A Full GM 1 Lemmings Soundfont!

[The Tomato Watcher]

A while back I saw someone mention they were looking for a Lemmings soundfont, specifically one with some Amiga instruments. I recently was reminded of this, and I thought I'd give it a try. Originally I was gonna just fill in the instruments I could with samples from the Amiga games, but then I remembered I have a program that can easily open and convert Gravis UltraSound patches, and DOS L3 has Gravis support, and indeed, TONS of instrument samples, including many sorely needed percussion samples. With all these extra instruments to play with, I figured that making a full General MIDI Level 1 soundfont with just Lemmings instruments wouldn't be too unrealistic.

Since I was already using non-Amiga samples, I decided that any Lemmings instrument samples, from any version of any game, so long as they aren't synthesized in real time or aren't just MIDI instruments, were fair game. This didn't actually increase my pool that much, mind you. It mostly meant I could use samples from the Acorn Lemmings games, SNES L1 and L2, and a couple other weird places. Technically, this included games with streamed music as well (e.g. CD soundtracks or whatever formats are used in the newer ones), but situations where you can actually get a good single instrument sample from streamed audio are few and far between. Besides, I tried to prioritize Amiga samples when possible, anyway. They're the most iconic, after all.

I was able to fill in most instruments directly, or at least use a sample that approximated it well enough, but some required some fudging since I was simply out of options, and I really didn't want two instruments to sound exactly the same as each other. So some groups of instruments in the same family share a sample, but have different samples for the attack periods. Many of the leads, pads, and effects are just combinations of other sounds, but plenty of actual MIDI synthesizers pull the same trick, so I didn't feel too bad about that. I'll admit that some of my fudged instruments sound kinda silly and some are downright scuffed. Notably, all of the solo string instruments, one of the organs, some of the instruments under the "ethnic," "percussive," and "sound effects" categories, the Voice Oohs sound, etc. Still, they're at least functional, and when used in actual tunes with other instruments, their scuffed-ness becomes less noticeable.

I did not bother supporting GS features like the ones included in Windows's default synthesizer because that would be too many percussion instruments to fudge (and I also I just really didn't feel like putting up with it) so sequences that take advantages of them will sound a little off, but not unlistenable.

The soundfont is attached below, along with a spreadsheet detailing where each instrument and percussion sample came from, if you're interested in that kinda thing. And a few Lemmings-y examples of MIDIs being played with this soundfont are linked below.

https://youtu.be/doTNCAaEj48

UPDATE 5/30/2022: I made some instruments loop and did some other stuff. I don't fully remember all the changes and I cannot be bothered to update the spreadsheet right now but here you go.

[NM7 (or just Nico)]

oh i think that man was me, thanks!, i really like use soundfonts to do covers(example: using mario 64 soundfont on touhou music) but lemmings insteuments has something what i like to hear(bass and brass instruments for example), I like your .sf2 !

[The Tomato Watcher]

oh i think that man was me, thanks!

Sure was! I'm glad you like it!

[The Tomato Watcher]

Oh, also, I'll probably be updating this overtime as I find little annoying mistakes I didn't catch or things I could have done better. Whenever that happens, patch notes will be added/updated in the spreadsheet.