Commander Keen's Time Machines

Anything related to Keen Modding.
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Deltamatic
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Commander Keen's Time Machines

Post by Deltamatic »

Still haven't started my entry in Paramulart's improv contest, downloaded the file full of Keen 1 modding stuff and had no idea what to do. A link to a getting started with Vorticons or modding in general or something guide would be nice, if there aren't any then where do I start?
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Tulip
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Post by Tulip »

Best is to start out making tiles and sprites
for that you best use Keengraph to extract graphics of a clean Keen copy (you'll probably start with Keen1).
When you got some basic solid and top blocking tiles, you should want either tileinfo (for old style modding) or tilesettool (for fancy new modding, with more options but also a little more complicated), to make the tiles you did work ingame.

Then you need mindbelt to edit levels. I usually make the maplevel a placeholder and finish that last, but that's up to you.
Also I tend to make some specialized tiles as I go, I only know what I need when I have some half finished levels.

For easy patching and textpatches you'll want the Neural Stunner (and ck1patch of course). For story/helptext editing you only need a good text editor like notepad2 or notepad++ (standard windows notepad is no good)
For more complicated patching use the patch index and ask for help here

After that you should playtest your mod, and that's about it.
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Deltamatic
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Post by Deltamatic »

Keengraph doesn't run on 64-bit machines.
Mod abandoned.
Too bad.
lemm
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Post by lemm »

and use dosbox
levellass
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Post by levellass »

Keengraph doesn't run on 64-bit machines.
It's a dos program, DOSBox will run it. I'm worried about changing to a windows\Linux base because running the program will get a lot more specific. (I don't even know if the program is 32 bit or 64 bit now.)
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CommanderSpleen
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Post by CommanderSpleen »

If you compile on a 32-bit system, it's a 32-bit binary. (Well, not necessarily, but if it was otherwise you'd know it.)

Are you talking about the FreeBASIC version you're developing? How will it be more "specific"? Also, Windows/Linux/DOS.
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Deltamatic
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Post by Deltamatic »

Sigh.
I don't have much time on my hands and I still have that Mars RPG fangame to make.
And besides, the competition's over.
And besides, I never intended to mod.
Maybe if some clear Saturday comes up I could try it out anyway, but the disincentives remain.
levellass
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Post by levellass »

Are you talking about the FreeBASIC version you're developing? How will it be more "specific"? Also, Windows/Linux/DOS.
As I understand it, old Keengraph is a DOS program, like Keen so anyone who can mod Keen can run it the same way. The new version is either Windows or Linux 32-bit, this already creates two versions specific to two operating systems, and they evidently don't run in DOS. I wonder if there are other winodws/Linux platforms they won't run on.
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CommanderSpleen
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Post by CommanderSpleen »

. The new version is either Windows or Linux 32-bit, this already creates two versions specific to two operating systems, and they evidently don't run in DOS
This is my very point. (And besides that, isn't it still QB compatible anyway?)
levellass
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Post by levellass »

So that one compiles for DOS? Does it work?
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