Commander Keen: Episode Smile :p

[KeenRush]

Ok, it is here afterall. :\ Take a look if you want to:

http://www.keengrid.net/ckfiles/modifications/smile.zip

As you've heard the same story million times, here's once more: I'm sorry that this isn't very good. It was meant to be different, I wanted it to be different. I truly hope that the next mod will be good, a lot different than this, and something I'd really like. I try my best to make up some nice stuff, hopefully I can manage. I'm planning to do Keen 3 mod next, I guess. There's so much ideas and cool patches to use that it's really hard to focus on anything; I just start and after some time I'm done and the result is not very good. I started this mod week or two before June. I just wish I could have released more stuff and not stopped so many projects. This is kind of stupid; I've struggled to make good mod and stopped many because of that, but finally I got one mod done, and it isn't good either, but some reason I'm still releasing it.

Enough of that, who can finish all the levels first! :)

And extreme massive mental shouts to those that can do the whole mod with one Keen only, without saving or loading. :)

Swim swim hungry *burb*

[DasBrot]

*DasBrot is downloading the file*

[grafix]

Downloading... please stand by.

Now extracting wkeen2.zip.

Running game. (I'm going to create an Automod frontend so I don't have to recreate my directory structure just to play a mod :D)

The graphics are beautiful. The enemy sprites are well drawn and the death tiles are reasonably obvious.

The idea behind the game is good. You've used the new patches to creative effect (especially the 1-level save only patch) and the story makes sense.

I'm in the "thanks" screen! Wheeee!!!

But... the levels are hard ARRRRGGGGHHHH. I'm very bad at jumping puzzles and these are littered throughout the levels. The levels do look nice, but I can't go very far without dying a horrible death.

If your Keen 2 skills aren't up to scratch, this mod will torture you. Accurate keypresses are needed to advance through the levels, which turned me off the game to a degree. This seems to be somewhat a reversal of Yorphius II, where the graphics weren't amazing but the levels were great fun.

You've obviously sunk huge amounts of effort into the graphics and it's paid off. A very quick change you could have mode is adjusting the bounding box of the balloons, becuase this would have made it easier to jump on them.

Apart from some of the levels, great mod. How long have you been working on this?

[DasBrot]

Wow!! Cool Mod! The graphics were awesome; and i really like your enemies (especially the miracles). But i don't like your world map so much and the levels are HARD. But away from that, your mod is great!

But WHY i am the last one on the list???? It seems to be that you don't like me. No one likes me. No one. *DasBrot is killing himself...*

[Ezjay]

It's not working :s

[DasBrot]

Of course its working. Update your keen2.exe to 1.31 and use UNLZEXE!

[Ezjay]

Edit: fixed it, havent played long but feels like one of the better mods

And no not because of the post above :)

[KeenRush]

Hehe, good that you like it. :) The levels are hard, yes, but nothing compared to other mods, for example Shadow Keen 3 or XkyKeen3 on hard. I guess.

Apart from some of the levels, great mod. How long have you been working on this?

Week or two before June till this day, though, naturally there has been days that I haven't done nothing at all, and days that I've just done one tile or small thing in some level. :)

And yes, it IS working if you have Keen 2 1.31 and you do as told in instructions.

Thanks for the comments, glad you guys like the graphics.

But WHY i am the last one on the list????

As said, the list is quite random, and I don't know you at all, and you were the last one I just throwed there. :p That's just the way it is.

[grafix]

It seems to be that you don't like me. No one likes me. No one. *DasBrot is killing himself...*

Don't worry. Since you're a new member to the boards, it's somewhat natural to put you at the bottom. Shuffling the list so someone else was at the bottom would make that person unhappy, and so on. Anyway, your mod looks good (and the sprite keeps getting better!).

[CommanderSpleen]

Wow.

Awesome graphics, new sound effects, well-drawn sprites, enthralling (yet particularly notorious) levels, and NEW SOUND EFFECTS... this mod rocks!!

And extreme massive mental shouts to those that can do the whole mod with one Keen only, without saving or loading. :)

Heh, that went out the window after finishing one level and attempting two others... these levels are hard. Especially that one with all the spikes and the blue keycard in that little room below the door... first time I did that one I went straight up the left hand side, damn you!

I love the intertwiningness of these levels... so much complexity... so many crazy little details... awesome. The jumping and timing puzzles are incredibly difficult if you don't play much Keen2, but I'm working on it.

Excellent work creating a mod of this calibre in only the space of about half a year!

>Commander Spleen

[KeenRush]

Awww, that's nice. :) Thanks for the comments!

Yeah, and you noticed the sound effects! :) Probably the others played this without pc-speakers. Yeah, I made those with my own software, Really Quick Commander Keen Sounds Hack. :p Too bad the program source is lost/gone/destroyed accidentally (and since it was in VB, I didn't compile it to exe either). That's why all the sounds aren't changed, I just didn't have time/interest to write another editor. I'll do that sometime later, though.

[grafix]

If only you hadn't erased your Windows partition whilst installing Linux... we could have made sounds effects much more easily. (Bad grammar due to worse spelling... how do you spell easilier?)

I like VB for prototyping, but I really should back up some of my better projects instead of running them from source. Also, remember to save your work before you press Run - I've lost so many programs because VB crashed when I ran them.

[CommanderSpleen]

That's it... I'm not releasing my 1LM until the sound effects are modified (same goes for CK:MB, too). You must tell me how this utility worked, then I can attempt to create another.

>Commander Spleen

[KeenRush]

The sound format is rather simple, but I was even lazier and made even easier. The sounds are stored inside the exe in Keen 2 and 3. It would've been trickier to make sound editor that would allow to change the sizes of those sounds and so on, so I just made editor that can edit the actual sound data. If you look at SOUNDS.CK2, there's just the sound data and FFFFs to mark the ending of a sound sample. I made editor that would edit those, and not change the sizes of sounds, to keep things easily under control. :) That worked nicely (as you probably can hear), I had no need to be able to change the actual lenght of sounds. :)

Edit: Spleen: I hope I can get working on new editor somewhat soon. I don't promise, but I try. ;)

[Ceilick]

garg, this mod is insanely hard!! i love the graphics though, very nice. I also like the way the ship itself seems alive.