Now what do we have here...a beta!

[Fleexy]

Interesting. I see people are ignoring FileDiff.

[Levellass]

Yes, the fools!

I'm going to see what I can rebuild out of the corrupted files, most of them are pretty straightforward.

I also believe there may be a God mode, I'll check as soon as I can decompress the EXE, does anyone know how it is compressed? I think it may be PKLite, like Keen Dreams.

I see potential in utilizing the intro sequence in mods...

If we can make space (And we can!) then the sequence can be copy-pasted into the 1.31 exe. It's not *that* long. Possibly for the CKCM?


EDIT: It seems that Keen 2 here had all its text files external, similar to Keen 1's versions, which is very strange. SOUNDS and STORYTXT seem recoverable. STORYTXT is identical to Keen 2 1.0 and onwards, just an external file. Same with the sounds.

Saved games are different; in Keen 1 they're just 2 bytes shorter, lacking 2 bytes that are mysteriously included in the 1.0+ release (It's at the end, where Keen 2 stores cities saved like a 9th city...)

Keen 2 lacks the parts got bytes and the 'extra' city, total savegame length 82 bytes with all locations in the file moved back 8 bytes (Because the parts stuff is at the start of the file.)

I think that this indicates that the Keen 2 executable was buggy enough that they decided to use a new version of the Keen 1 exe instead of fixing it, since there is a lot of similarity between Keen 1 and Keen 2 in the released versions savegames. (And why would you put back something you removed?)

[Fleexy]

You like FileDiff?

Also, FileDiff shows that there is a lot of space (00) in the beta.

[Commander Spleen]

It's incredible the way these things turn up. Brilliant find! A pity about the graphics; they would've been great to see.

Another notable difference: doors don't cause Keen to bounce as much if he doesn't have the key.

"In war, do not fire all your gleebs in the first ten nooms. Do not waste gleebs."

Also, I'm trying to figure out why this sounds so familiar

[XkyRauh]

This seems way too good to be true. :)

Edit: At first I thought for sure this was a hoax, put on by a talented modder, for grins.

The story sequence is clever, but seems a little campy--I can see why it was eliminated.

Pretty amazing, either way... *lurk lurk lurk*

[Mink]

Edit: At first I thought for sure this was a hoax, put on by a talented modder, for grins.

Hahaha, me too! When I first saw it there were maybe two posts and coupled with the broken link, I was all like "wow Ceilick and Draik sure are playing along really well, I wouldn't have thought to mention an animated cutscene."

So yeah, major props to you, Litude, that's insane you could recover it. So now time for you to find everything else Keen-related that's been lost!

Edit: Noooo, I'm a Vorticon Elite now. Vortininjas are so much cooler!

[Grimson]

Noooo, I'm a Vorticon Elite now

And you will be for a looong, long time

me too... =(

[KeenRush]

Not if you pm me the custom title you want.

Also, I'm trying to figure out why this sounds so familiar

You know what, I had the same eerie feeling when seeing that message. I even thought it sounds Spleenish.

[VikingBoyBilly]

Not if you pm me the custom title you want.

It's that easy?

[Commander Spleen]

Mink, you should definitely ask KeenRush to set your title as Vortininja.

[Genius314]

Mink: Forever a ninja.

[StupidBunny]

Forever a ninja.

I don't care what Mink says, this is his custom title now.

Has anybody mentioned yet that the hint boxes aren't as wide in this version? In fact, in one of the Yorp hints (I forget which, I think it's in the shrine closest to the Red Maze City) the text goes out of the box a bit.

[tulip]

Well, given the amount of ninjias Mink receives all the time we should name him "Vortininja'd".

On the subject of that beta... I don't really know how that works, but might it be possible in any way, to figure out which parts are uncorrupted of a file, for example egahead.ck1 and then try to replace those bytes in a egahead file of 1.0 or so, thus enabling us to see at least some graphics?

[Litude]

Interesting. I see people are ignoring FileDiff.

There really isn't much to be gained doing this. Comparing byte differences between EXE files doesn't really give you anything useful.

I also believe there may be a God mode, I'll check as soon as I can decompress the EXE, does anyone know how it is compressed? I think it may be PKLite, like Keen Dreams.

The EXE doesn't seem to be compressed at all? What makes you think it is?

[Calvero]

I was going to create a topic here on PCKF about some source code of Keen 1 that I found on the Gamer's Edge Sampler disk. And I was going to ask if someone could find more interesting Keen stuff on it. I guess I'm too late . It sure has exceeded my expectations on what to find on this disk. Too bad about the graphics files, but the cutscene of the Vorticon steeling the parts of Keen's spaceship is something I never expected.

Here's the source code I'm talking about:

Code: Select all

#define KEENWLK2SND 30
#define YORPBOPSND  31
#define GETCARDSND  32
#define DOOROPENSND 33
#define YORPSCREAMSND 34
#define GARGSCREAMSND 35
#define GUNCLICKSND 36
#define SHOTHITSND 37
#define TANKFIRESND 38
#define VORTSCREAMSND 39
#define KEENSICLESND 40
#define KEENSLEFTSND 41

I've already looked at some Apogee disk images to see if I could find more special Keen stuff on them, but I didn't find anything.