Why didn't the Keen games utilize their palette better?

VikingBoyBilly · Post by **VikingBoyBilly** » Sat Oct 09, 2010 22:37

If by "dither", you mean using a checkered pattern of two colors to make the illusion of shading, you could use graphics gale, set the two selected colors to the ones you want, select the checkered-pattern brush, and use a paintbucket to fill the area you want and use the pencil and change back to solid color pattern to clip for details. Hope my explanation makes sense

Paramultart · Post by **Paramultart** » Sun Oct 10, 2010 0:08

That's exactly what I meant!

Graphics Gale is the program I use anyway.
Thanks for the help, VBB.

Post by **Ceilick** » Sun Oct 10, 2010 6:01

Nice job on the dithering, guynietoren, that really looks a lot better.

I think the original has dark grey for reasons of style. Most of the graphics in keens 1-3 don't make use of a lot of dithering, while keen's 4-6 do. My guess is either thats just the style they wanted (pretty quick and simple for the first series while spending more time on the later), or it just shows how Adrian Carmack improved as an ega artist (not familiar enough with his other work to know).

Grimson · Post by **Grimson** » Sun Oct 10, 2010 6:54

Yup, I was impressed by the way they used dithering in Keens 4-6. It really does look better.

kuliwil · Post by **kuliwil** » Sun Oct 10, 2010 8:06

guynietoren wrote: I'm afraid if I find a copy I'll need a dos emulator to run windows 3.1 to run paint.

Works fine in Windows XP. You can load 3.1 in DOSBox too.

Post by **KeenRush** » Sun Oct 10, 2010 12:00

I think it's a matter of keeping a simple, cartoon-y style in the first three. Perhaps lessers skills as well.

kuliwil · Post by **kuliwil** » Sun Oct 10, 2010 12:04

KeenRush wrote:I think it's a matter of keeping a simple, cartoon-y style in the first three. Perhaps lessers skills as well.

"Simple" is the key word - the first three were rather rushed as I understand it. I'm guessing that it would've been easier and faster to paintbox fill it rather than dithering.

And yeah, it does stick to a theme. Why have dithering when no level backgrounds even have graphics? Goes in to far to much detail!

DHeadshot · Post by **DHeadshot** » Sun Oct 10, 2010 12:27

guynietoren wrote:
Paramultart wrote:Are there any good pixel editing programs that have convenient "auto-dither" features? I find myself having to boot up Windows 3.1 in order to use a proper airbrush, and it's fill tool allows you to fill in areas that are 25% 50% or 75% dithered.

So yeah... something like that.
lol... yeah was about to suggest Win3.1.

I'm afraid if I find a copy I'll need a dos emulator to run windows 3.1 to run paint.

I remember playing with the dither tool on that. It had 3 color bars on the left to slide to the desired color value and it showed the color in the box on the right.

The old one is called pbrush.exe instead of mspaint.exe

*rolls eyes*
Here ya go: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12124596/PBRUSH.zip - Download, extract and run. Works fine in XP, though 7 may struggle...

[Edit]Special Offer! Download Now! Paint/Paintbrush from 6 Different versions of Windows! All old, all yours! Download here!

DaVince · Post by **DaVince** » Sun Oct 10, 2010 13:54

guynietoren wrote:Ah yeah... I was getting lazy and just used the color from the MSPaint default colors instead of the red from the image. Wish I could modify what the default ones are.

Could've just used the color picker and worked with that.

Post by **Levellass** » Tue Oct 12, 2010 10:21

What I want to know is, why didn't the utilize the 16 palette better by making "dark gray" slightly DARKER than all the darker shades of the main colors.

Default EGA Palette, simpler to code, but not that much simpler. (I think however some hardware couldn't display non-default EGA at ALL.) What's really ugly to me is the MS Paint default 16-color palette. Blech.

Neopaint is a great program for doing dithering in I find.

DHeadshot · Post by **DHeadshot** » Tue Oct 12, 2010 10:25

Levellass wrote:What's really ugly to me is the MS Paint default 16-color palette. Blech.

The palette to which you refer is the default Windows 16-colour palette - if you run a windowed Dos program in XP, these are the colours used. Similarly if you change your display to 16-colours.
[Edit=Fixed Quote]

guynietoren · Post by **guynietoren** » Tue Oct 12, 2010 20:04

Excellent. Thanks a bunch for the DL.

Galaxieretter · Post by **Galaxieretter** » Fri Oct 15, 2010 12:17

Yeah, I would have to say that the artwork in Commander Keen 1-3 was *god* awful.

But when I was a kid it was totally cool because...
I mean it was in COLOR and it was Commander Keen.
All the OTHER games we had at the time were CGA, I believe CK was the first game we ever had that used the/an EGA card. (No, it was Stargoose.) And beyond that, the game characters were just like a 4-8 pixel blob that represented a helicopter or a car or a little dude or whatever. Commander Keen was the first game that actually had graphics!

I think some of the younger members here, no offense, don't quite understand how spectacular Commander Keen was at the time it was made.

But yes, the artwork in the original games did NOT age well. It's funny because of just how BAD that artwork is. I mean... that looks like it was done by a kid in elementary school, while it helped identify with me at a young age, I mean weren't these full grown men who made this art?

I dunno.

VikingBoyBilly · Post by **VikingBoyBilly** » Fri Oct 15, 2010 13:26

I doubt elementary school children understand how to shade properly or how to draw correct and proportionate details using pixels in such a limited space.

From what I've seen, Tom's drawings on paper DO look like they were drawn by a little kid, but Adrian made them look good as sprites.

Post by **Levellass** » Sat Oct 16, 2010 9:50

I think some of the younger members here, no offense, don't quite understand how spectacular Commander Keen was at the time it was made.

It was color, the screen moved. You had a whole big story and cheats. There were THREE games in the series. Incredible.