Rayman Pirate-Community

Hello all!

The TPLS TSR project has been discussed here in a few different places, but until now never had its own topic. Given that I've just released version 3.0, which I believe finally brings it to feature parity with the old Dosbox patch, I felt it was finally time to change that!

GitHub Link: https://github.com/PluMGMK/rayman-tpls-tsr

This is a TSR, or "Terminate and Stay Resident Program" for DOS, to implement "TPLS" (Per-Level Soundtrack) functionality for the PC version of Rayman 1. This functionality has previously been implemented here and in Rayman Plus, and also as a patch applied to Dosbox. The Per-Level Soundtrack makes the soundtrack of the PC version use multiple tracks per world, like on PS1 or Saturn, instead of repetitive medleys.

The TSR runs under DOS (either natively or within Dosbox) and so can directly hook into and patch the game at runtime. It supports all known versions of Rayman 1 (full list here) and can even play the ambient tracks from the PS1 version by injecting them directly into the game's sound system!

To use it, download the latest release from GitHub, extract the BIN/CUE files, and either burn them to a CD or add them to an IMGMOUNT command in your Dosbox configuration file. (There are more detailed setup instuctions on the GitHub page )

Enjoy!

Bro you're an absolute madlad, it takes a programmer genius to come up with this, like even in assembly code. Massive for keeping up the spirit!

Awww, thanks! I mean, if it hadn't been for your work on the original TPLS, I might never have started iterating the concept in the first place

Also, just a heads-up that I'm currently working on expanding the scope of this project beyond fixing the soundtrack, to ironing out some other bugs that make the PC version inferior to the PS1 version. Namely, the failure to appear of Bad Rayman's fist, and of the curse stars associated with Rayman's controls being reversed

Sorry to double-post, but I'm pleased to announce that I've released version 3.1, and here are a couple of videos showcasing its features!

Really cool! Keep up the good work

Thanks! I must take another break from it for a while, but I think the next step will be to start adding support for Rayman Designer and the Educational games (although the latter will involve adding yet another track to the CD image…)

Already adding new features unrelated to the music itself, eh? I'd like to think more is coming, but I'm well aware how limited you are in terms of modding with this method!

Yeah, basically I can only do things for which the code already exists in the game in some form. That's why it was so easy to fix the bugs in Candy Château which were basically caused by lack of quality control when the code was ported from PS1.

It might also be possible to replace the fades at level ends with transition effects like the Saturn version, since the code for those transition effects already exists for the level-loading vignettes. Not promising that though…

But things like the interactive stained-glass windows in the final boss fight? Unfortunately we can probably forget about those

That is, until RayCarrot recreates the game's code from scratch like he did for Rayman 3 on the GBA.

Hunchman801 wrote: Fri Nov 01, 2024 2:37 pm That is, until RayCarrot recreates the game's code from scratch like he did for Rayman 3 on the GBA.

There are actually two Rayman 1 decompilation projects in progress One for PS1, which is aiming to be a matching decompilation and another for PC which is porting the game from MS-DOS to Windows. When these projects finish it will surely open up a lot of possibilities for improving the games!

Btw, on topic for the new TPLS version - it's now been included directly in the Rayman Control Panel, available from the recent beta versions

I had no idea about those projects, that's great news! I can't wait for "ReDesigner" levels where the flying rings and the super helicopter work the same as in the original game.

Version 3.2 has been released: https://github.com/PluMGMK/rayman-tpls- ... s/tag/v3.2

This includes a workaround for a longstanding bug in Dosbox, which caused the intro cutscene audio to skip and desync, due to misreporting of the CD head position. The bug was in fact fixed in Dosbox back in 2019, but unfortunately most people are using builds that predate the fix… (Even DOSBox-X only picked up the fix in 2024 )

Has anyone tried this on a real 486 or on something similar ? I have Rayman on a MiSTer FPGA ao486 core, and it runs fine. But when I try to use the patch I get an error that says:

“e35m not enough tracks” or something like that, and it asks me to please insert the Rayman CD.

What I did was copy ambients.dat and tplstsr4.exe to *C:* (root). I run tplstsr4.exe, and with the image loaded from GitHub (TPLSTSR4.bin and .cue) I launch the game… well, doing that gives me that error.

I don’t know if it has anything to do with it, but I have the game installed in a different folder, rayman2, instead of the original one. Since it’s a VHD image, when I first installed the game it didn’t install correctly, and when I launched it, it said it was in trial mode even though the CD recognized the installation and the installation recognized the CD. IT’S VERSION 1.00. So I uninstalled it from the CD setup and installed it again in that other folder. I never tried installing it again in the default folder because it works fine for me like this.

Do you think that could be related? What else could be happening? Do I need to launch the patch with the original Rayman image mounted and apply the change with the game already installed? Do I need to modify anything else?

Thanks, and sorry for all the questions this is supposed to be like an original MS-DOS environment.

The "e35m" char sequence means you haven't loaded ANSI.SYS in your CONFIG.SYS - the messages are supposed to appear in purple.

As for not having enough tracks, that means you're not using the TPLS CD. You need to use the CD image that comes with TPLS itself, not your Rayman CD.

PluMGMK wrote: Tue Feb 24, 2026 7:52 am The "e35m" char sequence means you haven't loaded ANSI.SYS in your CONFIG.SYS - the messages are supposed to appear in purple.

As for not having enough tracks, that means you're not using the TPLS CD. You need to use the CD image that comes with TPLS itself, not your Rayman CD.

Thanks, I didn’t understand what was happening. I downloaded and initialized **ansi.sys**, but it didn’t change anything, only the error message, which showed up in purple.

I googled a bit and the GitHub says that the 486 core is not compatible with audio tracks, which didn’t make sense because the Rayman I was using had working audio tracks perfectly, so I was confused. I googled a bit more and that information seems to be outdated, but there was no solution mentioned anywhere.

In the end, I converted the BIN/CUE into CHD and it worked perfectly. No idea why that happens. Emulation quirks, I guess. I truly appreciate your response and your dedication.

Since I saw your extensive contribution to the Rayman community, I’d also like to ask your opinion. I feel like the enemies behave differently in the PC version compared to the PSX version I played about a year ago. It’s like they’re more ruthless, or they attack as soon as they see you, whereas in the PSX version they seem to wait a bit before attacking. This happens with the Moskito hunters, with the laser eyes, and in the Stone World with those enemies that throw lava rocks (I’m currently at that part and haven’t played much further).

Is that actually the case, or is it just my perception? Could it be that the enemies are slightly more aggressive? Some people say it’s tied to CPU speed, but honestly I don’t think so, I was just playing without parallax and with a slightly slower CPU setting, and they behave the same. If I enable parallax and increase the CPU speed, aside from fewer slowdowns, I don’t notice any difference in how the enemies behave. Maybe if I were actually using a Pentium III or higher I’d notice something, but that’s not the case here.

Thanks, I’d really like to hear your opinion, because aside from comments about it “looking or feeling different” and having different cage placements, I’ve barely seen any discussion about this anywhere on the internet, not even on this forum.

I asked the question in the Rayman 1 thread, taking advantage of the fact that the Rayman 30th Anniversary Edition is out now, but no one replied. I also don’t think many people choose to play the PC version, since the PSX version has widescreen and rewind features and is the one most people played back in the day.

Best regards, and thanks for everything .

edit: After finishing the Rayman helicopter level (1st level of mr stones peak), the game closes and displayed the “Thank you for playing Rayman” message. Could that be the copy protection? i used the original iso without the patch and everything workded, i tried the patch twice, one with /n and the other without

doom32x wrote: Wed Feb 25, 2026 2:54 am Thanks, I didn’t understand what was happening. I downloaded and initialized **ansi.sys**, but it didn’t change anything, only the error message, which showed up in purple.

Yes, ANSI.SYS is required to make the messages appear properly, but it doesn't change any behaviour. I should really get rid of that requirement, because there are other ways of printing coloured text in a DOS environment...

doom32x wrote: Wed Feb 25, 2026 2:54 am I googled a bit and the GitHub says that the 486 core is not compatible with audio tracks, which didn’t make sense because the Rayman I was using had working audio tracks perfectly, so I was confused. I googled a bit more and that information seems to be outdated, but there was no solution mentioned anywhere.

The ao486 core? I'm not familiar with it, what's included? Is the CD audio handled digitally? In the old days, CD audio was fed directly into the sound card by an analogue cable running through the PC case, so the CPU had no role in playing it except sending a request to the drive.

doom32x wrote: Wed Feb 25, 2026 2:54 am In the end, I converted the BIN/CUE into CHD and it worked perfectly. No idea why that happens. Emulation quirks, I guess. I truly appreciate your response and your dedication.

Excellent, glad you got it sorted!

doom32x wrote: Wed Feb 25, 2026 2:54 am Since I saw your extensive contribution to the Rayman community, I’d also like to ask your opinion. I feel like the enemies behave differently in the PC version compared to the PSX version I played about a year ago. It’s like they’re more ruthless, or they attack as soon as they see you, whereas in the PSX version they seem to wait a bit before attacking. This happens with the Moskito hunters, with the laser eyes, and in the Stone World with those enemies that throw lava rocks (I’m currently at that part and haven’t played much further).

Is that actually the case, or is it just my perception? Could it be that the enemies are slightly more aggressive? Some people say it’s tied to CPU speed, but honestly I don’t think so, I was just playing without parallax and with a slightly slower CPU setting, and they behave the same. If I enable parallax and increase the CPU speed, aside from fewer slowdowns, I don’t notice any difference in how the enemies behave. Maybe if I were actually using a Pentium III or higher I’d notice something, but that’s not the case here.

Thanks, I’d really like to hear your opinion, because aside from comments about it “looking or feeling different” and having different cage placements, I’ve barely seen any discussion about this anywhere on the internet, not even on this forum.

Honestly, I'm not sure. It's been years since I played the PSX or Saturn versions, so I'd have to deep-dive into the code of each one to say something intelligent on the matter...

doom32x wrote: Wed Feb 25, 2026 2:54 am edit: After finishing the Rayman helicopter level (1st level of mr stones peak), the game closes and displayed the “Thank you for playing Rayman” message. Could that be the copy protection? i used the original iso without the patch and everything workded, i tried the patch twice, one with /n and the other without

Aye, that's the copy protection. But it should kick in at Allegro Presto too, did it not? What version number of the game do you have?

The ao486 is a hardware emulation core for the MiSTer FPGA. In theory it’s supposed to be more accurate than software emulation. The sound emulation should work the same way without CPU involvement. I only mentioned the CPU in case it could influence enemy behavior, since on MiSTer you can configure whether to emulate a 386 or a 486 and slightly adjust the clock speed.

The main difference is that FPGA emulation recreates the hardware logic itself, so it’s generally more accurate and has less input lag compared to running DOSBox on a modern PC with Windows, GPU drivers, buffering, etc. The CD, sound, and CPU behavior are meant to be very close to how an actual old PC would behave.

From what people usually measure, DOSBox on a modern system can introduce maybe 1–2 frames of input lag (some say up to 4, but I personally doubt it’s that high in most cases). With MiSTer, if there is any lag, I honestly can’t notice it, maybe half a frame or one frame at most. It just feels more immediate.

My first experience with DOSBox was about 20 years ago on an old Windows XP machine. Rayman ran slow because the PC wasn’t very powerful, so I tried partitioning the drive and installing Windows 98… unfortunately I deleted the XP partition in the process good memories though.

To be honest, my overall experience with software emulation hasn’t always been great. I don’t know if it’s placebo, but I often feel a slight input delay. With MiSTer, I just don’t feel that.

Originally I wanted to play on my CRT TV, but because of signal compatibility issues (and I don’t have a VGA CRT monitor), I’m currently playing on a normal LED monitor.

Before you replied, I tried using the VHD in DOSBox-X to replicate the issue and see if the same thing happened with version 1.12, but I ran into a BIOS mismatch error and got frustrated, so I stopped trying

The version I’m currently using is 1.00, because the VHD image I downloaded came with that version. However, I also own Rayman Forever on GOG and I have a 1.12 image, so I suppose I could use one of those. The problem is I don’t want to lose my save file or configuration, so for now I’ll keep using the current image. For the levels where the copy protection triggers, I’ll just use the original image, and for the rest I’ll use the patched one. If you can tell me exactly which levels trigger it, I’d really appreciate it, otherwise it’ll just be trial and error, like everything else in this game

I only played a couple of levels with the patch so far, since I just managed to get it working yesterday. I completed some cages in the early levels, and when I played the helicopter level, the game closed twice and showed the “Thank you for playing Rayman” message. That’s when I assumed it was the copy protection, but I wanted to be sure. Allegro Presto was actually the only level where I already had all cages, so I didn’t use the patched image there.

Anyway, thank you again for your response and dedication. This is a game I care deeply about, and it brings back so many good memories, even when it trolls me.

I still remember playing the demo hundreds of times from one of those old shareware CDs and asking my dad to buy us the full game. I’ll never forget the night he came home from work and brought Rayman along with a Disney game that included The Lion King and Aladdin.

So when I start tinkering with DOS commands, struggling with mounting images or failed installations, hearing the “Perfect!” from the magician, Rayman saying “ectole!”, or watching those black-screen mini cutscenes where Rayman does silly things (which weren’t in the PSX version), it feels like unlocking memories in my brain.

Last year when I replayed the PSX version, I didn’t even remember those little cutscenes after beating the bosses

doom32x wrote: Thu Feb 26, 2026 11:26 pm The sound emulation should work the same way without CPU involvement.

Makes sense.

doom32x wrote: Thu Feb 26, 2026 11:26 pmI only mentioned the CPU in case it could influence enemy behavior, since on MiSTer you can configure whether to emulate a 386 or a 486 and slightly adjust the clock speed.

Well, Rayman won't run on a 386 so you don't have many options there!

doom32x wrote: Thu Feb 26, 2026 11:26 pm The version I’m currently using is 1.00, because the VHD image I downloaded came with that version.

Ooh, the evil version!

doom32x wrote: Thu Feb 26, 2026 11:26 pmHowever, I also own Rayman Forever on GOG and I have a 1.12 image, so I suppose I could use one of those. The problem is I don’t want to lose my save file or configuration, so for now I’ll keep using the current image.

Transferring the save file should be OK, but it can sometimes lead to slight weirdnesses (like a certain cheat activating if you transfer a completed save between versions).

doom32x wrote: Thu Feb 26, 2026 11:26 pmFor the levels where the copy protection triggers, I’ll just use the original image, and for the rest I’ll use the patched one. If you can tell me exactly which levels trigger it, I’d really appreciate it, otherwise it’ll just be trial and error, like everything else in this game

All maps with number 6 or higher, except for world 1. But the TSR should defeat this. If it isn't working, that's a regression, and I'll need to look into it…

Well, in the end I installed version 1.12, which as far as I understand doesn’t have copy protection. The curious thing is that it doesn’t let you install over an already created folder. I had a “Rayman” folder with no files inside, but the installer wouldn’t let me select it. When I uninstalled from the CD (1.00), for some reason it left the folder behind, so the installation gave me an “invalid path” error. However, when I uninstalled version 1.12 from the “Rayman2” folder where I had it installed, it deleted everything completely.

Also, when you install version 1.12, the CD recognizes the installation, but if you click “Play,” it doesn’t change the executable or anything, even if you installed the videos. So you have to do a clean installation from scratch (I backed up my Rayman save file beforehand), otherwise you get the “no disc” error.

I’m not sure what changes they made, aside from maybe some enemy or object positions. I hope it’s the same or almost the same as the version I was playing. At least now I can play a practically perfect version of the game.

Anyway, thanks for your help. I don’t think it’s necessary to modify or do anything with the patch anymore, it works almost fine now. And nobody, or at least very few people, use version 1.00, and the issue can be solved simply by installing another version.

What’s curious is that just now, while I was backtracking in Anguish Lagoon, a cage appeared that shouldn’t be there. I don’t know why, whether it was a bug related to the save file or something else. I only had two cages (the one before finishing the level and the one that appears when you ride the mosquito). I broke the first one that appears after jumping on the mushrooms at the start of the level, then the one above that shows up after jumping into a cage, and the one all the way to the right. When I was about to break it (I had only 1 HP left), I died and the level reset. I went all the way to the right again, broke that one properly, and then broke the one that appears after using the purple Lum.

But the cage guarded by the gunner appeared there , the one before the end of the level, right before the sign. I was like ????? I thought that only happened in the GBA version. The medallion didn’t trigger or anything, but the cage did break. It left me stunned.

Now I don’t know if this bugged my save file, or if it might count as +1% like can happen in the GBA version. Honestly, I don’t know what to do. I think I’ll keep playing on 1.00 and restore the save I had, because I don’t want problems later on.

What do you think about it?

Edit: the bug appears regardless of whether you die or not, and the order in which you open the cages doesn’t matter either. I assume the same or something similar must happen in other levels. You simply load the save file in Rayman 1.12 and the cage that was already opened appears again (the one before the sign). If you open a seventh cage, the medallion doesn’t appear. And if you open the cages but leave one unopened, then exit the level and re-enter, that one disappears, no matter which cage it is or in what order you opened them. here is the file if someone like to test it https://www.mediafire.com/file/2z0nr2sm ... 1.SAV/file

doom32x wrote: Sun Mar 01, 2026 9:25 pm Well, in the end I installed version 1.12, which as far as I understand doesn’t have copy protection.

There is an "UNPROTECTED" version of 1.12, but most versions of it do have protection, so you'll need to double-check that.

doom32x wrote: Sun Mar 01, 2026 9:25 pm Anyway, thanks for your help. I don’t think it’s necessary to modify or do anything with the patch anymore, it works almost fine now. And nobody, or at least very few people, use version 1.00, and the issue can be solved simply by installing another version.

The TSR is supposed to support every version, so this is not a valid solution. But I realize now that you need to make sure the videos are installed on your hard drive, otherwise it can't circumvent the DRM. That's all you need to do. I guess I should spell that out in the docs, because I honestly never gave it much thought (since I always install the videos without thinking too much).

doom32x wrote: Sun Mar 01, 2026 9:25 pm What do you think about it?

Edit: the bug appears regardless of whether you die or not, and the order in which you open the cages doesn’t matter either. I assume the same or something similar must happen in other levels. You simply load the save file in Rayman 1.12 and the cage that was already opened appears again (the one before the sign). If you open a seventh cage, the medallion doesn’t appear. And if you open the cages but leave one unopened, then exit the level and re-enter, that one disappears, no matter which cage it is or in what order you opened them. here is the file if someone like to test it https://www.mediafire.com/file/2z0nr2sm ... 1.SAV/file

Oops, yes, I guess since they changed around a few things with the cage placements between v1.00 and the later ones, so it makes sense that the save file got screwed up! So yeah, I'd say go back to v1.00 and make sure the videos (INTRO.DAT and CONCLU.DAT) are installed