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Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2015 20:04
by Roobar
https://twitter.com/romero/status/618596591428087808

John Romero ”@romero Jul 7

.@adamrofer : I do have a prototype of Keen 7 that was made here in Madison…

Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2015 4:30
by Keening_Product
... how has this not come up before? Hopefully it gets some form of release.

Then again, the source code is still in limbo...





Imagine if this was actually a prototype of a new Keen game under development now :disguised

Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2015 4:54
by Roobar
Let's hope he will release some screenshots of it. Or maybe he's secretly working on it? :begging :p

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2015 5:32
by Lunick
Just remember, it is a "prototype". There is probably little to no content.

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2015 16:45
by joe-ilya
Lunick wrote:Just remember, it is a "prototype". There is probably little to no content.
But at least there will be something.

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2015 16:49
by Flaose
I feel like they've talked about it before and that it only went as far as a basic parallax-scrolling engine. I could be completely wrong, though.

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2015 16:55
by Benvolio
Even if, as is quite likely, there was no new graphical content, it would be fascinating to see. Indeed, if there was a workable Keen7 engine, it would be an amazing project to port Keen7-9 onto it and converge ever closer upon the Keen:Universe trilogy that could have been.

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2015 18:53
by lemm
Flaose wrote:I feel like they've talked about it before and that it only went as far as a basic parallax-scrolling engine. I could be completely wrong, though.
At least for mod creation, that's all you'd really need.

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2015 19:10
by NY00123
As already hinted by Keening_Product earlier in this thread, and based on another post of him with a relevant quote, it's unfortunately unclear if the Keen 1-5 sources ever see the light of day (https://pckf.rigeltechnical.com/viewtopic.php?p=75868#75868).

Even while they were prepared for a possible release, though, it was mentioned that the Keen 7 proto doesn't have a lot and the chances it's released by id Software appear to be even smaller (Posted on 2014: viewtopic.php?p=71167#71167).

I can tell what I heard it has, though. Again, there isn't a lot: Basically a few EXEs, where from each of them one can check out a single map with mostly reused Keen 4-6 graphics; There may be some external and unused picture file with non-interesting VGA pipes, but otherwise the graphics are apparently just 16-colors EGA gfx converted to 256-colors. One of the EXEs has the parallax scrolling, where for every 2 pixels of foreground scrolling, the background is scrolled by 1.

If anybody has wondered how can multiple layers be stored in a map file, well, I don't know how was it done for K7, but here's one possibility based on earlier days of playing with JCS, the originally released level editor for Jazz Jackrabbit 2. Chances are it applies to a lot of other games with a similar feature. In JJ2, each layer is constructed as an independent map, separately from the rest of the layers. A preview of the variable-rate scrollings, especially a live preview, is probably useful if one wants to see how are the layers fitting together.

Given that TED5 was used for Keen 4-6 and Wolfenstein 3D, and work on Keen 7 was started right after 4-6, I guess the scrolling effect could be seen in-game only. Just making it working on the early PCs of the days was a challenge of its own, even with all the additions the VGA may have over the EGA.