Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Omnispeak – A Commander Keen Reimplementation

davidgow.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 57 posts

Re: Omnispeak – A Commander Keen Reimplementation

#21

Post by khedoros1 »

jononor wrote: post #18
badsectoracula wrote: post #17

> Omnispeak requires a computer with OpenGL 2.0 support That is the strangest requirement. I could see requiring OpenGL 3.1+ Core for someone who really wants to use a GPU (despite how unnecessary that would be) and thinks that glBegin is Teh Devil. I could see requiring OpenGL 1.1 for someone who still wants to use the GPU but doesn't want to bother with GLSL or any of the later more complex APIs. But why OpenGL 2.0…

OpenGL 2.0 was released over 10 years ago. Why is this requirement a problem? Anything that is supposed to work should be tested, I can see why people don't want to test against more-than-10-years old APIs.

On one hand, I can see that too. On the other, it would be cool to have the Keen games as an option on something like a little ARM computer, and if what the other commenter said is true, and the game's just blitting a bitmap into a texture and displaying that, there are plenty of libraries to let you do that, while providing a number of different backends. Let the library figure out the actual API to use.

On the third hand...it would probably be super-simple to just port the thing to SDL2. And that might be a fun, short project =)

Re: Omnispeak – A Commander Keen Reimplementation

#22

Post by dTal »

jononor wrote: post #18
badsectoracula wrote: post #17

> Omnispeak requires a computer with OpenGL 2.0 support That is the strangest requirement. I could see requiring OpenGL 3.1+ Core for someone who really wants to use a GPU (despite how unnecessary that would be) and thinks that glBegin is Teh Devil. I could see requiring OpenGL 1.1 for someone who still wants to use the GPU but doesn't want to bother with GLSL or any of the later more complex APIs. But why OpenGL 2.0…

OpenGL 2.0 was released over 10 years ago. Why is this requirement a problem? Anything that is supposed to work should be tested, I can see why people don't want to test against more-than-10-years old APIs.

Because it's unnecessary, and precludes it from running on fun platforms otherwise fully capable of it - like the Zipit Z2 I am currently hacking on (which come to think of it is probably even fast enough to run the original inside Dosbox).

It's just less fun.

Re: Omnispeak – A Commander Keen Reimplementation

#25

Post by throwanem »

dTal wrote: post #22
jononor wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenGL 2.0 was released over 10 years ago. Why is this requirement a problem? Anything that is supposed to work should be tested, I can see why people don't want to test against more-than-10-years old APIs.

Because it's unnecessary, and precludes it from running on fun platforms otherwise fully capable of it - like the Zipit Z2 I am currently hacking on (which come to think of it is probably even fast enough to run the original inside Dosbox). It's just less fun.

I think I still have one of those with an Emacs 23 install.

Watch out you don't leave it on the charger too long with a battery in it. The charge limiter is lacking or nonexistent, and the battery will overheat and swell.

Re: Omnispeak – A Commander Keen Reimplementation

#27

Post by fapjacks »

Holy smokes!! Commander Keen takes me back to when I first discovered hacking, clear back in the early/mid 90s. I actually met a good hacker friend of mine on a completely different continent on a train. He was playing Commander Keen on a laptop and playing the music super loud. I recognized it and introduced myself. That was almost fifteen years ago and we still work on projects together!

Re: Omnispeak – A Commander Keen Reimplementation

#28

Post by endgame »

jff wrote: post #10
djsumdog wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were super cute. Boy genius builds a space ship powered by a car battery, fuelled by your parents wine and .. yea I forgot all the other things you had to collect in the first one. They were all good, but I think one of my favourites was Keen Dreams with the giant potato monster at the end.

The Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket was fueled by Dad's Everclear, as I recall, and propelled with the vacuum cleaner.

Yep, and you needed the car battery and the joystick.

Re: Omnispeak – A Commander Keen Reimplementation

#30

Post by rzzzt »

techtalsky wrote: post #2

Even though the second Keen trilogy had richer graphics, I really loved the first Keen trilogy for the gameplay. The jumps and movement felt so much more physical. Keen would make this tiny pause as if winding up for a jump each time he jumped. The later Keen just did big floaty isometric jumps that didn't have the same snap. That said, I loved and played every single one of those games.

He's bending his knees before the jump. I could never get the timing right in that game, though :(
Post reply on HN