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My 1st Mod: AQUA KEEN

Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2012 11:25 pm
by Slayterdawg
Please utilize the below link to download...
AQUA KEEN - Defender of the Seas
in "Beneath the Blue"
Episode 1 - Red Tide

https://www.dropbox.com/s/msjjgz99c1hhq ... %20Keen.7z

This is my first attempt to make a Mod. It took 4 months,
and I had a lot of fun making it.
Aqua Keen's motto in this series is,
"Don't believe everything you think or see."

(Appearances are deceiving)

Best Regards and please enjoy...

Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2012 2:17 pm
by levellass
I will post a full review on the 1st or 5th of November, when I have some spare time. Looking very promising!

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2012 7:09 am
by levellass
Ok, let's see here.


GRAPHICS: 4/10 Graphics are extremely basic and often not altered at all. This is to be expected from a first mod effort, but you will find great improvements are possible here. Do not stick to what the game gives you, but draw your own tiles. Possibly clearing out the entire original tileset and then starting on the blank canvas will be of help here.

Sprites are inventive, even if they behave similar to their original counterparts.


PATCHING: 4/10 Quite basic, sufficient only to change the story and few small tweaks. This is not particularly important, but interesting patch use can make or break a mod as it changes how the player must act.


LEVELS: 3/10 You can see where, like the graphics, the original game was used, and that's a pity.Again you should not use the game so much that it can be seen. In several levels I could exit without the ship part, making the game impossible to win. In others I could cheat my way past large areas.

The blocks were also a bad idea. it seems neat to do things so that players have to figure out some trick or technique, but when it's a major part of the level (And especially in Level 1) it gets aggravating and dishertening. had you used these blocks for say, jump puzzles to bonus items or quick exits they would have worked much better.


MUSIC: 5/10 Directly converted from downloaded popular MIDI files. Several had rather jarring instruments that should have been removed or altered. One of the songs (For the level before the fist teleporter.) hung at the end and gave me an incessant annoying whining sound for the rest of the elvel. This is a bad, bad thing to do. Finding a midi composer to write you some songs, even simple ones can be useful indeed.

Some of the songs however worked remarkably well, adding to the atmosphere of the levels. (Indeed they deserved better levels.)


STORY: 7/10 Rather unique and interesting. Could have been fleshed out more and built upon. Looking forward to seeing how it develops in future installments.


OVERALL: 4/10 This mod needed a lot more work and a lot less reliance on the original game. The big weaknesses are the most intensive, graphics and levels. I hope to see improvements on these in future installments.

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2012 12:44 am
by VikingBoyBilly
Keen as a 12 year old is an interesting angle that hasn't been done before. So this game takes place in 1994, eh?

The music from E3M2 of Doom is awesome.

I missed one of the items in the levels, but the pyramid at the end gave me everything to fix it.