Lemmings Remake

[EricLang]

Hi GameProgrammers. this is my first post here...

I created a Dos Lemmings Clone for Windows.
There are clones for "Original Lemmings" and "Oh No More Lemmings"

http://home.hccnet.nl/ericenzwaan/lemmix/lemmix.htm

Now I have a few questions:

The game is written in windowed mode and does not make use of DirectX, OpenGL or whatever is out there. Just plain windows programming. (It makes use of the Graphics32 units to render the bitmaps, which is going very well.)
Is it possible to enhance the screenoutput used by Windows? (Scrolling is ugly when there are lots of vertical things).
If not then how can I port the screenoutput the easiest way, using DirectX?

I tried compiling DelphiX but this does not work for Delphi7, and seems rather old (or isn't it?).

The original gamescreen runs in 320x200. With the current generation of pixel-monitors it is not possible anymore to really set a resolution: it has to emulated. I can't use that for the Lemmings game. Is there a way to check the monitors pixelsizes?

Well that's it for now.
Bye, Eric

[cairnswm]

There is a version of DelphiX that will compile under Delphi7 - just do a few searches and you should find it quite easily - There used to be a link to it from the Turbo site....

Is your source code available anywhere for us to have a look at. I'd like to suggest using SDL for the graphics but would need to see how your calls are working to know if its the best way to do it.

[EricLang]

Ok. I just found the new DelphiX. I'll have my first look at it...
The source code will be available in the near future. working at it...
Most display is handled by one of the GraphicEx Components, which is (I think) one of the fastest ways to do in just plain windowed mode.

[jdarling]

Look into SDL and S2DL as well. With those you can create an SDL window of a specific size. Also if your running in OpenGL mode you can easily setup scaling to 2.0 and have your rendering surface at 320x240 with your display surface at 640x480.

As for DirectX components, Dan JetX, Asphere, Omega, and many more exist. The latest version of DelphiX is pretty much unDelphiX .7 if I remember properly. Search the forums here and you can find the home page/download link. .8 is supposed to be out some time soon (at least according to the post).

[EricLang]

I'm really quite new to this all.
What do you mean with "... is pretty much unDelphiX"?

[jdarling]

I'm really quite new to this all.
What do you mean with "... is pretty much unDelphiX"?

Well, unDelphiX came about because people wanted an updated version. According to the EULA of DelphiX they made copies and re-built to use the same interfaces. So most if not all DelphiX applications will compile with unDelphiX.

[WILL]

Nice job!

I enjoyed playing the original on the PC back in the day. Any plans to enhance or do some new things with your game?

I'm really quite new to this all.
What do you mean with "... is pretty much unDelphiX"?

UnDelphiX is the continuation of the abandoned 'DelphiX' project that as you probably know by now is a set of VCL components for Delphi that use DirectX for graphics, game control devices, networking and sound.

DelphiX is vastly out of date where it has been taken and updated, optimized and enhanced to become what UnDelphiX is today. Such things as hardware acceleration (hardware driven effects like rotation, scaling and alpha blending), using DirectX 9, general speed improvements, better use of memory, availability to later versions of the Delphi compiler (was originally restricted to Delphi 5) and a few other things.

Long text blurb made short, it's the version of it you'd want if you're going the DirectX/beginner's route.


Of course Jeremy also mentioned SDL, which is another great graphics medium (cross-platform too). If you go that route take a look at JEDI-SDL. [size=9px](Top dog of the SDL libraries for all Pascal compilers)[/size] Functionality it pretty straight forward, especially if you've been coding the graphics without VCL up until now anyways.

[EricLang]

I certainly have plans to enhance the Lemmings.
As you can see there is already:
• recording and replay
• gradient bridges
• fastforward
• 10 second game-jump
• savestate (enter) and restorestate (backspace)

At a certain moment I will leave the clone alone (that was the first purpose of my project: playing the game without dosbox) and create more things like cool graphic effects, new terrains and objects etc.

I installed DelphiX 1.07 into my Delphi7 Pro version now.

[WILL]

Well personally, I'd love to play this on Linux when I eventually move over to it.

Great work non-the-less, it's one of thsoe classics that helped define intuitive gameplay as we know it today.

Any chance for new types of Lemmix guys? Or will we see ones from other later versions than the original? That'd be cool. I always thought the grapple gun guy was cool.

:idea:[size=9px](I always thought it would be really neat to have a small goblin that stands maybe a few pixels taller than all the lemmings that would eat/kill them as they got close enough, but if you had a warrior/knight lemming you could fight them and make a path for your lemming buddies. ...ok got my idea out, I can breath now. :lol[/size]

[EricLang]

Other lemming characters and further enhancements are on my list...