I'm currently correcting Lemmings

[Mike]

No he can't.  Sony own Lemmings, so it can't be made free by anyone other then them.

And yes it is still selling (which is increadible! 15+ years on) in Tesco and Asda/Walmart for ̣5.



Go on...some really hard questions for him to answer!!

[EricLang]

Ok I have a few questions, and I am honored to ask them to the original makers!

1. How did you manage the fast screen output in plain windowed mode with the WinLemmings? Are these ordinary BitBlt procedures? Are there smart optimizations? In fast forward mode is every frame displayed?
(besides there are some bugs in the display I am impressed by the speed of display)

2. The main.dat of DOS-lemmings is divided into 7 sections, when decompressed:

  section 0: lemming animations
  section 1: exploder countdown numerals, terrain destruction masks (nuke, mine, bash, maybe others)
  section 2: skill numbers, skill panel graphics and numbers and letters for "PS2/high performance" machine mode
  section 3: brown background, lemmings holding signs, music/fx sign
  section 4: purple text, blinking lemming eyes, scroller (lemmings and reel), difficulty selector sign
  section 5: unknown
  section 6: skill panel graphics, green numbers and letters

What is section 5 containing?

[ccexplore]

Here's another question:  can you describe the algorithm used to draw the lemming explosion (ie. how the shower of pixels move?)

[Mindless]

And another: Was the compression format of the DAT files created specifically for Lemmings, or is it used elsewhere?

[ccexplore]

And another: Was the compression format of the DAT files created specifically for Lemmings, or is it used elsewhere?

Before Russell answers, I do want to note that some months ago when I was researching some stuff related to Amiga's MOD file format, one of the documentation mentioned something about PowerPacker, an Amiga program to "crunch" and "decrunch" data--their term for compression/decompression.  The doc has a brief description of the PowerPacker format and algorithm which, while not identical to Lemming's compression format, does bear some strong similarities.  See http://www.eblong.com/zarf/blorb/mod-spec.txt and search for "crunching algorithm".

So whether or not it's used elsewhere I can't say, but the format and algorithm is very likely derived from existing Amiga code at the time.