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Commander Keen Level Maps

commander-keen.com

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Re: Commander Keen Level Maps

#41

Post by giobox »

mrspeaker wrote: post #14

I remember having Commander Keen on my 486 and it was the first game where I realized the levels were stored in plain ascii. Changing the ascii values would directly change the level... I lost so many hours of my life to that!

One of my colleagues recently fired up dosbox and showed me his old level editing tricks for a ton of DOS classics. I was mildly annoyed at my young self for having never considered trying this!

Similar simple edits often work on save file data from games of this era as well, and often don't need a hex editor etc.

Re: Commander Keen Level Maps

#42

Post by khedoros1 »

lkbm wrote: post #17
mrspeaker wrote: post #14

I remember having Commander Keen on my 486 and it was the first game where I realized the levels were stored in plain ascii. Changing the ascii values would directly change the level... I lost so many hours of my life to that!

They are?! I would've had so much fun with that as a kid. Is this true of all Keens? 4 was my first and favorite.

Doesn't seem like it: http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/Commander_Keen_1-3_Level_...

http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/RLEW_compression

Looking at a hexdump of the Keen1 file matches those specs. Keen 4 uses another, more complicated kind of compression, too: http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/Carmack_compression

They might be thinking of earlier Id software games. Some of those weren't compressed, and you could at least edit them with a hex editor pretty easily.

Re: Commander Keen Level Maps

#44

Post by lotsofpulp »

bananabill wrote: post #36
chungy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While probably a mistake on John Romero's part, Keen uses 卍 in its easter egg while the nazis used 卐 instead.

True but regardless of which one is technically correct, both pretty much share the same negative connotations now. I used to always hear people talking about how the swastika is really a sign of peace, but regardless of what it originally meant, it doesn't mean that anymore.

It doesn't have anything to do with Nazis to at least a billion people in India. I'd even bet that the majority of people around the world associate swastikas with non-Nazi stuff.

Re: Commander Keen Level Maps

#47

Post by khedoros1 »

ovulator wrote: post #28
thinkMOAR wrote: post #11

Commander Keen and Captain Comic, i do not think i spend more time on anything else at that age.

Captain Comic 2 seems to be almost impossible to find a working copy of. It seems it had some sort of copy protection that when the files were copied it locked you out of a majority of the game. It seems this would be trivial to get around, but there doesn't seem to be enough interest in the game to find any information on it.

Any info on how it locks you out (text it shows? behavior of the lock?), how soon into the game, etc?

The binary itself seems either packed, compressed, or obfuscated, and that's probably part of why you haven't found a fixed version.

Re: Commander Keen Level Maps

#49

Post by korethr »

coroxout wrote: post #2

I spent so many hours playing the first game as a kid, decoding the alphabet (which I would later discover it tells you how to read in episode 2 or 3 anyway), trying to get every last item, etc. My favourite bit was the dark, fiery secret tunnel underneath one of the larger levels ( http://www.commander-keen.com/levelmaps/1/013.gif ), which teleports you to the city on the right-hand side of the world map at the bott…

Yep, I remember that level. My sister and I called it the Pepsi Maze, because of its maze-like layout and the fact there were Pepsis everywhere.

I believe this is the secret level: https://www.commander-keen.com/level-maps-1.php

We called it the Teddy Bear Maze, for its higher occurrence of teddy bears than other levels. Though looking at the layout now, I don't think it quite deserves the 'maze' designation as much as the Pepsi Maze does. But all those teddy bears...you could rack up a few extra lives if you managed to snag them all.

Looking at the levels, this one raises my curiosity: https://www.commander-keen.com/levelmaps/1/015.gif Note that there is a yellow keycard, but not a yellow door. I'm thinking either the level was never quite completed, or whoever took the screenshots to make these images took one after opening the yellow door. Reflecting on it now, I think perhaps the latter was the case, though I don't remember where the yellow door was. Either by one of the robots, or right before the drop out of the colored area.

Re: Commander Keen Level Maps

#50

Post by samueloph »

A few years ago Tom Hall almost accomplished to release the source code of 4-6 online, i still can't believe we lost it on the final step. So close yet so far :(

I've created a twitter account just to ask Tom about the progress.

I still have hopes of seeing commander keen released as software libre.

Here's the discussion on twitter https://twitter.com/0samueloph/status/668911938844401664

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