Failed to check my own assumptions on the EGA graphics, my apologies. As it turns out, the dirt tileset was a misleading example, as its "ega_preview" is the only one that contains exclusively CGA colors (and happens to match the in-level colors precisely), and I failed to check the other graphics sets. Seems like "ega_preview" is accurately named, as the colors for the other tilesets do indeed match those found on the level preview screen. It does seem like there is indeed a 16-byte copy from "ega_standard" through "ega_preview" for the preview screen though, as the not-quite-right object/lemming colors do actually match the way objects appear in said preview (most clearly seen with the water in dirt and pillar graphics sets).



As for the colors in the levels, I realize now how the 200-line video modes actually work. Those "ega_custom" colors ARE actually used in the level, even though they don't look like the CGA colors. Essentially, the secondary green bit acts as the CGA intensity bit in 200-line modes (equivalent to controlling all 3 secondary bits simultaneously), so those color values are simply encoded differently, which also means the "ega_standard" colors are indeed not used in the actual levels (since they use the invalid-in-200-line-mode secondary red and secondary blue bits), only the preview screens. The "ega_custom" colors also definitely do occupy colors 8-15, though I wouldn't know where the fixed colors 0-7 (or 0-6 more accurately, as color 7 is always copied from color 8) are sourced from.

On a brighter note, I can happily report that the Tandy audio is already much better and much closer to how it's supposed to sound, and both AdLib and PC Speaker sound closer as well. The hardware accuracy option is very welcome as well.

Sorry again for jumping to a conclusion without checking the other graphics sets (and without fully knowing how EGA works, how embarrassing! )

Hello VorticonCmdr, and welcome to the Forums since I hadn't said that yet. 

I've spotted some graphics and sound issues, and apologies if this seems nitpicky; I read the documents to check what you were and weren't aware of. First, the EGA graphics. The terrain colors are slightly different to how they appear in-game, and the lemming and object colors are completely and totally wrong, and I can see exactly how this happened! Colors 0-7 in the palette ARE the standard colors (except color 7) shared across all graphics sets (though it is absolutely correct that they aren't the low-intensity CGA palette). That 16-byte copy you mention does NOT copy starting from the offset that you label "ega_custom" and copies through to the end of "ega_standard"; it copies from "ega_standard" through the array that you labeled "ega_preview", because those "ega_preview" colors are actually the colors used in the levels. The "ega_preview" entries in the dirt set example match up with the terrain colors seen in-game (screenshot below), and it only contains CGA colors, which is important since EGA does NOT support non-CGA colors in 200-line video modes, which Lemmings uses during a level; thus the "ega_custom" colors could not possibly be used in a level.



Now for the AdLib sound. It's pretty good overall, but the tick rate for the music driver isn't correct. player.asm's timing loop simply is not accurate to what the actual game does. As far as I know, in all cases EXCEPT when running VGALEMMI with the "For High Performance PCs" or "For an IBM PS/2 Machine" options selected, the game programs the PIT to fire at a rate of 72.8261 Hz, which it uses to help throttle the gameplay speed, and the music is also driven at that rate. (The aforementioned exceptions seem to synchronize with the VGA video rate(?) independent of the PIT, which results in the music playing very slightly slower, but I am NOT an expert on how the High Performance mode works, so take that with a grain of salt.)

Next, the Tandy sound. The actual game uses the same 72.8261 Hz tick rate to drive the Tandy sound as it does to drive the AdLib sound. Additionally, the PSG clock speed is also incorrect, specifically half as fast compared to what it should be. There's some significant sequencing issues in the Tandy player as well, resulting in extreme desync and misplaced effects, though I imagine you're aware of that even if I didn't catch any explicit mention of that in your document. I also notice, thanks to Lemmings Tune 18, that the software PSG is using more than 10 bits for the period of the square channels, as that tune attempts to play notes that would require an 11-bit period to play, resulting in garbage pitches on the real chip as the most significant bit is discarded. Don't ask me why the tuning table contains 11-bit periods in the first place.

Finally, the PC Speaker sound. First of all, I had no idea there were unused sounds in the PC Speaker driver, so it was very cool to listen to them. However, the sounds seem to play much too fast. This is easiest to hear with Patch 12, which is triggered in-game when a lemming explodes (recording below). Unfortunately in this case, I'm not entirely sure what the tick rate should be; the driver certainly isn't getting called at 72.8261 Hz, as that would make the sounds play even faster. Sorry!



Hope this is helpful at all!

Thanks for playing through the pack, Swerdis, and I really appreciate all the feedback.

I just put out V3, partly with the help of your feedback (and partly with the help of everyone else's feedback and replays of course, as well as roundthewheel's recent streams). Hopefully the pack is now even more fun for future players :]

Thanks so much Erick! Really glad you had fun ^^

You've got some creative solutions here. All are acceptable except mayyybe Calm 10? If another more major backroute gets found I'll tweak it in the next update, but I'll leave it as is for now.

Never got around to replying, oops!

All your replays look good, including Tense 8. Surprising that it was much harder than the repeat! Though considering the repeat had backroutes in testing, perhaps it never got the best evaluation of difficulty. But it could also just be a matter of different people finding different things difficult; we'll see!

Glad you enjoyed the levels!

Quote from: DirtyHairy on March 22, 2026, 03:02:15 PMI had a copy of Lemmings on our good, old 286 when I was a child, and I remember them being blue, but that's about ~35 years ago, so I wouldn't trust my memory too much here. I suspect a dosbox bug, but there is no way to tell for sure without looking at real hardware.

For the record, the marble arrows can appear blue on DOS... if and only if the game is running on a Tandy machine.

Quote from: Proxima on December 09, 2018, 12:34:46 PM"The Crystal Cavern Mark II" doesn't have any traps on Amiga.

Turns out it does, it's just only visible by one pixel until triggered! I also didn't see it until it was too late I was just messing around.

So I mentioned that I properly ripped the Arcade Lemmings samples in another topic, then realized I never actually uploaded them here! Oops!

The sampled sound effects in LB999's download have some clicks and pops, which is why I made this rip. Attached are the game's samples converted to WAVs via Audacity (ArcadeLemmingsSampleRips.zip) and the original VOX ADPCM samples copied directly from the game's ROM (ArcadeLemmingsVOX.zip).

I imported Paradise's music bank into Audacity (since it can work with VOX ADPCM) and found that it steals not only tim5, tim7, and lemming3, but tim3 and tim8 as well! All 5 tracks are recordings from the DOS version (with the AdLib sound card) at 8000 Hz. That's not the rate at which they're played back in the game due to how the soundchip is clocked, which is why the example above sounds a little slow.

I did a little digging into Yun Sung's other games, and found one called "Bomb Kick" from 1998 that steals, among other things, spdbass.mid from Lemmings Paintball!


I took the time to properly rip this one (which wasn't much time, it's the same procedure I took for the Lemmings arcade protoype SFX) so you can more easily make out how they (poorly) abridged the original tune.

Seems to be played through the Sound Blaster AWE32.

Thank you all for the replays and feedback. Really glad you all are enjoying the pack!

A lot of these solutions from all three of you are quite different than the ones I had in mind, but almost all of them are perfectly acceptable. It seems a lot of these levels, even many of the harder ones, turned out to be pretty open-ended, which I'm quite happy about. The only real exception is Guigui's solution of Tense 9, which I've just now patched (along with some minor cheese in a couple of kaywhyn's solves, since I was uploading a V2 anyway). 

It's worth noting now that I very much do not design levels with clean "max save" or "100% save" solutions in mind (unless of course the save requirement IS the max possible), so if anyone finds saving the max possible lemmings in a particular level annoying, I'm sorry!

Also GuiGui, it seems your Panic 8 replay is broken on my end. I'm using NL V12.14.0 currently. What version are you using, since CE shouldn't behave any differently?

I left the Author field blank on all levels since, in my mind, if all the levels share the same author, filling the author field is redundant, and on my version of NL, the Author field is not present when blank instead of listing "anonymous". Realizing now that there's versions that do list "anonymous", I probably should've fixed that for V2, whoops. If there's another major backroute, I might remember to fill those in.

Thanks again for the replays! With the levels in general being more open-ended in this pack, as well as having had it playtested some already, I'm hopeful there won't be another "Sour 2" situation.

02 JUN 2026: V3 released! Fixed another major backroute in Tense 9, swapped Tense 7 and Panic 1, and made various other design tweaks--details in the changelog below!



After a few more months of work, I present to you all "TomatoLems"! 

FEATURING:

• 30 levels (7 of them repeats) split across 3 ranks
• 3 special hand-drawn levels (drawn by my bestie EeveeSkittles!)
• 9 standard (tracked) music tracks arranged by me + 3 special (streamed) music tracks composed by me (+ 2 custom jingles!)

Thank you to JawaJuice, kaywhyn, and weirdybeardy for testing my pack to varying extents. Your feedback was extremely valuable!
Thanks also to Ether Audio who makes cool music and let me use one of their tracks for this pack, and an extra special thanks to EeveeSkittles for once again drawing the special levels and for being the best friend I could ever ask for.

The full credits for the pack are in credits.txt, which can also be found inside the TomatoLems folder in the ZIP file.

RANKS:

Calm (Easy)

Calm 1 "Beware of the Pipeline"

Tense (Medium-Easy)

Tense 5 "Polar Vortex"

Panic (Medium)

Panic 8 "Cave-divers"

DOWNLOAD:
 
Simply unzip this file into your main NeoLemmix folder.

I hope you all have as much fun playing this pack as I did making it!

Changelog

V3 (02 JUN 2026)

• Fixed another major backroute in Tense 9 (also affecting Calm 8).
• Fixed a bad design flaw in Tense 8 and Panic 9.
• Swapped positions of Tense 7 and Panic 1.
• +2 Miners and save requirement 78->75 on Panic 6 to make it less annoying.
• RR 75->50 on Calm 6 and RR 75->60 on Tense 4 to make both less annoying.
• Added a steel block to Calm 10.
• Reshaped some terrain on Panic 10.
• Fixed typo in Panic 10's name. (How embarrassing!)

V2 (09 MAR 2026)

• Fixed major backroute in Tense 9 (also affecting Calm 8).
• Fixed minor cheese in Calm 6 (also affecting Tense 4).
• Fixed minor cheese in Calm 10.

V1 (07 MAR 2026)

• Initial release.

Minor progress update for you all.

The harder repeat of the aforementioned level has been scrapped due to a backroute that I'd rather not worry about trying to patch out, so we're back down to 26 levels, but I've got a few works in progress to replace it with. On the plus side, I've finally settled on a name, "TomatoLems", even if it's not the most creative one out there, and I've been working on the presentation some now as well, adding some unique custom panel graphics and custom jingles.

Very excited to finish this pack, though progress will likely remain slow for the rest of my time working on it.

Another progress update! We're now up to 27 levels!

Here's just one more preview to avoid spoiling over half the pack This pair of repeats is based on one of my earliest contest levels, and it's safe to say I've come a long way since then ^^ (at least in terms of gameplay--in terms of aesthetics I'm about the same as I was years ago).


"Break the Cycle" / "One to tell the story"

I've also now got 8 tracked music files to play in the levels, some of which are my own compositions and some of which are covers of others' works, including a piece from one of my friends (used with their permission, of course), which is awesome. I'm very excited to release this pack! Not so excited that I'm gonna rush it, of course--as cool as it would be to release the pack on Lemmings's 35th anniversary, the final 3 levels and finishing touches will need a bit more time than that.

Since NeoLemmix Editor 1.45, if a level with more than one terrain piece is saved, each subsequent $TERRAIN group in the NXLV will be indented two extra characters, which accumulates the more terrain pieces there are in the level.

For example, this:
#        Terrain pieces         
# -----------------------------
 $TERRAIN
   STYLE orig_crystal
   PIECE bar_04
   X 507
   Y 65
   ONE_WAY
 $END
 
 $TERRAIN
   STYLE orig_crystal
   PIECE clump_01
   X 38
   Y 109
   ONE_WAY
 $END
 
 $TERRAIN
   STYLE orig_crystal
   PIECE clump_02
   X -8
   Y 115
   ONE_WAY
 $END

...

...becomes this:
#        Terrain pieces         
# -----------------------------
 $TERRAIN
   STYLE orig_crystal
   PIECE bar_04
   X 507
   Y 65
   ONE_WAY
 $END
 
   $TERRAIN
     STYLE orig_crystal
     PIECE clump_01
     X 38
     Y 109
     ONE_WAY
   $END
   
     $TERRAIN
       STYLE orig_crystal
       PIECE clump_02
       X -8
       Y 115
       ONE_WAY
     $END
     
...

ONLY the Terrain pieces section has this issue. Objects and Rulers are formatted properly.

While this doesn't prevent the level from loading or playing normally in the NeoLemmix Player or in the Editor itself, it can make levels explode in file size. After opening the level these examples are from, making no changes, and immediately saving, the file size went from 26KB to 566KB!

Little progress update: scrapped 1 level, made 6 more for a total of 19 out of 30!

Here's a few previews:


"Follow me!" / "Wait for me!"


"The Lemming Hair Dryer"


"Freezer Burn"

Here's hoping I don't run out of ideas anytime soon