So, what have I missed?

[Craig3410]

So, long story (basically, my PC with all my lemmings stuff doesn't have any way to get onto the internet [something wrong with it, still trying to figure out how to fix it] and I've tried to stay away from here b/c if I see what all you guys are doing, I'd get disappointed I can't play it [this is my parents computer, and they don't want me downloading stuff]  )

So, I come back, and I see these:

http://www.geocities.com/zarathustra47/Teaser.gif

and

http://home.arcor.de/0xdeadbeef/escher.png

Can someone fill me in on them?

Whoa.
     

[ccexplore]

Ahribar's Teaser was just one of the levels of his that he remade in his new style, which features graphics from the original games.  The style is still not ready basically because I'm a jerk and procrastinator (you see, I was suppose to make the ONML MIDIs for him, but I dragged on for months on this and still hasn't finished).

Deadbeef's screenshots are mock-ups of a program he's writing, basically a Java version of Lemmings.  The graphics come from the Windows version of Lemmings, in particular the high-resolution graphics from that version of the game.  I don't know what features of the program he has working now at this point.

In short, you didn't really miss much.  Both projects will eventually be released for real, which probably won't happen for a while.

[Craig3410]

Thanks.

[0xdeadbeef]

Well, here's a more recent screenshort of my little project:
http://home.arcor.de/0xdeadbeef/lemmgreen.png

The screenshots are not "mock ups" in the sense of put together in a graphics program. These are actual "in game" shots.
Then again, at this moment, large parts of the game logic are still missing (not to speak of sound, music etc.) and while I added the loading of all the lemmings animations recently and started with the lemmings state machine, I must admit, my progress was rather slow lately (due to heavy workload in my "real" job, sickness and lazyness).

Status Quo of the project:
- ripped all 9 gfx sets from the windows version (original + oh no!)
- converted all 80 original and 96 oh no levels to text files
- added code to load all (?) of the 176 level, display them with all draw modes and full animation of animated objects
- included the 4 "special" levels
- created collision mask out of level data and hand drawn collision masks for exit/traps
- implemented mousescrolling and keyboard scrolling
- ripped and integrated all animations of all the lemmings
- ripped and integrated icon bar which is already working in sense of pressing buttons etc. while the game code is still missing
- ripped and integrated number charset and complete charset
- added mini-map

[0xdeadbeef]

I implemented walkers, fallers and the splatter animation last night:
http://home.arcor.de/0xdeadbeef/walker_faller_splat.png

Next step will be to add code so I can change a lemming's skill.

Well, still a long way to go, but at least they're walking at last...

[ccexplore]

Do you have a link to the latest JAR?

Sounds like it's about time for people to start testing your stuff, now that you have moving lemmings.

[0xdeadbeef]

At this moment, only walkers, fallers, floaters and climbers work (at least to a certain degree).
These were the simple lemmings, since they don't alter the collision mask.
Implementing the blocker, digger, basher, miner and bomber will be a little more work and before I finished this, I don't think beta testing would make any sense.
Apart from that, the exits aren't working, the entry works only manually (by pressing space at the moment) and levels can only be loaded via a file requester which wouldn't work in a Jar.

However, as soon as I have something that is worth testing, I would greatly appreciate the help of a small group of beta testers to help me find out were my version doesn't work as it should be.

Anyway, most probably I won't have much time to continue this weekend and I'm on a business trip next week, so chances are little that this will happen soon.

[ccexplore]

At this moment, only walkers, fallers, floaters and climbers work (at least to a certain degree).
These were the simple lemmings, since they don't alter the collision mask.
Implementing the blocker, digger, basher, miner and bomber will be a little more work and before I finished this, I don't think beta testing would make any sense.

I disagree.  Even now, I can start checking for things like whether your fallers are falling too slow or too fast (3 pixels per frame in the 320x160 resolution of DOS and Amiga).  I can check whether your skill assignment handler will do things like allowing you to assign skills on a lemming that's splattering (it shouldn't), or how it handles the case of multiple lemmings under the same cursor (select the one who came out the latest, as you haven't implement the other skills at this point).  I can check what is the maximum distance your lemmings can fall without splattering (somewhat of a long story if you want to imitate DOS/Amiga/Windows/etc. exactly, but roughly 60-63 pixels).  And so on.

Apart from that, the exits aren't working, the entry works only manually (by pressing space at the moment) and levels can only be loaded via a file requester which wouldn't work in a Jar.

Those aren't problems in terms of testing what you have now.  Though it is useful to be able to load levels, especially custom levels that I can create specifically for testing.

I don't actually need to run jar.  I can always unzip it and directly run the .class file that has your main() method.

However, as soon as I have something that is worth testing

My point is that it looks like you already have something worth testing.  The sooner testing begins, the faster we can get bugs out of the way.

Anyway, most probably I won't have much time to continue this weekend and I'm on a business trip next week, so chances are little that this will happen soon.

Which is a good time for people to do the testing on.  Though granted, what you have right now will probably not take all week.

[0xdeadbeef]

I have a very large list of thing I know that don't work. There are even some "array out of bounds" exception, lemmings climbing though solid ceilings and so on. The skill assignment can only assign climbers and floaters. So just believe me: at this state, I don't need someone else to tell me that it's not really working yet. I might have something more useful after the next (not this) weekend. But no promises.

If you really wish to support me, you could provide me with a set of test levels to check fall distance, maximum height of obstacles that a lemming can climb and so on.
This would really help me in this stage of development.

Levels should be either in LVL format or in my own (very simple) INI format which is just simply a text file describing all the objects.

I wrote myself a very basic java tool to convert all the original levels (win95 2kb LVL files)  to a text format. The tool also scales all the data by 2 since I have a twice as large level.
You can download it here:
http://home.arcor.de/0xdeadbeef/LemmLevel.jar

It's a very simple command line tool without very extensive error checking, but it does its job.
Use it like this from the command line:

java -jar lemmlevel.jar d:\mylevel

It will convert all files called "*.LVL" to text files called "*.INI" in the given path. Without a parameter, it will use the current directory.

Note that this only works for the (2kb) LVL files of the Win95 version.

[Mindless]

Levels should be either in LVL format or in my own (very simple) INI format which is just simply a text file describing all the objects.

Perhaps you could use XML instead of your INI format... see... um... [link=http://eng-forum.lemmingswelt.de/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=news;action=display;num=1123253327;start=18#18]here[/link].

Just a suggestion.

[ccexplore]

To be honest, I'm not completely convinced of the need or usefulness of having it in XML format.  (covox never really explained that choice either)

[Proxima]

- converted all 80 original and 96 oh no levels to text files

Which four ONML levels are you missing?

[Shvegait]

Maybe those in DLVEL012.DAT? There's only 4 levels in that pack (the leftovers. Tame 17-20).

[ccexplore]

Ha!  Sounds like we just found the first bug in your program, 0xdeadbeef. And without even having working code to play around with yet.  

Incidentally, if you don't want people to report bugs you already know about, keep a bug list and include that with every release.  You should keep a bug list anyway in any case so you don't lose track of them yourself.

But no hurry.  Just that some bugs tend to be harder to diagnose the later they are discovered.

[Isu]

Maybe those in DLVEL012.DAT? There's only 4 levels in that pack (the leftovers. Tame 17-20).

I can tell you from personal experience that Tame 17-20 were not in the Win95 version.  B)