Custom tileset - please help with ground file

[Johannes]

I'm working on a couple new tile sets for my Android clone of Lemmings, and am having some problems writing a valid ground file (one that works with lemmix). The terrain pieces weren't very difficult, but I'm having some problems with the object information.

Specifically, whenever I load an object in Lemmix (except for the exit for some reason), I get the error "Source rectangle is invalid." Objects display fine in the object selection menu of the inspector window, and also display in-game (F2), but are not animated correctly (the entrance starts slightly open, then opens and jumps back to closed for the last frame, the exit and all other objects don't animate at all).

Trying to start the original game (vgalemmi.exe) shows the level preview correctly, but crashes when I try to start playing.

Are there some hard-coded assumptions the game (and lemmix) make about the animation of the objects? Or about the size of the object? Is there some data I'm forgetting in the ground file?

I've attached an excerpt of one of the tilesets for anyone who has any idea about what I'm talking about 
Thanks!
Johannes

p.s. Yes, I will release the complete tilesets to all you fine folk soon. In fact, I will be holding a level design competition for anyone interested in contributing some levels for the clone. Stay tuned!

[Simon]

About the attached screenshot: Are these all terrain tiles from the set? Do they look like they're supposed to? (I don't have Lemmix here right now; screenshot is from Lix.)

I checked VGAGR0.DAT, and the file seems to be properly compressed with two sections. I haven't checked every single detail of the file, just whether it was compressed at all.

The entrance hatch animation is stored in a weird order inside L1 graphics files, you must take this into account when saving graphics in this format. The first frame in the file must be the fully opened hatch, then the fully closed, and then all remaining frames of the opening animation in order from closed to open.

-- Simon

[Johannes]

Yay, I got it working! Thanks for the tip with the strange entrance order - considering how the entrance works that actually makes a lot of sense. Other things I was doing wrong: I didn't set the animation flags correctly (that's why nothing was animating), and I thought the preview image index specified a frame, whereas it actually specifies an offset from the start of the data section (that was causing the source rectangle invalid error).

I've attached what it looks like in Lemmix now. The tiles I posted before are only a small portion of the entire tileset - I don't want to publicize the tileset quite yet.

Interesting that Lix gets the colors wrong, I guess it uses a hard-coded palette rather than the one at the end of the ground file. I guess that will limit editing to Lemmix.

TC,
Johannes

[ccexplore]

Awesome custom tileset! I was out for a bit today, good thing Simon was able to help you with this.