Public Commander Keen Forum

Hi everyone, I am making a levelpack of keen 4 with a few graphical changes. The mod is looking great and I'll post some more information soon. I was wondering how do i add pictures to my post?

Thanks, Tom.

Type "[img]" then the URL of the image you want, then "[/img]".

OK, Ive been working on this project for a while now and even though its my first mod of keen i think it is pretty good. I have completed 5 levels so far and the story is also done.
And the title screen is now done:


Here are the first three levels:

The Oracle...







The Pyramid of Depth...









Dusty Fort...









And of course the BWB...



Now the story (this will explain those strange pixels on the oracle in the first picture of my post)...

After narrowly saving the entire universe from near destruction caused by Mortimer McMire, Commander Keen starts the long voyage home.
To Keens dismay he must first take all of his friends home.
After a few hours of paddle war the Bean with Bacon comes into orbit with Vorticon VI.
Keen farewells Lt. Barker as the ship takes off for Gnosticus IV to drop off the princess and the oracle janitor.
The Oracle Janitor starts rambling on about "when I was young" and doesnt stop until the ship lands on Gnosticus IV.
As the group is getting out of the Bean with Bacon a big explosion errupts.
Keen tells spot to stay at the ship as the rest of the group decide to investigate.
They follow the debris of the explosion to the oracle where they find none of the council members and strangely none of the eight batteries usually in the battery compartment.
After a moment of silence the oracle janitor says,"I know whats happened here... The oracle hasnt been working lately and the council members must have tried to replace the batteries and then ... Ka-boom!".
"So the high council along with the eight batteries must have been blown away to different parts of Gnosticus IV?", Lindsey says.
"Certainly seems like it...", Keen mutters...

Thats it so far. Im going to make it so that this episode ends with the oracle being fixed and keen finding out that mortimer survives the fall in the warpcore and is at home living his usual life so that if anyone is in the process or will be making a mod to continue after tuit their plans wont been wrecked.

New level done! Its a mirage level without a name:



Surprise! added that cool exit sign in the demo tiles...


Two more levels done!

A forest level... No name yet but something to do with damp and dark and ends in village?





And also a cave level (very hard) with heaps of blue birds...






So thats it so far.

Looking good so far! From the screenshots you've posted, this looks more like a levelpack than a mod, but that's not a complaint - the levels look pretty nice from here!

I am a little worried about Keen standing in the air in that second to last screen, though. Invisible platforms?

Thanks,
Its a level pack with a few minor graphical changes.
And yeah keens standing on one of the platforms that has the sun light flicker on it but you cant see it in the screen shot.

Also I have changed keens book animation (when you dont press a key for a while) so that he plays his gameboy (Its my avatar).

Looking really good, especially for a first mod. What is the scale of your project? Do you intend to create a full 18 level mod/levelpack with a new worldmap and the works, or do you plan on this being a small mini-mod? Either way, I like what you have so far.

The oracle : The circle of shading toward the bottom right of the oracle looks out of place and a little sloppy. The lower left of the oracle machine seems like it needs something else. I noticed what appeared to be a grey smudge on the bottom right of the oracle member's robe. Is this what you had intended?

Pyramid of Perils: Looking pretty good. However, I see a switch behind an elevator. I would move it out of the path of the elevator if I was you to avoid any possible glitches.

Dusty Fort: On the first image on the right, you have that grey background bordering the sand dunes background. Although I can't see beyond the screenshot, generally it is a bad idea to have contrasting backgrounds like that. The incosistent use of the solid inner wall tiles in the 1st image near the bottom right looks sloppy. If these are secret passages, then they are painfully obvious. If necessary, you may want to use the detailed 4x2 solid wall tiles instead of just using one tile. Hopefully that makes sense to you

Once again, looking great. Keep it up. It would be great to have another Keen project released (especially because there's been such a drought of finished mods lately.)

Gridlock wrote:Looking really good, especially for a first mod. What is the scale of your project? Do you intend to create a full 18 level mod/levelpack with a new worldmap and the works, or do you plan on this being a small mini-mod? Either way, I like what you have so far.

The oracle : The circle of shading toward the bottom right of the oracle looks out of place and a little sloppy. The lower left of the oracle machine seems like it needs something else. I noticed what appeared to be a grey smudge on the bottom right of the oracle member's robe. Is this what you had intended?

Pyramid of Perils: Looking pretty good. However, I see a switch behind an elevator. I would move it out of the path of the elevator if I was you to avoid any possible glitches.

Dusty Fort: On the first image on the right, you have that grey background bordering the sand dunes background. Although I can't see beyond the screenshot, generally it is a bad idea to have contrasting backgrounds like that. The incosistent use of the solid inner wall tiles in the 1st image near the bottom right looks sloppy. If these are secret passages, then they are painfully obvious. If necessary, you may want to use the detailed 4x2 solid wall tiles instead of just using one tile. Hopefully that makes sense to you

Once again, looking great. Keep it up. It would be great to have another Keen project released (especially because there's been such a drought of finished mods lately.)

I intend to make all 18 levels and a new world map and everything.
I'll be fixing the explosion pixels on the oracle and i might move some stuff on it around. And yeah the grey smudge on the oracle members robe is made to look like they've in an explosion (also did you notice how they carry one of the batteries).

Ill make sure to move the switch in pyramid of perils for the release.

And with dusty fort to the right of that is a gem door, but ive already fixed that.

Thanks for the help.

the stone fortress in the first dusty fort pic is slightly off the edge, which is a little abnormal.

perhaps move the house 1 tile to the right?

Eros wrote:the stone fortress in the first dusty fort pic is slightly off the edge, which is a little abnormal.

perhaps move the house 1 tile to the right?

Bear in mind, Eros: The house is supposed to be lying in the background, not on the foreground tiles where keen is. So it's laying on the edge of the hole. Then again, against that particular background, that would mean it's laying on hills, so... maybe rethink the placement of the house there entirely.

Anyhow, it looks great, I'm excited for this.

I like how this looks.

This 'levelpack' is looking quite good so far!

The only two complaints I have is the excessively repeating tiles in some of the red and grey stone -- It's nothing that can't be fixed up in a few minutes!

And 2, the first picture of Dusty Fort: The transition between the sky and the dark grey background on the right side *really* would benefit from a transition tile: basically something so that the difference isnt so drastic. I really like the effect you're going for here (in fact, I use that effect in my mod, too )

Keep up the good work!

_mr_m_ wrote:This 'levelpack' is looking quite good so far!......

......(in fact, I use that effect in my mod, too )

Keep up the good work!

I like the screenshots, This looks like it will be a nice little levelpack.

Mr_M, how far have you gotten into Foray in the Forest?

Thanks for the advice.
I may have to do all of my levels again as when I try to open the game maps the omegamatic gives me window saying that Tom has to close. I don't know what to do as I have already downloaded Tom again and the original ck4 game maps load so yeah...

Bubbatom wrote:Thanks for the advice.
I may have to do all of my levels again as when I try to open the game maps the omegamatic gives me window saying that Tom has to close. I don't know what to do as I have already downloaded Tom again and the original ck4 game maps load so yeah...

It did this to me when trying to open the tilesets- I put the gamemaps and tilesets in a separate folder from the TOM executable so I had to navigate to them to open them, and it started working again...

Hope this helps...

EDIT: If you try this, just make sure you copy them back into the main folder after editing so you can overwrite the old ones with your edits... but make sure it works for you first.

The biggest thing to keep in mind is that every gamemaps file has a corresponding maphead file; if you've somehow mixed your files up, then TOM won't be able to load your levels at all. TOM autoloads the maphead file in the directory in which your chosen gamemaps file is. So my advice I guess is first make sure you're selecting the correct ( = the one you've been editing) gamemaps file and also check that you haven't somehow gotten a different maphead into your folder since as far as I know there's nothing else, short of some bizarre file corruption, that would crash TOM like that. If you still can't get it working, email/pm me your gamemaps and corresponding maphead file, and, provided the gamemaps file hasn't been overwritten, I can straighten it out for you so you don't have to restart.

I really hope this works for you, bubbatom, since I'm looking forward to your project.