I can finally announce the project I've been working on for the past year and a half. Golems!
Golems is a DOS Lemmings game engine. It represents an original reverse engineering effort that is not based on Lemmix.
Golems v1.0 (for Windows)
Golems does not come with any data files. To play levels, run the Golems executable, install the .NET 8 Runtime if it isn't already installed, click
Game ▸
Load Game..., and select a "MAIN.DAT" file from a DOS Lemmings game. The remaining data files will be loaded from the same directory that contains "MAIN.DAT". The mode of the game engine (release X offset, splat height, etc.) will be determined automatically from this file. The game engine assumes that your files are from the floppy disk version of the game, not the CD versions with the splat height that breaks WAFD.
You can also pick "CSTM.DAT" to play a Customized Lemmings level pack.
Or pick a file named "GOLEMS.DAT" (renamed from "CSTM.DAT") to play in the "Golems" game mode. This game mode is similar to Customized Lemmings (which is the same as the Holiday game mode except for the red-blue palette swap) except that the one-way mining bug is fixed and the splat height is reduced by 3 for lemmings that start falling when walking or bashing. I think this mode represents a good compromise between not breaking WAFD and not breaking most custom level packs.
There are a few bugs that are not and will not be implemented:
- Pause for time – because the behavior depends on picking High Performance PC mode or not.
- Nuke saved % – because the bug is arguably in the saved percentage calculation, and Golems doesn't use percentages. (Okay, it's mostly due to how much I dislike this bug and the percentages.)
- Right-click-and-hold – because a faithful implementation is fundamentally incompatible with rewinding.
- [Visual Only] Walking shrugger – because the visual part of this bug can cause out-of-bounds memory access. The gameplay part is implemented.
I did also make some visual-only improvements to the control panel (status text, pause button, nuke button, and minimap) and to the level view (highlight selected lemming). I limited these changes to what
could have been done in the original game engines.
Aside from the above bugs, visual-only changes, and any bugs that result from out-of-bounds memory access, I hope to have implemented the game engine so that it behaves exactly as the original game engines. Please let me know if you find any unexpected differences! (Please note the game mode shown in
Help ▸
About.)
Also let me know if you encounter any other bugs.
Some keyboard controls:
- Space – Pause
- ~ – X-ray View
- W – Fast/Step Backward
- Left Shift + W – Faster Backward
- E – Fast/Step Forward
- Left Shift + E – Faster Forward
And one more thing:
Golems in your browser