A different type of Commander Keen in Doom Mod

You can discuss anything about fan-made Commander Keen games here.
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Kraigose
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Post by Kraigose »

Gridlock wrote:Err, Doom uses 16 colors right? I honestly don't know. However, if you want a better way to get graphics, you can easily extract them from the original Keen games. You could take wall textures directly from Keen 5, as well as get the original enemy sprites. Maybe you did this already, but if not it could make things easier. And if you don't know to extract the graphics, we can help.
Doom uses 256 color graphics. However, it includes colors very similar to the CK graphics at certain positions. Palette isn't so much an issue because I'm going for using the full palette shown here anyhow.

EDIT: It's come to my attention through some gross hacking apparently I can replace the palette in DOOM. Maybe a more colorful palette is in order.

Textures/Flats, I'm not good at drawing those from scratch... I might need help extracting tiles (as the few I got from screenshots seem to work even with my sprites). I did it once but I've long since forgotten.

As for sprites, I'm okay with redrawing the sprites. It's good practice.
I wonder how Commander Keen eats all that food and only gains points, not calories.

... I'll grab my coat.
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Post by VikingBoyBilly »

Kraigose wrote: ZDoom actually had a 3D Floors update recently, where non-sloped 3D floors are now allowed. Sloped 3d floors (think room over room, or platformy-levels) are soon to be implemented.
GZDoom's had sloped 3D floors for a pretty long time now :confused

huh? What? You said ZDoom? Without the G? HOLY GARG :eek
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Kraigose
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Post by Kraigose »

VikingBoyBilly wrote:
Kraigose wrote: ZDoom actually had a 3D Floors update recently, where non-sloped 3D floors are now allowed. Sloped 3d floors (think room over room, or platformy-levels) are soon to be implemented.
GZDoom's had sloped 3D floors for a pretty long time now :confused

huh? What? You said ZDoom? Without the G? HOLY GARG :eek
Yes. ZDoom has 3D floors. This thread was where the current implementation ALL began. Abandoning an earlier attempt, 3dfloors2 is now in the main trunk, and latest SVN builds of ZDoom allow 3D floors (I will include that ZDoom with this mod for the purpose of up-to-dateness).

The 3dfloors3 branch will implement sloped 3d floors, but isn't part of the main branch yet. Once it is though, you bet your Vitalin Kegs I will certainly implement levels with sloped 3d floors where needed :J

http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=28003

I've all ready made use of non-sloped 3D floors a bit in the MAP01 demo level, which is a bit of a remake of the Ion Ventilation System/Security Center (combining the two areas into one area). Screenshots will follow but I need to work on a couple school assignments shortly.
I wonder how Commander Keen eats all that food and only gains points, not calories.

... I'll grab my coat.
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Kraigose
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Post by Kraigose »

I'm doubleposting because I got some good developments.

I replaced the palette. I used a more colorful palette by a fellow ZDoom person named NeuralStunner (appropriate name :V) that had some decent greens, reds, blues and other colors that seemed more colorful and Keen-like. Though some of the sprites aren't as good, but I can fix it easily (some of the colors in the palette I chose also double as brightmaps it seems, like Duke 3D had).

I also started on a demo map - MAP01 - Customs Centre. It's kind of a weird hybrid of Keen 5's Ion Ventilation System and the Security Centre. I feel this time around they'd up the security quite a bit in anticipation for Keen's arrival, thus the need for a checkpoint.

No enemies yet, I usually develop the level's basic structure before placing enemies.

I also fixed some sounds up and replaced the platform/moving sectors/door sounds.

I also added some bytemap fonts and fixed up the menu. It's less doomy-now and less reliant on the IWAD (my goal is to make it standalone, non-dependent on DOOM or DOOM II, so people can play it without owning DOOM or it's sequel)

You can check out some screenies here: http://s773.photobucket.com/albums/yy16 ... Keen%203D/

This album is public, so any new screenies will go here. In fact, any art related will go here. Unless there's something specific I want to link, I'm not gonna link every single image on this thread to conserve bandwidth on my end and other Keenest-folk end.
I wonder how Commander Keen eats all that food and only gains points, not calories.

... I'll grab my coat.
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Post by Dynamo »

This looks okay and I wish you best of luck with it. At the moment I'm more interested in how the gameplay would be like instead of a simple test room to see the new graphics.

Also I find it amazingly stupid how apparently some people would play a type of game they don't like just because it has keen graphics slapped on it. That's just me though.

And also, I see you mentioned ST: I can't be bothered to read through the whole thread right now but I'm gonna assume your mod will also be MP-compatible. Skulltag is indeed a great choice for that. Judging from the screenshots you posted above however I can see you really need to do some work when it comes to tiles: no offense but some of them look like they come from MM8BDM. Am I playing commander keen, doom or an NES game?
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Post by Kraigose »

CKeen wrote:This looks okay and I wish you best of luck with it. At the moment I'm more interested in how the gameplay would be like instead of a simple test room to see the new graphics.

Also I find it amazingly stupid how apparently some people would play a type of game they don't like just because it has keen graphics slapped on it. That's just me though.

And also, I see you mentioned ST: I can't be bothered to read through the whole thread right now but I'm gonna assume your mod will also be MP-compatible. Skulltag is indeed a great choice for that. Judging from the screenshots you posted above however I can see you really need to do some work when it comes to tiles: no offense but some of them look like they come from MM8BDM. Am I playing commander keen, doom or an NES game?
I'm focusing on single-player for the moment.

As for the substandard textures, this is true. The textures are not the best, but I'm admittedly not the best at textures. I can try to recreate the existing textures in my style but I'm not sure if that'd be better or worse.
I wonder how Commander Keen eats all that food and only gains points, not calories.

... I'll grab my coat.
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Post by Dynamo »

Well it's not just a matter of how good or bad they are, the point is that they have absolutely nothing to do with commander keen.

http://i773.photobucket.com/albums/yy16 ... d_Door.png

Prime example. I'm almost sure no one could ever tell this is something CK-related if it wasn't for the status bar

EDIT: Actually I just noticed that blue texture looks like the Keen 5 background but again, it doesn't exactly work for a FPS.
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Post by Kraigose »

CKeen wrote:Well it's not just a matter of how good or bad they are, the point is that they have absolutely nothing to do with commander keen.

http://i773.photobucket.com/albums/yy16 ... d_Door.png

Prime example. I'm almost sure no one could ever tell this is something CK-related if it wasn't for the status bar

EDIT: Actually I just noticed that blue texture looks like the Keen 5 background but again, it doesn't exactly work for a FPS.
I agree, the textures aren't the best for the job...

I'm just not sure how to fix them. Keen doesn't exactly have the most abundant texture resources because:

A) The tiles are 16 color. Doom supports 256 colors total.
B) The tiles/objects in keen are smaller (the largest single object isn't that big.
C) Because of the above two, the textures don't scale up well, and tiling them seems kind of flaky.

Also, the MAP01 level has no enemies yet, which might give the impression it's not very Keen like coming late into the thread. It's intended to show I'm working on levels too. I can't really test balance unless I make my own levels. Doom's stock levels don't do justice even for testing due to the different enemies.

I am trying my best to fix this by designing custom Keen-like textures (not an easy task as Keen had some pretty weird tiles to draw inspiration from) as I don't want this to be an eyesore for people. (Graphics aren't everything, but they're still something people do consider).

I'm up for suggestions on what to do for this. the level isn't even done yet. It's more of a showing off of some of what ZDoom can do for the actual level geometry.
I wonder how Commander Keen eats all that food and only gains points, not calories.

... I'll grab my coat.
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Post by StupidBunny »

The download link for my resources is available in this thread. They're not the best graphics and I could probably do better if I tried again now, but as they are they're okay and hopefully have some measure of Keen-ness to them. Use as much or as little as you want.

Those screenshots look good, by the way. :) I think a good way to get more Keenishness in there would be to make sure there's an essential quirkiness in your artwork. Even in the Omegamatic, which is all machinery and the like, it's still colorful and there's something decidedly weird and cartoony about all the technology around you. One of the joys of Keen is how quirky everything about it is and how little it takes itself seriously, and that can be hard to capture adequately in the Doom engine.
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Post by lemm »

Maybe you can use the Keen 4x tiles for textures.
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Post by Morshew »

This looks totally awesome already. I have been using the ZDoom engine for my own mods for quite a while and I know how much work already goes into such small projects. Making a Keen Mod was also on of my ideas, but for some reason I am never able to finish a project once I started it.

But I do have some ideas for improvement. 8)

In my opinion, the ability to jump should definately be implemented. You can still make it feel like an FPS, but jumping just fits to Keen and also to the fast gameplay of doom. For me, it made doom feel less stiff and a lot more fun.

Another thing are the graphics. I would actually go for a pixelated 16-color EGA style, which has that retro feel that not seems cheap and is consistent in itself.
(I made mods in a similiar graphical style and when I made maps, I always darkened the textures of the walls that faced east or west. This always does wonders if you have a cartoony style with relatively little details, it gives a very nice contrast and depth to the scene.)
As I have seen, you use monster sprites with 256 colors and anti aliasing around the outer lines. I don`t know why, but to me that looks a little unpolished and flat.
And one last thing would be to brighten your maps a lot more. Right now it looks too dark for a Keen Game.

But keep on working on this, as I said, it already looks awesome! :p
I would actually be interested in helping you a bit with this project, maybe with graphics, soundtrack or scripting.
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Post by kuliwil »

Morshew wrote:In my opinion, the ability to jump should definately be implemented.
Can you reverse-engineer a pogo in ZDoom?
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Post by VikingBoyBilly »

Zdoom already has jumping. You can even change the player's jump height and air control to make it better for platforming. Most of the problems with platforming in FPS comes from realistic (i.e., low) motion control in the air, but you can heighten the amount of control to make it so you can move as easily while jumping/falling as you can on ground.

And like I said, I made a player state that puts the player in "pogo" mode, and I even made a working overhead world map but the way it's set up is a bit contrived. I'll just have to dig up my resources from 2008.
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Post by kuliwil »

VikingBoyBilly wrote:And like I said, I made a player state that puts the player in "pogo" mode,
Sorry VBB - I missed that first time 'round.
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Post by Lito? »

So, is this project still alive?
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