Public Commander Keen Forum

Hello everyone,

Keen day has already passed. But I still have something to present to you even if it's a bit late. It's a new version of my mod. It's still a beta version but it's coming much closer to a completed version. It has new playable levels. Enemies not yet seen in the previous version and ...

Thanks everyone who voted for my projects. I do appreciate winning the trophy (2 even) this year. Congratulations to the other winners as well of course. Let's continue to keep keen alive, right?

This sounds very promising. I also wonder what this means in terms of overcoming current modding limitation.

For example would it be conceivable to have vorticon elites together with yorps and gargs in one level? And generally more types of enemies at once? Are even bigger levels a possibility? Are ...

It's good to hear someone is giving these levels a try.

It's nice that you are considering updating randomizer. I'm not sure I really encountered any bugs that I think need fixing. But I do potentially have ideas for features that could be added.

Is there anything the randomizer could do which ...

It depends on what you want to do. Technically you could simply not place any potentially problematic elements in your levels but that would sort of defeat the purpose. The challenge can be to create a fun challenging situation without it becoming too hard or impossible.

The ways that could make ...

But that there is no actual "impossible pogo" trick that gives you extra height.


That's right I'm pretty sure there is no trick to get a higher maximum pogo jump in keen vorticons. Eventhough the term impossible pogo trick seems to originate from the keen vorticons manual. The advantage is that ...

Here is a preview video (includes minor spoilers):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEY-5VEghc4

some screens

Keen 1 Randomiser levelpack: the lost martian cities


Hello keen community,

I would like to present to you my latest keen project.

It's a collection of keen 1 levels put into a level pack. These are levels I copied from existing level pack/mods and modified to what I felt to be a suitable style ...

I have a bit of a followup on this topic. I spotted another -possibly relevant- occurrence of the number 315.

The tileset (only visible with modding tool or to code divers) has a system to number the tiles. and tile number 315 seems somehow iconically landed on the eye of the yorp statue

This ...

That's one way to get the teddy bear but it's not the only way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LieRYOCnn8

All official Keen1 levels are also known to be completable while lacking a pogo at start, but some mods might not be the same.


that's actually not true. In fact level 15 is the only one you can't. I recently (re)discovered. All other levels you can though. Although you can't access the secret ...

If you hold the opposite direction as you approach the edge, then press the pogo key right as you're falling off, Keen will turn around and fall straight down rather than the usual horizontal fall.

Interesting. This is exactly the kind secret mechanics/glitch I was talking about. The "usefulness ...

great sprite patching work too, that's certainly one of the project's strengths at present.


Thanks, it is a part of the focus of this project. I feel there is a lot of unused potential in the available patches.

I can think of some cool stuff that could be done with on-off bridges with the ice ...

Interesting, I wasn't aware that you can trap yourself in the red maze city. In an alternative timeline keen may have gotten stuck there forever. I wonder if that is a mistake by the developers (somewhat likely here). You could maybe get out though if you set the dosbox cycles to around 100 keen ...

Seeing your request about ammo at start surprised me because I assumed that keen 4-6 patching was more advanced than the vorticon patches. So I took a look at the wiki.

The wiki is fairly decently categorized but sometimes you have to search a little. I didn't find it right away.

If you go to ...