Editing Lemmings (video game) (section)

==Development==
Mike Dailly, the first employee<ref name="jones recount"/> of [[DMA Design]] and one of the programmers for ''Lemmings'', provided a detailed history of the development of the game titled "The Lemmings Story" in 2006.<ref name="history">{{cite web |url=http://www.javalemmings.com/DMA/Lem_1.htm |first=Mike |last=Dailly |title=The Complete History of Lemmings |year=2006 |access-date= 10 December 2014|url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150627001229/http://www.javalemmings.com/DMA/Lem_1.htm|archive-date=27 June 2015}}</ref> [[David Jones (video game developer)|David Jones]], founder of DMA Design, has also commented on the development and success of ''Lemmings''.<ref name="jones recount">{{cite web|url=http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12190 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120526225205/http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12190 |archive-date=26 May 2012 |title=Playing Catch Up: GTA/Lemmings' Dave Jones |date=21 December 2006 |access-date=10 December 2014 |work=[[Gamasutra]] |first=Alistair |last=Wallis |url-status=dead }}</ref>

[[Image:Lemming animation.gif|left|thumb|Gary Timmons improved Mike Dailly's lemming walking animation (left) to make it appear less stiff.]]

The inspiration for gameplay came as a result of a simple animated character [[Sprite (computer graphics)|sprite]] in an 8×8 pixel box created by Dailly using [[Deluxe Paint]]<ref name="jones recount"/> as part of development for ''[[Walker (video game)|Walker]]'', then envisioned as a sequel to ''[[Blood Money (video game)|Blood Money]]''.<ref name="history"/> Dailly was able to quickly produce an animated graphic showing his creations moving endlessly, with additional graphical improvements made by Gary Timmons and other members of the DMA Design team to help remove the stiffness in the animation. One member, Russell Kay, observed that "There's a game in that!", and later coined the term "lemmings" for these creations, according to Dailly. Allowing the creatures to move across the landscape was based on a ''[[Salamander (video game)|Salamander]]'' weapon concept for ''Blood Money'' and demonstrated with the animations.<ref name="history"/>

Levels were designed based on a [[Deluxe Paint]] interface, which allowed several of the members to design levels, resulting in "hundreds of levels".<ref name="jones recount"/> There were several internal iterations of the levels, each designer challenging the others. Dailly pointed out that David Jones "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." They also sent internally tested levels to [[Psygnosis]], getting back the results of their testing via fax. While most were solved quickly, Dailly commented that "Every now and again though, the fax would be covered in scribbles with the time and comments 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."<ref name="history"/>

Each of the designers had a somewhat different style in their levels: Dailly's levels often had titles containing clues to what to do (such as "It's Hero Time", suggesting that one lemming had to be separated from the crowd) and generally required the player to perform several actions at once; Gary Timmons's levels were minimalistic, with popular culture references in the titles; and Scott Johnston's (whose mother was the first voice of the lemmings) levels were generally tightly packed. Dailly was also responsible for the "custom" levels based on other Psygnosis and [[Reflections Interactive]] Amiga games, including ''[[Shadow of the Beast (1989 video game)|Shadow of the Beast]]'', ''[[Menace (video game)|Menace]]'', ''[[Awesome (video game)|Awesome]]'' and ''[[Shadow of the Beast II]]''. These "crossover" levels also used music from those games, though in ports these levels have been removed or altered to remove such references. After they developed most of the hard levels, they then created several simple levels either by copying the existing ones or creating new layouts; as Dailly states, "This I believe is where many games fall down today, they do not spend the time making a good learning curve." Timmons is credited with the official drawings of the lemmings, as necessitated by the need of Psygnosis for box cover artwork.<ref name="history"/>

The two-player option was inspired by then-current games ''[[Populous (video game)|Populous]]'' and ''[[Stunt Car Racer]]''. DMA Design initially wanted to use a [[null modem|null-modem]] connection between two machines to allow competitive play, but ended up using the ability of the Amiga to have two mouse pointer devices usable at the same time and thus created the split-screen mode.<ref name="history"/>