L3DUtils is a collection of utilities for Lemmings 3D. Most features require DOSBox, although the patches can be used even with copies of L3D running on real hardware or in virtual machines.
Note that L3DUtils is only intended for use with the full version of Lemmings 3D. Most features also require L3DUtils to be in the L3D folder, although you can use the launcher
with CD versions of the game, or the replay manager, from anywhere. The Replay Manager features require Windows XP or higher, and likely won't work in WINE (although they might work if you use Windows DOSBox via WINE too).
L3DUtils has three main features:
1 - Game PatchesL3DUtils has three patches it can apply to Lemmings 3D.
The first one is the Music Patch. This fixes the discrepancy some levels have in their music between the CD audio vs soundcard / MIDI audio. This is identical to the music patch L3DEdit can apply (I'll be removing that from L3DEdit in the future, since it makes more sense as part of L3DUtils).
This patch should be considered obligatory when creating or playing custom levels, but it's up to you if you want to use it for the official content.
The second is the Pyramid Texture Patch. Some copies of Lemmings 3D have corruption in one of the two Pyramid texturesets, resulting in many missing textures on the levels "Tooten Lemming", "Oh No! More Pyramids!", "King Coder's Tomb" and "The Prisoner" (it doesn't affect "The Arena" or "Raiders Of The Lost Lemming" as they use the other texture set, which is not affected). This patch will fix this corruption.
Finally, the last option is to switch the Lemmings 3D EXE between the floppy disk and CD versions of the game. The floppy version doesn't have the disk check, at the cost of not supporting CD audio (it does still support CD animations if the files are there).
Copy/pasted from a post in the L3DEdit topic (as this patch used to be part of L3DEdit):
The music patch does not fix anything with sound working or not working.
What it fixes, is that in the vanilla version of L3D, there's a discrepancy between CD audio and other audio. As you might know, there's two tracks for each style on the CD audio (I'll call these "Standard" and "Alternate"); while the soundcard / MIDI audio has three for each track (equivalents to Standard and Alternate, plus a third one - which I'll call "Remix" - which is always a remix of Standard).
Each level can select between Standard, Alternate and Remix. Obviously, this setting is based on soundcard / MIDI audio. Since CD audio doesn't have Remix, you'd logically expect that any level that plays Remix, would instead get Standard under CD audio; while Standard and Alternate would work the same way they always do. However - what actually happens, is that while Standard works fine, the CD audio will play Alternate if the level's set to "Remix", and Standard if the level is set to "Alternate".
The music patch fixes this, so that the musics are consistent between the CD audio and the soundcard / MIDI audio. That's all it does - specifically, it does this by swapping the 2nd and 3rd music file for every style. You can then choose, either globally or per-style, whether you want to treat the CD audio track selection or the soundcard audio selection as the "correct" one (which will then patch the levels appropriately - when keeping the CD music, or on levels that use Standard, no changes are needed; otherwise, it will swap between the two remaining options). You can customize this however you like, but I've set the default to be keep soundcard / MIDI's choices for Space levels, and CD audio's for all others (when you see exactly which Space levels get the alternate music with this setup, you'll see exactly why I made that the default).
If sound / music is not working, you need to run L3D's "setup.exe" and configure sound hardware. With DOSBox's default config, you can use either Soundblaster or General Midi. With some additional setup, you can also use Gravis UltraSound. AWE32 is not supported in DOSBox - although you can use Virtual Midi Synth, together with an AWE32 soundfont and the "General Midi" music option, to get very close to AWE32 music (but you just have to settle for Soundblaster or Gravis UltraSound for effects) - the one catch being that it glitches out hard towards the end of the Standard track for the Computer style (sound glitches only, but they're REALLY annoying). The need to run setup to configure your sound hardware is nothing special to DOSBox; the same applies to running L3D PC version on real hardware.
The replay manager lets you save and load your replays in Lemmings 3D, instead of them being limited to an auto-replay mode when you retry a level. There's even an option to auto-save replays when you complete a level - please note that this specifically works by saving the replay as soon as you hit the save requirement, so anything done after that will not be included in the auto-save replays.
Saving a replay manually is as easy as clicking "Save Replay". You can save a replay at any time during gameplay (or demo mode, if you really want). If you start a different level, or start playing the same level and interrupt the replay (or start it again in a way that doesn't trigger auto-replay mode), that's when the replay is lost - up until that point, you can still save the replay.
Loading a replay is similar; you can load a replay at either type of preview screen, while in-game (if you do this, gameplay will restart), or on a failed postview screen.
It is normal for L3DUtils to seem to freeze for 10 - 15 seconds upon opening the Replay Manager. You can minimize this by not opening the Replay Manager until Lemmings 3D is running, although it will still happen, just to a lesser extent. This is just because L3DUtils is searching DOSBox's memory to find Lemmings 3D.
If the Replay Manager doesn't work (the buttons never become enabled), please make sure that (a) you're using a 32-bit version of DOSBox (will look into supporting 64-bit in the future), (b) you're not using the debugger build of DOSBox (this will be easy to make work, but I haven't done so yet), and (c) DOSBox is
not running as an administrator - or if it has to be for some reason, then L3DUtils needs to run as one too. L3DUtils shouldn't require any specific version of DOSBox, just as long as the EXE file is named "DosBox.exe" (not case-sensitive).
You can also use these replay files, to create demos for your custom level packs. Simply replace the "REP.xxx" files in the "REPLAY" folder with the replays extracted by L3DUtils. Note that while REP.000 to REP.003 can be for any level, REPLAY.080 to REPLAY.099 must specifically be for the corresponding Practice level.
There are also some general memory-hacking features for L3D hidden in the replay manager. These are probably of no use to the average user, but if it sounds like something you have a use for, see the
V0.08 update post for details.
3 - L3D LauncherThis enables one-click launching of Lemmings 3D in DOSBox. Note that you still mostly need to configure DOSBox's options in terms of graphics, setting the CPU type to "dynamic", etc. What the launcher will do, is take care of mounting the folders for you and starting up L3D. Optionally, it can mount an ISO file or a physical CD-ROM drive as well - and yes, it's compatible with the OGG-based CD music setup that some people have been sharing around (make sure to select the CUE file, not the ISO file, when using that setup).
If there is a copy of Lemmings 3D in the same folder as L3DUtils, this copy will be launched. If not, then if an ISO or CD drive is configured, it'll launch the copy from that. (If neither of these applies, it won't be able to launch L3D.)
The real draw of the launcher, though, is that it allows you to swap between multiple save files - essential if you're playing multiple packs at a time, or you just want to keep separate save files, etc. The save files will be kept in a subfolder of wherever L3DUtils is running from, and the configuration (but not progress, obviously) will be shared across all saves as long as L3DUtils is being used to launch L3D.
Do note that you cannot swap save files while L3D is running.On the subject of save-files, there's also an "Unlock All Levels" button. Unlike the equivalent feature in L3DEdit, this does not create a new save file, but modifies your existing one - so your records will remain, and any levels you've completed will stay marked as complete, and your skill usage counts won't be lost, etc. All it does is unlock any levels that aren't already unlocked, and make sure all the level titles in the save file are correct.
Source code (for Lazarus) is available here:
https://bitbucket.org/namida42/l3dreplay/src/master/L3DReplay does not have any dependencies outside of the units included in Lazarus as standard. However, it relies heavily on the Windows API, so it will not be possible to compile for other operating systems without
major changes.
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