Lemmings on the Next

[Jbizzel]

https://github.com/mikedailly/Lemmings

[flatduckrecords]

This could be the Next killer-app I’ve been looking for! August () can’t come round quick enough! 🐿

In somewhat related news, Neil RMC mentioned on the latest This Week in Retro that Mike is currently working on recovering his original (Amiga based) Lemmings level editor. Could mean some new levels on the way…?!

[Jbizzel]

That is great news...

Lemmings is such a cool game

While you are waiting you can enjoy this port.of lemmings to the Z88 by Dominic Morris. The game is based on the spectrum version, but it had the Amiga music, and digitised speech, listen to this....

[media]https://youtu.be/_InjF8cWcAg[/media]

[danboid]

Has anyone successfully built Lemmings for the Next or does anyone know where I can download a binary?

I emailed Mike a few weeks ago about this and something else but got response.

I thought I might as well open a github ticket.

https://github.com/mikedailly/Lemmings/issues/1

[PeterJ]

@danboid,

On the GitHub he says:

You may NOT however distribute with original Lemmings graphical assets or levels in either source or binary form.

[Joefish]

Damnit, I read that as 'Lemmings on the Net'. I was expecting some massive multi-player on-line Lemmings where the level is one massive scrollable browser window with thousands of people working away on random little corners of it making Lemming tunnels and bridges to bring them all closer to one big exit in the middle. And small wars breaking out as people tunnel their Lemmings into a neighbour's play area to sabotage it or set them all to nukes!

[Lee Bee]

I love Lemmings. Love Tim Wright's awesome soundtrack (he also did the music for Oh No!).

Just in case anyone's interested, I've been working on content for Spectrum Lemmings. I made a colour version of the logo. I made AY sound effects to emulate the Amiga sound effects (the button press sounds, etc). I also started making accurate AY versions of all the music. I was going to see if some modder wanted to use it. But accurately recreating all 21 tunes is actually a lot of work, a task I'd be way more motivated to complete if I thought someone might actually be able to use it in a game.

[danboid]

@danboid,

On the GitHub he says:

Yes, I have seen that but that doesn't answer my question. I'm not asking for a pirate copy of Lemmings, I just want the .nex binary or instructions to build the code he's uploaded to github.

It seems strange Mike should post so many videos on YT about Lemmings Next but not tell anyone how to build it.

I presume it never got finished but it must be a least partly working for him to create all those videos.

[danboid]

I asked Jim Bagley if he has a build of Lemmings as he says not.

I have contacted Neil RMC to see if he has a copy. He does own a Next and the worlds only Lemmings arcade machine so he seems like my only other chance here.

OH NO!

[flatduckrecords]

I haven't managed to build it, but it looks like the process is:

1. Clone/Download the Lemmings repository
2. Within the repo is a tool called LemConv, wich is a C# program that will convert the assets from the Windows version of Lemmings into a format that can be used to build the Next version. (Looks like it extracts the assets and dumps them into the lemdat directory, ready for the next step).
3. Also withing the repo is a batch file (a.bat) that's used to build/assemble the .nex file. This uses Mikes SNASM assembler, rather than SjASMPlus. SNASM comes bundled with CSpect.

The actual assemble command (as found in a.bat) is:

Code: Select all

snasm -map _LemmingsNext.asm _LemmingsNext.dat

I don't have Windows nor a copy of Lemmings (nor any experience with C#) so I can't try it out myself but I hope that helps!

(Of course anyone who can build it won't be allowed to share it).

[danboid]

Thanks flatduckrecords! That seems to be pretty complete instructions for building Lemmings for the Next. The key missing bit of info for me was that I didn't know where to download snasm until you told me its included with CSPect.

So the only thing standing between me playing Lemmings on the Next now (I have a copy of Lemmings for Windows) should be building LemConv so that I can convert the assets and then build the game, with any luck.

It seems I would need to install Visual Studio to build LemConv. I don't see a pre-built exe of LemConv in the Lemmings next github repo, just a .csproj file and the source code.

Could someone build LemConv and share (a link to) the exe here please? Spare me having to install Visual Studio which I just know is going to be awful to install.

EDIT

flatduckrecords - I don't see why people can't share LemConv.exe on here. That would be all above board as its open source. The forum won't allow uploading exe's I'm sure but it might allow zip files?

[danboid]

I have updated my github ticket with flatduck's build instructions and asked Mike if he could add a LemConv.exe to the repo to spare people having to install VisualStudio just to build it:

https://github.com/mikedailly/Lemmings/issues/1

If we can't upload zip files to this forum then can someone kindly attach LemConv.exe (in a .zip or whatever) to a comment on my github ticket pretty please? I'm Visual Studio and XCode phobic.

Let's go!

[danboid]

Turns out I had no need to install Visual Studio under Windows. I was able to build LemConv.exe under Debian

Code: Select all

~/src/Lemmings/LemConv/LemConv$ msbuild LemConv.csproj
Microsoft (R) Build Engine version 16.10.1 for Mono
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Build started 23/05/2024 13:15:11.
Project "/home/dan/src/Lemmings/LemConv/LemConv/LemConv.csproj" on node 1 (default targets).
PrepareForBuild:
  Creating directory "bin/Debug/".
  Creating directory "obj/Debug/".
GenerateBindingRedirects:
  No suggested binding redirects from ResolveAssemblyReferences.
CoreResGen:
  /usr/lib/mono/4.5/resgen.exe /useSourcePath /r:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/Microsoft.CSharp.dll /r:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/mscorlib.dll /r:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.Core.dll /r:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.Data.DataSetExtensions.dll /r:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.Data.dll /r:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.DirectoryServices.dll /r:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.dll /r:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.Drawing.dll /r:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.Net.Http.dll /r:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.Windows.Forms.dll /r:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.Xml.dll /r:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.Xml.Linq.dll /compile FormUI.resx,obj/Debug/LemConv.FormUI.resources
  Processing resource file "FormUI.resx" into "obj/Debug/LemConv.FormUI.resources".
CoreCompile:
  /usr/lib/mono/msbuild/Current/bin/Roslyn/csc.exe /noconfig /unsafe+ /nowarn:1701,1702 /fullpaths /nostdlib+ /platform:anycpu32bitpreferred /errorreport:prompt /warn:4 /define:DEBUG;TRACE /highentropyva+ /reference:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/Microsoft.CSharp.dll /reference:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/mscorlib.dll /reference:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.Core.dll /reference:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.Data.DataSetExtensions.dll /reference:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.Data.dll /reference:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.DirectoryServices.dll /reference:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.dll /reference:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.Drawing.dll /reference:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.Net.Http.dll /reference:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.Windows.Forms.dll /reference:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.Xml.dll /reference:/usr/lib/mono/4.5.2-api/System.Xml.Linq.dll /debug+ /debug:full /filealign:512 /optimize- /out:obj/Debug/LemConv.exe /subsystemversion:6.00 /resource:obj/Debug/LemConv.FormUI.resources /target:winexe /utf8output /langversion:7.3 BitmapConversion.cs Buffer.cs FormUI.cs FormUI.Designer.cs Image.cs MemoryStreamEx.cs Palette.cs Program.cs Properties/AssemblyInfo.cs Sample.cs Sprite.cs SPRLoader.cs Utils.cs "obj/Debug/.NETFramework,Version=v4.5.2.AssemblyAttributes.cs"
  Using shared compilation with compiler from directory: /usr/lib/mono/msbuild/Current/bin/Roslyn
_CopyAppConfigFile:
  Copying file from "/home/dan/src/Lemmings/LemConv/LemConv/App.config" to "/home/dan/src/Lemmings/LemConv/LemConv/bin/Debug/LemConv.exe.config".
CopyFilesToOutputDirectory:
  Copying file from "/home/dan/src/Lemmings/LemConv/LemConv/obj/Debug/LemConv.exe" to "/home/dan/src/Lemmings/LemConv/LemConv/bin/Debug/LemConv.exe".
  LemConv -> /home/dan/src/Lemmings/LemConv/LemConv/bin/Debug/LemConv.exe
  Copying file from "/home/dan/src/Lemmings/LemConv/LemConv/obj/Debug/LemConv.pdb" to "/home/dan/src/Lemmings/LemConv/LemConv/bin/Debug/LemConv.pdb".
Done Building Project "/home/dan/src/Lemmings/LemConv/LemConv/LemConv.csproj" (default targets).

Build succeeded.
    0 Warning(s)
    0 Error(s)

Time Elapsed 00:00:02.02

[danboid]

Windows 95 Lemmings runs fine under i386 wine (installed under Debian amd64) but I'm going to run LemConv under Windows because getting the paths correct when running LemConv under wine would be tricky

[danboid]

I have successfully used LemConv under Windows 10 to generate the Lemmings Next data files. I copied the contents of the lemdat folder into the lemdat subdir of the Lemmings source then:

Code: Select all

~/src/Lemmings$ mono snasm.exe -map _LemmingsNext.asm _LemmingsNext.dat
SNasm V3.2.3.0 (c) Copyright 1999-2023 Mike Dailly
             All rights reserved.
Pass 1
/home/dan/src/Lemmings/irq.asm(13) error Symbol MUST be defined before using - MIXERSAMPLESPERFRAME  included from file /home/dan/src/Lemmings/_LemmingsNext.asm at line 45
/home/dan/src/Lemmings/irq.asm(15) error Symbol MUST be defined before using - MIXERSAMPLESPERFRAME  included from file /home/dan/src/Lemmings/_LemmingsNext.asm at line 45