Level Editors

[Lemming122]

Hi all!

Does anybody know if there has been a level editor released yet for Lemmings Revolution? Or maybe 3D Lemmings?
Thanks!

[ccexplore]

Sorry, AFAIK neither has any level editors.  In fact for Lemmings Revolution no one has even figured out how exactly levels are stored and represented so there isn't even enough information at the moment to write an editor for it.  I think for 3D Lemmings at least we have that information (or some of it), but I don't know if we have anyone here who has experience programming 3D graphics.

[grams88]

I wonder if there might be a lemmings paintball one but by the sounds of it that might not be the case either.

[ccexplore]

You may well be the first person here who has ever mentioned the idea of an editor for lemmings paintball.

[DragonsLover]

There IS a level editor for Lemmings Paintball stored inside of the game itself, but nobody knows how to activate it. It seems to be activated using command lines, but their use are unknown and may cause the game to crash. By using a resource hacker program, we can clearly see the windows that are used to edit levels. I mentioned these over there.

Once someone figures out how to activate the level editor within the game, it will therefore be possible to edit our own Lemmings paintball levels.

Lee, author of his old Lemmings Paintball fan website, had started his own level editor, but the project seems to be abandoned.

[ccexplore]

  Interesting.  That might actually be up my alley to figure out, though I'll have to first start by actually installing and playing that game as I have never done that yet.

And of course as a disclaimer, it is quite possible for the resources to be left over in the game but the actual coding for the editor may not be (fully) there.

[namida]

Didn't Mike once mention that the editor for original lemmings may remain in the Amiga version of the game, too?

[DragonsLover]

Interesting.  That might actually be up my alley to figure out, though I'll have to first start by actually installing and playing that game as I have never done that yet.

And of course as a disclaimer, it is quite possible for the resources to be left over in the game but the actual coding for the editor may not be (fully) there.

If you could put your hands into that, that would be neat.

[namida]

I'm still somewhat hopeful we'll see a L3D editor someday. I used to have millions of great ideas for 3D levels... :/

[DragonsLover]

I think for these days, a 3D Lemmings clone in Minecraft would be much better. It would be easier to build levels and customize everything. With the Spectator mode Mojang have implemented, it would become handy to move around and take a look at the "levels"and assign skills. The only downside: you must have Minecraft, which isn't free.

[ccexplore]

There IS a level editor for Lemmings Paintball stored inside of the game itself, but nobody knows how to activate it. It seems to be activated using command lines, but their use are unknown and may cause the game to crash.

I started a little bit over the weekend.  From what I can tell so far, you can pass in "/EDIT@" on the Command Prompt to make the game try to load a level stored in a file.  For example:

lemball.exe /EDIT@nofile.xyz

The game will launch looking normal, but when you click on the 1-player icon on the main screen, instead of loading Fun 1 it will try to load a level from file nofile.xyz in the current directory.  Of course that file doesn't exist and you end up with a rather funny error message which I'll leave it to discover for yourself.   If you do have a bogus file named nofile.xyz placed in the correct location, then as expected the game will crash trying to load that bogus level file, when you click on the 1-player icon on the main screen.

This of course doesn't quite prove that there is a working editor in the game, but it clearly points to the next step:  figure out how levels are stored in PBAIMOG.VSR.  That should then hopefully allow for individual levels to be extracted from the VSR into standalone files, which then might be loadable and editable using the command line switch above.

====================

sidenote: the full list of command line options I can see in the EXE are as follows:
/NOMUSIC
/NOEFFECTS
/SNDDEBUG
/STATDEBUG
/MEMDEBUG
/NOANIM
/NOZOOM
/320
/TESTALLLEVELS
/?
/TESTSTARTSKILL@
/TESTSTARTLEVEL@
/EDIT@
/PLAY@
/GRAPHICS

I've only tested very few of them so try them at your own risk.  Some might not do anything observable.  For /TESTALLLEVELS it appears the game will proceed automatically to load each and every level on its own, one by one.  It is clearly a test mode and doesn't appear to allow you to intervene short of using Task Manager to kill the program.

[ccexplore]

I made progress with regards to extracting individual level files from the VSR.  Attached is Fun 2 extracted from the demo version's VSR.

As far as I can tell, the level loads and plays successfully if you run lemball.exe in Command Prompt with option /PLAY@TEST.LVL

The level also loads successfully with /EDIT@TEST.LVL, however after clicking on "OK", the program eventually displays an error message and quits.

That could mean a number of things:
  - the code for the level editor is missing in the game EXE (despite the presence of the dialog resources), and so the attempt to go into editor mode ultimately fails and this is futile; or
  - additional data needs to be included in the level file in order to edit it; or
  - there may be different file formats between editable levels vs the release versions of levels found in the VSR

Bottom line:  more investigations needed, and potentially no editor in the game EXE.  The easy part is more or less over so don't hold your hopes up.....

[Prob Lem]

Didn't Mike once mention that the editor for original lemmings may remain in the Amiga version of the game, too?

I wonder if that's how New Year Lemmings '92 (a hack of the Amiga demo, Xmas Lemmings '91, by a member of the group Fairlight) came to exist? To the best of my knowledge, those were the first custom levels ever made for the game.

Personally, I often find myself wishing there was a Lomax level-editor for the PSX version, since the chances of a new game for him are slim to none.

[grams88]

Thanks ccexplore for giving this a go.

[DragonsLover]

I made progress with regards to extracting individual level files from the VSR.  Attached is Fun 2 extracted from the demo version's VSR.

As far as I can tell, the level loads and plays successfully if you run lemball.exe in Command Prompt with option /PLAY@TEST.LVL

The level also loads successfully with /EDIT@TEST.LVL, however after clicking on "OK", the program eventually displays an error message and quits.

That could mean a number of things:
  - the code for the level editor is missing in the game EXE (despite the presence of the dialog resources), and so the attempt to go into editor mode ultimately fails and this is futile; or
  - additional data needs to be included in the level file in order to edit it; or
  - there may be different file formats between editable levels vs the release versions of levels found in the VSR

Bottom line:  more investigations needed, and potentially no editor in the game EXE.  The easy part is more or less over so don't hold your hopes up.....

Yeah, that's exactly what I tried myself. It gives me a memory error.
I have all of the levels extracted if you're interested. Also, I have some kind of alternative files for LEMBALL.EXE and PBAIMOG.VSR. The executable contains extra commands to use (such as displaying the console) and the PBAIMOG.VSR file size is strangely smaller. How can I send the stuff to you?