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Description of the Lemmings Games

A Lemmings game is presented as a picture on the computer screen. The picture contains two kinds of objects besides empty space.

There is a lemming source from which lemmings are emitted until the quota for the game is reached. There is a goal or lemming sink. The object of the game is to get a specified fraction of the lemmings to the goal. If the player doesn't succeed, he gets to try the game over.

All lemmings are initially emitted as walkers. Subject to certain restrictions, the player may designate any lemming as having one of the 9 qualities other than walker.

Here are the capabilities of the different kinds of lemming.

The above description does not fully describe the behavior of lemming, e.g. how deep a hole has to get before it traps walkers. Properties like this are consequences of the lemming program, are not described in the manual and are imprecisely learned by experience.

The game file bought from Psygnosis contains a number of opportunities to play (10 in the sampler and 120 in the original full version). We call each of them a game. The games are organized into levels of increasing difficulty, but we won't use the word level that way; instead we use it in its geometrical sense. Each sequence of actions by the user and the program is called a play of the game.


next up previous contents
Next: What Needs to be Up: PARTIAL FORMALIZATIONS AND THE Previous: Introduction

John McCarthy
Mon Mar 2 16:21:50 PDT 1998