WinLems: Fangame by W. Gaylen (not: Lemmings for Windows 95)

[GigaLem]

Playlist of Levels made on this
I used to make levels on this before getting into Lemmix, I can't seem to find this clone anywhere on the internet, its known as "WinLemm" and personally I wished I seeked this out and archived it before it seemingly disappeared

its very different in a way from W95 Lemmings, it doesn't even have the Oh No Sets. And uses the midi based tracks from the 95 compositions 

[GigaLem]

I found the clone Issue being it has an installer and giving its not from the original site that had the project, I have a bit of pause seeing an installer requiring admin privileges making me worry about if the site that reuploaded it did something to it.
Forgive me for saying this, you can choose to ignore it if you want if nothing is wrong with it. Probably my paranoia speaking but if Sonic Gather Battle has taught me anything is that it is not wise to install a fangame requiring  admin privileges as its possible someone added code to make Malicious code and calling it DRM. I'm likely being hyperbolic here and the game be perfectly fine. I know I could use a VM, but still. I just would've preferred the game been in a zip and I just extract the game to folder  and everything is go to go.

The Developer did upload the source code to github right here saying anyone is alright to make a fork of it. my issue is that it doesn't have a program file to run it or the level editor.

I do recommend archiving any means of keeping this playable though, it is a part of lemmings history though

[Simon]

Nice digging!

github right here
it doesn't have a program file to run it or the level editor.

One way is to build WinLems from source. Warren (the author) says that you needs Visual Basic 6 to build. VB6 is ancient, I have no experience with that.

Another way: Ask Warren directly to release executables. It's a long shot after all these years. And in 2020, he has marked the WinLems github project as archived, which means that he doesn't want to be involved with it anymore. But who knows what will happen if you ask nicely ...

-- Simon

[zanzindorf]

Hmmm... For some reason I remember this too. I don't have my original files, but I installed the installer on a sacrificial machine, and it seems to be fine. I ran it through a few virus scans and it also seems fine. It's wise to be cautious. Though it installs fine, it will not run. This Italian site says it may only run on XP, and I don't have a system with XP. Attached is the installed directory though, if you want to try it on your own XP.

[Dullstar]

Did a little testing though my disclaimer is I just used the .zip provided by zanzindorf; didn't try the installer.

The error I get on Win10 is "Component 'COMCTL32.OCX' or one of its dependencies not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid."

Also tested in WINE on Arch Linux and got "0024:err:module:import_dll Library MSVBVM60.DLL ... not found." I'll note that this test could also have issues since I haven't extensively tested the wine installation to know if it's configured correctly; I got NeoLemmix running with it simply because I knew it should work and that's about all the testing I've done to it.

Of course I suppose it's possible this is an installer that's more than a glorified extractor, but just using the zip seemed a little safer. Curious if anyone who's tested the installer gets the same errors.

Maybe I'll test the installer later.

[zanzindorf]

Oooo neat. COMCTL32.OCX and MSVBVM60.DLL are part of the Visual Basic 6 Runtime package. Windows 10 doesn't have that installed by default because it's old. If you can install a Visual Basic 6 Runtime package, WinLem works on Windows 10. It's possible the WinLem installer includes a VB6 runtime package, but I still haven't tried it yet.

I got my runtime from here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/vb6extendedruntime/
I know it another random third-party installer on the internet, which we were trying to avoid, but I had downloaded and tried this for a different issue, so I was already comfortable using it. If you use it, you only need the first two options for WinLem to work (Highlighted yellow in the attached picture).

With the combination of the VB6 runtime and the zipped WinLem directory I posted earlier, WinLem seems to be working on my Win 10. I don't think the level select menu is working correctly, but everything else seems to. Maybe it needs a specific font installed?