Hi folks,

as probably some of you already know, geoo has been to Vienna last month and as I just happen to study there, we decided to meet up. 't was my first time meeting an internet acquaintance, so naturally I was skeptical at first concerning the get-together, but I brushed it off and designed a plan to follow on that day.

The day was Thursday, March 19th - as far as I remember a sunny day (contrary to the days prior, which were mostly clouded and a bit rainy), and at 10 in the morning we met up in Heiligenstadt, one of the northernmost quarters of Vienna. I recognized him almost immediately by his beard (no kidding). So we introduced ourselves formally and then went to take the subway right away to one of the center squares of Vienna, the Karlsplatz - the residence of my university (Vienna University of Technology). The first thing that I found us to have in common are the studies - both of us study/studied Maths and we got to talk quite a bit about it. Sadly he doesn't specialize in the topic that I am going to give a lecture of, else I would have bombarded him with many more questions than I already have.

After arriving at Karlsplatz I showed him the interior of my university building a bit, then we moved on to walk across the "Ring" - an important street that proceeds around the city center - passing by the State Opera House and along the Carinthian Street (a big shopping street) to St. Stephen's Cathedral, probably the most iconic building of Vienna. From there we continued on to the Hofburg Palace, where the Austrian President's official residence and workplace is located, and saw more of the "Ring" along with a few more sights, like the Kunsthistorisches Museum and Naturhistorisches Museum, the Town Hall park (it seemed closed though, so we sadly couldn't get in), the Volkstheater and the Museumsquarter (which is kind of a park that often hosts Christmas markets). In this meantime we did get to talk about Lemmings a lot, particularly also about my progress in the Lix levelpack (4 levels unsolved), where I presented some of my approaches to him and he surprisingly told me that they weren't too far off from the actual solution.

At that time the clock hit 12 and I already had a specific restaurant on the Mariahilfer Street (another big shopping street) in mind, so we made our way there and had some delicious Stroganoff and a seemingly Austrian speciality reminiscent of a cheese-baken bread of sorts. (http://www.pitopia.de/pictures/standard/d/daddy/08/daddy_1113508.jpg While not exactly it, it was something like this with some more salads and vegetables.)

Our last planned destination was Schönbrunn Palace. Since it's located rather at the west end of the city, we took the subway yet again. One day prior I had enlisted the help of a studying colleague who lives in the vicinity to show us the exact paths to go from there, since I myself hadn't been there yet. We kind of took a back entrance (passing by the famous Schönbrunn zoo) which directly led us up a hill behind the Palace to the Gloriette (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/90/Gloriette_Sch%C3%B6nbrunn_Wien.jpg/1920px-Gloriette_Sch%C3%B6nbrunn_Wien.jpg). The weather was just perfect, we could catch a few slight glimpses over the city itself. That is also the only time we consciously took a picture of us with the city in the background, but I think we had a few lighting problems, and I haven't seen the pictures myself because we used geoo's camera. Since geoo had a tight schedule for later that day, we sadly had to get back to Heiligenstadt already so that he could catch a bus to get to a lecture in time.

In any case I enjoyed the day, geoo made a very sympathetic impression on me and I'd definitely decide on meeting him again - probably more Lemmings/Lix focused then, since I planned this day only to show him what Austria's beautiful capital has to offer.

Link to newest beta: http://www.vertigofx.com/jrkstudios/lem/lemmings_19.exe

Contains 19 levels (3 unfinished) without any particular order

Backstory:

The only Lemmings game I possess is the SNES one. It had me enchanted when I was younger.

In older times (still some time ago) I found out about Lemmings on other platforms. I tried Lemmings for PC but I didn't like the interface. I've always wanted to make own Lemmings levels too (I remember having drawn a lot of them on paper long ago, I lost all of em in the meantime), and I found LemEdit and Lemmix. However, LemEdit was pretty hard and annoying to use and Lemmix also had some flaws, so I couldn't really enjoy doing Lemmings levels to the max.

Some time ago I got ahold of a program developing software (Multimedia Fusion 2) and I've seen other great games made by it, so I decided to remake the SNES version (I haven't seen any remake with the SNES interface before).

It's gone pretty well in the beginning, though I had to rip most of the GFX from the emulator while playing the ZSNES Lemmings. I also ripped the font as I couldn't find the SNES one anywhere. It wasn't too hard to do the basic movement engine but when stuff like assigning actions or displaying numbers appeared, I often racked my head. Luckily I had an online friend who helped me out and the MMF2 community also gave me hints along the way. Finally I've come towards completing a pretty stable engine with nearly all the SNES Lemmings features implemented already. (This project was started October 27th and I didn't have any major prior knowledge about the software I was using.)

Demo (engine and physics testing):

http://www.vertigofx.com/jrkstudios/lem/lemmings.exe (always updated to the newest build if available)

Test level to test interactions with obstacles, goal and steel. (Only recently implemented those.)
Release rate 50, Amount of Lemmings 100. Don't panic when nothing happens after all the Lemmings are gone, didn't do that yet. Just restart with R if you like.

I've been looking for sounds so I haven't implemented them yet (except when you assign a skill to a lemming).

Controls?:
Scroll left: Left Arrow or A or move cursor to left edge
Scroll right: Right Arrow or D or move cursor to right edge
Switch between skills: Up/Down Arrow or W/S or F3-F9 or click on them (for some reason MMF2 won't take F10 yet, I hope it's going to be fixed)
Release rate: F1 (decrease) and F2 (increase) or click and hold +/- on screen
Pause: 0 (Numpad) or Space
Restart: R

Screenshots?: Eh, the game should look 100% like on the SNES (judging by screenshots themselves) as all the GFX are ripped.

Differences from the original SNES game:
-Frame rate. The remake is a bit faster in fps, and thus the lemmings' animations aren't exactly spot-on-spot. I hope I can fix that in future.
-Bombers CAN bomb through steel.
-Controlled by mouse!
-Can't get the release rate exactly like in the original game, only similar. Does anybody know the exact formula of how fast the lemmings are emitted per release rate point?
-...can't think of anything else at the moment

Known bugs:
-Trouble with displaying the bomber countdown number above the correct lemming. Don't worry the lemming itself will explode after 5 (game) seconds, uninfluenced by the countdown number.
-Sometimes when a builder hits a wall, he goes backwards while doing moonwalk. Absolutely no idea what causes this.
-Blocker is quite buggy. The second time a lemming hits the same blocker, it starts to moonwalk. Again, makes absolutely no sense.
-Building a bridge into trapdoor/exit will make the bridge appear behind the object. I know what's the problem but if I fixed this then you could make a hole into them by bashing, mining or digging.
-When a lemming falls into liquid right before a wall, during their drowning animation they will appear in the wall. Won't be a hard fix, I hope. Just a graphical issue.
-Sometimes a basher stops bashing and turns around when bashing while walking up a bridge. Again, no idea, but it doesn't happen often.
-Game starts lagging (slowmo) when about 40 lemmings are out. This is due to the tremendous amount of fastloops used in the conditions. When I finish the engine, I'll try to take some away and build the game hardware-accelerated to try to get rid of the lag.
-A couple of very minor things I can't think of at the moment.

Missing:
-Traps for each level style
-Sound effects and music
-Nuke.
-Minimap at bottom right + its engine
-Lemming identifier + number at the left when you hover over a lemming with the mouse ("Faller", "Walker", ...).
-Level select and level end screens
-Levels! The only reason I made this remake was that I could make Lemmings levels SNES style, and that other people played it.
-Motivation to learn for the history exams tomorrow.

Planned extra features:
-NO additional skills.
-Some extra traps and landscape features with lemming interaction.
-A whole new generation of levels. Wow I'm so looking forward to this. Don't know how many I plan to do. Probably a gazillion, or only until I run out of ideas.
-The game has a score system that hardly anybody noticed. I'm trying to give it more of a use.
-Perhaps a level editor... perhaps. If my friend helps me.
-If I'm going to make a level editor, then I'll be determined to have it feature online playability, like sharing levels and levelpacks online and such.

Please report any bugs you find not listed on this known bugs list

...and now, have fun 

EDIT: Oh by the way a friend of mine reported that the mouse cursor (neither standard one nor Lemmings one) showed up. If that happens then please tell me.