Revenge Of The Shikadi Trilogy

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Benvolio
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Revenge Of The Shikadi Trilogy

Post by Benvolio »

Hello Everyone,

I'm Benvolio. I have created a new trilogy of Mods. The trilogy is entitled "Revenge Of The Shikadi". The three episodes are called:

Vanished To Venus
Stopping The Skypest
Exiting Epsilon

The first two are Keen1 mods and the third is a Keen2 mod.

The story is that Commander Keen wants to upgrade his Bean-With-Bacon Megarocket, so he travels to Venus to steal some new replacement parts to replace the four parts he retrieved in Keen1. At the end of Vanished To Venus, Mortimer contacts Keen and tells him that he is constructing a Destroyer Ship, codenamed the Skypest, and plans to destroy the Universe.

So, in Stopping The Skypest, Keen goes to the Destroyer Ship to remove the four dangerous plasma crystals that are powering the weaponry of the Skypest. But, when Keen triumphantly marches beck to his Megarocket afterwards, he is grabbed by Mortimer's guards, and transported to a large city on planet Epsilon Zeta XII.

Thinking quickly, Keen shoots his guards and escapes into the streets of the city. He then finds out that Mortimer has stolen eight of his most prized possesions and hidden them in vicious machines around the city.

The trilogy can be downloaded at the url:

www.maguidhir.com/benvolio

but, of course, the Exiting Epsilon can only be played by people who have a copy of Keen2. The first two, however, can be played by anyone who downloads them. There are screenshots available of all three mods on the site.

Anyone who wants to can redistribute them, put them up on their sites, review them and re-use any of the patches and graphics from them, as long as I'm credited.
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XkyRauh
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re: new mod

Post by XkyRauh »

Holy cow! Out of nowhere, not one, not two, but THREE new mods to play! This is incredible!

First off, I have to say, you've got one of the most extensive and in-depth Readme.txt's I've ever seen. That's a very cool piece of effort.

Episode 1, Vanishing to Venus, is very remniscient of a level pack--Venus is enough like Mars where the territory feels comfortable and familiar. There was a lot of stuff in there that was just a tiny little detail that made me smile--your spotlights pointed every-which-way, the tower of falling platforms, the way you made subtle use of the color palette patch... all in all you put together a basic, but solid, mod. My biggest complaint is the sheer size of the levels--these things are MASSIVE. And you put a lot of death tricks in there, like "here's some ammo that you hafta jump into a pit to get" or "look points that will kill you!" :-P Made my experiences not so fun. I got a game over or two and had to really really retry a few levels. I'll admit I used cheats after a while because I wanted to see your ending--and it was well done and cute. I particularly liked how you had all the soda cans from Keen1-3 laying around Keen's workshed. Kudos!

Episode 2: Good gravy--there's a lot of LHS in this one. More big levels, more running around and getting lost while looking for keycards. The levels themselves are fun and all--I just think you could turn each ONE of your levels into FOUR or FIVE of anybody else's... these things make the word massive inadequate. Shadow Keen-esque in size and difficulty, but with a couple of Golden Crystals areas tossed in for good measure. I still get frustrated when you litter an arrow of goodies into a death trap. Grr.

Episode 3: Woah, okay, just kidding... did I say the levels were too big in Episode 2? I was wrong. Eight keys to juggle just means that the levels are twice as complex, but still humongous! It drove me nearly insane trying to do this. I cheated quite a bit because I was more interested in seeing the ending... but holy cow, too many levels for me.

Here are some other minor nitpicks I've noticed... there's an occasional graphic's glitch regarding the popup messages "Keen dares to enter..." where some of your sign tiles will end up in mid-air. This happened on the level just above the exit to the teleporter level, too.
In your Stopping the Skypest F1 help file, it mentions the Venus map. ;-) hehe Lastly, at the end of Ep.2 Keen was kidnapped and dragged to the planet by the Hologram folk, but at the end of Ep.3, he's flying in the BwB Megarocket... what happened?

Alright, so here's my overall review of the entire trilogy, in eight words: Levels are massive, enemies are simplistic, marathon mod.

Graphics: 5/10
Levels: 5/10
Story: 8/10
Keen Factor: 6/10

Overall: 6/10

I admire your patience and endurance, to be able to complete so many huge levels without getting restless!

--Xky
KeenRush
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Post by KeenRush »

WOAH! Awesome; I'll try to get playing them more today, I've only tried the first one so far and seen some screens on your site. Good palette there, by the way.

Also, I'll put those on my site, and of course your name'll be there as well, if you don't mind.
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levellord
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Post by levellord »

Wow.

Just plain wow.

Thats a lot of effort to appear all at once. I can say nothing.
Benvolio
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Post by Benvolio »

Thanks for all the compliments so far!

In a few weeks, I shall release a new version of my mods, with any mistakes that are found seen to.

The reason the hint sometimes goes to the wrong image is not completely clear. The part of the sign that it turns into is the same tile as the one that is the yorp statue's head after Keen has read the hint, in Keen1. In some levels, it seems to turn into the plain tile (the one that all the points change to when they have been gained.)

Xky, it's funny you should say that Vanished to Venus is like a level pack because that's what it was going to be, in 2001 when I started making the levels. Then I discovered Modkeen and started modding!
KeenRush
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Post by KeenRush »

^ Good levels they're anyways. :)
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grelphy
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Post by grelphy »

Looks good. I definitely have to agree with Xky: the levels are hugenormous and overwhelming. Big is fine, but big mazes are just too much. (No that's not hypocracy: even my mazes aren't that big.) Aside from size, the level design was good.

Graphics were pretty good overall, if a bit repetitive. I'm still out on whether the palette chance was tasteful or garish. ;) The sprites were done nicely; good job with the shikadi in Skypest. The vorts (if they were Shikadi Masters) should have used a similar semi-transparent effect, but they weren't bad.

All in all, this is a good set of Mods. Just tone down the scale of the levels!
Stealthy71088
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Post by Stealthy71088 »

I dled it from here, and when i unzipped the file i found it was missing the .tli file. Thus it doesnt work right at all. Could someone put up an alternate link with all the files?
KeenRush
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Post by KeenRush »

The ones in TGMM should work as supposed to..
http://www.keengrid.net/ckgalaxy/tgmm.php
Benvolio
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Post by Benvolio »

Thanks, KR!

And, by the way, thanks to Xtraverse also for featuring Benvolio's mods in such detail on spatang.com!
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najawa
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Whoa, I'm sunk...

Post by najawa »

I just am blown away by this mod. Graphics aren't the greatest I've seen, but the level's are massive. I admidt I cheated. I used the 'Tab' cheat to walk through levels, and sort of checked them out.

Benvolio, you are awsome. Gease, with a 6/10 rating, I'm destine for the -1/10 or less. Well, I geuss this is a wake up call for me; I'm working harder now. This is what I expect for Armaggedon II: Pluto Burns (just so nobody gets there hopes high):

Graphics 2/10
Levels: 3/10
Story: 5/10
Keen Factor: 3/10 (give or take)

Overall: 3/10


You all are my role models now; I've got to get down to buisness.

-- NAJAWA --

Overall Modding capabilities: 2/10
Better Than: Nobody but my baby brother
Chance of Survival: 1/1,234
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XkyRauh
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hehe

Post by XkyRauh »

Najawa, your post has very little to do with Benvolio's mods beyond the first three sentences. Please leave speculation and self-criticism for another thread, or another forum entirely. :-) Thanks.
Stealthy71088
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Post by Stealthy71088 »

he sounds like me on the right day :)

I finished Epsilon the other day. I cheated only to get back to a certain part after i died once i got through half the level. I noticed as i was playing that you really improved as you were making those mods. Some of Epsilons levels were huge, its true, but not most of them. I think there was only one level i actually had trouble with due to size. I was impressed by some of the tricks you had in the levels. For example, in one particular level with a bar, you have a bacteria right next to a female thug, with the bar structured so that the bacteria will knock you out, allowing the thug to kill you. Its set up so that its very difficult to shoot or avoid the bacteria, so you really have to be a fast sharpshooter to get through. I did notice an error in one of the levels. You needed to go back to the beginning to get a key to win the level, but it was to high a jump back to the beginning without cheating.
Benvolio
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Post by Benvolio »

Thanks, Stealthy71088. The reason some of the levels have mistakes is because back then I never bothered to test the levels. I try to do that most of the time nowadays. When I was making those early levels, I just turned created a 120x120 level and then spent, say, 2 and a half hours non-stop creating levels. You'll find that the majority of my levels start in the upper-left corner, and meander from side to side of the level until Keen reaches the bottom right corner, where there's an exit. Now I try to make "open plan" levels, like the original ones. Anyway, it's nice to see people still discovering my mods - the whole modding thing is about creating something that lasts, not something that picks up 50 comments in 3 days and is then forgotten.
:-]
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levellord
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Post by levellord »

Hey, at least you did better than me, the third generic mod got I think 3 comments before being forgotten. :}
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