Lemmings Boards > Help & Guides

Lemmings 1 Graphics and Music error

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607:
The regular DOS version does have a music bug, but it has nothing to do with notes being in the wrong place. The issue is that the music cycle restarts whenever you fail a level or start a new game. In case you haven't got the fix for that yet, here it is. If you want to make sure the music is sounding right, compare against this video.
I guess the colours on the level preview screen are indeed a bug. I've gotten used to it, but yeah, it's likely indeed supposed to look like the results screen. :P I don't find it hard to read, maybe you just need to get used to it? I would like to see one of the videos you mention! Are you sure it's the DOS version?
 In case you didn't know, you can choose for high-quality colours on the skillbar, that also differ depending on the graphic set used, by pressing 2 instead of 1 on the pc selection screen. This also makes the fade-outs be slower, which can help on levels with a tight time limit. ;)
Have fun! :)

schlorgadorb:
The link Namdia gave me had the answer!

So, if you go into your settings in DOSBox, switch the "machine" setting to vgaonly and that will resolve the issue.

As for the music, I would chalk it up to the limitations of the system. Probably, on the hardware it was programmed for, it works great, and I'm trying to play it with later end DOS emulation. Or maybe I had a bad sound card growing up. Maybe I always selected the wrong option.

ccexplore:
Does your music in DOSBox sound like in the youtube video 607 linked to?  It should and I don't think it'd sound too much different on an actual DOS PC of the day.  The PC sound hardware at the time is somewhat primitive, remember, and Lemmings 1 does not even really take full advantage of the hardware capabilities available at the time.

IIRC, (most versions of) DOS Lemmings 1 only comes with adlib.dat and tandysnd.dat, so only two possible choices of sound hardware--and actually IIRC most PCs don't even support the sound hardware specific to Tandy computers.  So it actually shouldn't matter what hardware you have if you can hear music at all.  Maybe there are some DOSBox settings to tweak that can improve the sound emulation on your computer?

Simon:

--- Quote from: schlorgadorb ---So, if you go into your settings in DOSBox, switch the "machine" setting to vgaonly and that will resolve the issue.
--- End quote ---

Thanks for confirming the solution in good detail!

My guess is that, in the graphics bug, Lemmings 1 wishes to display the level preview in 16 colors, then needs a different 16-color-palette for the blue-brown statistics section below, but fails to switch palettes. Both seem to be VGA modes, interesting that the machine setting has an effect on this.

-- Simon

ccexplore:
Yeah, your guess is spot-on.  Lemmings (amongst many other games as well) uses the trick of switching palettes mid-frame to effectively work around the 16-color limitation.  Specifically it does so on the level preview screen to allow the level preview on the top to use a separate palette from the bottom.  This requires the graphics emulation to be line-by-line rather than something more coarse-grained.

Based on various threads found by Google, it looks like vgaonly mode has line-by-line emulation turned on, but for whatever reasons the default "super vga" mode does not, which is why you get the messed up colors with the default emulation settings.

It used to be that IIRC, before version 0.73 of DOSBox the default was different and more akin to the "vgaonly" mode of 0.73+, so for some time the default settings work fine for Lemmings.  But looks like after 0.73 you have to change to vgaonly, since the default changed and new default not compatible with what Lemmings does on the preview screen.  I've long done that on my own computer as I saw that thread about the setting in the past, so I forgot it was needed.  Some people may also have never upgraded DOSBox to a higher version given that issue.  It's fair to say that the problem is indeed widespread nowadays for new DOSBox users, given what happened.

I guess it'd be good to create a sticky post on this board analogous to the ones kieranmillar already created for L2 and L3 on DOSBox.  Even though I think Lemmix or NeoLemmix are far better options for L1, there may be nostalgic reasons for a user to prefer the DOSBox way.

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