Lemmings on Windows 7, Working Installer, No Glitches!

[AsmodeusXero]

 

Win Lemmings featuring the Depeche Mode Midi Soundtrack!, looking on forums and on the many sites that host downloads, none will install or even run on windows 7, until now. I found files, made an installer, viola!

Look here, I posted videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVLwmcOC5MY

[mobius]

Great.   now all we need is a way to get Lemmings Revolution to run on Windows 7.

Seriously if you have any insight into this as well, that would be awesome. Revolution doesn't run properly on Windows 7.

[AsmodeusXero]

i feel you there, but one thing at a time, i'll look into it.

[finlay]

Win Lemmings featuring the Depeche Mode Midi Soundtrack!, looking on forums and on the many sites that host downloads, none will install or even run on windows 7, until now. I found files, made an installer, viola!

Look here, I posted videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVLwmcOC5MY

Viola!

(Sorry, I'm being mean, perhaps...)

[GuyPerfect]

I'm back, baby!

Great.   now all we need is a way to get Lemmings Revolution to run on Windows 7.

Seriously if you have any insight into this as well, that would be awesome. Revolution doesn't run properly on Windows 7.

I tried and tried and tried, but I couldn't get Lemming Revolution to run correctly on Windows 7. The best I could do in 7 proper was a no-audio, black-UI setup, which wasn't very good.

Then I tried running it in virtual machines with Windows 98, Windows XP and Debian installed. Windows VirtualPC doesn't appear to support 3D acceleration whatsoever, and even with the VirtualBox 3D driver it didn't work. The game's got some old-fashioned hardware enumeration going on and if it doesn't find a controller it likes, it just up and quits. It didn't like VirtualBox.

One thing I did have some success with was Wine, which is specifically designed to run old 32-bit Windows programs within a Linux environment. The issue here wasn't that the game didn't run properly; it was that it was unplayably slow because it had to translate all the Direct3D functions the game uses. If it used OpenGL it would be just fine, but that's not the case.

So I took a moment to install Linux on my machine (different partition) and... Wine didn't work. Something about an invalid parameter to glXCreateContext()? Whatever the case, I think what happened was they said "Hey, it works on 32-bit, so let's just compile it 64-bit and not test it! Profit! I mean non-profit!"

Fortunately, AMD put out some sweet Linux drivers for ATI cards since the last time I tried running Linux on this box, so that's a plus.

Re-installing the 32-bit Debian and setting up Wine, everything worked like a charm. Audio sounds great, the 3D is spot-on, and the UI elements look exactly as they should. Well, not like they were supposed to in 2002 (look at the balloon and clock icons; the colors are whack), but it looked like that on XP, so whatcha gonna do?

There were two curious problems, however. Running the game full-screen, I wasn't able to pan left when holding down the right mouse button. Yeah, like... it would only rotate clockwise. That wasn't an issue in windowed mode, but the cursor positioning was a bit off and I guess right-click is what releases the cursor from the Wine window? Neither makes the game unplayable, but they're both somewhat of an inconvenience. Is there maybe a way to pan around the cylinder without using the mouse? That'd be ideal.

So that's it, then. We can still play Lemmings Revolution this day and age, but not through Windows 7 directly. At least it's not gone to the clutches of time.

[mobius]

thanks a lot for that information. Do you think this would work with Ubuntu? That's what I used in the past and liked it alot, it's basically mostly the same as Linux isn't it? [It's a spin off of if I thought] If only I had two computers. I'm reluctant to do partitioning, I've had such computer problems in the past that I treat everything with extreme caution and care now. But all is not lost!

you can pan without the mouse by pressing backspace, but that rotates you 180 degrees quickly, in other words in will only put you on the direct opposite side of the level.

EDIT: there is one other option I didn't see you mention; Windows 7 ultimate edition which has "XP mode" or something like that is similar to a virtual machine but I think it's a little different. I tried upgrading to it a few months ago (I have home edition) but Microsoft is a little %#^* and gave me a hard time about it.

[GuyPerfect]

Ubuntu is one of the many Linux distributions. The main difference between them is the software they bundle in with the Linux kernel. I like Debian because the supplied software is barebones: you get a shell, networking, simple text editing, a package manager and a thumbs-up. If you want anything more, you get the honor of installing it yourself.

You can shrink a partition in Windows 7 via Control Panel -> Administrator Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management. Doing so even on the main Windows partition can be done while Windows is running and will not cause any problems. If you decide you want to undo the shrink later on, you can give the unused space back to the partition.

Give yourself 10 GB or so to play around with the Linux distribution of your choice, but remember you'll need a 32-bit version to get Lemmings Revolution to work. In the event something really goes bananas and you're locked out of your computer entirely, it's actually an easy fix: as long as you have your original Windows 7 installation disc, you can follow these instructions to put the bootloader back the way it was before you started messing around with Linux.

If you do this, back up all your stuff. In the event you make a wrong move with the Linux partitioner, you could screw yourself over.

If you're still apprehensive about installing a second OS on the machine, you're out of luck as far as I can tell. If you can find a VM that lets Lemmings Revolution use the 3D properly, you'll be able to use it right there in Windows 7, but I haven't had any luck with that. Not all hope is lost, however: there is a WineOnWindows initiative that exists for exactly this sort of situation. It's not functional yet, but the end goal is to essentially create a compatibility layer for older Windows programs that we can use to run that stuff on Windows 7.

[GuyPerfect]

EDIT: there is one other option I didn't see you mention; Windows 7 ultimate edition which has "XP mode" or something like that is similar to a virtual machine but I think it's a little different. I tried upgrading to it a few months ago (I have home edition) but Microsoft is a little %#^* and gave me a hard time about it.

I'd looked into it, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't support Direct3D. If I'm wrong about it I might entertain Microsoft in their little anti-piracy test, but I'd have to be fairly certain first.