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Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen

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Re: Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen

#51

Post by rtpg »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #5

Lovely book. Skimming through it. One thing that might help contextualize it is a brief discussion of the how contemporary hardware like the SNES rendered sprites so efficiently compared to the PC hardware at the time. It's not obvious to modern readers why a PC with significantly more powerful compute capabilities would struggle to keep up with significantly slower Nintendo hardware at the time for sprite rendering.

the Gameboy, not the SNES, but this talk is very very good at going in detail about a bunch of internals. The graphics stuff is 29 minutes in but I love the whole video. Very much a high level guide to building a "retro-y" fantasy console for people into that stuff

https://youtu.be/HyzD8pNlpwI?t=1759

Re: Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen

#52

Post by _jackdk_ »

charlietran wrote: post #22
LarsDu88 wrote: post #4

Someone ping Fabien Sanglard! Looks so much like his site!

Author's note from the book: "...I discovered Fabien Sanglard’s website and began reading his Game Engine Black Books on Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. Inspired by those works, I wondered whether I could do something similar for Commander Keen: open up the source code, explore the files, and piece together a picture of the overall architecture and the clever tricks used. The style, dimensions, and structure of this book ar…

I think it's a really cool homage, but that the site could be a little clearer that it's not Fabien's work. When I first clicked through and saw a different name, I was hopeful that someone had started a publishing house dedicated to high-quality dissections of classic games.

Re: Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen

#54

Post by nnnnico »

dang wrote: post #17
nnnnico wrote: post #9

this looks like a copy of fabien's site, plus the topic is very related and likely trampolining on his brand :/

I can understand the feeling of loyalty to a widely admired figure (and deservedly so!) but this isn't a great way to respond to someone else's work. Unless there's some evidence of ill intent, why not just classify it as an homage? " Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. " " Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of wh…

totally, I wrongly assummed ill intent as I thought it was fabiens work for a good while and then came back here frustrated

Re: Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen

#55

Post by to11mtm »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #45
to11mtm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tyrain ... Well, we do at least have OpenTyrian... (Edited to add; And OpenTyrian2000) > Epic Pinball Best I can find for Epic Pinball is an old thread on Pinball Fantasies [0] but I think it almost counts cause there was shared dev work between the two... > Halloween Harry TBH that one would be fairly interesting, especially compared to Duke Nukem 2 (Part of me thinks they might be similar/same engine) > Jill of t…

IIRC (from being a kid) Harry was 256 color and DN2 wasn’t quite. Also it felt like it had much better frame rate. But I’m sure that could be engine evolution too. Interesting, I hadn’t ever thought of the connection before. Though the “hot babes stuck in alien pods” from Harry showed up as a central plot point in DN3D.

I mean, I could be wrong as far as Harry and DN2 sharing an engine, OTOH Apogee did a -lot- of engine reuse (Bio-Menace used a CK4 variant, Monster Bash using an evolved FAST..)

Although, mea culpa, DN1 engine is not necessarily CK but the programmer has credited Carmack in helping with the drawing assembly...

Re: Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen

#57

Post by bananaboy »

to11mtm wrote: post #55
kridsdale1 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC (from being a kid) Harry was 256 color and DN2 wasn’t quite. Also it felt like it had much better frame rate. But I’m sure that could be engine evolution too. Interesting, I hadn’t ever thought of the connection before. Though the “hot babes stuck in alien pods” from Harry showed up as a central plot point in DN3D.

I mean, I could be wrong as far as Harry and DN2 sharing an engine, OTOH Apogee did a -lot- of engine reuse (Bio-Menace used a CK4 variant, Monster Bash using an evolved FAST..) Although, mea culpa, DN1 engine is not necessarily CK but the programmer has credited Carmack in helping with the drawing assembly...

Harry was written by an Australia, John Passfield, on his own and published by apogee (I forget but apogee might have provided some art support). John is still making games today!

Re: Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen

#59

Post by fabiensanglard »

sasas wrote: post #29
bel8 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And his site looks like another thousand, as I'm sure he knows. We consume his site for the content, not for the minimalistic design that exist since the inception of the universe.

It appears the author is leveraging Fabien's branding by copying not only the style of post but more importantly the formatting and style of Fabien's books. Even structurally the book appears quite similar. If you didn't double check the author while skimming this Keen book, you may well be mistaken that it was written by Fabien. I took a quick skim of the content, it looks great - tempted to purchase a copy to suppo…

> perhaps this is all sanctioned

In short, it is not.

I received early draft from bas. While I encouraged him to finish his book, I also told him, in no uncertain terms, that I had released the source code to inspire people and give them a kickstart, but not for them to copy the content.

As months passed, I asked repeatedly to remove whole paragraphs he had copy/pasted as is, and drawings he had also copy/pasted. Later, as A.I became more powerful, I used it to compare Wolfenstein 3D and Keen book and noticed a lot more that was verbatim. At which point I told him I no longer wanted to help him in his project.

It is cool that someone documented Keen thanks to my framework. But I have only myself to blame for opensourcing the code of my books/website and thinking people would use it as intended.

PS: I commented it was a "good idea" to change the cover because originally this was going to be the "Game Engine Black Book: Commander Keen". I did not like that his work could have been mistaken for mine (he also elected to use the same style as my website for his website which only adds to the confusion).

Re: Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen

#60

Post by fabiensanglard »

_jackdk_ wrote: post #52
charlietran wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author's note from the book: "...I discovered Fabien Sanglard’s website and began reading his Game Engine Black Books on Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. Inspired by those works, I wondered whether I could do something similar for Commander Keen: open up the source code, explore the files, and piece together a picture of the overall architecture and the clever tricks used. The style, dimensions, and structure of this book ar…

I think it's a really cool homage, but that the site could be a little clearer that it's not Fabien's work. When I first clicked through and saw a different name, I was hopeful that someone had started a publishing house dedicated to high-quality dissections of classic games.

> the site could be a little clearer

I agree.

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