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The removed Keen Dreams port (Steam) - source code snapshot

Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2020 12:41
by NY00123
So, remember when there was a port of Keen Dreams available from Steam, before eventually becoming unavailable?

It was initially started as an unofficial port made by David Gow, partially using code from Omnispeak (Keen 4-6 reverse-engineering project) as a base.
It later got picked up to be used as a basis for an official port, which was available for some time from Steam (and beforehand, from itch.io). It also received code contributions from Emma Kranz and Braden Obrzut.

Some time after the game got de-listed, it was temporarily available for another time period from Steam. This incarnation was handled by Nightdive Studios, and Ryan C. Gordon was updating the port.

While the port itself isn't available anymore, it turns out that David Gow pushed a snapshot of the Steam port's source port, presumably last month.
It doesn't include any of the changes made after Nightdive Studios took over as a publisher, and any code related to Steam integration was replaced with mostly empty stubs.

https://github.com/sulix/keen-dreams-sd ... 30e5718b96

Re: The removed Keen Dreams port (Steam) - source code snapshot

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2020 3:53
by Multimania
I wondered if anyone would notice that appearing! Yup — I've been going through backups and uploading a few things, and since the rest of the Keen Dreams source is available, this seemed worthwhile.

There's nothing enormously exciting in it (mostly bugs), but here are a few highlights for those who may be interested: Doing some of the Steam preparation work was quite a bit of fun — the new menu graphics / credits screens / etc. were all done with the original tools: DeluxePaint II on DOS, and imported using the original IGRAB program and scripts. I also had the fun of going through and fixing a few bugs in the original game data, like the "fall down at exit sign" tileinfo issue.

Re: The removed Keen Dreams port (Steam) - source code snapshot

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2020 20:45
by K1n9_Duk3
Multimania wrote: Sun Oct 18, 2020 3:53 A fix for a bug in the original code where it could crash if the game was saved while things were flower-powered.
There's a similar problem with the "Zzz" sprites if the game was saved while Keen was sleeping. Did you fix that as well?

Re: The removed Keen Dreams port (Steam) - source code snapshot

Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2020 13:53
by Multimania
K1n9_Duk3 wrote: Sun Oct 18, 2020 20:45
Multimania wrote: Sun Oct 18, 2020 3:53 A fix for a bug in the original code where it could crash if the game was saved while things were flower-powered.
There's a similar problem with the "Zzz" sprites if the game was saved while Keen was sleeping. Did you fix that as well?
I don't recall fixing an issue with the "Zzz" sprites, but I'd already changed how some of the pointers to other objects were handled, so it's possible that fixed it without me noticing… It never showed up in playtesting, but that could've just been because it was missed.