Using a Different Sprite for The Player in Certain Levels?

Request patches for Keens 1-3.
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Bitemaster
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Using a Different Sprite for The Player in Certain Levels?

Post by Bitemaster »

Is it possible to make a patch change the sprite that represents keen in the middle of the game? In essence, for a certain level, read a different area of the sprite file and use that sprite instead of the normal keen player sprites, so Keen can, for instance, turn into an evil version of himself. I heard having custom tilesets for each level was done in a similar way.

I could be completely off base on this or it could be way too much work but please let me know :) I'm trying to make a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde themed mod, you see, and this would make or break it.
Nospike
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Post by Nospike »

This would probably require something similar to V2 that also includes sprite graphics. Sounds like a pretty massive deal to me.

I ain't Lemm or Lass though, so I can't really tell. You'll want to hear from them on this matter.
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Post by Bitemaster »

Thanks Nospike! Yeah, it might not be doable for some reason. I will have to ask around more.
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troublesomekeen
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Post by troublesomekeen »

This would be quite a hefty patch, and use up a lot of frames.
I've only seen Szemi's Dreams mod do this (released not too long ago) and ValoKeen came close to it.

If I had to attempt this in a Galaxy mod, I'd use masking tiles to create the illusion of the Keen sprite changing colors.
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Post by levellass »

This will depend on what game you're modding and what you want to do. The patch would be big but not necessarily undoable. (See Szemi's mod where we managed to change the player sprite, score panel and items.)


The biggest and most complex undertaking would be Vorticons Keen having two different appearances while still doing all the stuff he does normally. First you'd need patches to simplify the number of animations Keen uses (There's a lot of redundancy in the original code.) followed by something that switches his appearance back and forth when placed in a level. If undertaken by me it'd take a while, my Keening time has been reduced since I started working.
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Post by Bitemaster »

Thanks! I'm not too anxious to have it done soon, as I have discovered and been enthralled with the Commander Keen Source Mod and might go that way instead of a Keen 1 mod. In that case I would just do it with source.

I understand you are busy, and so I will ask about it again if and when I want to do that with a Keen 1 mod. Thanks :)
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Post by Benvolio »

What about switching the in-level sprite with the map sprite following some trigger (picking up an item, flipping a switch, death etc)... you could then further patch the mechanics of one or both of those sprites, making for some interesting phenomena. But I guess a level has to be determined map or non-map from the start to dictate the behaviour of many tiles (hazards, points etc) and sprites (e.g. yorp vs 'level1.ck1') so maybe the above is not a possibility.

Perhaps another thing that could happen is for Keen to temporarily switch into one of the enemies. First person experience of garg, yorp etc have been patched many years ago if I recall correctly (I went trying to dig up all those sprite patches recently but I couldn't find them). If you had some area in a level that was impassable by the basic Keen sprite, you could have him transform into say a robot or bionic sprite which could then get him through that area. There are quite a lot of hypothetical possibilities, without even doing what above posters have suggested and coded in extra sprite images for Keen.
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Post by levellass »

The map thing no, the way levels and sprites are handled are incompatible there. First personing as an enemy might work but there are still issues there. (turning INTO an enemy is easy, but it just acts enemy-ish.)
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Post by Nospike »

Benvolio wrote:If you had some area in a level that was impassable by the basic Keen sprite, you could have him transform into say a robot or bionic sprite which could then get him through that area.
Like the transformation bubbles in Yoshi's Island? I'm liking what I hear, here! :P The puzzles!
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Post by levellass »

Or in Biomenace. Getting Keen to transform is simpler, it's like the crawling mechanic I already patched into a mod somewhere.
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