That may have been the case for the original Lemmings — where the background is black so you can collision test directly against black pixels — but newer games have background textures.
If you want to have complex backgrounds and terrain textures with pixel-perfect collisions and terrain modification then you’ll likely want to keep separate buffers for foreground and background. Then your game engine would operate on a bitmask for collision and destruction of terrain, and you’d construct the framebuffer by blitting [1] the foreground and background using the mask to select between them.
For example Amiga and most 16-bit consoles could just have two (or more) playfields (like layers or screen size sprites) superimposed on each other. For the game code those pixels would still be "black", well, transparent, even with background graphics showing through.
No blitting required, playfields were drawn by the display hardware at scanout.
>We still don't have any modern games like Lemmings or the "classic" 2D Worms
That's like complaining we haven't made a modern Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson or that we haven't remade The Godfather.
If the originals are so simple, accessible, and so good, what more could you bring to the table with a new modern version to guarantee a big sales success to offset the risk and cost of starting such and endeavor when gamers can just play the existing originals.
Not everything needs a reboot/remake, especially if perfection has already been achieved.
> If the originals are so good and can be played today on modern systems, what more could you bring to the table with modern versions to guarantee a big success.
That's a weird deduction. Everything can be improved upon. Why do we have loads of modern games like Doom, for example? It was good too, and can be played today on modern systems.
Some genres, like Worms, just peak much sooner than others, like Doom, and don't benefit from newer graphics or technological improvements. Just like UX design, at some point you peak, and any more changes you try to add for the sake of improvements, just end up making the product worse.
Look at current commercial operating systems or at Reddit. They also made a 3D Worms game a while back and it was a massive flop. Often, simpler is better.
Sure, everything can always be improved an you might hypothetically be able to build an even better Worms game than the original, but since the bar is already so high, you have very little chance of topping it and all the risks of failure.
I'm still waiting for FMV games to come back into fashion. They were a neat blend of theater and adventure games (which is another genre that doesn't get enough love)
Worms is in the same genre as Scorched Earth and owes it a lot for inspiration, but it adds a ton of distinct weapons and movement technique that certainly qualifies it as it's own game.
Yeah! This genre is called "artillery games" [1] and it has an impressive number of titles going all the way back to 1972! Scorched Earth is at least the 16th game in the genre, albeit the most famous pre-Worms.
My favourite iteration growing up was called Dome Wars [3] and it's not even on that Wikipedia list!
Wow, then in that case we should stop making any FPS games because we already have Doom, no more RPGs because Ultima exists, and no more movies because there's Bambi.
Oh, I didn't necessarily mean retro. Just not a multiplayer focused IAP fest.
A decent single player shooter with a story, atmosphere etc.
I believe Far Cry may still qualify but I don't get games that require an account with the vendor (UPlay, Rockstar Social Club and other crap like that).
I mean Android is sadly lacking of any of these kinds of games. There were great Worms clones back in the day as well, now there are afaik, none.
It reminds me of rock as a genre. As a teenager, rock stars were everywhere, but there's barely any new rock bands after 2010. It doesn't mean the genre has achieved perfection, but everyone who would be doing rock is now doing something else.
There was a resurgence in Interactive Fiction about 10 years ago, which evolved into AIF (thanks internet), which then disappeared in just 1-2 years, to be replaced by all these Ren'Py games.
There's a huge gap and demand for Guitar Hero type of games, but nobody wants to make them. (Maybe related to the decline of rock, as there's still beat games)
Adult IF. There's some incredibly detailed mechanics, but I'll spare the details. And once people couldn't make the mechanics better, they had to focus on plot, puzzles, or images (though puzzles went against the spirit of IF). It got to a point where there were large communities like the roguelikes, awards, and suddenly it collapsed after things got too ambitious or I guess after everyone has seen everything in the genre.
I think there might be a resurgence now or later with Twine and Patreon though.
While I wouldn't quite call Liero "modern", dating from 1998, the modern part is that you can play it multiplayer in your browser instantly: https://www.webliero.com/
King Arthur's Gold looks familiar! Must be an homage to the hidden gem King Arthur's World [1] for the SNES. I played the heck out of that game. Fantastic music and clearly an interesting take on the Lemmings genre!
Not the pixel art style that you seem to mean but there is a recent lemmings 3D style game called Tin Harts. I haven't played it yet but it looks interesting.
Also, it is voxels rather than hand drawn pixel art but I thought Urbek did a great job at feeling like that era of game. It is as much a puzzle game as a builder (there are a number of levels of upgrade that require other buildings within a certain distance).
I still remember the day I walked into my local games store and bought it off the shelf. It was flying off the shelves. I think there was a cover disc demo the previous month which had started the hype machine.
This aged really well, I had no idea how impressive this was when I first played it either. The only thing is the cookies, which might break after 26 years:
From what I see, bot the developer of the DHTML version and the band are from Netherlands, and the developer had to take the game down from his site [0]
Absolutely wild this doesn't use <canvas>! I remember playing this way back in the day, before I was a SWE, and didn't really appreciate that fact. Of course, I'm sure it predates being able to effectively use the canvas... but still! Super cool.
I can't seem to find it online anywhere, but I'm also reminded of the knockoff game "Flea Circus" which I played in grade school :)
There was one level that stumped me for a long time, it was the level that introduced the one dig direction game mechanic. I was young and there was no internet to look up a solution.
One night I dreamed the solution, how obvious it was! Even now I still remember this experience when confronted with an intractable problem.
Lemmings is such a fun game! I played many hours of it trying to perfectly solve its many puzzles.
Lemmings inspired Ron Millar, a designer at Silicon & Synapse (later Blizzard Entertainment), to invent The Lost Vikings, our first original game: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Vikings
The original design for Vikings was very similar to Lemmings but saw massive changes during the course of development, going from many Vikings to five to eventually just three.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the Lemmings devs for inspiring our efforts.
Yeah, the ambivalence between "oh, I want to save every one of these cute little critters" and "f** this, I'm sick of it, I'll just click 'nuke' instead of pressing the escape key to restart" was really something special...
The Lost Vikings was one of my favorite games growing up. There have been so many attempts to copy the formula (e.g. Trine) but none have been so memorable or endearing. The character and level designs are wonderful.
Haha I didn't know there was such a direct connection!
When we were building Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, I think the games were referenced the most were actually both Lemmings and The Lost Vikings, with Cannonfodder as a 3rd one - there was very little inspiration from the RTSs that Commandos was apparently more similar to.
I remember watching my folks play both games as a child and then doing so myself. Not sure which I got through first but know they were both before i turned five as it was at our first house. Have been contemplating playing then again as it's been 30 years now. Still have the floppy's in storage, lol. Such great games.
I loved lemmings as a kid, and bits of the soundtrack get stuck in my head to this day (I know a lot of it is just chippy arrangements of otherwise famous public domain music, but the arrangements were great). Even at the time it was a really original concept in a way that people seldom manage, like something that could have (but as far as I can tell didn't) become its own "genre" of game
I could have sworn I saw a documentary where they talked about having legal issues with some of the music, because some of it (e.g. "She'll Be Coming Round the Mountains") was not public domain.
Also, if you're not being facetious and actually didn't notice, they do have a youtube embed of the full documentary made in 2022 at the bottom of the linked article. I haven't taken the time to watch it, but maybe that's the one you're thinking of
Other well-known tunes include the ouverture from Orphée aux enfers by Offenbach (better known as "the can-can music") and How much is that lemming, er, doggie in the window
First video game I remember playing. Dad worked at a warehouse for the local school district and when I’d go to work with him, he’d set me up on their IBM PC and let me play lemmings the entire day. Truly loved that game
Pretty sure Ludum Dare is still around; a friend competed in a recent one.
The website looks a bit behind, with a YouTube video and calls for signups for a 2022 event. But the competition still seems to be running and got "an avalanche of submissions" for the most recent event in September 2023 [0]. Maybe you can find more about it on Reddit [1], and there's also mention of a Discord server.
And the answer is: the organiser went and built a new website at https://ldjam.com and does a _really_ bad job of redirecting users to the new one. So all you see on the old main website is stale content and inactivity. :unimpressed_shrug:
I first played Lemmings on a Mac IIsi, and later on an Amiga 1200. I remember the pixel-perfect timing being brutally difficult with the low-quality Amiga ball mouse, but I played it enough that I can still hum all the tunes.
I remember that the "P" key was your friend... and I never thought the Amiga mouse was bad quality, but maybe those shipped with the Amiga 500 were still better, I used to clean it regularly, and of course I hadn't used optical mice until then :)
Unfortunately Sony has been sitting on the IP for Lemmings for quite some time now and hasn't done a lot with it. There was a mobile game a few years ago however (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sadpuppy.l...), but apparently the free version is pretty ad-infested (haven't tried it yet).
There was also "Lemmings Revolution" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmings_Revolution) which is over 20 years old by now, but tried to translate the original concept into something that would look good in 3D. I thought it was ok, but didn't enjoy it quite as much as the originals (which of course could have something to do with the fact that I was younger when I played the original games).
147 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 199 ms ] threadHOW did they do that pixel-perfect terrain destruction anyway?
Noita comes to mind. Also includes some pretty wild fluid dynamics.
> HOW did they do that pixel-perfect terrain destruction anyway??
Usually the terrain is a bitmap, and various effects paint/erase it.
If you want to have complex backgrounds and terrain textures with pixel-perfect collisions and terrain modification then you’ll likely want to keep separate buffers for foreground and background. Then your game engine would operate on a bitmask for collision and destruction of terrain, and you’d construct the framebuffer by blitting [1] the foreground and background using the mask to select between them.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitter
No blitting required, playfields were drawn by the display hardware at scanout.
That's like complaining we haven't made a modern Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson or that we haven't remade The Godfather.
If the originals are so simple, accessible, and so good, what more could you bring to the table with a new modern version to guarantee a big sales success to offset the risk and cost of starting such and endeavor when gamers can just play the existing originals.
Not everything needs a reboot/remake, especially if perfection has already been achieved.
That's a weird deduction. Everything can be improved upon. Why do we have loads of modern games like Doom, for example? It was good too, and can be played today on modern systems.
Some genres, like Worms, just peak much sooner than others, like Doom, and don't benefit from newer graphics or technological improvements. Just like UX design, at some point you peak, and any more changes you try to add for the sake of improvements, just end up making the product worse.
Look at current commercial operating systems or at Reddit. They also made a 3D Worms game a while back and it was a massive flop. Often, simpler is better.
Sure, everything can always be improved an you might hypothetically be able to build an even better Worms game than the original, but since the bar is already so high, you have very little chance of topping it and all the risks of failure.
Arguable. I've seen variations of Tetris, but never improvements. Nor do I think you can improve stud poker, or Go.
I like the multiplayer versions over the years. The Tetris Effect is pretty fun, although maybe not strictly an improvement.
I'm a little on the fence about 7-bag, because it's a little too evenly distributed, but early Tetris had some gnarly distribution.
Not to mention that when people say "improved" they usually mean "adding more stuff". More isn't necessarily better.
My favourite iteration growing up was called Dome Wars [3] and it's not even on that Wikipedia list!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery_game
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artillery_video_games
[3] https://macintoshgarden.org/games/dome-wars
Serious Sam seems to survive. They tried to continue Doom but it wasn't Doom so much. What else is there?
A decent single player shooter with a story, atmosphere etc.
I believe Far Cry may still qualify but I don't get games that require an account with the vendor (UPlay, Rockstar Social Club and other crap like that).
It reminds me of rock as a genre. As a teenager, rock stars were everywhere, but there's barely any new rock bands after 2010. It doesn't mean the genre has achieved perfection, but everyone who would be doing rock is now doing something else.
There was a resurgence in Interactive Fiction about 10 years ago, which evolved into AIF (thanks internet), which then disappeared in just 1-2 years, to be replaced by all these Ren'Py games.
There's a huge gap and demand for Guitar Hero type of games, but nobody wants to make them. (Maybe related to the decline of rock, as there's still beat games)
I think there might be a resurgence now or later with Twine and Patreon though.
There's also King Arthur's Gold, which is a free multiplayer game that I'm sure only has like ten players online these days but is an absolute hoot regardless: https://store.steampowered.com/app/219830/King_Arthurs_Gold/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur%27s_World
You run a zombie invasion, the zombies have attributes not unlike the ones from Left 4 Dead, but the gameplay is pure Lemmings.
https://www.zombienightterror.com (Incidentally the best game I've ever played on an iPad.)
Yes we have.
https://hedgewars.org/
https://www.gog.com/en/game/tin_hearts
Also, it is voxels rather than hand drawn pixel art but I thought Urbek did a great job at feeling like that era of game. It is as much a puzzle game as a builder (there are a number of levels of upgrade that require other buildings within a certain distance).
https://www.gog.com/en/game/urbek_city_builder
Open Source version is Pingus: https://pingus.seul.org/
Another great game from that era ;)
It's dated 2004, but I'm convinced I remember playing it earlier.
It got taken down shortly after that by BREIN, the Dutch copyright watchdog, but it lives on as Pumpkins.
Amazing that JS from the Internet Explorer era still works well 20 years later.
This aged really well, I had no idea how impressive this was when I first played it either. The only thing is the cookies, which might break after 26 years:
function setcookie(id, cookievars) {
So maybe somebody uploaded it in support.
I can't seem to find it online anywhere, but I'm also reminded of the knockoff game "Flea Circus" which I played in grade school :)
Predates it at all. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ca... says browser support didn't come until 2005 at the earliest.
https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/acse/department/facilities/diamo...
(OK, also linked in the article.)
tgalemmi
Don't know why I still remember those.
One night I dreamed the solution, how obvious it was! Even now I still remember this experience when confronted with an intractable problem.
Lemmings inspired Ron Millar, a designer at Silicon & Synapse (later Blizzard Entertainment), to invent The Lost Vikings, our first original game: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Vikings
The original design for Vikings was very similar to Lemmings but saw massive changes during the course of development, going from many Vikings to five to eventually just three.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the Lemmings devs for inspiring our efforts.
When we were building Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, I think the games were referenced the most were actually both Lemmings and The Lost Vikings, with Cannonfodder as a 3rd one - there was very little inspiration from the RTSs that Commandos was apparently more similar to.
Thanks for the good memories.
There's a little bit written about it on Wikipedia but I wish I could find the documentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmings_(video_game)#Developm...
Also, if you're not being facetious and actually didn't notice, they do have a youtube embed of the full documentary made in 2022 at the bottom of the linked article. I haven't taken the time to watch it, but maybe that's the one you're thinking of
"Dad, are they playing Lemmings music?"
"It's called Pachebel's Canon, it's from the 17th century!"
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QwXthGJfHLc&t=118s
(And I choose that one as the forlorn, mournful sound seems most appropriate as all the lemmings march to their death.)
Documentary: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RbAVNKdk9gA
So where is the outlet?
(I just did a search for Ludum Dare, and it seems ... dead?)
The website looks a bit behind, with a YouTube video and calls for signups for a 2022 event. But the competition still seems to be running and got "an avalanche of submissions" for the most recent event in September 2023 [0]. Maybe you can find more about it on Reddit [1], and there's also mention of a Discord server.
[0] https://flashlight13.medium.com/ludum-dare-54-hidden-gems-by... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ludumdare/
[1]: https://ludumdare.com/#schedule
I'm sure a Kickstarter for this purpose would be very well received.
There was also "Lemmings Revolution" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmings_Revolution) which is over 20 years old by now, but tried to translate the original concept into something that would look good in 3D. I thought it was ok, but didn't enjoy it quite as much as the originals (which of course could have something to do with the fact that I was younger when I played the original games).
The Settlings: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1771110/The_Settlings/