Is the tool available that made these maps?
Do you mean the original level editor, or the one that produced the images on that site? If the former:
Commander Keen Level Maps
51–60 of 64 posts
Re: Commander Keen Level Maps
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It has been a while since I tried. These are the only two sites I could find that mention it:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/captain-comic-ii-fractured...
https://raisedonvideogames.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/captain-...
Re: Commander Keen Level Maps
#53Commander 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.
You'd get to a certain point where there's a room with an NPC. It's impossible to get out of the room (too high to jump, you don't have the ability to fly yet). The NPC tells you that you're missing an important item. I got in touch with Michael Denio, the creator of Captain Comic, years later and he told me that the "important item" is the game itself (and was kind enough to offer to send me a physical copy of the game by himself).
I think it's one of the earliest examples of a game pretending to be properly cracked, yet ending up in an unwinnable state, misleading the crackers.
Re: Commander Keen Level Maps
#54Jason Scott has archived Commander Keen, playable in Browser via DosBox
https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_1_-_Maroone...
https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_2_-_The_Ear...
https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_4_-_Secret_...
https://archive.org/details/msdos__K6DEMO__shareware
https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_-_Keen_Drea...
Commander Keen created iD software.
Also noteworthy for the use of John Carmack's adaptive tile refresh to smooth scroll on early 90s PCs.
Re: Commander Keen Level Maps
#55See also: http://nesmaps.com/
Might as well go to the mother lode: http://vgmaps.com/
Re: Commander Keen Level Maps
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
That wiki is brilliant, thanks!
Re: Commander Keen Level Maps
#57I 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…
Yes, http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/Keen_1_Levels says the "teddy bear maze" is the secret level and that the yellow door never existed.
Not sure if a mistake or red herring; probably the former but in a more tortuous level layout it would be kind of funny/cruel to make people work to get the green key to get the yellow key to get nowhere extra at all...
Thanks to khedoros1 for linking to the wiki, which has lots of good stuff on (and also lets you look at the level maps while the originally linked site is down): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14656926
Re: Commander Keen Level Maps
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It has been a while since I tried. These are the only two sites I could find that mention it: http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/captain-comic-ii-fractured... https://raisedonvideogames.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/captain-...
Interesting, thanks. By this point, I'll bet there's a page somewhere with the codes...in fact, the copy that I downloaded has a file "PROTCODE.TXT" with the codes to look up.
They look like they're just 16-bit values. It tells you to look up things like "A, 5". In the table, there are 16 letters (columns) and 128 numbers (rows). I'll bet it's just checked against some algorithm in the game code.
It's tough to see where some of the code comes from, though. The game copies chunks of the binary around within itself, and constructs function calls "by hand" (pushing a memory address byte-by-byte, then "returning" to it). It's not horrendous to trace, but more than a half-hour job for me.
Re: Commander Keen Level Maps
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Commander Keen 4 and Duke Nukem 2 with a Gravis joystick of some description.
This one maybe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravis_PC_GamePad
We got Keen 4 bundled with this Gravis joystick: http://mocagh.org/forsale/gravis-back.jpg
I played Keen exclusively with a joystick for years and was pretty good at it. If you sat me down with the exact same joystick I could probably still play pretty well, but the much looser feel of a modern joystick would screw me up. When my brother and I would play Keen, we'd make the plastic on the joystick case creak from the frantic maneuvering!
Re: Commander Keen Level Maps
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Captain Comic was very difficult. Great game.
I nearly finished it 'coop' haha :) i did the jumping my* brother the walking
Funny to hear that my brother and I aren't the only ones. We always played Captain Comic with me walking and jumping and him shooting (continuously). Neither of us were good enough to beat it alone as little kids.