Introduction and a question

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happygrue
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Joined: Wed Jan 15, 2014 4:37 pm

Introduction and a question

Post by happygrue »

Hello! A long time ago there was a kid who loved Keen. That kid was me.

Fast forward some years, and I have my own kid! Around the age of 3 he was interested enough in games that he really wanted "his own thing to try", so I fired up DosBox and sorted through some old CDs and suddenly there he was: dying over and over and over (and over) trying to get past the very first snail and pit trap of Goodbye Galaxy. But he was undaunted! He loved this game. It did not bother him that he crashed and burned, he wanted to do it again. I forget the timeline, but eventually it all clicked and suddenly he was beating levels. He would load a save every time he died, but he was doing it! He beat the episode. Suddenly I was on the hook for more stuff!

He played his way through the various Keens, and Monster Bash and got pretty good. By the time he was about six or seven I was casting around for other things and stumbled upon the Keen Wiki... filled with NEW KEEN STUFF, and I boggled his little mind (and mine too - great work people)!

He really wanted to make his own mods by the time he was 8 and I started slapping stuff together but he got discouraged and somewhat confused and we halted before really getting started.

Fast forward to about a month ago... My son is now 10. He plays "on iron man mode" and recently had an epic run on Episode III where he had 15+ Keens going into the Mangling Machine and lost them all... causing his three year old brother (who was watching) to cry because "he was so close".

The time was ripe to try again. After bugging me about making a mod off and on for years we finally put everything in place. He wanted to start with Episode I, of course, and redo them ALL in order with his own story, so off I went to see how Vorticons mods could be made. I followed Xky's excellent checklist with a few modifications to get the tools working and off he went with much success - he's completed *most* of his own mod, having changed a bunch of stuff around. However, we got stuck with fin2bmp and getting his art and text into the ending. I played around with it and got stuck.

Before I am finished looking into the issue he's now wanting to do a Galaxy mod, so off I wander to Ceilick's Keen Galaxy Modding Tutorial, thinking I'll set him up hacking the artwork while I go back and figure out how to fix the Episode I ending stuff... But being a busy dude (did I mention that I have 4 boys?) he is actually moving along at a clip and outpaces me on this too. Now he's wanting to edit sound stuff so again I'm off using what time I have on this figuring out how IF and HOW I should let a 10 year old create stuff that I will be forced to listen to for the next many years over and over... ;)

In looking at KeenWave I stumble upon Abiathar, and this leads me to the question. We have sitting around a modded Keen1 playable beta ("complete" in the eyes of a 10 year old who loves "pixelated games and music" other than missing ending story and art), and a Galaxy mod with sprite art well underway. After looking at Abiathar, it seems to me that perhaps he should be using that instead?

Is it worth trying to convert both of these projects to Abiathar, or should I try to finish with existing tools? Obviously I'll be needing to post details on the issues I've been having as I've reached the point where I need help. But I just wanted to figure out, if possible, how to focus my energy.

Any thoughts or tips from people in the know?

Thanks!
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Fleexy
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Post by Fleexy »

Hi, I'm the author of Abiathar! It's great to hear about new modders.

Abiathar is an editor of levels, tile properties, and sound for the Galaxy episodes and Keen Dreams (plus Bio Menace, NetKeen, and similar games). For Vorticons modding, KeenGraph and Mindbelt are definitely best in class. I've personally never gotten FIN2BMP working correctly, but Levellass (a very prominent patcher and tool creator, the author of KeenGraph) can probably help you with that.

For Galaxy, I personally find Abiathar+KeenGraph to be the best tool stack. Converting to Abiathar from TOM, Galactile, and KeenWave is very doable. I find that Abiathar has fewer bugs and more features those tools, and it integrates three previously disjoint processes (level editing, tileinfo management, and sound import/export, respectively) into one program. I or others (notably Lemm) can help you get converted. You can make use of as much or little of the program as you need; it's entirely possible to use Abiathar for levels but KeenWave for sound, for example. If you do choose to stay with older tools, I'm sure you can manage too. If you get into really intense source-code modding (like Atroxian Realm, for instance), you'll effectively have to use Abiathar.

Welcome to the Keen community!
levellass
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Joined: Wed Oct 11, 2006 12:03 pm
Location: Ngaruawahia New Zealand

Post by levellass »

Hey there. Conversion can be quite simple, for Keengraph just take the game files you've made and extract, now you should be able to import everything you need, including the ending graphics. (Just copy your un-fin2bmp'd stuff to the 1EXT000x.BMP files and import!)

Abithar can be a little more tricky but it shouldn't be too hard to get everything together, and if problems persist you can always zip it up and send it to me or Fleex and we can covert it for you and send it back.
happygrue
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Joined: Wed Jan 15, 2014 4:37 pm

Post by happygrue »

Thanks for the answers!

I don't know why I didn't see that Abiathar was for Galaxy... but I guess that's why it didn't come up on my radar until we started in on the Galaxy mods.

I'll shelve that for now and go back to see if I can't sort out Keengraph and the ending of his Vorticon mod first.

Thanks for the help!
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Bitemaster
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Location: Windows 95 CD (with PLus!)

Post by Bitemaster »

Hi happygrue, Are you using CKPatch? This might be helpful for you: http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/Patch:E ... 8Keen_1%29 (The ending sequence text is actually stored in the EXE file, of course.)
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