Menu backgrounds for Lemmings 2 and Lemmings 3D?

[Strato Incendus]

For my custom packs Lemmings: Hall of Fame and Lemmings, Drugs, and Rock 'n Roll, which are inspired by Lemmings 2: The Tribes and Lemmings 3D, respectively, I'm using the menu backgrounds from those packs.

However, I had to take them from a google image of a level pre- or post-view screen, and then cut out a small piece of background that wasn't covered by fonts or images. Thus, the best I can currently do is repeating those sections, but you can of course still see the lines between the "puzzle pieces" that form the background.

Does anyone have a larger image of the blank level-selection-menu background for Lemmings 2 and/or Lemmings 3D?

namida, maybe, is that part of your L3D editor?

[namida]

L3DEdit is indeed capable of extracting that graphic. Here you go.

I can't help you with L2 though, but maybe someone more familiar with it (kieranmillar, perhaps?) could.

[Strato Incendus]

Thanks a lot, namida! This looks much better now. Even though the graphic is actually smaller in dimensions than the one I've been using so far, there are no lines around the edges. Or at least that's what I assume. Either way, when NeoLemmix automatically places several instances of this graphic next to each other, it seems more or less seamless (except for the occasional "D" of "3D" being cut off here and there).

Now, is there anyone who happens to have access to the (purple) background graphic of the Lemmings 2: The Tribes level selection menu?

[namida]

when NeoLemmix automatically places several instances of this graphic next to each other, it seems more or less seamless (except for the occasional "D" of "3D" being cut off here and there).

The graphic's width is exactly equal to L3D's menu resolution width; whereas NeoLemmix's is higher. The graphic is only designed to tile vertically.

With that being said, modifying it to tile horizontally shouldn't be hard. Just reduce the width (as in crop, not stretch) until it does.

[geoo]

I wrote some tools to rip the graphics for L2 long time ago; all the menu/intro graphics are attached.
The level preview background is l2bitmap.zip/frontend/rockwall.png. Hope that serves your purpose (it's only 320x200 and doesn't tile, so larger sizes will be tricky).

EDIT: Some more menu graphics with smaller snippets of the background, in case it's useful. See l2ss_menu.zip

[Strato Incendus]

Thanks a lot, geoo! I'll check these out ASAP and then report back here.

[Strato Incendus]

1) I'm bumping this thread so that I don't forget to try out geoo's L2 backdrops (this kind of fell off the radar over the weekend due to my laptop failure, when migrating everything I could save to a new PC became more urgent).

2) I have another extraction request for namida:
Since it was possible to extract the menu background graphic with L3DEdit, is it also possible to extract the signs from the main menu? I tried getting them from Google, but the size I ended up with was too small and had a too poor resolution. Inside the L3D menu, these things are huge!
I would like to give using them in Lemmings, Drugs, and Rock 'n Roll another shot. The reason I originally discarded them was because the rank sign, with all the menu signs in L3D being square-shaped, was too narrow for the rank labels I had created. But if the entire menu card is larger and the rank label remains the same, it might fit.

3) If you happen to know, namida, what the fonts used in Lemmings 3D (for the level menus as well as for the main-menu signs) are called, that would be helpful to know as well.

Basically, the more I can make this upcoming NeoLemmix pack look like Lemmings 3D, the better!

Thanks a lot in advance!

[namida]

The fonts are very possibly custom ones made just for L3D.

Regarding the other graphics: They're in a format L3DEdit never got proper support for (partly due to that the format is only used for menus, UI or lemming sprites; not for actual level elements). Your best bet would be DOSBox and screenshots for that one. It's possible I may at some point update L3DEdit to add support for this - though I wouldn't hold your breath here, I haven't worked on it in months now, and likely only will do further work if a serious bug is reported (or if I decide to make a second L3D pack).

[Strato Incendus]

Well, thanks a lot anyway, namida!

Thanks a lot also to geoo, your background image is already a huge improvement over the one I had cut out from a Google image!

I'll try out what it looks like if I change its dimensions to that of the standard Lemmings background, or if I prefer the automatic tiling even though one can see the edges.

[Dullstar]

If information about the format is already known, and it's just a matter of actually doing the conversion, I might be able to help, given the information to work with.

[namida]

If information about the format is already known, and it's just a matter of actually doing the conversion, I might be able to help, given the information to work with.

This post should get you in the right direction: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=1590.msg40706#msg40706

Files are RNC compressed. L3DEdit has the ability to uncompress them.

[Strato Incendus]

Another bump to this to ask for a different graphic: Can the "officer / sergeant guy" from the Army tileset be extracted via L3DEdit? As well as the ball-juggling lemming from the Circus tileset (the one that Ryemanni uses as his avatar)?

I'd like to add these two fellas to a custom tileset so that my L3D-inspired NeoLemmix pack "Lemmings, Drugs, and Rock 'n Roll" can look the part a little more. For Circus, there are already two tilesets (L2 and one by the aforementioned Ryemanni), but the Army tileset is particularly hard to recreate without that sergeant guy standing around as a background object somewhere in the level landscape.

I have downloaded L3DEdit, but I can't currently open the level files myself yet. I do still have a CD version of Lemmings 3D, but my new laptop doesn't have a CD drive anymore. I am in the process of ordering an external one today anyways (I just need to make sure it has a Thunderbolt 3 plug, because the number of my USB slots is very limited ^^). But even once I can insert the CD again, that doesn't mean it will work on a very new PC (from 2020). Sure, if it can be installed properly (even if the game itself doesn't run), the level files should be there for the editor to open. But sometimes with these very old games, even the installation process already fails, or fails partly.

[namida]

There is no reason to need Thunderbolt 3 (at least, directly) for a CD drive, and I doubt such even exists. You might be confusing Thunderbolt 3 with USB-C, which, while Thunderbolt 3 does use a USB-C plug, are not the same thing.

What you need here, if you're out of normal USB ports, is a USB hub. This could either attach to a USB-A or USB-C port (whether or not that USB-C port is Thunderbolt 3 enabled or not), and would provide multiple USB-A ports (the "normal" type) and possibly some additional USB-C ports (you can get really fancy ones that have ethernet, extra HDMIs, etc too - these are often called "docking stations" - but this is not what you need here). That aside, I've got a "almost ready to go, just add DosBox" download of L3D you can use here: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=4289.0

If you did prefer to stick to the CD, you wouldn't need to "install" it. Just copy/paste the appropriate files to your hard drive (as for technical reasons, it cannot directly decompress the file in memory and instead must decompress it, save the decompressed version, then load that - and there is no code to handle "save the decompressed copy to a different place" when doing this on a read-only medium such as a CD), and then start opening.

I can say for sure that L3DEdit can extract those two graphics, though I don't remember off-hand what file number they were (as L3D names its graphic files with a scheme like "ANIMOBJ.001", "GFX.001" etc - the name represents the type of file, and the extension is an index number; there's no meaningful name). However, you could start by looking through the options in L3DEdit's lists (in the Styles, or whatever it was called, tab) which should point you in the right direction.

[Strato Incendus]

Wow, thanks a lot, namida! I didn't know we already had a no-CD version of L3D up here on the forums. Usually those always come with big warning signs "remember that this is only legal if you own a full version of the game" etc. Well, in this case of course, I have just confirmed that I do - just like many people nowadays, I'm using CD drives less and less.

So that's one game less for which I need to worry about / attach one, but of course I'm still going to get one for other purposes.

The reason I'm looking for a Thunderbolt one is because the USB-C input is already occupied by my external screen. And also, often these external CD drives are quite power hungry, even taking up two USB slots to get enough of it.

However, yes, attaching a USB hub to the Thunderbolt input first, and then an external CD drive to that hub, that would definitely be an option!

[namida]

I have never seen an external CD drive that needs two USB ports. O_O I've seen hard drives that do, but not opticals - and even for hard drives I haven't seen it in a long time now.

Thunderbolt 3 ports are "downwards compatible" with regular USB-C, so you could get a USB-C (or USB-A with adapter to USB-C) drive and plug it into your TB3 port and it would work fine.

[kaywhyn]

However, yes, attaching a USB hub to the Thunderbolt input first, and then an external CD drive to that hub, that would definitely be an option!

This the exact setup I use. I attach the USB hub to a USB port of my laptop, and I have an external optical drive plugged into a USB port on the hub.

I have never seen an external CD drive that needs two USB ports. O_O I've seen hard drives that do, but not opticals - and even for hard drives I haven't seen it in a long time now.

The external optical drive I have has two USB plugs, but from what I understand one is to plug the device in so that you can use it, while the other plug is to simply provide power to it. Ever since I bought it, I have only used one USB plug in order to use the device. I have never had to have both USB plugs plugged into a USB port, so I'm somewhat confused as to why one would need to have both plugged in. Probably because I almost never use the external CD drive and so power shortage has never been a problem. Yet, I still have it plugged in just so I don't have to worry about doing that later on just for convenience. I'm not sure if the fact that it is a blu-ray optical drive makes any difference in terms of power consumption.

[Strato Incendus]

Okay, I've opened up various levels in L3DEdit, but even though I can see the silhouettes of the pieces, it all displays as black and pink only (see Screenshot 1).

If I tick "No Invisibles", I can at least see a little more of the structure (see Screenshot 2), but I still can't get the level to display as in the manual.

Have I overread something crucial? I can't seem to find any hints about this in the manual...

(The level below is "Take A Dive", as you can probably roughly recognise by the outlines of the shapes.)

[namida]

Make sure L3DEdit is in your base L3D folder (so it can find the graphics etc). In other words, it should be in the same folder as L3D.EXE itself.

You might also need to decompress the L3D data files first (there's an option in the menu bar somewhere to do this), although IIRC I added code to decompress individual files on-demand.

EDIT: It also looks like you might be missing the accompanying INI file that has the list of what numbers correspond to what styles? Although that too, IIRC it should automatically regenerate it...

[Strato Incendus]

Thanks, namida, that was indeed the issue! I had set up L3DEdit in a separate folder to L3D - partly because I downloaded L3DEdit first, hoping to maybe be able to extract the graphics even without the game itself, and partly because I wanted to keep the original levels and the editor separate as long as I don't intend to make any actual L3D levels.

There was one line in the manual that had me suspect L3DEdit would have to go in the same folder as the game itself, but I wasn't quite sure:

L3DEdit will find the other one by itself as long as it’s in the same folder – which it should be if you’re using actual L3D data files

I wasn't sure whether this "should" was an imperative and referring to L3DEdit (i.e. "L3DEdit should be in the same folder"), or whether it was merely describing likelihood and referring to the BLK and level files (i.e. "if you're working with the original L3D levels, those should naturally be in the same folder as a result of the installation").

Regarding the .ini files, I have both L3DEditPresets.ini and L3DUtils.ini in the same folder now, together with everything else.

[namida]

partly because I wanted to keep the original levels and the editor separate as long as I don't intend to make any actual L3D levels.

There's no good way to manage this other than keeping a separate installation for custom vs original content (and further to this, separate installations for each pack). I did have plans to implement a custom pack management feature into L3DUtils, but there simply wasn't enough interest in L3D custom content to justify this - there's only the official levels, my pack, and the one custom level by Pooty (I've also seen a single other level made by someone else, which to the best of my knowledge they have never released publicly - a shame as it was quite a nice level).