for
bland looking levels, and 3 blocks on
screen was just that. So Gary went
off and put lots of fluff around the
edges to make them more appealing,
but nothing that interfered with the
playing of his level.

You can see examples of this in
levels like "Lemmingology" , "We all
fall down" and "All or Nothing". All
of these have very simple play areas,
while the surrounding detail is
meaning-less to the level itself.
Still, it didn't stop Gary from
producing some great levels.

I also liked to give small clue's in
the name ( "It's Hero Time" referring
to a single Lemming going 'over the
top' as it were), while Gary used to
try and make clever references to
things ("I have a cunning plan" -
Black Adder), where as Scott just
tended to make up nice sounding
names. Of course we all did a bit of
everything, my "The Island of the
Wicker people" being a reference to a
line from Batman.

PART 3
------

I was also the one responsible for
creating all the "custom" levels for
the game. We picked games that used
the Amiga's dual-playfield system as
they only used 16 colours, this ruled
out games like Blood Money which was
a full 32 colours. We did a test with
a Menace level since we already had
all the graphics to that, and once we
saw how this looked, we went hunting
for others.

We were then lucky enough to get some
graphics from Psygnosis and
Reflections for Beast, Beast II and
Awesome which then made up the rest
of these levels. The special levels
were very basic, as they couldn't
have traps of any kind (due partly to
the change in colour palette), which
meant I had to try and make hard
levels using only the skills and
backgrounds only; never an easy thing
to do.

The problem was now that we had all
these really hard levels, but no easy
ones. So, Gary then set about making
simple ones; either by making easier
versions of hard ones, or brand new
levels. Levels like "Just Dig"
(Lemmings level 1) were example of
the new, simple levels. Designed to
ease the player in,. these levels
were so simple, that some under 5's
managed to play the first few levels
unaided.

This I believe is where many games
fall down today, they don't spend the
time making a good learning curve.
Its also one of the reasons why I
think the game did so well, everyone
could do at least a few levels.

I've since met many people that were
around 6 or 7 years old at the time,
who have told me they used to play
it. There have been very few games
with such a cross section of players;
Mario games are the only other ones I
can think of since not even the Sonic
games are played by such a wide cross
section of ages.

The music and particularly the sound
effects have to get a mention, so
crucial to were they to the game.
Both were created by Brian Johnson
(Scott's younger brother), and the
reason the tunes were, well - basic,
was to avoid any copyright problems.

This was around the time when games
first started to worry about such
things, where as before they would
have just happily ripped them off,
but not now. This is why we were
stuck with such timeless classics as
"How much was that doggie in the
window?" etc. However, I do seem to
recall that Gary Timmons did the
intro music, for some reason.

The sound effects were superb however
and deserve a special mention, since
the game wouldn't have been the same
without them. Scott's mum I believe
was the first voice of the lemmings.

The other great thing with the
original lemmings was the 2 player
option. This came about because of
games like Populous and Stunt Car
Racer. These were the games we were
playing in the office at the time,
and they were the first to use
Null-Modem cables for multi-player
action.

We tried this as well, and I actually
coded up a Null-Modem cable routine
up, and even got a mouse moving
around on Dave's machine, being
controlled by me on mine. However,
since the Amiga could have 2 mice
plugged in, Dave decided to go with
the split screen option instead.

This was a great addition, and one
I've been very sorry not to see again
since. The PC has problems
controlling more than once mouse, so
it was dropped from that version, but
the Atari ST version did managed to
retain it.

PART 4
------

When the arcade machine was being
written, the CEO of Data East
apparently wouldn't start a meeting
without challenging the person to a 2
player version of lemmings (according
to Dave that is).

I've never been quite sure why no one
has ever done a proper multi player
Lemmings game since, and these days
with and internet connection, it
would be a great game to play.

The arcade version is also where the
fast forward of Lemmings 2 came from,
once we saw it in the Arcade version,
we realised we just had to have it.
It's now very hard to play the
original Lemmings without the fast
forward.

The arcade version was controlled
with the joystick or a trackball and
was still in the very early stages
when it was cancelled. I still have
the original prototype here, rescued
from the skip when DMA moved from
Dundee to Edinburgh.

Another little known fact, was that
Psygnosis also did a book of
solutions, written by Mark Tsai
(current owner of Lemmings.com), and
A.J. Aranyosi, it included 16 new
levels from the "oh no, More
lemmings" level set. This book is now
well out of print, but is
ISBN:1-55958-188-3 in case you want
to look for it.

It was printed in black and white
pages, and gave detailed descriptions
on how to complete each level from
Lemmings and the new bonus levels.

The Lemmings front end was also going
to look very different initially. We
came up with the idea of lemmings
holding up cards, like in stadiums to
spell stuff out. The rest of the
lemmings were going to be doing lots
of other funny animations.

So I set about doing this. I had a
screen full of lemmings, all
animating differently, and some
holding up cards. This was neat, but
confusing... so it was eventually
dropped.

The official drawings were done by
Gary, however they were done well
after the game was underway. They had
to be drawn since Psygnosis kept
asking us what they really looked
like for boxes and adverts and we
couldn't tell them. So Gary knocked
up these sketches to give them the
basic idea.

We also received various comments
back from the public, one of which
sent our eyes rolling! The level 666
was received very badly in places,
since many thought this was a direct
effort to put the devil over as being
"cool" or whatever.

However, it all started out as me
trying to get a level full of
"fives", but while I could get 55 of
each skill, 5min, 55 seconds for the
timer, I couldn't get 55% of lemmings
to save; only 66% (it has since been
pointed out that if I'd change the
number of lemmings, I could have
easily gotten 55%). So it changed to
6. Then since it was in the hell
level, I though of 666.

I never thought it would cause quite
the stir it did, although I still say
you're helping them escaping from
hell it to a far better land!

PART 5
------

The number of people that claim to
have been involved in the original
Lemmings, is huge. The actual number
isn't.

The main folk were Dave Jones
(Amiga), Russell Kay (PC), Gary
Timmons (Animations), Scott
Johnston(Backgrounds), Me (Mike
Dailly), Brian Watson(ST), Brian
Johnson (Music+SFX) and Steve Hammond
(PC EGA/CGA Graphics conversion).
Tim Write (I think he did the music
player), Tony Williams (PC Music), oh
and Scott's mum (Lemmings Voice)!

If I've missed anyone and you think
you know some one else who should be
on this list, then please let me know
- but I reserve the right to laugh at
you.

This list obviously doesn't include
any Psygnosis staff, since during the
first lemmings game, they only really
gave feedback, and tested - although
John Whyte's level feedback was
excellent. He used to draw up a
lovely grid with level names and then
rated them and gave some comments
back.

And so there we have it - the full
story of Lemmings. I'm sure that this
will be added to as the others read
it and remember little stories of
their own, or correct some small
points listed here, but this is
pretty close.

Hope you enjoyed it!

COMMODORE FREE
This information is Copyright to Mike
Dailly Please contact Mike directly
for permission to reprint or use any
of this information

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