Public Commander Keen Forum

I bumped into this of KeenRush's while randomly browsing around on Beyond the Pogo. [Long story: I was looking for a level pack that I had downloaded a long time ago *quick arithmetic* the last time I would have played it would have been at least three years ago. After downloading like every Keen 1 level pack on the site, I finally found the one I was looking for: pLeitorians's 2nd level pack. I then proceeded to browse around randomly until bumping into KeenRush's article.] It made me think of some "new ways to play" that I'd done over the years. One of the more obscure/weird ones was to remap the controls--swap left and right, up and down, ctrl and alt.

Any creative tweaks to playing the game that people have used to make Keen more challenging?

Ah, this old sh1t... The article was written for Commander Keen Newsletter, by the way, someone has just posted it on that site too, it seems. Well, I probably like the two mentioned in that article, 'pogoing all the time' and 'not shooting' the most. But have to say I haven't used those for a while, should try to get skills back to what they once were...

By the way, I just discovered that level pack a week or two, or so, ago, and have to say it's one of my favourites! It's fantastic! And it was done in KMO2, too! Respect. (That editor has its small faults such as having to set the sprites again every time you load the level to the editor and random crashes and stuff. I used it with Yorphius II.) I was even to make a topic about pLeitorian's stuff, but somehow the idea got lost in time.

Hmm... interesting topic. I don't think I've really tried any different ways to play, but maybe I should. It could provide some freshness. Come to think of it, I haven't really played Keen at all for quite a while, apart from that Keen Q mod. I'd like to replay Keen 6, I should do that soon.

KeenRush wrote:That editor has its small faults

I don't know, I remember it having a large fault, which was that it glitched when you tried to save a level (I don't remember the way to get around that). Maybe it was fixed in a later version, I don't know.

There were very precise workarounds, if you didn't follow them exactly you'd be screwed and probably lose your data.

xtraverse wrote:There were very precise workarounds, if you didn't follow them exactly you'd be screwed and probably lose your data.

Sounds like kind of a pain in the arse.

Indeed so... That 'small faults' was a joke. Ah, those were the days.

KeenRush wrote:(That editor has its small faults such as having to set the sprites again every time you load the level to the editor and random crashes and stuff. I used it with Yorphius II.)

That might explain why the keenedit kept moving your sprites when I was opening up your levels to try to get ideas for the level pack.