How many levels

Request patches for Keens 1-3.
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levellord
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How many levels

Post by levellord »

Using the 32 level patch, levels 1 to 32, 80,81 and 90 can be used, excepting level 20

In keen 1 the following other levels can be used: 64,65,69,71,72,75,76,78,76,79,85,86,88,89,91,92,93,94 and 95
This gives a mod a maximum of 50 levels!

In Keen 2 the following levels can be used: 35,36,37,38,91,95,96 and levels 200-254.
This gives a mod a maximum of 77 levels! (and I think 300 upwards can be used to.)

I have not yet tested Keen 3, but levels 200-254 seem to work as well as levels 91-95 and 88-89

This gives potential for some VERY large mods. (Or you can make lots of small levels, like defense tunnels or bridges.)
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Post by adurdin »

The difference with the 30 level patch and just using other level numbers is twofold: (1) the 30 levels all get marked as "Done" when you finish them and retain this status when you save and re-load a game, and (2) you can *always* do them: if you just make other levels, you end up essentially writing the "Done" status of levels into a part of memory used for other variables, which results in not being able to enter some levels, or sometimes being able to enter levels more than once. Not good.
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Re: How many levels

Post by Yowza »

levellord wrote:76,78,76,79
Hehe :P

... You can tell I'm tired if I find that amusing XP
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Post by KeenRush »

I didn't know that. :)
But yeah, like adurdin said - if I remember correct, if you for example do not use 30 levels patch and have level number 24, for example, you can play it, but if you die to something danger, you can never start it again (unless ending game)..
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Post by levellord »

Hehe I made a mistake!, for no reason I made level 76* a level (TOO much sugar.)

Indeed, this can have interesting consequences:

If a game is saved the level becomes 'undone' and can be re-entered.

The level will can be placed in two or more places in the map and will work if acessed from both of them, unlike 'normal' levels that sometimes go all cross tiled.

The levels I included are realitivly bug free; they can usually be done even if some of the regular levels are done, re-entry merely puts you back on the map, a small inconsistency for the versitility offered.

The teleporter patch has interesting consequences for these levels, turning them into teleports to random parts of the map.
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Post by KeenRush »

Do you mean that teleport-inside-a-level patch or world map one patch?
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Post by levellord »

The teleport in a level patch.

Also I noticed, when level01 is opened by Keenedit it increases from ~2K to 9.68K in size. Other edited levels are stored much less efficiently than in the game, even if nothing is changed; why is this?
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..

Post by xtraverse »

Keenedit doesn't compress the level data with RLE.
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Post by adurdin »

I didn't bother making it compress the levels again, as we're usually not that short of disk space these days, and they load just the same regardless.
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re: compression

Post by XkyRauh »

You never know... I'm sure KeenRush could very well have 20+ GB of Keen-related stuff on his harddrive at the moment... ;-) (just kidding)

When I first saw the topic title "How Many Levels?" I thought it was going to be a thread similar to the Color Theory topic, discussing the pros and cons of X or Y number of levels... really got my noodle going! Maybe if this patch stuff is taken care of, we can move this topic in that direction?

--Xky
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Post by KeenRush »

Good idea Xky. :)
Oh, and I would save everything Keen related to hard drive, but don't have too much spare space.. :(
By the way, what is that compression? Some iD's own one?
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...

Post by xtraverse »

RLE = run length encoding. It's not ID's own, it's one of the most basic computer compressions that exists. It basically searches for patterns of words that have the same word three or more times in a row. It will then replace that string with FEFE (special word that indicates a compressed string) number of words, actual word that is repeated.
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Post by levellord »

I am short of disk space; I have 11.3 gig of Keen related stuff on my computer (Don't ask how; I just DO) Another problem is that my email is REALLY limited in the amount of data I can send(I can't email mods for example so I haven't done one yet.) Can I get a program that uses this RLE?

And to change the thread direction; less levels = unique levels, quick mod (or large levels) more levels = tiles can be shown off, mod is longer (and may become monotonous) and lots of small levels can be interesting.
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Post by Yowza »

What I would love to do is make a mod where the levels branch out

eg.

                                        LVL01
                                       /   |   \
02    03  04
    / \   /  \   / \
 5  6  7   8 9  10


...and so on. And of course, you can't turn back. Each path would end up with about 10 or more levels (although, some are shared)

EDIT - I screwed up the diagram. You should be able to figure out what it means.
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Post by KeenRush »

Goo-o-ood idea Grelphy! And it's pretty easy to make, also. In world map do like this;

Code: Select all

*---*
*---*
*000*
*--k*
*---*

* = solid wall block
- = not-solid block, tiles you can walk on
0 = "gate", block that are set to be solid at bottom, so you can walk past them when you come from up, but can't return and walk up because of them (that "k" means Keen that has gone past those gates)
Hope you got what I meant.. :)

Wow, pretty much stuff, levellord! :) But switching e-mail can help, for example you can send that big files easily with OperaMail.com.
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