The Ian Burton Adventure

Anything related to Keen Modding.
Post Reply
Zero X. Diamond
Posts: 44
Joined: Fri Jun 09, 2006 7:03 pm
Location: The Planet of the Tiny Hut People
Contact:

The Ian Burton Adventure

Post by Zero X. Diamond »

Image

Yes, ladies and gents, it's that time again. Inspiration has been gnawing at me as of late, and I feel the need to get back to work on "The Ian Burton Adventure" once again. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about or need a refresher, TIBA is a CK1 mod based on the fictionalized exploits of yours truly, Ian Burton, in which space pirates invade his home town and wreak havoc by stealing, among many other things, all of his prized possessions. Here's the intro snippet from STORYTXT.CK1:
~ IAN BURTON
~ in
~ "The Ian Burton Adventure"


Almont, Michigan, was always a quiet, peaceful place. With a population of
roughly 2,800 people, it was rather small--never the location of anything
worth paying attention to. Arguably, one of the only really interesting
things to come out of the town in ages was a teenage boy unlike any other.
While others wasted their time with athletics and other ultimately
meaningless activities, he spent his time developing a personality that
stood out among the rest, a level of cool hard to beat, and a haircut to
match. So much rythm, grace, and debonaire for one man... and that man
was...

IAN BURTON--King of Swing!

~ Episode One: Gone With the Space
~ Pirates


It was just another boring, run-of-the-mill day in Almont. The dirt road
running past Ian Burton's house was devoid of cars, and nobody else was
around for miles. Had he been seated on a rickety, weather-worn rocking
chair on his front porch clad in overalls and playing a banjo, it would have
been just like a scene from every crappy movie about hillbillies ever. Yes,
friends, it looked like little was going to happen today.

Just as Ian was about to give one of his friends a call to see if he could
get together and do something, there came a knock at his door. Well, really,
it was more of a rhythmic pounding. He set down his phone, got up, and went
across the room to answer the door. When he opened the door--the response
of choice to knocking on the door--he was surprised to find something there
that didn't seem to be human. There was little chance for him to look over
what was there, however; it was quick to throw him clear across the yard and
into a tree. All he made out was a brown blur roughly three times his size,
wearing a blue blur and a red blur.

After being out for several hours, as even the greatest of badasses would
have been having been thrown several yards and into a tree, Ian awoke to find
that the dream he'd been having about his house being ransacked... well, it
wasn't quite as much a dream as he'd thought. The front door he'd been flung
from was now hanging by a screw from the hinges. Whatever had tossed him so
effortlessly was nowhere to be seen. Stranger still, a few miscellaneous
objects seemed to be floating in the air.

Alarmed, he rushed inside the house to see exactly what had happened. Right
away, he noticed something that made his blood boil. The spot on the table
where he'd set his cellular phone was now bare. Whoever those big jerks were,
they'd just ripped him off. Rushing upstairs and around the corner, he found
that it hadn't just been his cell phone. There was a bare spot on the chair
where he'd left his trusty fedora. A dusty outline marked where the TV had
been perched upon the heavy, old trunk. And, much to his horror, his computer
had gone AWOL.

"Nobody steals my chips," he spat. "And lives."

As he turned out of his room, he noticed that the invaders had torn the door
clear off of his father's gun safe. Floating in the air several feet from it
was the weapon that Ian quickly decided would be the harbinger of his
vengeance: a shotgun. Snagging it from the air, a grin wiped across his face.
Down the stairs and out the front door he flew, gun in hand. Through the front
door and onto the porch he went. Following one more short set of stairs, he
found himself on the front lawn. Still grinning, he raised the shotgun above
his head with one hand.

"You see this," Ian inquired. "This... is my BOOMSTICK!"

~ WHAT THE PIRATES HAVE STOLEN

Those jerks took Ian's swag, and it's up to you to get it all back. The
following items must be recovered:

CELLULAR PHONE - Has all Ian's phone numbers in it, and allows him to
make calls on to go. Incredibly scratched up flame pattern faceplate.

FEDORA - Greatest hat in all the land. Black in color, sleek in
design. Looks like something straight out of 1922.

TELEVISION SET - The fabled "boob tube". Picks up channel four well.
Good for watching movies.

COMPUTER - Even though it stands on its last legs, still the greatest
piece of hardware in the city of Almont.



Armed with only his wits and a shotgun, Ian must rush out into the fray,
throwing caution to the wind, to defend that which is right... but mostly so
he can get his stuff back.
The only thing that's keeping me from plunging back into this project and finishing it this summer is the fact that I still don't have a full on solution to the nasty graphics hashing problems I've been getting during imports. Using ModKeen 2.0.1, it would leave white and gray noise all over my overworld trees. Using ModKeen32 1.0, it puts nasty hashes all over the high score text graphics and the "Game Over" one as well. At this point, I am fully willing to do anything necessary to fix this crap, including zipping all of my game's resources and sending them to somebody. I think Shadow Master offered some time last year, but I forgot all about it until it was far too late. If anyone can help me at all, it would be greatly appreciated and I would no doubt be able to finish this mod sooner rather than later.

Also, stay tuned to this thread for an eventual sneak preview of what lies in our hero's future. This adventure ends with the game, but more mystery and mayhem is just around the corner!

EDIT: This is what I mean by hashing and noise, if you can't picture it:
Image
KeenRush
Patch Maker
Posts: 1988
Joined: Sun Aug 31, 2003 2:52 pm
Location: Sand Yego
Contact:

Post by KeenRush »

Oh man, this mod will be so great, so glad to hear it's not forgotten! :)

Damn that noise... I got such long time ago, but can't remember what I did wrong. I think it was around the time of Yorphius or something. I don't think there's certain graphical pattern that causes the program to go nuts and write wrong data, but it's something else... Or is it? Can you try by temporarily replacing those overworld trees with some other tiles? (Remember to keep backup of the tree tiles!) If that doesn't work, try getting a clean new Keen 1 folder and start moving your new data there one by one, and try to see if any of the files has something wrong.

Heh, the story is great. :D
User avatar
levellord
Crazy pAtChEr
Posts: 1401
Joined: Thu Nov 20, 2003 11:35 pm
Location: NewZealand
Contact:

Post by levellord »

Your title screen and/or F1 for help are too large or do not compress enough.

Try cutting a black square out o the bottom right of your title screen, about 16x16, that usually works, then you can shrink it. (PM2 needed a 4x4 square cut out.)
KeenRush
Patch Maker
Posts: 1988
Joined: Sun Aug 31, 2003 2:52 pm
Location: Sand Yego
Contact:

Post by KeenRush »

This problem has already been solved, in a PCKF topic. ;) It appeared to be due a patch that accidentally wrote over some tile memory. Or so it seems. At least it's gone now.
levellass
Posts: 3001
Joined: Wed Oct 11, 2006 12:03 pm
Location: Ngaruawahia New Zealand

Post by levellass »

Oh how wonderful! Can we hope to see it soon?
Post Reply