Finally my humble efforts to port Lemmings to Java have reached a state in which I think I can release it for a (more or less) public alpha/beta test.
I came up with the name "Lemmini" which is the scientific "tribe" name for lemmings since it not in direct conflict with the trademark "Lemmings". Sounds a little silly in my mother tongue, but maybe not as much in yours
Please note that you need a (legal) copy of "Lemmings for Windows" to actually play the game. Lemmini is just a game engine which needs the resources of "Lemmings for Windows to run" ... mainly for legal reasons.
I'd recommend to keep the CD-ROM in reach or to copy the WINLEMM folder from the CD-ROM to your HDD since future updates of Lemmini might need to extract the resources again to reflect changes in the resources.
Secondly you'll need a Java runtime environment (JRE). I'd recommend to download the latest version "JRE1.5 Update 6" from here:
http://javashoplm.sun.com/ECom/docs/Welcome.jsp?StoreId=22&PartDetailId=jre-1.5.0_06-oth-JPR&SiteId=JSC&TransactionId=noregAfter installing Java and having your copy of "Lemmings for Windows" ready to hand, you are prepared to visit my Lemmini homepage:
http://home.arcor.de/0xdeadbeef/lemmini.htmAs described there, you might either run/install Lemmini as a Webstart application by clicking to the according link on the site (and answering all the following questions with "yes") or you can download the file "lemmini.jar" directly, copy it somewhere to your local HDD and start it with a double click. The advantage of Java Webstart is that this will automatically check for updates and download the latest version of Lemmini. Then again if you don't like that or don't have a permanent internet connection, you might want to stay with the Jar.
I'd call Lemmini a playable Alpha at this point, because a few game features are missing. Most noticeably you can play all levels from the beginning, the level codes are given, but you can't enter them anywhere and there's no kind of "game over" screen whatsoever.
Then again, all Levels of the Windows version (+5 additional levels) are in, the levels are completely playable, also music, sound and user interface are finished or at least nearly finished.
I tested quiet a lot during the last days on five different systems and had no crashes lately, so I hope it's more or less stable. Then again, I could only test on WinXP systems. So it might crash, refuse to work or behave strangely on different operating systems. Last time I tried in Linux, it crashed while loading resources. But that was some months ago and since then I reworked all the resource names to avoid conflicts with uppercase/lowercase file names. So it might work under Linux, but it's kinda unlikely.
About resources: the game needs almost no CPU-time during normal gameplay on the five systems I tested, where the lowest one was an 1.6MHz Centrino Notebook. It eats much more resources in "fast forward" mode, but this is a different story (limitations in the current Java runtime under Windows). The RAM consumption is about 60MB, so I guess if you have 100MB free, you shouldn't have problems.
The intention of this public alpha/beta test is to get feedback on the following topics:
- Does the game work (well) on your system (especially Windows versions before XP, Linux and Mac)?
- Is the timing ok (release rate, movement of lemmings, animation speed of lemmings, level objects like traps etc.)?
- Is the behaviour of lemmings ok in detail (height of obstacles, falling height, digging speed etc.)?
- Do the Traps and other level objects work as they should (also entries, exits)
- Are the level names, order, start position ok? Are all levels fully playable and "winnable" with the default solution?
- Anything else strange/wrong compared to the Amiga/DOS/Windows version?
- Are there glitches, bugs, crashes, freezes etc. ?
If this is ok with the Moderators, I'd suggest to post comments in this thread. Please don't spam me with emails or PMs for every little comment or issue. Also I'd ask you to keep this beta test internal to this forum for the moment.
And PLEASE don't ask for "Lemmings for Windows"! It's still on sale and I ask you to respect the rights of the copyright holders. I bought my copy at eBay for just 5P as I started this project, so I think this should not be an issue.
Anyway, I can neither promise that Lemmini will work (well) on your system nor that I will consider/comment any issue discovered during the test. Please be aware that this is a spare time project any my interests may and will change from time to time.
Hope you enjoy it...