Lemmings & Oh No! More Lemmings DOS music for Lemmix

[twinklestarmate]

Hello,
I like Lemmix a lot and really enjoy it as an alternative to plain DOS lemmings, but is there anywhere I can find the DOS music for Lemmings and Oh No! More Lemmings in MOD format (if it is possible) to be able to use it in Lemmix?

Thanks in advance.

[ccexplore]

It has been asked before and unfortunately, it is a difficult ask.  While the internal format for the DOS music has been figured out (and actually is very MOD-like), the main issue is that the instrument sounds in the DOS music is synthesized very differently from MOD music.  So you definitely cannot make it sound exactly the same in MOD, and regardless, it'll still take some work to properly sample the individual instrument sounds for MOD use.

That said, if someone does make an effort to make the DOS music available in MOD format some time in the far future, you'll probably hear about it here.

[twinklestarmate]

Oh! it's such a shame. Because I've finally got the chance to hear the original Amiga MOD format music - and I didn't like it. In fact, I've grown up with the Lemmings DOS music since my brother first showed me the game back in 1992 that I couldn't stand the big differences in tones and instruments against my favored-DOS music.

Perhaps there can be a way to make Lemmix play random WAV files as music. That would be enough for me. Is it possible to make lemmix play WAV files instead of MOD. If it is able to play WAV files, extracting the music to WAV is no hassle for me, as I can do it myself. But I really need to know if lemmix is able to play looped WAV music, and if not, may I request it's playback ability to do so, even MP3 or any other audio format.

Thanks in advance and great respect to you ccexplore for your great lemmings researchs. I've really get to know this game much more in depth than I did years ago.

[namida]

It's definately possible; how easy it would be is another matter.

Both me and ccexplore have managed to successfully modify and recompile the source code, even to the point of building a player with new levels (check my Lemmings Plus DOS Project topic, it has a Lemmix player). So, it's just a matter of modifying this to acheive the desired effect.

[Clam]

Sorry to bring up an old topic, but...

I've searched a bit for DOS music and I can't seem to find it anywhere (aside from YouTube videos). All the downloads I've found are Amiga version, or something else entirely. Is the DOS music out there in any audio format?

[ccexplore]

I'd think that some of the MP3s out there for Lemmings music must have come from a DOS version, but then again I haven't ever done a search myself on this.  Maybe you'll have to record your own (it's not too bad doing so using DOSBox).

Technically you can say the DOS music is available in adlib.dat format, just that there's no player for this format to play the music (unless you count the game itself).

[Mindless]

You reverse-engineered the music format, didn't you, ccexplore?  Why not document it or hack together an adplug player for the format?

[ccexplore]

Hmm, not familiar with adplug, will have to take a look at that.  Yeah, I guess I can document the "format" at some point, assuming I can find my own notes on that from ages ago

[ccexplore]

Ok, I haven't bothered yet to dig up old notes on adlib.dat yet, but I think I remember one trouble with trying to document the adlib.dat "format", and this is that a lot of the data concerning instruments basically specifies or maps to values being sent to various registers on the OPL2 FM-synth chip.  I can either leave it at that and try to point people to URLs on the web documentating the chip (often incompletely), or try to include/summarize all that information (starting from an explanation of FM synthesis, which obviously takes time to write).

That said, I'll see what I can do when I find the time.  I'll most definitely lean towards the side of only documenting adlib.dat-specific stuff and leave the user to find out about the OPL2 chipset and FM-synthesis on their own.

[twinklestarmate]

I'd think that some of the MP3s out there for Lemmings music must have come from a DOS version, but then again I haven't ever done a search myself on this.  Maybe you'll have to record your own (it's not too bad doing so using DOSBox).

Technically you can say the DOS music is available in adlib.dat format, just that there's no player for this format to play the music (unless you count the game itself).

Don't know if it's actually of interest, but I've recorded the whole DOS soundtrack for both Lemmings and Oh No! More Lemmings in WAV format, and have it compressed in WMA lossless. I did some editing regarding the loops. I think I did the cuts quite nicely and as best as I could. Perhaps I could upload the DOS music somewhere if, again, is anyone's interested.

[ccexplore]

Well, it sounds like ClamSpammer may be interested at any rate.  Although I still think MP3 format would be more preferable for obvious reasons, but on a Windows computer WMA will probably be fine.

[Simon]

geoo and me are interested in the DOS music as well! At least for me, both WMA and WAV are fine.

-- Simon

[twinklestarmate]

Here you go, guys:

http://www.4shared.com/file/r6EVebBm/LEMM_ADLIB.html
http://www.4shared.com/file/OuBN5aPj/OHNO_ADLIB.html

For LEMM_ADLIB, tracks 1-17 correspond to the order of the songs played during the game. Tracks 18-21 are the special level songs in order.
For OHNO_ADLIB, the same as above, like the standard songs.

Any download issues, let me know.

[Clam]

Thank you very much!

[Simon]

Heh yeah, before I forget it once more: Thanks!

-- Simon

[Domarius]

Here you go, guys:

http://www.4shared.com/file/r6EVebBm/LEMM_ADLIB.html
http://www.4shared.com/file/OuBN5aPj/OHNO_ADLIB.html

For LEMM_ADLIB, tracks 1-17 correspond to the order of the songs played during the game. Tracks 18-21 are the special level songs in order.
For OHNO_ADLIB, the same as above, like the standard songs.

Any download issues, let me know.

FINALLY!  Someone did this!  Thanks mate!  I admit it was probably possible for me to get around to it but I never found the time, and you've done a perfect job.  The looping is perfect and there's nothing wrong with the recording to my ear.  (The only thing to complain about is in 2 of the songs, the instruments are not quite right, but that's just a limitation of emulating Adlib in DosBox)

You know, for years, you do a search for the original Adlib Lemmings sound track, and all you get are posts of people talking about how much they loved the Amiga Lemmings music and people wondering if the PC version even HAD music!  Why was it so unknown and underapreciated??  Especially since the Amiga version just a very very shoddy quick port from Adlib to MOD.

To explain; the Amiga music wasn't re-composed to take advantage of the MOD format's strengths.  Usually what you do with MOD files is compensate for the 4 voice limit by using appregios, and exploiting the fact that the instruments are just sound recordings by recording a variety of chords as single instruments.   But instead it seems it was just cheaply ported over from the PC music files, resulting in missing harmony notes etc. due to the 4 voice limit.  So as far as MOD music goes, they are pretty shoddy.

So yeah - kind of frustrating when searching for this soundtrack, to hear people "liking" the Amiga version so much.

[ccexplore]

Especially since the Amiga version just a very very shoddy quick port from Adlib to MOD.

Actually, the Amiga and PC versions of Lemmings were developed more or less concurrently, with the Amiga version happened to be released slightly earlier.

As far as technology goes, neither port really took full use of the available sound technologies.  The adlib version in fact doesn't need to be limited into using only 3 channels out of the 9 available for music.  If anything, it would almost seem as if the legacy of 3 channels originated from the Amiga version.

Together with the fact that a good number of Lemmings music are simply re-arranged "classic/folk" tunes with no copyright restrictions, instead of originals, it's clear that music simply isn't as big a focus as it could be when it comes to the original ports of Lemmings.  Also, considering that the Atari ST version was I think also developed concurrently, and that the PC version also supports Tandy with its more primitive sound support, it may simply boil down to a case of developing for the least common denominator.

So yeah - kind of frustrating when searching for this soundtrack, to hear people "liking" the Amiga version so much.

Haha.  Relax, I think this is just a simple consequence that there was much more of a "MOD scene" with the Amiga in general, due to a number of technological advantages.  When you already have an environment where it'e easier for people to rip music off of a game to be played in other contexts, there's bound to be a selection bias favoring the number of people who'll talk about the Amiga game music compared with the PC, even if it might well be the case that there were actually more people who first played the PC version.

The simple practical fact is, recording and sharing the PC version of music is pretty much not practical for the typical user until the days of Windows and DOSBox and widespread adoption of sound cards with full digital record and playback capabilities, plus the development of decent compression like MP3, and technologies like the internet (you'd be hard press to fit all the MP3s of the PC Lemmings music onto a 3.5 floppy!).  Unlike the Amiga.

[brumbles]

I have been looking for the Lemming DOS music for ages! I found this thread and got so excited, but when I try to download it, it tells me that the link is broken! Is there a different link I could follow or another place where I can find the music?? Thanks in advance!