Forums > Game Forums > Lemmings > Music not working in Lemmings games

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Nowhere Girl (8680) on 4/27/2012 12:02 PM · Permalink · Report

I have six Lemmings games: the first one, "Oh No! More Lemmings" and the four holiday games (1991-1994). I run all of them with DOSbox or, more precisely, D-Fend Reloaded. I like this program very much, it looks nice to have all my DOS games sorted, with cute screenshots and so on... However in every single Lemmings game the music is not working. The sound fx are OK - bomber detonating or builder signalling he is running out of bricks - but no music at all in all six games. Does anyone have an idea how to make the games run WITH music? I can recall it was quite nice, especially since I had more than just PC Speaker on one of my old computers.

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lilalurl (733) on 4/27/2012 12:31 PM · Permalink · Report

"SoundBlaster/OPL music only seems to work if Cycles is set to AUTO, or something low. Having Cycles set to MAX makes the game use the PC speaker regardless of SB being available."

From: http://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=1143&letter=O

Try to change your settings and tell us if it solved the issue for you or not.

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Nowhere Girl (8680) on 4/27/2012 1:03 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

Wow.
How could I have known it? I only change processor settings when I really HAVE to (some games become so fast they are completely uncontrollable on modern computers). And I mean, I have done a bit of searching before and nowhere have I found the answer that all it takes is this little setting...
Just one more edit: the one thing I could complain about is that now music jams the sound fx a bit... I always enjoyed music much more than effects, actually I played lots of games with "music on, sounds off" - but in Lemmings games the effects are important - especially the builder "click". Now I have to be more careful to notice these clicks...
There were some games with separate controls for music and other sounds, but these were rare and it's of course not the case in Lemmings games.

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lilalurl (733) on 4/27/2012 3:28 PM · Permalink · Report

First, your new issue: In the game profile, in D-Fend RL, you should have, under the Sound section, a tab dedicated to the Volumes of the different sound devices emulated.

Playing with these settings might help you to get a workaround.

Speaking of the builder sound, you might be interested to know, that the Atari ST version used a LED (additionaly to the sound I think): "The software controllable LED of the Atari ST disk drive was used in-game. It blinks when the three last building bricks are used by the bridge builder lemming."

http://www.mobygames.com/game/lemmings/trivia

Back to your "How could I have known it?", you probably could not. Hence the usefulness of things like a compatibility list where everyone can post solutions/workarounds.

There are many examples of solutions that most people would not be able to find by themselves, like getting the sound to work for Hired Guns or Innocent Until Caught (they share the same solution for that).

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leilei (343) on 4/30/2012 3:07 PM · Permalink · Report

usually the cycles=auto defaults to 3000 cycles and only kicks it to max for protected mode games (such as modern titles like Doom and Quake, and not such as Lemmings), the only problem Lemmings has with Dosbox is advancing completed levels sometimes takes you back to the main menu, though some svn builds fix that