The Neural Stunner

A catch-all of miscellaneous Keen:Modding utilities.
Mink
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The Neural Stunner

Post by Mink »

Happy Keen Day! I haven't had a chance to thoroughly check out all the contributions so far, but most of them look quite nice.

My contribution is The Neural Stunner, a program which automatically creates patch files. Part of the reason I made this is that Xtraverse is no longer updating his Patchotron, and I wanted to make patching Keens 4-6 easier. As of now, it is somewhat similar to Patchotron, but I hope to expand and revise it (this is just a preliminary release after all). Some of the new features I hope to add are: the ability to easily modify sprite behavior and the ability to change string length.

You can download The Neural Stunner here. Unfortunately, this program requires the Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework. If it doesn't work on your computer, please let me know. If you keep your copy of Windows updated (Yes, this is currently a Windows-only program), I don't think you'll have a problem. Please try it out, tell me what you think, and report any bugs.
Last edited by Mink on Mon Jul 20, 2009 2:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Ceilick
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Post by Ceilick »

Very nice tool, will be especially useful to beginners. I quickly looked through the options availible to Keen 6, I can tell using this will make things much easier :) Those future sprite features sound especially nice.
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Tulip
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Post by Tulip »

My virus scanner Avira AntiVir tells me there is a trojan in your exe. I don't know if this is a false alarm, but you might want to check it.
Mink
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Post by Mink »

I'm glad you like it, Ceilick.

Tulip: I think it's a false alarm. I didn't detect anything with AVG, Symantec, or Spybot. After installing Avira AntiVir and compiling a new version, it only picked up something after I compressed the executable with mpress. You can download an uncompressed version here. Hopefully, AntiVir won't find anything in this version. Please tell me if it does or not.
Last edited by Mink on Mon Jul 20, 2009 2:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Tulip
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Post by Tulip »

Thanks, it seems its fine now.

edit: Looks great. Dunno if it'll work flawlessly yet, but we'll find out eventually when it has been used for more mods. I'll sure use it for Silcar5.
Thanks a lot for this program.
levellass
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Post by levellass »

*Sniff*

Oh, this really did bring a tear to my eye to run and test. It's brilliant, just brilliant. It almost makes me want to learn VB. You have everything done perfectly, everything's easy to use and understand, and it covers all the basic patches.

This made me cancel three small sub-projects I was working on. There's more that will (Or at least can) be added over time, but for a first version, this is surprisingly inclusive and well done. Top job!
Mink
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Post by Mink »

Thanks for the positive feedback, everyone. I'm currently working on modifying sprite behavior and after that I'll probably focus on more options for Keens 4-6.

levellass: I think you should try VB; it's very easy to learn. Also, what were the three small projects you were working on?
levellass
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Post by levellass »

I may, Vista is antagonistic towards QuickBasic, but I am stubborn! *Sigh* But perhaps BASIC's day is done,and it is time to leave such childish things. Oh remorse! Remorse!

It would be nice to have an automatic sprite property editor, most of the patches are simple replacements, you could have a little box with something like:

Sprite: (Garg, Yorp, etc)
Property: (Push, kill, etc)
Strength: (If possible)
When shot (Dead Yorp, etc)

and maybe some speed stuff, though that would be much harder. It would make things a bit easier for a few people.

Something else I am wondering about is, since we now know how to edit the window sizes, locations and read times, will those be added to the ending sequence stuff? It'd allow custom ending sequences to be made an order of magnitude more easily.

The three projects I canceled were 1.) KTB, a basic program for changing text in Keen 4-6, level names and such, KeenEnd, a program for customizing the Keen 1-3 ending sequences, and KTXT, a program for altering most of the Keen 1-3 texts. The last two have just been suspended until I see what the NS can truly do.
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CommanderSpleen
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Post by CommanderSpleen »

levellass wrote:I may, Vista is antagonistic towards QuickBasic, but I am stubborn! *Sigh* But perhaps BASIC's day is done,and it is time to leave such childish things. Oh remorse! Remorse!
Never! BASIC ftw. Vista is NOT a reason to give anything up except Vista.
levellass
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Post by levellass »

Indeed! It took me a week to find a VB compiler, and then it wouldn't run the example programs, and its help file doesn't work. Also, VB lacks the clean simplicity of QB, there is no simple 'print' command, or get or put, it's all buttons and properties and complex nonsense. It's good for GUIs, and nothing else.
Mink
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Post by Mink »

Well, I finally finished the next version. Get it here!

With this release, I've added the ability to alter basic sprite properties and strengths in Keens 1, 2 and 3, as well as putting in a scrolling story text editor for Keens 4, 5 and 6. There may be a few bugs in these, especially the latter, so please tell me how they work for you.

Even though the sprite features for Keens 1-3 could be added to, I currently want to expand the options for Keen Galaxy, especially Keen 5 since I know of at least three projects in the works which this might be of use to. If you have any suggestions for new features, let me know.
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Tulip
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Post by Tulip »

I haven't tested the new options in a mod yet, but it looks great. With this tool everybody can make patches.
Mink
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Post by Mink »

Thanks. Do you have any features in mind that might be useful for Silcar 5?
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Tulip
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Post by Tulip »

I don't know if this fits theneuralstunner, but I'd love something that helps with changing those coordinates in in 5Sprites.txt when you changed the size of a sprite. That would definetly help, because right now there is just too much guessing involved.
Mink
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Post by Mink »

Although I may add this feature at a later time, as of now, I want to focus more on patches.

Besides, I think Br1ck's K-Sprite already does this. Br1ck mentioned it in the ModKeen topic, and it can still be downloaded from Beyond the Pogo. I haven't personally used it, so I don't know if it works or not, but it seems like it would be useful if it does.
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