Public Commander Keen Forum

Hello, I know Keen 4 and Keen Dreams have unused musics. But which is K4 and which is KDR unused music?

dopey.imf -> ???
bullfrog -> ???
iscream -> (I know it's Keen Dreams ending)


Next (technical) question:

I tested the unused K4/KDR musics in Keen 4 by using the extra music and extra level patch, so I added them as extra songs. Everything in the patches is correct, but the new musics don't work. Instead of the unused songs there is only silence.
What causes this?

What makes you say any of them were composed for Keen Dreams? To my knowledge, only "You've Got To Eat Your Vegetables" was originally composed for Dreams. Dopey and Bullfrog were composed for Keen 4, and I Scream for Keen 5.

Because I doubt that Keen Dreams was planned to have only 1 music (Eat your veggies on the title).

As for iscream.imf, it wasn't for Keen 5, because that would be included in the unused Keen 5 musics.
Keen 5 has two unused songs: jazzme (not in the AUDIO.CK5) and 1 that is in the AUDIO.CK5 file.

szemi wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2017 19:27 I tested the unused K4/KDR musics in Keen 4 by using the extra music and extra level patch, so I added them as extra songs. Everything in the patches is correct, but the new musics don't work. Instead of the unused songs there is only silence.
What causes this?

Some months ago I was playing around with these unused .IMFs and ran into the same issue. After some research I had found that Keen uses type 1 IMF, but poking around in these files revealed they were type 0, explaining why they didn't play. I used KeenWave to convert them to the proper type and they worked.
It sounds like you're having the exact same trouble I did. Here, try these, the same .IMFs but converted to type 1.

szemi wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2017 13:39 I doubt that Keen Dreams was planned to have only 1 music (Eat your veggies on the title).

I agree, I think I'd get pretty sick of "Eat Your Veggies" after listening to it for however long it takes to win Keen Dreams. The unused songs do sound a bit more basic than most Galaxy songs, like maybe they were made earlier when Bobby Prince wasn't quite as experienced. (Or perhaps they were just unfinished.)
One question though. Where does it say iscream.imf was meant for the ending of Dreams, or for Keen5? And which is it?

proYorp wrote: ↑Thu May 18, 2017 7:08

szemi wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2017 13:39 I doubt that Keen Dreams was planned to have only 1 music (Eat your veggies on the title).

I agree, I think I'd get pretty sick of "Eat Your Veggies" after listening to it for however long it takes to win Keen Dreams.

I also agree, but even Catacomb 3D had only one song in the entire game ("Too Hot to Handle", which was later recycled to Keen 4). It's also possible Bobby only got to record and finish "Eat Your Veggies" for Dreams before they decided there's no room for music in the game.

proYorp wrote: ↑Thu May 18, 2017 7:08One question though. Where does it say iscream.imf was meant for the ending of Dreams, or for Keen5? And which is it?

In the Video Game Music Preservation Foundation Wiki (ugh what a title!). You can also find pages for "Dopey" and "Bullfrog", where it's stated they were intended for Keen 4. There was also another site that wrote about these songs but I can't seem to find it...

Having only one song and restricting it to the title screen wouldn't have been out of the question at the time. Plenty of games did that I mean, it would even have been the first Keen game with music.

Dreams does feel like what it was: a contractual obligation. A decent one, mind. I'd be surprised if extra music was seriously considered.

Another interesting fact about Keen Dreams and music is that the released source code for Keen Dreams doesn't even use the simple IMF format for music playback. Instead, the music was supposed to contain events on multiple tracks, much more like the MIDI fomat. However, the implementation in Keen Dreams was unfinished, so I doubt there were any actual music files in this format.

Oh, that's interesting! Was a MIDI-like system uncommon in games at the time?

I'd say no. The PC version of Prince of Persia (1989) used the MIDI format for music and so did Dark Ages (1991). Jill of the Jungle as well as Word Rescue and Math Rescue (all 1992) use CMF, which is very similar to MIDI.

Thank you for the insight

I think, in the meantime, I solved the puzzle:

iscream.imf -> "I scream" is for Keen Dreams, because in the unused animation Keen gets up and screams of the veggie nightmare.