Lemmings 1 (SNES) PC Remake

[Ramon]

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.

[GigaLem]

Theres a glich on there
Moonwalking lemmings  lol

[Ramon]

Yes. If you read my post you'd have seen it on the known bugs list

[covox]

I must say, this is a pretty sweet Lemmings engine. No idea how much Clickteam have changed since MMF1, but it must've been substantial considering this was possible to make in a couple of weeks. Can't say I'm the biggest fan of the SNES version of the game though (especially the music).

One problem, I can't seem to get past the success screen following Level 1. A shame, I'd like to see how all the other skills are implemented. The MMF I know would wet its pants in fear at the sound of pixel-level graphic operations and collision detection.

[Ramon]

I must say, this is a pretty sweet Lemmings engine. No idea how much Clickteam have changed since MMF1, but it must've been substantial considering this was possible to make in a couple of weeks. Can't say I'm the biggest fan of the SNES version of the game though (especially the music).

One problem, I can't seem to get past the success screen following Level 1. A shame, I'd like to see how all the other skills are implemented. The MMF I know would wet its pants in fear at the sound of pixel-level graphic operations and collision detection.

Haha, thanks for trying. When I posted this I still had a test level up. Now I've started to build levels for another beta tester so I overwrote that file. And no I haven't built anything beyond the first result screen yet

I've uploaded the version with test level, here it is http://www.vertigofx.com/jrkstudios/lem/lemmings2.exe

In terms of collision detection, there's hardly any problem (as far as I have tested), but I've noticed a new bug. The same frame when a lemming walks off an edge and you apply builder to him, he starts building from 1 or 2 pixels in the ground and all the other bridges are duplicated to the right. I know sounds weird but you might be able to recreate it.

Also the basher still turns around when building... I'll try to fix everything today.
And I'm still having trouble with bomber.

About the SNES version, I like the interface better and especially the music. :p I can't stand the music from other ports...

[GigaLem]

Love the level whats is its name

[Ramon]

Love the level whats is its name

Which level? lol the test level is just a test level and not an actual level in the game.

[Dullstar]

Mind if I remake the levels you make for this project in either L++ or LemEdit for the benefit of people with Macs or running Linux?

The MMF I know would wet its pants in fear at the sound of pixel-level graphic operations and collision detection.

I must ask, since I used MMF before, were you using the Platform Movement, a custom engine, or the Platform Movement Extension?  I would recommend the extension, because it's not as complicated as the custom engine, and works better than both.

[covox]

Ah, nice. Apart from really weird behaviour with the bomber timer, and no nuke button, it looks remarkably up-to-scratch. Only complaint is that the click detection seems a little rubbery with walking lemmings, with up to a half-second gap before registering a new skill. Is it possible to let skills be allocated while the game is paused?

Mind if I remake the levels you make for this project in either L++ or LemEdit for the benefit of people with Macs or running Linux?

Runs fine under Wine 1.1.32 for me.

[Ramon]

Mind if I remake the levels you make for this project in either L++ or LemEdit for the benefit of people with Macs or running Linux?

I wouldn't mind but let me make the levels first :p

Ah, nice. Apart from really weird behaviour with the bomber timer, and no nuke button, it looks remarkably up-to-scratch. Only complaint is that the click detection seems a little rubbery with walking lemmings, with up to a half-second gap before registering a new skill. Is it possible to let skills be allocated while the game is paused?

Yep, as I said, I'm having trouble with the bomber, thus the nuke button isn't implemented yet either (same with minimap).

...hm, about the clicking, I didn't actually notice anything out of the ordinary, but I'll look into it and see if others report anything weird with that...
Skill assigning is not possible during pause (hasn't been on the SNES either)

Fixed the basher bug, it actually looks like I've mistakenly used the "turn around" event for "no floor detection" instead of "hit steel".

Also, I got a completely custom engine that is only run by events.

I'm hoping to fix the bomber soon, because it's been bugging me for quite a while already and still haven't found any solution...

[Dullstar]

...hm, about the clicking, I didn't actually notice anything out of the ordinary, but I'll look into it and see if others report anything weird with that...

This above issue was brought into light by covox.  But this seems...  strange down here.

Runs fine under Wine 1.1.32 for me.

WINE works pretty well, but it's not perfect.  Are you suere that's not the problem?  I once made a game that ran slowly on WINE in MMF.  That's probably about when I decided to learn to program the games (it was only the first testing release, though, so there wasn't much to it),

[Ramon]

Guys I actually fixed the bomber issue, it now works along with nuke. Also implemented vertical scroll!

What I'm missing is the bomber explosion particles, because it's quite hard to rip and there's no specific formula for that.

About minimap... dunno how I'll do that yet. But I've started building levels.

[ccexplore]

What I'm missing is the bomber explosion particles, because it's quite hard to rip and there's no specific formula for that.

When I'm back home later today, I can give you the data from DOS Lemmings (I'm pretty sure they use the same data for all similar ports).  It's basically just a big table of particle positions.  Alternatively, you can use a formula for parabolic motions (which appears to be the same type of motion as the ones represented in the table) to implement your own particle explosions.

[Ramon]

What I'm missing is the bomber explosion particles, because it's quite hard to rip and there's no specific formula for that.

When I'm back home later today, I can give you the data from DOS Lemmings (I'm pretty sure they use the same data for all similar ports).  It's basically just a big table of particle positions.  Alternatively, you can use a formula for parabolic motions (which appears to be the same type of motion as the ones represented in the table) to implement your own particle explosions.

Wow, that'd be awesome, thanks in advance 

[GigaLem]

Can you make more levels for the new version ?

[Dullstar]

I would imagine so - otherwise he might as well just use an emulator.

Speaking of which, I must ask who the **** decided to make it so you have 10 seconds to continue if you fail a level and then if you don't react in time make you start back from Just Dig.

[ccexplore]

Quote from: ccexplore on 2009-11-18 13:09:01

When I'm back home later today, I can give you the data from DOS Lemmings (I'm pretty sure they use the same data for all similar ports).  It's basically just a big table of particle positions.  Alternatively, you can use a formula for parabolic motions (which appears to be the same type of motion as the ones represented in the table) to implement your own particle explosions.

Almost forgot about this.

See attached explodedata.txt.  There are a total of 80 explosion particles, and the entire explosion sequence lasts 52 animation frames, but the very first frame has no particles displayed yet--you just draw the reddish "bang" graphics.  So it's just 51 frames of explosion particles.

explodedata.txt shows for each of the 80 particles, their (x,y) positions for each of the 51 frames.  Most particles don't actually last for all 51 frames, but instead disappear earlier.  For example, particle #1 in the table will only last one frame and then disappear, hence only one entry.  Particle #10 lasts 15 frames before disappearing.  (x,y) is relative to the position of the pixel the exploding lemming was standing on, following the usual PC graphics convention that positive x is to the right and positive y is down.

The coloring of the particles (if you want to follow the one from the game instead of your own color scheme) are assigned as follows.  Lemmings graphics uses a 16-color palette (the palette changes from graphics set to set), so pixel color values range from 0-15, and here's the particle color scheme:

particle #1: 4
particle #2: 15
particle #3: 14
particle #4: 13
particle #5: 12
particle #6: 11
particle #7: 10
particle #8: 9
particle #9: 8
particle #10: 11
particle #11: 10
particle #12: 9
particle #13: 8
particle #14: 7
particle #15: 6
particle #16: 2

Repeat this sequence of color assignments on particles #17-#32, then #33-#48, etc.

I'm unfamiliar with MMF2, so if the data in explodedata.txt is formatted in a way that's awkward to reformat for MMF2 use, I can rewrite my script to reformat the data in a more suitable way, if you can describe how you want it.  Alternatively, I can give you the original raw binary data format (as ripped from DOS game) for the table, although that doesn't sound very easy to me since you'd have to write your own code to read the binary data.

Mod Edit: Restored attachments.

[ccexplore]

Speaking of which, I must ask who the **** decided to make it so you have 10 seconds to continue if you fail a level and then if you don't react in time make you start back from Just Dig.

  Heh, yeah it's annoying.  Actually, it really reminds me of arcade games, where when you lose, it might give you a 10 second countdown to insert more coins to continue (or something like that).  Perhaps the company that made the SNES port mainly did arcade games and can't shake old habits?

[Ramon]

Thank you very much ccexplore - the particle table looks quite promising and I'll try to work the rest out tonight (in a hurry now).

Dullstar - yep I'm playing Lemmings on the SNES Emulator to rip gfx and see how the engine works. Currently at Mayhem 29 (Save Me) (wouldn't have had the patience to get this far without savestates, heh)

giga - of course I'm gonna implement new levels, I'm not doing like 20 in one day, haha. I'm focusing on visual design as well as level design. On average, on schooldays I can do 1-2 levels, on free days probably a bit more. Can't really tell yet because it's only been about 2 days since everything works (by the way I found new bugs  ) Sometimes when I get an idea in school, I draw a draft on paper.

[GigaLem]

Geting more levels for the new version

[Ramon]

At the moment I'm implementing the particles for the explosion into MMF2 and it's quite much more work than I've thought.

I need to enter each seperate coordinate of each seperate frame of each seperate particle into an extra object, and the amount of numbers in the .txt ccexplore provided me with comes to about 8000.

Now, since I'm using a double-sized screen than original, and since MMF2 has a reversely fashioned hot-spot-feature (aka where the actual x and y positions should be), I need to multiply each number with -2, then enter them into the hot spot coordinates.

In total, I've been working on the particles only for about 4-5 hours, and I've only implemented 28 particles yet.  But I'm sure the work gonna pay off in the end. I tried an explosion with 16 particles and it already looks much better than without.

EDIT: Actually, ccexplore, did you mention you could change the whole format of the script? Would it be possible to have each number multiplied by -2 in a quick way? Doing it by hand takes very very long.

[ccexplore]

EDIT: Actually, ccexplore, did you mention you could change the whole format of the script? Would it be possible to have each number multiplied by -2 in a quick way? Doing it by hand takes very very long.

Definitely.  I'm not at the computer with the script right now, but I'll get you the numbers when I'm back in about 2 hours.

I was actually hoping that there's some sort of cut-and-paste that allows you to just paste a whole bunch of numbers into MMFs, instead of having to type them in one by one.  Maybe you should ask an MMF2 expert and see if there's an easier way to like copy and paste in all the coordinates for one particle at once?

[ccexplore]

Here's the data multiplied by -2.  I've also included a version ("explodedata_XL") that you can paste into something like Excel, which will recognize tabs and put the numbers in separate columns.  In case you need further adjustments to the numbers.

Mod Edit: Restored attachments.

[Ramon]

Haha, thank you so much.

I'll keep you guys updated on progress!

EDIT:

Cheers, it works

[GigaLem]

where can get the new level
i call the level ozone friendly lemmings (part 2)

[Ramon]

I'll tell you when I upload a new build. First I gotta finish the 8 basic skill introduction levels.

The leven in the screenshot is called "And it goes boom" (level 3) it's the bomber skill introduction level. You start with 20 bombers, only 5 are needed to pass this, if you place the bombers correctly. You can use all 20 bombers and still have the needed amount of lemmings.

Unfortunately, I got more trouble. Game's already starting to lag with around 20 lemmings. 

I need to clean the code a little.

[namida]

FOR flip'S SAKE GIGA.
It's not your level, don't try to name it.
And if you read the topic, you'd know it's a WORK IN PROGRESS and there's no downloads yet.
Seriously, GROW UP. You wonder why people hate you here... >_>

[Dullstar]

Well said, namida.
Giga, if you want to name this stuff, DO IT YOURSELF.  Don't wait for others to do the hard work and then name it yourself unless someone asks you to.

[Minim]

I haven't completely given up on the forum yet. But I'd like to say this:

FOR flip'S SAKE GIGA.
It's not your level, don't try to name it.
And if you read the topic, you'd know it's a WORK IN PROGRESS and there's no downloads yet.
Seriously, GROW UP. You wonder why people hate you here... >_>

Well said, namida.

Actually, I blame it on BOTH of you for that, not Giga. Giga was just sharing his level idea to the community, and he was politely asking a clean, appropriate question which in unharmful. You may be sick of him, because of low-quality posts but I'm starting to get a little tense with you (occasionally) attacking him on every single post. It's about time you need to calm down, OK?

In relation to the third line of namida's quote, there is a download I think (I'll take a look in a second).

[Ramon]

Okay guys I uploaded a new beta: http://www.vertigofx.com/jrkstudios/lem/lemmings_19.exe

Contains 19 levels (3 unfinished) without any particular order. I still have a lot of bugs and slowdowns (starting with 30 lemmings) so please report if you find any bugs. Also feedback on the levels would be appreciated.

Difficulty order (for me): Simple - Mediocre - Complex - Hardcore

You can use + and - to speed up the game to up to 4x original speed.

Also gotta fix the loops in the music, there's a small gap between each loop...

About the discussion about Giga:

I think I read somewhere he has Asperger's syndrome, and on his profile it says he's 12 years old. In that case I guess it must be a little hard to coordinate in the internet, especially with more grown-up users.
I have looked around the forums and seen that he caused quite some trouble with creating a few obligatory topics or posting posts that nobody understands... but... yea I think most of us would have been like that if we were 12 or new to the internet.  He'll eventually learn.

(Please don't misunderstand, I don't want to start a flamewar. No offense intended to anybody.)

[Pooty]

Nice job so far with the engine (especially the particle effect when a lemming explodes, you used ccexplore's data really well ). However, after the builder level, the game becomes quite difficult all of a sudden. Also, I feel that the miner level introduces too many concepts at the same time (the miner skill, traps, and vertical-scrolling levels).

[Zack]

Very cool, I like it a lot. How can I make my own Lemmings remake like you're doing. How can I make the game full-screen?

[Dullstar]

It's very complicated if you go the "actual" route and for lemmings games it is still complicated in game development software.  Still, if you were to make a lemmings fangame from scratch, I would suggest you learn a cross-platform programming language such as Java or Python.  It's more complicated, but being able to run the game on any operating system that supports the programming language is a definite plus.  There's actually a version of Python for the Amiga.

WINE and similar projects are making this better, though, by allowing us to run Windows programs in Linux.  But last time I made a game in MMF, it ran slowly in WINE, which is something that really makes me want to learn how to program.  And for those of you who really don't believe that I did such I thing, I'll point you to the exe (in a PM however).  I may release the .mfa or whatever the file extension it uses is too, but the first testing release was as far as a got before shifting efforts to learning Python and Pygame and programming it.
So, if anyone wants to see that, PM me

Anyways, good luck with whatever you wish to make.

[Zack]

How can I do it if I was to use Multimedia Fusion. Multimedia Fusion games seem to run fine on my computer, and not slow at all.

[Clam]

The lag is a real killer unfortunately. I do like the vertical scrolling aspect though. Just as long as you don't abuse it and make ridiculously large levels... And as Pooty mentioned, you might want to put in an actual training level for miners and move that huge cave map down the list. But hey, this isn't so much about the levels as it is about the game itself, and on that front it's looking very nice so far.

By the way, I like the way the display jolts when you press "r" to restart (whether that was intended or not). It's like you're picking it up and shaking it to make it reset.

[Ramon]

Thanks for your input guys.

Yes I guess I did make the basher and miner introduction levels too hard... but I just couldn't await doing harder levels so I thought a little brains should belong into the levels already. :p

I completely forgot about the R button and I guess it happens because of MMF2's way of restarting an application. I'll leave it in if it isn't too bad.

[Ramon]

bump

http://www.vertigofx.com/jrkstudios/lem/lemmings_23.exe

Contains 2 or 3 new levels, and I finally implemented one-way terrain!

...now all I gotta do is cut out the rest of the marble/pillar traps and implement them.

(and try to remove the lag  I'll need to try a hardware accelerated build and see if it gets rid of the lag completely... if not, I might have to recode the engine)

[Dullstar]

Recode the engine?  I thought you were using MMF2.  Recoding, well, if you were programming it, it would work great.

[Ramon]

Recode the engine?  I thought you were using MMF2.  Recoding, well, if you were programming it, it would work great.

Er I meant using another way to build the engine with MMF2. At the moment I'm using a tremendous amout of fastloops which slows the game down when there are too many lemmings. I just wonder if it would be possible without fastloops...

[Dullstar]

I don't know, the way MMF handles things, it may be better, albeit time consuming, to start over with a different program, such as Construct or Game Maker.  Although, I don't know, so take that advice with a grain of salt.

[Zack]

Have you been working on your SNES PC Remake? I played the demo and loved it and want to see more work and a complete full game because it is such a cool fangame.

[Ramon]

In fact I dug out the game again a few days ago - had a play over it and I must say it really wasn't that bad.

But I'm sorry to say when I look at the code now I'm only able to confuse myself :p

The lag problem still applies too and there's no workaround without rebuilding the engine...

[Simon]

How did you actually do the game's graphics, if everything is in MMF? Do you read them from the original games' files, or converted them to some common image format first which the environment can read?

If the environment can't work with the current load, you might consider learning a general-purpose programming language and a suitable library for it >_>

-- Simon

[Ramon]

I found some spritesheets on the net for the most moves, however, there were important ones missing so I ripped those myself from the game. I got the terrain and co. from Lemmix, I think.

I started this project about 2 years ago, I just wanted to do a little fan project  nothing big, really. Currently I do not have the time to learn a programming language, but if I could, I probably would, as Lemmings continues to amaze me for the most part. 

[DoubleU]

Speaking of which, I must ask who the **** decided to make it so you have 10 seconds to continue if you fail a level and then if you don't react in time make you start back from Just Dig.

  Heh, yeah it's annoying.  Actually, it really reminds me of arcade games, where when you lose, it might give you a 10 second countdown to insert more coins to continue (or something like that).  Perhaps the company that made the SNES port mainly did arcade games and can't shake old habits?

I think it's more like they were planning on turning it into an arcade version and that never got off the ground.