Lemmings DS Controls
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The default style is called ‘Tapper style’. ‘Tapper style’ is similar to the original Amiga Lemmings control style: use the stylus to tap a lemming, and the tool will be assigned instantly.There are two ‘Tapper style’ preferences, ‘Hold’ and ‘Toggle’. These affect how the shoulder button is used:
Hold means the game is paused while you hold either shoulder button. While holding one shoulder button, you can tap the other button to advance the game by a single frame.Conversely, Toggle means you toggle pause on and off with the shoulder buttons.
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The second style is call ‘Holder style’. In ‘Holder style’, you can hold the stylus against the screen to pause the game temporarily. Holding the stylus against a lemming cause that lemming to be highlighted. While a lemming is highlighted, tap any shoulder button to assign the current tool. This style can be useful if you are trying to pick a single lemming from a large group.
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The final style is called ‘Tactics Style’. ‘Tactics style’ is basically a reversal of the original Lemmings style. You must click on the lemming first, and then the tool you want to assign.’Tactics style’ offers the same ‘Hold’ and ‘Toggle’ preferences as ‘Tapper style’.
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Use the directional pad or XYBA to move the camera in any control style. Hold the Start button or hold the stylus against the Fast Forward button to increase the game speed. You can use Fast Forward while the game is paused; the game will stay paused once you release the Start button. To restart the current level, press Select three times rapidly.
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Zoom in and out using the zoom controls in the lower left corner of the touchscreen.
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Shutting the DS’ lid will pause the game.
11 Comments so far
Hi
I would love to play Lemmings on the DS but how do I actualy load it on to my machine from your download
Thanks
G:)
All you’ve gotta do is download the right version of Lemmings DS for your specific flash hardware, and then copy it over.
Easy, eh?
so i don’t even need to run it through the supercard software on my computer?
i can just put it straight onto my sd card and play it right away?
That’s exactly right.
Impressive little project you have here. I’ve never played Lemmings, but I’d like to know, have you or are you considering optimizing the game’s graphics and sound to fully utilize all the DS’ sound and graphical capabilities? Also, I’ve heard Mario vs. DK2 compared to Lemmings many times. Have you taken some inspiration from that game for control scheme and other features?
> I’d like to know, have you or are you considering optimizing the game’s graphics and sound to fully utilize all the DS’ sound and graphical capabilities?
Well… it’s not like you can ignore the DS’ graphics hardware completely. You have to plan ahead and figure out what graphics mode combination you want the DS to be in, so you can draw what you want to draw with the minimum of fuss. (The lemmings level is an ‘extended rotation’ background (16-bit colour bitmap), the menus are all tiled paletted backgrounds, paletted sprites are used for the top minimap, that kinda stuff.)
I’m not too hot with sound, but 0xtob’s NitroTracker core code maps XM module instrument triggers onto the DS sound channel system. I can trigger sounds on the left over channels myself using the ds-sound-trigger stuff. (It stacks sound requests into a queue, and fires them off at the end of a frame, after dealing with duplicates. It cycles through the voice channels so that already playing sounds aren’t interrupted.)
On the GBA, you’d have to write a module player, sfx player and sound mixer, as the GBA only has a pair of output streams for stereo sound. (kinda)
I’ve never played Mario vs. DK2… so I wouldn’t be able to tell you if it’s similar.
Hmmm….. well, primarily it occurs to me that Lemmings is sort of a cartoony style game, so I figure you can reduce how much pixelation or similiar problems are introduced on the DS by switching it to a sort of cel-shaded style, taking advantage of that hardware capability. As you can probably tell I have little experience in these matters, but I do know that one of the big hangups with putting games like Doom or Quake on the DS has been the small RAM size. Normal DS games apparently utilize the actual ROM memory on a game card as RAM, thus extending the DS’ ram amount by a gigabit….if you could utilize the extra RAM in the Supercard, or whatever solution various DS flashcard utilities use to compensate for the RAM issue to get the games to play, perhaps you could boost performance. I’m thinking the best utilization of the hardware would be to sharpen the graphics and make the sounds directionally sensitive for a full 360 virtual surround sound, so you could for example hear something lower on the screen from behind you, perhaps. Like I said, I haven’t played Lemmings, but it looks sort of like an RTS and that’s the best use of that technology I can think of. It looks like a new Lemmings game hasn’t been made in quite a while, so this could be the sort of upgraded sequel long-time fans have been waiting for, or such. Just some ideas, what do you think?
As for sound, you can get a taste of the virtual surround sound on Super Mario 64 DS, dunno where else you would see it, but if you could reverse-engineer how they do it there…
Cel shading of course is visible in Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
To clarify what I meant, what I wanted to know really is whether or not you meant to improve on the original lemmings game using the excess power on the DS as opposed to it’s origin console, or just leave it as is. I’ve recently discovered, as well, that a new Lemmings game has come out for the PSP.
> Normal DS games apparently utilize the actual ROM memory on a game card as RAM, thus extending the DS’ ram amount by a gigabit…
Hmm… you probably mean loading files from a device, similar to the way a PC game may load or stream files and music from a CD-ROM?
This is what happens when you use the level utility to add extra files onto the end of the ROM.
The main game code is copied into RAM and ran from there, but the levels are only called upon when they’re required. This raises the available storage capacity to the maximum size of a GBA cartridge. (32MBytes)
I don’t know how you’d do ’surround’ sound using the DS’ speakers, I’m not sure if it’s even possible. If you listen carefully, all of the sounds ingame are in stereo, and are affected by the location of the ingame camera.
As for improving Lemmings… I’m not really sure what I could do. Maybe later, when everything is running much more smoothly, the graphics could be changed… or something. But it’s hard to redo the Lemmings themselves without changing how the game works completely. (See Lemmings 3)
I haven’t had the opportunity to see PS3 or PSP Lemmings.
Sounds like it’s time for a hardware donation! If you have any friends with a PSP, see if you can borrow it and a copy of the new PSP lemmings. Also see if you can borrow Mario vs. DK 2: March of the Minis, and Super Mario 64 DS. SM64DS demonstrates how virtual surround sound works. To be clear, what happens is that you don’t just hear a sound from one speaker or another - it actually projects the sound in such a way that your ear recieves it as though it came from beside, or behind you. To figure out how it works on the DS, though, you’ll need to look into some information on the speakers and SM64DS. I’m going to see if I can scare up any information regarding this and get it back to you. As for the ROM/RAM deal, actually what I meant is that the ROM moves fast enough that you can utilize it as RAM. The N64 used this system. I am not sure on the specifics of how you use ROM as RAM, but it may be a good idea to make Lemmings DS take up an extra chunk of flash memory on whatever medium it’s sent with, and then use that extra, ‘empty’ space as RAM. Do you have an instant messenger we can take this conversation to, by the way? I seem to be clogging up the comments area for the LemProject controls. My instant messengers are: Solodric (AIM) SolodricPierce(Yim) Solodric@Hotmail (MSN) and 294219085 (ICQ), so if you don’t want to give yours out, just IM me. I’m almost always online.
Alright, I’ve gotten a clarification on the RAM/ROM info. According to wikipedia and a couple other sources (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N64) apparently ROM cartridges move sufficiently quickly that you can real-time stream large amounts of data off them. Meaning that if you can figure out exactly what the limit is that you can stream without risking slow-down, you might be able to utilize a sizeable amount of the ROM space on the cartridge as a sort of virtual memory and thus counter the DS’ seemingly biggest weakpoint to homebrewers - namely the puny 4 megs (mebibytes) of RAM. I am also fairly certain that most DS Slot 1 solutions like the Supercard have a small amount of dedicated RAM on them….you should check up on that, I think, though naturally you still need somebody to lend you one. Here are a few Wikipedia articles referring to the surround sound
Nintendo DS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS#Hardware_specifications
Virtual surround sound
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_surround
Unfortunately besides Super Mario 64 DS, I am still unaware of any other games that utilize the feature….but if you play SM64DS and go into Options and start scrolling through sound types, I assured you the difference is audible.