PATCH REQUEST: "health"

Request patches for Keens 1-3.
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grelphy
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PATCH REQUEST: "health"

Post by grelphy »

Would it be possible to make a patch to give Keen "health?"

More precisely, this means that when Keen "dies" (touches a bad guy, etc.), he loses a life, but is not reset back to the world map, at least not until he loses all of them?

I kind of like the idea of actually "gaining" health with points ( or running out and being left without any until you can muster more). It'd be unique among games - you can usually regain health, but you are almost never left with a defecit (or surplus) between levels.

Another thing - if you're runnig out of patch space, you could try skipping the "final" screen and replacing it with patching...

And it's not like this is critical, or even really necessary. Just an interesting idea.
KeenRush
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Post by KeenRush »

Interesting stuff indeed. :)
But that life thing would be probably quite hard to do; adurdin should do at least the following:
1. make the game save the value to save game, and load it correctly
2. make all kinds of checking does player have health and so on
3. make something item where player can get health, and put in the levels (Even that is already impossible, probably!)
4. something health-meter
5. and probably a lot of stuff I forgot to mention here!
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adurdin
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Post by adurdin »

I think Grelphy was suggesting to use the "lives" as health, so that 1, 2, 3, and 4 would then already be implemented. However, the two difficult issues I see are: (a) how to stop Keen from losing health continuously while touching a Garg (for example) -- most games with health do this by having a brief "invincibility period" after being hit; (b) what to do when Keen falls off the bottom of a level.
KeenRush
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Post by KeenRush »

Ah, I see now. :) This would be really cool..
Yeah, that a-thing seems to be quite a problem. Would it help to keep those numbers high, so that it would take more time to come down from max to min?
To that b-thing. Maybe it could work that when the "healt" is 0, it would exit the level and give Keen one health point. When he next time starts level, he would be very weak (with that one point). So, exiting a level could be kinda "resting". ;) And when Keen falls of the screen, it would do the same than in normal dying - set Keen's "healt" to 0..
Or, what about using Keen's score as "health"? That way there probably wouldn't be the problem with continuous health-losing, since the number is so big.. Too bad there wouldn't be scores then..
Or.. Maybe Keen could just get some energy stuff from every collectiable, and they are vital to his life. That way the score collecting would have something important purpose. And that way also lives could be used, that the Game Over could come some time..
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XkyRauh
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re: health

Post by XkyRauh »

Adding invincibility time to a game really screws with the way levels can be designed effectively. A long row of Fire tiles in Keen1 seems pretty intimidating; but the same row of Fire tiles in a Keen1 with more than one hit is trivial--it's likely to be very worth it to just take the hit and trudge a screen or two through the fire in search of secrets.

Just something to keep in mind in the event that this patch request becomes a reality ;-)

Also, perhaps there'd be some useful information for this patch in the Keen3 code? There's already a limited form of invincibility in that game.

--Xky
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