Public Commander Keen Forum

Okay boys and girls, from what I've read on the KeenWiki nobody had a look at the tile graphics from the Keen 4 Demo before. I found this very interesting and decided to share it with you.

The tilesets in the demo version are the most complete Keen 4 tilesets I've seen in any version. My guess is that they scanned through the maps and removed all tile chunks that weren't used in any of the maps, when they released the "full" version of Keen 4. This is some of what the Demo has:

- interior for "houses"
- a "desert" version of Hillville
- unused "exit" signs
- remains of a snow/ice environment

And you can see that they were planning to do the whole introduction sequence (Keen stunning his parents, jumping in the BWB Megarocket and meeting the Coucil Page) in-game. There are object-tiles for Keen, his mom and dad, the workshop, the BWB and the page.

Here are the tileset graphics (left: DEMO, right: FULL):

Holy fucling garg! This is an incedible find!!!

Have you checked the keen 6 demo as well?

Edit: Wow, I am still just blown away by this find. How did you extract these? Were you able to extract sprite frames as well? I see there are some other files in the demo called: CKART.ck4, CONTRART.ck4, DEMOART.ck4, HELPART.ck4, and STORYART.ck4, any luck with any of these?

epic.

Ceilick wrote:How did you extract these? Were you able to extract sprite frames as well? I see there are some other files in the demo called: CKART.ck4, CONTRART.ck4, DEMOART.ck4, HELPART.ck4, and STORYART.ck4, any luck with any of these?

I used my Galaxy viewer to extract them. The current version (1.1) of the viewer can't read the demo yet (the EGAHEAD is in 4-byte format, not in 3-byte like all the other version of Keen 4), but I'll change that for the next release. Sprites can be exported, too. But the sprites are the same as in the regular Keen (the demo is missing some sprites, of course).
The ART files are the texts you can find in the help section. Just open them with a text editor.

Ceilick wrote:Have you checked the keen 6 demo as well?

Yes, checked the DEMO and the PROMO but they don't have anything special. If you don't count the Yorp sittin on the signs on the world map, that is.

Aw, too bad about keen 6. Could you upload a version of the foreground set complete with it's mask?

It never occured to me that there could be stuff like this in the demo version... If anything, one'd think there were less tiles than in the full version! This is an amazing find! This stuff has been there for 20 years, unseen... Good work.

WHOA!!!1 That's pretty incredible! There's so many tiles that didn't make the cut...some of those wooden platform ones might've been cool, as would the house interiors. Nice find!

I'll join in and say whoally garg!! This is amazing, top notch unused stuff in there, and suddenly the weird arrangement of tiles in Keen4 makes sense.

This calls for a Keen4 community levelpack!

Ceilick wrote:Aw, too bad about keen 6. Could you upload a version of the foreground set complete with it's mask?

Why? You can just open the png file in GIMP, make the image twice as wide, fill the right side with black, and use the transparent parts of the image to fill in the white stuff in the mask layer. That's just what I'd have to do if i were to upload such a version.

If you want to see what's "hidden" in the transparent parts, get GalaxyView Version 1.2 and the Keen 4 demo, use UNP.EXE to unpack the demo's EXE and press F4 while viewing one of the maps. You can then open the exported TILES16M.PNG in MS Paint. That will "kill" the transparency.

The crystallus exit sign looks pretty cool. Too bad they put a gnosticene and a scuba gear where it couldve been used.
Those little icons of every enemy in the game should be emoticons (and strangely they remained in the full version even though they went unused).

Wow. How was this found only now?

There should be an "enhanced version" that brings all these graphics back into the game. That would be neat.

VikingBoyBilly wrote:Those little icons of every enemy in the game should be emoticons (and strangely they remained in the full version even though they went unused).

They are used in TED5 to display the actors on the map. And they are NOT included in the full versions 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2, only in 1.4 (and 1.5 for Keen 6).

Wow! I may even be able to find a use for some of those foreground tiles as backgrounds in Atroxian Realm. I wonder if Keen 5 has stuff like this.

OHWOWTHESLEEPINGSLUGSWEREN'TINTHEDEMOINEVERKNEWTHAT

And what's up with that odd well of wishes tile that intersects with an aqua tile?

AAAnd what's up with those tiles near the top right? The ones that look like a window or a mine entrance.

I've seen these. Always figured they'd been extracted sometime. Keengraph can handle all the EGA versions of Keen (Export at least.) Are the CGA tilesets extracted too?