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Flexi Lemmix Tutorial
So, you want to build a custom pack using the Flexi Lemmix Player or the Flexi Toolkit? Well, these tutorials will help you do that! These tutorials are primarily written with the NeoLemmix version in mind, but can be used for the Traditional version as well; keep in mind that there are some differences (such as that the traditional version does not need Frenzy and Gimmick musics, and can only have up to five ranks). These will generally be noted throughout the tutorial. For this first tutorial, I will explain how to create a custom level pack that runs on the standalone Flexi player. After this, how to build an all-in-one EXE using the Flexi Toolkit will be covered in another tutorial. In order to create a Flexi Lemmix level pack, you will need the following:
So, to keep things tidy, it may pay to create a dedicated folder for your project. Start by placing the following in this folder:
The graphic sets should be named in the usual way for Lemmings graphic sets; ie: graphic set 0's files as ground0o.dat and vgagr0.dat. The same applies to VGASPECs; ie: start with vgaspec0.dat. Music files should follow the pattern of track_##.it or track_##.ogg; starting from 01. Note that the Flexi Player supports some other formats as well as IT and OGG - basically, any format supported by Bass. However, no matter what format they're actually in, the filename extension must be ".it" or ".ogg". Note that if both an IT file and an OGG file of the same track are present, the OGG takes priority. Note: Versions earlier than V22 use BassMod instead of Bass, and as such only support IT and related formats. Don't place your MAIN.DAT in the folder just yet; you'll probably want to customize some images. That's where LemMain comes in. You probably don't want to create all the graphics from scratch, which is why we use LemMain to extract the images from an existing MAIN.DAT file - if you're using a MAIN.DAT from a Christmas or Holiday Lemmings game, don't forget to switch to the Xmas Palette! After extracting, you will most likely want to modify lemlogo_01.bmp and the ranksign_xx.bmp images. Keep in mind that you must stick to the existing palettes for these images; LemMain is capable of generating BMPs of the palettes. Also keep in mind that there is a limit on how many ranks you may have, specifically 15 ranks. Finally, keep in mind that if you're using a non-NeoLemmix source MAIN.DAT, you'll need to add some images that aren't in standard ones (if you're using NeoLemmix, that is; you don't need to add these when using Traditional). You can get a copy of those here. If your source MAIN.DAT is already a NeoLemmix-based one, it'll already contain all the images you need, so it's just a matter of any modifications you want to make. Once you have extracted (or created) the graphics, and made any alterations you wish to them, you can now rebuild your MAIN.DAT. Start up LemMain and choose to rebuild the MAIN.DAT - again, don't forget to switch to Xmas Palette if you need to. Regardless of what format the original MAIN.DAT was in, always choose to rebuild it as a NeoLemmix format if you're using NeoLemmix, or a 15-rank Traditional if you're using Traditional. Once this is done, LemMain will put together a MAIN.DAT containing the graphics (including your modifications if you made any).. Now you can put the MAIN.DAT in the project folder. You'll also need to create a SYSTEM.DAT file. The NeoLemmix Editor can do this for you; select SYSTEM.DAT Editor from the Tools menu. NeoLemmix Editor comes with a SYSTEM.DAT file with many of the in-game texts already filled out for you, so you don't have to write them all yourself; but you can create one from scratch. Do note that the Congrats screen texts are no longer used in NeoLemmix as of V1.27n-B (they are still used in traditional Lemmix); the editor has not yet been updated to reflect this. The options are mostly self-explanatory. At this point, the only thing left to do is levels. If you allowed it when creating SYSTEM.DAT, you can use LookForLVLFiles (you still need to turn it on in the Lemmix player's configuration, as usual), which is very useful during development; but the proper way to do it is to pack the levels into DAT files. These should be named LEVEL000.DAT, LEVEL001.DAT, etc. Each DAT file should contain all the levels in a single rank - so to give an example, if we were recreating the original Lemmings game using Flexi, then LEVEL000.DAT would contain all levels from Fun, LEVEL001.DAT would contain all levels from Tricky, and so on. If you want to have a special preview or postview text for a given level, you can do so by including it as a text file. Name the file iXXXX.txt for preview, or pXXXX.txt for postview. These can be up to 18 lines long; anything beyond this will be cut off. Each line can have up to about 40 characters on it; only standard ASCII characters can be used (in simple terms, if you can type it with a standard English keyboard, it's probably fine to use). You can have a preview and a postview text on the same level, and there is no limit (or minimum requirement) of how many levels have these. Once you have the levels alongside all your other files, your pack is complete! You can now distribute this as a fully playable Lemmix-based custom pack! You can, but don't need to, include the Flexi Lemmix player when distributing this way. However, it's quite a mess having all those files, right? If you want an all-in-one EXE, you can indeed build one, and that's where the Flexi Toolkit comes in. You can find the Flexi Toolkit tutorial here. |