Where does one find Cheapo? Is it still available?

What about LemEdit? How do you get it to work properly. I tried to load it (without dosbox though, I suppose that could be the problem... :\) and the mouse didn't work.

Thanks!

I've just realised I didn't download LemEdit2, which I thought I had. But now the clock won't initialise. I did follow the advice in the other thread, but even with the cycles set to 20 it failed--is this Mac OS X being faster than Dosbox is perhaps designed for? I've now set it to 6 but it's taking years to load. Why didn't somebody hack it so it didn't do this?

edit: in fact, with cycles set to 6 it failed worse than before....  :-/

Because I haven't figured it out yet.

LemEdit2 was made mainly to allow the mouse to work, it doesn't pretend to fix the clock problem.  In fact, I only have a fix for the mouse problem because someone else pointed out somewhere on this board that LemEdit attempts to do a check for Windows and then switch to a "Windows compatible mode", but unfortunately the check only works up to Win98--on later versions of Windows the check fails, so LemEdit thinks it's running in a real DOS environment.  My hack in LemEdit2 simply forces LemEdit to always use the Windows compatible mode no matter what.  It fixes the mouse but doesn't really help with the clock problem.

Really, the author of LemEdit is the one who should be publicly executed for the atrocity.  I mean, even Lemmings itself runs on XP, just that the speed is wrong.  Mouse at least works there.  It behooves me why LemEdit author would try to deal with the mouse and timer in such unorthodox ways that it breaks compatability with basically any system that doesn't have true DOS on it.

While I don't think I can offer much to get around the timer problem, do tell me how bad it is:  the test looks for 2 seconds, what did it report back?  (On my machine without changing the emulation cycles number from the default 3000, it gives back about 1.70 seconds.)

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I'm also slightly confused now though.  I thought you said you are running DOSBox in XP?  But now it sounds like you're running it on the Mac OS.  Very few people here have Mac OS, and of the ones who do, I think you're the only one so far who has tried DOSBox on it.  So we don't know anything about how things will work on the Mac OS.  But DOSBox is supposed to be relatively platform independent, so generally things that works in DOSBox on WinXP should also work on DOSBox on Mac OS.

Actually, although I don't have much luck with it, see what happens if you run LemEdit2 directly on WinXP.

If I recall correctly, the mouse doesn't work very well when you try that, but it seems to vary from machine to machine.  Maybe it'll work out better for you (though I won't count on it).

I have both; sorry for confusing you. :D Basically I was on the PC on Thursday night, then I went on the Mac the next morning (because I compete with two siblings for it usually). I usually use the mac out of preference, but then if I want things like these special lemmings things I have to use the PC.
Mac OS is generally faster than windows, though, afaik.

I couldn't even get 1.70 seconds setting the cycles to obscenely low things like 4; there it was something like 1.4. On the default 3000 it was 0.8 or something.

As far as the other games went, Lemmings 2 worked on my fast OS X, albeit slowly, but only just worked on the iMac. It worked at a respectable speed on the XP. Lemmings 3 worked on the XP but I haven't tried it on the mac yet. I suspect I'll get similar results.

Yay! Lemedit2 worked on dosbox on the XP.

/me is very very happy.

Now I just need to show you my levels. I've already made a few hand-coding it on the mac X_X although I'd need to get them first into the right format. I have a couple more that I want to make though...

Oh, and another question: where do you get Cheapo sets?

The Cheapo pack topic in Level Designing contains a few downloads; or you can ask the guys here, most of whom keep a fair few of each other's sets as well as their own. I'll let you have mine, as soon as I've found some way to get my new styles to you (there are 22, most of them nearly or just over 1MB.........)

O_o... erm, you could always try emailing them, perhaps, but it just might take a while.

I don't think that download has all the styles and sets.

No, it doesn't; it only has the default crazy set.

Well, there isn't any download that has all the styles and sets..... only place to go if you want that is right here.

http://membres.lycos.fr/createmania/lemmings3.html

Actually, this is where all the sets and styles are.  

"All"? Like hell it is.

When I first downloaded Lemedit it wudn't work on XP so I got Lemedit2 and ran it in DoxBox then the mouse worked. Finlay I'm also looking forward to playing your levels :)

Well, the Cheapo downloads in Dragonslover's old site have all the sets, including the Wild set, the Madness set, and the Spain set.

Gblems.sty is used in one of AlmightyHydra's levels, which you cannot play if you download it from http://www.teamhellspawn.com/lemmings/tools.htm. There are other exciting styles in the complete download that the other doesn't have.

If Isu downloads there, he might extend Style Trial...

I see; so you were just saying that's the most complete download available. It still doesn't include all the sets and styles made by the people on this forum, though....

The site has a levelpak by Team Hell Spawn for Custlemm. The levels have some pretty cool scenery but some are fairly hard and some are fairly easy.

Yes, I probably will. I have actually extended part 2 to accomodate Ahribar's new Prince style, I'll upload it sometime.

Cool! I was wondering if everyone was tactfully ignoring that style....... since no-one ever posted in the topic.

Arhibar's Repton and Prince style encouraged me to create a Supaplex style which I had planned before and almost discarded.
However, don't expect it to be released soon, it will take quite some time.

I quite like the Prince style since Prince was one of my favourite games I played.

I'm now trying to get Cheapo and Lemedit to work on my shiny new iBook (yay!) by installing Windows 98 on the Virtual PC. Having done that I can't work out how to get them onto it. :( >:( very annoying... If I can't get it to work, I won't have any access at all, because I'm leaving in three days for university. I do remember in the distant past using a previous version of Virtual PC with Windows 95 and Cheapo didn't work very well at all; the vertical dimension didn't work, for instance; so that's not very promising at all. I could have installed XP on this version but there's not really enough space on my hard drive, since it's a laptop. O_o

OK, having actually got Cheapo onto it it now gives an error, and so does the editor: Cannot create primary surface. Whatever does that mean?

Sorry, but I'll probably need a bit of time before I can actually do that. O_o First I have to go off to university, but once I've got there and settled down I could perhaps do a couple, although as I say the programs may not work on the laptop in which case you could only see the ones I've already done. It's somewhat ironic that it happens now when I've just really got them working.

Since no one else here has experience with running Virtual PC on an iBook and installing Windows 98 on it, help might be limited.

I can tell you in somewhat technical terms though that it means Cheapo and the editor is having some problems doing graphics.  Now I'll spew out some stuff which might or might not make sense to you, hopefully the former.

1) Make sure you have DirectX installed along with Windows 98.  Muck around at the Microsoft's official windows website to find a download for it.

2) I'm hoping the Virtual PC is sophisticated enough to support DirectX.  Well, you'll know once you updated your Windows 98 to have the latest DirectX components on it.  If Cheapo is still having the same problem then maybe it's Virtual PC's fault.

3) It's possible that Cheapo and the editor needs something better than Windows 98, though I don't remember what the minimum system requirements are exactly.  Someone here should be able to tell you that.

Most likely, if you simply resign yourself to use a real PC rather than a Virtual PC, you'll have less problems.

I just read the birthday thread.  So it's your birthday present huh, no wonder you wanted to put Cheapo on it.

Well good luck, I sincerely hope it works out.  If it doesn't, I guess it's back to the PC.

I would also think that somewhere out on the Internet should be support groups (ie. forums) for getting PC games to run on Mac thru Virtual PC.  If Cheapo's having problems, so will a whole bunch of other PC/Windows games that uses DirectX for rendering graphics and sound.

Direct X actually might be the problem; I do remember last time I tried to put Cheapo on Virtual PC (this was a year or two back and it was Win95), it needed Direct X. Now I just need to find it; it should install on the Virtual PC.

It is my birthday present, yes. :D I'm quite happy with it, but it is a bit slower than the other computers. Lemmings was a bit slower than I'm used to, but I don't think it was as jerky (which I think is a result of running it in Classic mode on OS X, although the manual described that problem and said it would be cDevs and INITs (mac extension programs), but when I turned this off it was still jerky) as it was on my normal computer.
Also, I won't have personal access to a PC when I go away to university this weekend, so this is my chance to get it to work now, basically.

No! all that and it didn't even work!! :(:(:( that's just disappointing. The Virtual PC was running very very slowly anyway, so it might be that I've got several other programs open in the background... I don't want to give up though, but I have absolutely no idea how it might work. I only used windows 98 because XP would take up too much disk space.

I'm not sure what kind of performance you were expecting.  You already said yourself that the notebook was slower than what you're used to, then on top of that you have the Virtual PC whose emulation will add a whole new layer of slowness on top of the notebook.

Anyway, let's try this to see whether DirectX is the issue (it most probably is):

1) Go to the Start Menu
2) click "Run"
3) type dxdiag and press Enter

This will bring up the "DirectX Diagnostic Tool" that comes with the DirectX installation.  It will gather some system information which might take a minute or 2, so be patient.  Once it looks ready, click the "Display" tab.

4) Take a look at the "Notes" section and see whether it says "No Problems Found".  If not, take note of what problems it said it found.

5) click the "Test DirectDraw" button.  The program will now direct you to a series of tests, where it first tells you what you should be seeing, then it does the test (generally some animation of a box bouncing around), and then it asks you whether what you saw matches what the program says you should be seeing.  You should pass all tests.  On my machine, I recall there were 3 or 4 tests it did.

Let's start with that for now and see where you go with that.

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I'm not very familiar with DirectX, but I think what can happen is, the program when using DirectX can ask for certain capabilities it needs, and if the hardware doesn't support it, you'll end up with the "cannot create primary surface" error.  It's possible that under a VirtualPC, its emulation of the display system isn't sophisticated enough to support the capabilities Cheapo might need.

Speaking of performance, check out what Microsoft has to say about it:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/824622

Now, to be fair, Cheapo isn't exactly the pushing the cutting edge of computer graphics (it should be far less demanding than the average 3D first person shooter), and it is a Microsoft article so there can be a little bit of bias.

Still, I think it's a good idea to set your expectations to having Cheapo walk on the Virtual PC.  I'm not sure it'll run. ;P

Also, check out the manual for Virtual PC to see if there are any specific settings you need in order for DirectX to work under it.

I'll have to try it some other time... I'm still not sure what's wrong...