WinLems Custom Levels

[Vexar]

Hi guys!

I've been playing Lemmings since the 90s, and a couple years ago I stumbled upon WinLems and started building custom levels and experimenting with it, even rebuilding and reimagining some of the ONML levels and a few from YouTubers.

I can't think of a better place to share some of my .dat files, and I'd love to know if there are any other WinLems builders here that would like to share some levels too!

I attached some pictures to give an idea of my builds

        

[Simon]

Welcome to the forums!

Thanks for sharing the level pictures. It's always lovely to see new ways to use these old tilesets. Nice artwork! Every author has his own unique style.

With "WinLems", do you mean WinLems by Warren Gaylen (from 2007, which looks like it accepts .DAT files) or do you mean Lemmings for Windows 95 (whose directory is also called Winlemm)? It's a nastily similar name. I believe neither of these two games has active players here. From early 2025: Giga's topic about Warren Gaylen's WinLems

You can attach your levels. Or you can upload .DAT packs to Mindless's Lemmings Level Database.

-- Simon

[namida]

For reference - levels from both Win95 Lemmings and Warren Gaylen's WinLems can be converted to NeoLemmix (and from there to many of the other modern engines, if you prefer another one - though NeoLemmix is generally the "gold standard"), but you'll need to use a slightly older version of NL (12.9 or earlier) to do so.

[Vexar]

Thanks a lot! I started rebuilding some in NeoLemmix but is taking a lot of time, and I'd love to convert the rest to save time, is there a thread where I can download the old versions you're referring to?? It would help a lot

[namida]

Thanks a lot! I started rebuilding some in NeoLemmix but is taking a lot of time, and I'd love to convert the rest to save time, is there a thread where I can download the old versions you're referring to?? It would help a lot

12.9.X release topic: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=4872.0

To convert:
1. Create a subfolder of "levels" (call it whatever you like)
2. Put your levels in this folder
3. Create a "levels.nxmi" file in this folder. Look at an existing pack (it will have levels.nxmi inside each rank's folder) to see how to structure this file. Make an entry in it for each level you want to convert. (Note: When converting LVL files from DOS / etc, or older-version NeoLemmix level files, you do not need to create a levels.nxmi file as NeoLemmix will autodetect them. It won't automatically pick up other engines.)
4. Run the cleanse levels feature on it. (Open the level select, select your pack (not a level within it, the pack itself), hit Ok. It'll take you back to the title screen. Now press the F8 key.)
5. NL will create converted copies of your levels in a new folder, which IIRC will be called "cleanse".

Now - one thing I'm gonna have to correct myself on, I think I'm confusing WinLemm (unless you mean Windows 95 Lemmings, in which case that's the same format as DOS Lemmings and is fully supported for this process) with Lemmins, another clone. So I could be wrong about it being supported.

[Vexar]

I think I followed the instructions to the letter, and it did create a **Cleanse** folder with several `.nxlv` files inside, but they're all empty levels. If I open one with NLEditor, it just shows a 1x1 px level

This is what I have. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but yes, these are WinLems levels by Warren Gaylen

Sorry for taking so much of your time. I really appreciate what you guys are doing to keep the game alive 

[namida]

Yeah, it looks right. And the format I remember is ".lev", not ".dat", so yeah - I'm probably thinking of the wrong engine here.

That being said - if WinLems offers any way to convert to the standard DOS format, you could go WinLems -> DOS -> NeoLemmix.