Public Commander Keen Forum

Keening_Product wrote:My only point would be that you don't seem to have carried the 2.5D look over to the pole hole. Having not seen Tron I don't know if that is intentional or not, but it looks a little strange to me.

Yeah I noticed that and fixed it. The opening will look like a slanted hexagon after I update again.

MoffD wrote:I just thought of a potential problem with the boomerang disk, what would happen if keen exited the map before it returns? (assuming that this works off of ammo somehow)

That might be a problem if the presence of the disc depends on existing variables. Could use the ammo counter to keep track if it's held or not. But may need a way to set that value back to 1 after a level exits or begins. Either way it would have to be checked when a player dies as well. Possibly adding difficult with loading game saves, but I'm not sure.

Let me know if you have any suggestions.

You could probably combine the schoolfish behaviours with the stunner-charge behaviours to make a returning disc. Gravity could be enabled for the shooting behaviour to make a disc that arcs through the air. A simple timer that switches the disc back into "homing return mode," with gravity disabled, would probably look good too.


Abstract backgrounds and a palette cycling patch would really fit this mod too.

guynietoren wrote:That might be a problem if the presence of the disc depends on existing variables. Could use the ammo counter to keep track if it's held or not. But may need a way to set that value back to 1 after a level exits or begins. Either way it would have to be checked when a player dies as well. Possibly adding difficult with loading game saves, but I'm not sure.

This is simple, the disc variable is set to 1 when Keen spawns (Easy to do by simply rearranging the sprite initiation code) So Keen always starts the level with his disk. Firing decreases and picking up increases the variable so Keen has 1 disk per level.

The easiest disk behavior would be a shcoolfish-like one combined with linear motion; Keen could fire the disk straight, but once it hit something or a solid object it would 'wander' back to him. This would be much like JotJ except it would go into 'wander' mode in midair.

Bouncing off off walls linearly is more difficult and could result in the disk getting stuck bouncing forever in a certain part of the level (So you'd need to be careful when designing.) In that case it'd only go to wandering if it hit an enemy or maybe not at all.

I like the old Tron movie (haven't seen the sequel) and this looks great. Good idea.

So I decided on the basics of a plot. But still not much to it other than what can be explained by what I have for a title screen. The matter transducer is basically his ticket back to the physical world. I'm not yet satisfied with both hands holding up the disc like that, but it's coming along. If you're a fan of Space Quest, you'll notice some similarities with the dark blue used to outline objects in the dark.

Hmmmnnn... possibly different hand positions on the disk? Maybe even just one hand? It does look awkward as-is.

Maybe just get rid of the left hand?

The right arm needs to be completely redone.
Anyway, I love what I see so far.

Looks neat. Except for the disk holding bit - looks like a humanoid frog with an early Apple Power Mac.

I'd also add some perspective to the disk. The perfect circles are kind of jarring.

Something like this?

His right hand is at an unnatural angle and position, but yeah, that's a step in the right direction.

With his left hand makes more sense:

I think the Keen face/body needs to be completely redone. It's weird seeing the Goodbye Galaxy graphic pasted there. At the very least, his body and shoulders need to be fixed to match the position of his arm.

hmm, I liked the first version the most. The hands looked good to me, and in the later version it seems too far away from the head. But I'm usually not backed by many on these matters