How to play Lemmings 3 in DOSBox

[kieranmillar]

1. Grab one of the CD versions from here, doesn't matter which, the only thing that changes is the name of the game on the title screen:
http://www.camanis.net/lemmings/lemmings3.php

2. Extract the zip file somewhere. E.g. C:/games/lem3cd . Note that there is a LEM3CD folder inside the zip, so might prefer to extract it to C:/games in this example.

3. Create another folder where the game's installation will go, e.g. C:/games/l3install

4. Get DosBox here, presumably you want Windows but all sorts of operating systems are supported: http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1

5. Install DosBox.

6. Run DosBox and type the following (substituting the file paths for the two folders you used):
mount c c:/games/l3install
mount d c:/games/lem3cd
d:
install

7. You will now be at the install menu. Use the keyboard to navigate. Do the following for each option:

• Set Installation Directory - Change it to C:/
• Select Sound Card - Choose Sound Blaster, then the rest of the options choose the defaults
• Select Super VGA Mode - On
• Select Sound Effects - On
• Select Music - On
• Select Difficulty - Adults
• Change CD Drive Letter - D

Then press Esc and Choose Save and Quit

8. Back at the DosBox screen, type l3 to make sure it all works. The opening video might be messed up but when you reach the main menu it should be fine. It might be insanely loud though. Watch out headphone users! We'll fix that soon.

9. If it's all working, you can close DosBox by typing "exit" at the DOS prompt, by pressing Alt+F9, or by freeing your mouse from being locked inside the window by Alt-Tabbing out and then just closing the window.

10. In your Start menu, you should go to DosBox and look for the Options, specifically "DosBox 0.74 Options". This is a text file where you set the various options.

11. In the options file you're looking for 3 options:

• Render options, scaler=normal2x. Can change this to normal3x if the game is a bit too small on your screen for your liking.
  
• Cpu options, cycles. Not sure what the default is here, but I'd recommend 10000, which keeps the loading times low without dedicating too much unnecessary processing power to running a 25-year old game.
  
• Autoexec options. This is right at the very bottom of the file, and you'll want to add in the following 5 lines (substituting the paths for your own directories):
  
  mixer master 20:20
  mount c c:/games/l3install
  mount d c:/games/lem3cd
  c:
  l3
  

(This autoexec assumes you only want to play Lemmings 3, never anything else.)
The mixer master line decreases the volume to 20% and makes it a much more sensible level.

12. Run Dosbox and Lemmings 3 should boot straight up from now on.

NOTE If you want to play custom levels, it might be easier to duplicate the CD folder, then replace the levels in there and change the D drive location you are mounting to the duplicated folder, leaving the install path the same so you don't have to reinstall everything.

[Simon]

kieranmillar's instructions make L3 read and write to different folders.

Here are alternative instructions to make Lemmings 3 read and write from only one single folder.

Configure DOSBox

1. Download and install DOSBox.

2. Create a directory for all your DOS games and remember its path. Henceforth, I'll call this directory "dosgamesdir". On Windows, create this on your desktop or into your Windows user directory C:\Users, to have write access without requiring administrator rights. Wherever it is, I'll refer to this path as "dosgamesdir" from here on.

3. Edit dosbox.conf (search the web to learn where this file is on your installation/operating system), it's usually called dosbox-0.74.conf, with a text editor. Find these lines at the end:

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
# You can put your MOUNT lines here.

Add two lines, take care to replace the-full-path-of-your-dosgamesdir with the real full path to "dosgamesdir", which is the directory that you created in item (2.) earlier:

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
# You can put your MOUNT lines here.
mount c the-full-path-of-your-dosgamesdir
mixer master 20:20

Save the file. This edit makes DOSBox mount "dosgamesdir" as DOSBox's "C:\" and lowers the sound volume to something more reasonable. The default sound volume would have been the maximum, mixer master 100:100.

Setup Lemmings 3

4. Within "dosgamesdir", create the directory "L3" without quotes. Extract your Lemmings 3 CD into there. Your file tree should then have "dosgamesdir/L3/L3CD.EXE" along with several other directories and files in "dosgamesdir/L3/". Take care not to end up with "dosgamesdir/L3/LEM3CD/L3CD.EXE" or anything similar; the L3CD.EXE should sit immediately inside "L3" inside "dosgamesdir".

5. Extract the contents of the attached zip archive into "dosgamesdir/L3/", overwriting all files if you are asked. (This will enable sound in Lemmings 3 without running the installer. In general, don't run the installer -- it will write bad batch files in unwanted directories.)

6. This completes the setup. To play Lemmings 3 from now on, start DOSBox, then type at its C:\> prompt:
cd l3
...and hit Enter. The prompt should change to C:\L3\>. Then, type:
l3
...and hit Enter.

7. If you would like to add a savegame file from other people, e.g. Kieran's "SAVEG6.DAT", put this file into "dosgamesdir/L3/" and the game should find it after you start DOSBox and Lemmings 3 for the next time, as described in item (6.) earlier.

-- Simon

[kaywhyn]

All right, let's give this a try and see if either kieran or Simon or anyone knowledgeable enough about Lemmings 3 can advise me here. So the good news is that I'm able to get the L3 game running on Dosbox by following the instructions in either post for the CD version, though yea I agree that Simon's post is the much easier way to go about it since it doesn't require or recommend installing the game. The game runs fine, but there is a problem with the intro movie sequence: It flickers between a black screen and showing the movie. Perhaps this is what kieran meant by "the opening video might be messed up"? I'm not sure why it happens and whether there's a fix for it. I've tried researching it online but I haven't found anything, and it doesn't seem to be a problem in general for the game.

The other alternative is to run the floppy version of the game instead of the CD version, which doesn't have the opening video messed up flickering issue, but instead the problem is now there's no moving at all in the movie, i.e, you don't see the Lemmings Ark moving and flying in the movie. This seems to be very common, as pretty much nearly every video of the opening L3 sequence I've seen on Youtube have this no movement in the opening video.

So yea, any suggestions or know of a fix for the flickering for the CD version?

[jkapp76]

https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZdSoOVZSpJ2pulFthS12h1B1k3PCB964IDV
Above is a link to my portable version of Lemmings 3 packaged in dosbox, just unzip and play!

https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZAHhOVZqUmQzmyvPnRJqtcULY4T5L8sNvkX
This second link is to my version of lemmings 2 for dosbox, it includes kieran's level pack and also the other fan-made level pack... I forget the name ATM.

[Simon]

intro movie sequence: It flickers between a black screen and showing the movie.
whether there's a fix

I can reproduce this black flicker in DOSBox version 0.74-3 on Arch Linux. I remember that I have seen this flicker for many years. The flicker makes the movie practically unwatchable.

My weak guess was to fumble in dosbox-0.74-3.conf with this setting:

[dosbox]
machine=

I've tried all values for it. Earlier settings (hercules, cga, tandy, pcjr, ega) make Lemmings 3 complain about the missing VGA card. Later settings (vgaonly, svga_s3, svga_et3000, svga_et4000, svga_paradise, vesa_nolfb, vesa_oldvbe) make Lemmings 3 run, and L3 reacts according to each card, but the flicker stays in all of these settings. I've reverted to the default svga_s3 and accepted the flicker.

Failure. And no other option sounds promising to me.

I don't know about a solution. Try the Dosbox forums, or the forums of one of its forks (Dosbox-Staging, ...).

-- Simon

[jkapp76]

I think I could create a perfect packaged version of lemmings 3 cdrom version if I could find the cd image online somewhere.

[The Tomato Watcher]

The CD-ROM image is available on archive.org along with a pre-packaged playable version. The only way to view the intro sequence as intended is to mount the disc image as its own drive within DOSBox with the IMGMOUNT command. For example:
IMGMOUNT D "C:\the full path to the CUE/ISO file" -t iso

At that point, you do not install the game to the C drive in DOSBox, but you play it directly from the disc image, making sure to run either L3CD.EXE or L3CDGUS.EXE depending on whether you prefer SoundBlaster or Gravis UltraSound audio for the intro (and whether you have GUS enabled in your config file.)

Unfortunately, I can't seem to get the intro music or game sound effects working no matter what my DOSBox audio set up is, no matter which executable I run, and no matter which fork I use. Will update when I figure out a way to get that working. I have not tested the pre-packaged version yet; perhaps it works just fine.

[jkapp76]

My portable version of Lemmings 3 plays all the movies properly. I just fixed it. The link above will download the newest version.

[kaywhyn]

Thank you @Simon, @The Tomato Watcher, and jkapp76 for all investigating and looking into this. Especially jkapp76 for submitting a bug report on the Dosbox-Staging Github:

https://github.com/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging/issues/4370

intro movie sequence: It flickers between a black screen and showing the movie.
whether there's a fix

I can reproduce this black flicker in DOSBox version 0.74-3 on Arch Linux. I remember that I have seen this flicker for many years. The flicker makes the movie practically unwatchable.

My weak guess was to fumble in dosbox-0.74-3.conf with this setting:

[dosbox]
machine=

I've tried all values for it. Earlier settings (hercules, cga, tandy, pcjr, ega) make Lemmings 3 complain about the missing VGA card. Later settings (vgaonly, svga_s3, svga_et3000, svga_et4000, svga_paradise, vesa_nolfb, vesa_oldvbe) make Lemmings 3 run, and L3 reacts according to each card, but the flicker stays in all of these settings. I've reverted to the default svga_s3 and accepted the flicker.

Failure. And no other option sounds promising to me.

Yea, I tried changing the machine type in my Dosbox configuration file before you posted and no dice there for me either with getting the flickering in the intro video fixed. I've tried vanilla Dosbox and its variants Dosbox-X and Dosbox-Staging and same thing.

I don't know about a solution. Try the Dosbox forums, or the forums of one of its forks (Dosbox-Staging, ...).

jkapp76 has submitted a bug report on the Dosbox-Staging Github, which I've linked to above. I will be keeping my eye out on this. Feel free to do so as well if you wish!

The CD-ROM image is available on archive.org along with a pre-packaged playable version. The only way to view the intro sequence as intended is to mount the disc image as its own drive within DOSBox with the IMGMOUNT command. For example:
IMGMOUNT D "C:\the full path to the CUE/ISO file" -t iso

At that point, you do not install the game to the C drive in DOSBox, but you play it directly from the disc image, making sure to run either L3CD.EXE or L3CDGUS.EXE depending on whether you prefer SoundBlaster or Gravis UltraSound audio for the intro (and whether you have GUS enabled in your config file.)

I've tried doing the imgmount command in Dosbox and it made no difference for me in regards to the intro video flicker.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to get the intro music or game sound effects working no matter what my DOSBox audio set up is, no matter which executable I run, and no matter which fork I use. Will update when I figure out a way to get that working. I have not tested the pre-packaged version yet; perhaps it works just fine.

I'm not sure which file you used for this download. I did the 7th part and as I kind of expected, once again no dice for me.

My portable version of Lemmings 3 plays all the movies properly. I just fixed it. The link above will download the newest version.

Thanks for this, as well as for explaining that you could swap out the movie file but then the flicker returns. Indeed, I have tried that with your portable copy and can verify the flicker issue with the larger movie files.

Thanks for letting me know that you've submitted a bug report to the Dosbox-Staging Github. I've linked it above for Simon and The Tomato Watcher if they wish to keep a watch on it. Thanks again!