Menu backgrounds for Lemmings 2 and Lemmings 3D?

[kaywhyn]

However, yes, attaching a USB hub to the Thunderbolt input first, and then an external CD drive to that hub, that would definitely be an option!

This the exact setup I use. I attach the USB hub to a USB port of my laptop, and I have an external optical drive plugged into a USB port on the hub.

I have never seen an external CD drive that needs two USB ports. O_O I've seen hard drives that do, but not opticals - and even for hard drives I haven't seen it in a long time now.

The external optical drive I have has two USB plugs, but from what I understand one is to plug the device in so that you can use it, while the other plug is to simply provide power to it. Ever since I bought it, I have only used one USB plug in order to use the device. I have never had to have both USB plugs plugged into a USB port, so I'm somewhat confused as to why one would need to have both plugged in. Probably because I almost never use the external CD drive and so power shortage has never been a problem. Yet, I still have it plugged in just so I don't have to worry about doing that later on just for convenience. I'm not sure if the fact that it is a blu-ray optical drive makes any difference in terms of power consumption.

[Strato Incendus]

Okay, I've opened up various levels in L3DEdit, but even though I can see the silhouettes of the pieces, it all displays as black and pink only (see Screenshot 1).

If I tick "No Invisibles", I can at least see a little more of the structure (see Screenshot 2), but I still can't get the level to display as in the manual.

Have I overread something crucial? I can't seem to find any hints about this in the manual...

(The level below is "Take A Dive", as you can probably roughly recognise by the outlines of the shapes.)

[namida]

Make sure L3DEdit is in your base L3D folder (so it can find the graphics etc). In other words, it should be in the same folder as L3D.EXE itself.

You might also need to decompress the L3D data files first (there's an option in the menu bar somewhere to do this), although IIRC I added code to decompress individual files on-demand.

EDIT: It also looks like you might be missing the accompanying INI file that has the list of what numbers correspond to what styles? Although that too, IIRC it should automatically regenerate it...

[Strato Incendus]

Thanks, namida, that was indeed the issue! I had set up L3DEdit in a separate folder to L3D - partly because I downloaded L3DEdit first, hoping to maybe be able to extract the graphics even without the game itself, and partly because I wanted to keep the original levels and the editor separate as long as I don't intend to make any actual L3D levels.

There was one line in the manual that had me suspect L3DEdit would have to go in the same folder as the game itself, but I wasn't quite sure:

L3DEdit will find the other one by itself as long as it’s in the same folder – which it should be if you’re using actual L3D data files

I wasn't sure whether this "should" was an imperative and referring to L3DEdit (i.e. "L3DEdit should be in the same folder"), or whether it was merely describing likelihood and referring to the BLK and level files (i.e. "if you're working with the original L3D levels, those should naturally be in the same folder as a result of the installation").

Regarding the .ini files, I have both L3DEditPresets.ini and L3DUtils.ini in the same folder now, together with everything else.

[namida]

partly because I wanted to keep the original levels and the editor separate as long as I don't intend to make any actual L3D levels.

There's no good way to manage this other than keeping a separate installation for custom vs original content (and further to this, separate installations for each pack). I did have plans to implement a custom pack management feature into L3DUtils, but there simply wasn't enough interest in L3D custom content to justify this - there's only the official levels, my pack, and the one custom level by Pooty (I've also seen a single other level made by someone else, which to the best of my knowledge they have never released publicly - a shame as it was quite a nice level).