2013 list of game engines and editors

[geoo]

See also:
How to play Lemmings (1991) on a modern PC
How to play and create custom levels

This topic introduces the various options to play and design custom levels for the various lemmings games.

Lemmings (L1), Oh No More Lemmings (ONML)

To play DMA Design's L1 and ONML levels with the exact DOS Lemmings physics, get Lemmix players, or play the DOS games in DOSBox.

To edit and play levels in the old L1 level format, use Eric's Lemmix editor: See .lvl and .dat: How to play and edit.

Today, most level designers work with NeoLemmix. The second-most popular engine is Lix. We recommend to design levels for these games instead of in the .lvl/.dat format. See: How to play and create custom levels in NeoLemmix and Lix.

Games with physics very similar to DOS Lemmings

NeoLemmix

This is the engine of Lemmix taken and a lot of the glitches from the original games fixed, and topped up with new features like 8 new skills. All the Lemmix Players are available in NeoLemmix form, as is Flexi, allowing you to make use of these new features in your custom level sets. Comes with NeoLemmixEditor to support all those new features, which also features a playtest mode to test a single level by running CustLemmix/NeoCustLemmix if provided.
Note: Custom levels from the level database might not be solvable in NeoLemmix.
Dedicated subforum: http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?board=9.0
Website: http://www.neolemmix.com/old/
The Lemmix Players and NeoLemmix Players available on this website run out of the box and allow you to play the original Lemmings 1 games.

Lix

Lix is an open-source lemmings clone with networked multiplayer support (up to 8 players), a few new skills, savestates, framestepping, replays, and a focus on customizability and user friendliness. It comes with new graphics and over 500 community-created levels. Lix's level editor a lot easier to use than Lemmix, but it only loads and saves its own format (Lix .txt).

Link: http://www.lixgame.com
Dedicated subforum: http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?board=8.0
IRC Channel: #lix on irc.quakenet.org

Lemmini

Lemmini is a lemmings clone that supports custom graphics and music. It has its own level format (.ini) but also supports .dat and .lvl  and comes with the ability to load and save replays.
Note: .dat and .lvl levels that use behaviour specific to Lemmix/CustLemm might not be solvable in Lemmini.

Link: http://lemmini.de/

Setup: Obtain WinLemm one way or another, when you first start Lemmini it should ask you for the path where WinLemm is located. It will then compile some data and after a while you're ready to go.
Setting up Lemmix to edit .ini levels: Edit [style_4] in LemmixStyles.ini to have CommonPath point to the Lemmini path, and follow the same procedure described in the Lemmix section.

SuperLemmini

A version of Lemmini with physics closer to the original Amiga physics, a lot of bugs fixed and some new features. Includes most official levels. Custom level packs/sets made for the original Lemmini might not be solvable in SuperLemmini due to the physics changes.
Link: http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=1793.0
Dedicated subforum: http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?board=10.0

jLevelBuilder

Editor only.
Link: http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=1609.0

Cheapo

Rarely used anymore, but comes with an editor and supports custom graphics, custom music and level descriptions and hints. A batch of excellent levels have been made for this, however the cheapo level format is only supported by Cheapo itself.
Download link and some levels and styles (definitely not all): http://www.teamhellspawn.com/lemmings/tools.htm
Some Cheapo content can be converted to NeoLemmix: http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=2070.0

Lemmings 2

L2Player: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?board=39.0 An in-development (as of early 2022) Lemmings 2 clone.

Now has a usable level editor courtesy of GuyPerfect. Together with L2STAT turned into L2Suite for more convenience.

L2Suite: http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=1198.0 While it can be used with PCL2ED, I strongly recommend getting lgl2 as the main level editor. The only advantage of PCL2ED over lgl2 is that it displays the graphics of certain special objects (e.g. Sports steam).
lgl2 download: http://www.camanis.net/lemmings/files/editors/lgl2_10302009.zip
lgl2 instructions: http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=1089.msg31839#msg31839
PCL2ED: http://geoo.digibase.ca/PCL2ED/

L2 Level topic: http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=990.0

L2 Level editor for Amiga: http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=1534.0

Lemmings Chronicles/All New World of Lemmings

Mindless and kieranmillar wrote lem3edit, an editor for Lemmings Chronicles.

Egyptian levels by Clam Spammer (dead link)

Lemmings Revolution

GuyPerfect created a patch to make Lemmings revolution run smoothly in Win7. Also fixes graphics issues in WinXP.

Link: http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=1459.msg38150#msg38150

Lemmings 3D

Loap: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?board=40.0 An in-development (as of early 2022) Lemmings 3D clone.

Some research: http://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=1590.0
Level and graphics editor (2019): https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=4274.0

[mobius]

the link to Clam's L3 pack is dead. Also I'm not certain [only because I haven't looked at what I downloaded yet] but the link to the editor (L3 editor) may not be accurate?

thanks very much for maintaining this thread!

[WillLem]

We should ideally update this post to include newer engines that are currently in development, and remove those that are now outdated and no longer maintained.

Suggested additions:

SuperLemmix
RetroLemmini
GoLems

Suggested removals:

Lemmini / SuperLemmini (certainly no need for both of these to be on here)
jLevelBuilder
Cheapo

I'd also suggest that we point to this post from here as well.


EDIT: We could even merge the two topics into a single topic which links to all relevant ports/engines.etc.

[Simon]

I recommend to preserve this (2013 list of game engines) as it is, as an historic artifact. It's not a websearch landing pad, unlike the maintained How to Play L1 on Modern Computers.

It would be better to rewrite my half-baked How to Play and Create Custom Levels, then point to that rewrite from the 2013 list. But that's also from 2017, and I think it's good to rewrite from scratch these things every 5-10 years.

Best: Duplicate How to play L1 and adapt it to the separate task of joining custom level culture, i.e., to both playing and editing. The format of the post can still be like How to play L1. It always starts with installing some custom engine. But the choice/order/instructions of the engines will be different. Presumably CE/NL -> Lix -> RetroLemmini -> SuperLemmix (assuming you maintain that still) -> Golems (if that has custom level upload), eyeballed by how much attention these draw? You don't have to cover it all, nobody knows all of them by heat.

I'll do that in 2026 when I'm back at my main computer. Or you can spearhead it and I'll join the effort.

Either way, I'll link to the result from here.

I'd also suggest that we point to this post from here as well.

"This post" is "How to play Lemmings (1991) on a modern PC" and the 2013 list already links there. It's only that the link has the older caption "How to play old Lemmings on a modern PC". Will update the link caption.

merge the two topics

I prefer to keep the duplication. Both posts are for newbies. The most common question is how to play L1, and the instructions for playing L1 should have have no clutter. Level editing is clutter. Lix is clutter.

-- Simon

[Proxima]

It's good to maintain a list (with short descriptions and links) to currently maintained engines, to help new arrivals connect with the content they are most likely to want.

But it's also good to keep these lists of older engines, as there are many reasons readers might want to check them out. Cheapo, for example, had hundreds, maybe thousands, of levels made for it that have never been converted to more recent engines.

[WillLem]

Cheapo, for example, had hundreds, maybe thousands, of levels made for it that have never been converted to more recent engines.

Do we have an existing way to convert this content to .nxlv (or .lvl or .ini)?

If not, this could be a good project for someone (I already have more than enough to deal with Lemmings-wise, but would be happy to support the project if someone else wants to take it on).

[WillLem]

Best: Duplicate How to play L1 and adapt it to the separate task of joining custom level culture, i.e., to both playing and editing.
...
I'll link to the result from here.

Good idea. If I get some time, I'll do this. I'd suggest keeping the list as easy-to-read as possible. We don't need to list lots and lots of features, we can just name the engine, link to it, and give a brief description which conveys the engine's main USP (very much like the OP in this topic, come to think of it).

Really, the "How to play L1" should also be simplified further. People want to see links to click and brief overviews, not big paragraphs of information. They can get that information once they've clicked the relevant link; the brief overview should tell them if it's a version they want, or not.

[Proxima]

Do we have an existing way to convert this [Cheapo] content to .nxlv (or .lvl or .ini)?

Not automatically! The problem is that Cheapo levels are saved as bitmaps, so it's hard to convert that back into individual pieces. (And many Cheapo tilesets never got converted to NL.) Unless you could somehow write a program to calculate the tile locations from the bitmap, the only way would be rebuilding every level manually.

[Simon]

"How to play L1" should also be simplified
get that information once they've clicked the relevant link

Hmm. It's possible to make extra topics: One for vanilla Lemmix (that tells you invisible hotkeys etc.), one for Amiga Emulation with the many choices, ..., then tie them together in How to Play L1. I'm sure you can condense it to half its size like that.

There is merit in seeing the full installation instructions at a glance, without indirection. Oh, that engine requires five steps to play. Oh, this runs in the browser and requires no installation.

The main worry is: Once you redirect to separate topics, those will be generally about the individual engine, not narrowly focused about getting L1 running in that engine. Maybe that's fine, at least you're now busy installing an engine that can later play L1.

You can try. We can always revert it if it sucks.

-- Simon