Lemmings 3D Demo - Missing sponsorship and level name-change; Floppy disk L3D?

[Prob Lem]

I did have a look around to see if anyone had posted about this, but found nothing. If I am mistaken, please direct me to the correct thread (or merge this one with that one, if that's possible).

I wondered for some time if Lemmings 3D always had the Jelly Belly jelly beans sponsorship (which meant that a sample bag of these sweets was included with the initial big-box releases of the game, which was pretty awesome, really ) or not, and not too long ago, I found something that muddied the water on this wondering even further.

I found the following in one of the demos (it was either the eight level or ten level one - obviously, not Winterland );



It's the artwork for the sweets levels, with different colours, lighting, object placement, and camera-positioning (which shows up some problems with the 3D model of the overstuffed lemming, too!). Notably, the Jelly Belly sign, Mr. Jelly Belly mascot, and jelly bean flooring are all absent, and there are chocolate beans in the vein of Smarties (specifically, the British sweets by that name, which are chocolate-covered discs in the vein of M&Ms, but a little larger; North American Smarties are something completely different, and not at all chocolatey). Moreover, the whole image looks a bit dark and dingy due to those giant walls of humbugs and Flumps in the background. The level name, "Build To Success", is different, too - it's a clue to solving the stage, rather than the reference to a perennial Jelly Belly product that takes its place in the retail game.

Here's the equivalent image from the final game;



The changes from the previous image are obvious, and the level is named after a type of candy dispenser which features prominently within it.

Does anyone know if this was just a licensing issue for the Lemmings 3D demo, or whether the sponsorship deal with Jelly Belly was something that was added very late in development?

Incidentally, did anyone actually mind Lemmings 3D's sponsorship deal? And, is it the only Lemmings game to have been sponsored in such a way, or have I missed another?

This aside, the readme files for both the eight level and ten level demos states the following;

SOUND
-----

The game supports the following sound cards:

SoundBlaster AWE32
Gravis Ultrasound
General Midi
Roland LAPC-1
Roland SCC-1
SoundBlaster 8-bit & compatibles

There will be over 30 themed tunes.

There will be over 100 samples, including Lemming speech.

The CD-ROM version will also have over 20 audio tracks.

HARD DISK SPACE
---------------

This DEMONSTRATION version requires 10MB of Hard Disk space.

The FINAL version will be available on PC CD-ROM and 3.5 HD floppy.

The game requires approx 1Kb of Hard Disk space,

The floppy version will require approx 25MB of Hard Disk.

One thing that jumped out at me here, was the differentiation between the CD-ROM and floppy disk version, the latter of which I've never seen anywhere, and only heard of as a result of trying out these demos for the first time earlier this year. Did they actually ever release the floppy version, or was this abandoned in favour of releasing only the CD version?

Last of all, just out of curiousity, has anyone figured out how to rip the graphics from Lemmings 3D? I'd love to be able to get clean, non-scaled versions of the sprites from it - it's one of my favourite games in the series.

[DragonsLover]

Nice finds there! First, what are the problems of the overstuffed Lemmings you're talking about? Am I blind for not spotting them?

About sponsorship, I don't really know and I don't really care. And I think they abandoned the floppy version because it wouldn't have enough space for everything. It's just a guess.

Ripping the graphics is possible. I checked some of the texture files and they're mostly raw BMP data. Simply, each pixel of the textures are referring to the palette of the game. I could try to code i, but I'd have to figure out much better the file formats.

[Prob Lem]

Nice finds there!

Thanks!

First, what are the problems of the overstuffed Lemmings you're talking about? Am I blind for not spotting them?

They're minor, so you're not blind for not spotting them, but when you notice them you can't un-notice them. Specifically, in the image from the demo, the overstuffed lemming's arm is going through the bottom of his face (especially around where his shoulder is), and it's more obvious that his feet are going through his body where they probably shouldn't be, too. Also, the angle of the camera showcases the fact that his head doesn't appear to be attached to his body at all, which gives the whole thing a bit of a freaky look.

And I think they abandoned the floppy version because it wouldn't have enough space for everything. It's just a guess.

That's my guess, too, but the content of the demos (aside from the missing sponsorship) is more-or-less the same as the final game, which makes me think that they're from late in development. Accordingly, I wonder whether the floppy disk version actually got out into retail channels at all. Probably not, I guess, or else someone would have seen it by now.

Ripping the graphics is possible. I checked some of the texture files and they're mostly raw BMP data. Simply, each pixel of the textures are referring to the palette of the game. I could try to code i, but I'd have to figure out much better the file formats.

Ooh, that's cool. Nice work.

I've managed to get at the audio files, though they all seem to be stored at different frequencies, as far as I can tell, which means a lot of trial and error to get them sounding right when opening them in, say, Audacity.

I wouldn't dream of imposing by asking you to do anything with the file formats, but if you ever do this in your free time, please would you let me know?

[DragonsLover]

For some sounds, they're stored in raw unsigned 8-bit format (.U8 files). The only thing that would require to do is to make a .WAV out of all this, which is surely possible too. In the meanwhile, the simplest way to get these sound files would be to record them in-game using Dosbox.

For your demand, I would, unless ccexplore wants to do the job.

EDIT: I just noticed that the 10 levels demo of Lemmings 3D (which is older) has different textures for the Lemgo universe. It is written "LEMGO" on the blocs instead of "L3D".

[Prob Lem]

EDIT: I just noticed that the 10 levels demo of Lemmings 3D (which is older) has different textures for the Lemgo universe. It is written "LEMGO" on the blocs instead of "L3D".

Nicely-spotted! I never noticed that, though I do know that the associated desktop background that's present on the final retail disc is titled "lemgo.bmp" (for the 800x600 version, at least - the 1024x768 one is "lemgo2.bmp", instead ). It always made me smile, for some reason.