"C64 version. Sprite limitations mean that the number of lemmings is considerably less than the other 8 bit versions. Shame really."
Not quite true. On the C64 version, they used hardware sprites for the playing field and bitmapped the Lemmings onto the background.
Sprite limitations meant that the visible playing area was only a half-screen wide. The restriction on the number of Lemmings was down to the poor bitmap performance on the C64 (it has an 8x8 tiled layout, not a true cartesian map) and the fact that they had to duplicate the movement onto the sprite-mapped background to drop out pixels.
All the coordinate calculations were computationally intensive.
Register
C64 version
"C64 version. Sprite limitations mean that the number of lemmings is considerably less than the other 8 bit versions. Shame really."
Not quite true. On the C64 version, they used hardware sprites for the playing field and bitmapped the Lemmings onto the background.
Sprite limitations meant that the visible playing area was only a half-screen wide. The restriction on the number of Lemmings was down to the poor bitmap performance on the C64 (it has an 8x8 tiled layout, not a true cartesian map) and the fact that they had to duplicate the movement onto the sprite-mapped background to drop out pixels.
All the coordinate calculations were computationally intensive.