Recently i was informed about the lemmings .dat levelpack decompression
algorithm by ccexplore, and i was wondering if anyone would find it useful if there was an application which could convert a .dat levelpack into a series of .lvl levels for use with the
Windows version of lemmings which uses .lvl files.  I got the impression
before that most players like the DOS version better.

Another option would be to load up a levelpack into CLONES to play, but the
differences in lemmings dimensions would render many maps unplayable.  At
the very least you could edit the .lvl levels in the CLONES mapeditor but
that would require you to play them in winlemm which might not be what you
want.

Please advise.

rt
http://www.tomkorp.com

You can save each level from a pack in .lvl files with LemEdit.

I am awear of that, however LemEdit requires DOS and you need to manually convert from .dat to .lvl.  

I was thinking of a windows application in which you drag 'n drop the .dat levelpack and the app will spit out the .lvl levels automatically.  No keyboard required :)

The question is: Is this useful or not?  Does anyone want to convert hundreds of .dat into thousand of .lvl quickly?  Or  is everyone happy playing custlemm and the like?  Basically this allows for an all-windows editor which can create either lvl or .dat levelpacks.

I'd like to see a program like this

Of course, a program that could do this automatically could be appreciated. But, unfortunately, this program doesn't exist for now. Maybe a good programmor could try to make one! But for now, you don't have choice: You must save every level from a .dat file in .lvl using LemEdit. It's long, but there's no other solution. And if LemEdit doesn't work... that way, I really dunno how you could anymore!

I'd definitely like to see a program like this. Unfortunately, my programming skills are pretty limited, so I can't do it.

That would be very useful, cos then the .lvl's can easily be converted to mac levels, that I use.

The program does exist!

As i said before, i was given the decompression code for .dat levelpacks.  I have added the code to CLONES which allows you to select a .dat pack and have all the .lvl levels extracted automatically.

It seems that at least a few people would find that useful, but perhaps it would be better if i made a seperate stand-alone drag-n-drop app like i mentioned.

My real question is 'why do need to convert many .dat levelpacks into .lvl format'?  Doesn't custlemm use .dat as well?  And i've heard that most people like DOS lemmings better than Windows lemmings so what would be the point of such an application?

rt
http://www.tomkorp.com

I can most definitely make use of such a program. I may be the only one to prefer Windows lemmings over DOS (Nothing, of course, can beat the Amiga version), but that doesn't bother me.

What you might be missing is the fact that winlemm has many more features than DOS. Fast-forward and Action Replay are just some of them.

The only downside at the moment is that some levels might not be passable on the windows version...

I will at some point make a program like this, but don't expect it any time soon, expect to wait months.  rt, on the other hand, could release it anytime he wants.

it may not be fool proof, but here it is...
http://it.travisbsd.org/lemmings/files/lemmingsdatdecompressor/lemmingsdatdecompressor_1_1_0.zip

Edit: new version released