Keen: Modding

In my time zone it's not Keen Day yet, but it is in some places, and I'm not 100% positive that I'll have access to the internet tomorrow, so ...

Introducing ...
K e e n G r o u t

Every time I sat down to make a couple of tiles, especially for Keens 4-6, I was always set back by having to count, multiply by 16, divide by 16, and fiddle around to make sure I was creating tiles actually on 16-tile boundaries ... and most of the time I messed up the first time anyway. Making Keen 4-6 foreground tiles is even worse, with the 'masking' half of the tile image to worry about.

So a few days ago, when I realized that Keen Day was coming up and I didn't have anything for it, I wrote a program that I had wanted for quite a while.

KeenGrout

Put this program in the same folder as your tile image(s). Run it, and press the 'En-grout' button to create a version of your tileset with the tiles delimited by grid lines every 17 pixels (so that there are 16 pixels in between in each one). In Keens 4-6, it also handles the masking plane, and makes all parts of the tile image that are 'see through' a different color. After editing the grouted version, press 'De-grout' and import with ModKeen. See the docs for more information.

Enjoy, guys! And have a great Keen Day!

Excellent work! I really like how the masking half is handled automatically. This will greatly speed up the tile editing that I am doing for my Keen 4 level pack. Thanks for such a great program.

How very nice! I have only one problem with it; it doesn't let me partially mask tiles (Tiles that have a color other than black or white in the tile mask.) It turns them all to full masking.

'Grouting' such an interesting word. It certainly does speed up the creation of tiles; this is something that should be implemented for all the Keen episodes, that ability to edit masked sprites and tiles without having to draw the image again as a mask. (I believe this has been mooted before.)

A very good release, do keep it up!

levellass wrote:this is something that should be implemented for all the Keen episodes, that ability to edit masked sprites and tiles without having to draw the image again as a mask.

Indeed, that'd be the one single most useful graphics tool feature I'd ever need. Perhaps the program could have like something image box where user could see the sprite and see different sprites by clicking their names from a list, and if clicking some button it'd automatically do the mask. Also, another button could make the collision rectangle of given size (that set somewhere too), and one could apply that same collision rectangle easily by just clicking the sprites... Droool... This'd make sprite editing so much more faster and easier, and bearable.

Whoa, keengasm!

Well, I finally got my act together, and wrote some docs for the new version of KeenGrout.

http://www.bipship.com/KeenGrout

This new version has a few nice features, but the biggest one is handling of the masking plane on sprites.

Well now, this is certainly interesting, especially the sprite handling part. Very inspiring and a good piece of work!

Sorry about the bump, but I can't find any valid links to this. Does anyone have a copy around?

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/221 ... ngrout.zip

Here you go. I used this all the time before switching to Keengraph.

ckguy must've rearranged his links -- it's still on the Bipship: http://www.bipship.com/downloads/keengrout.zip

dang y'all, this was five years ago

whoaaaaah