Keen 9: Battle of the Brains

Post by **Levellass** » Sun May 16, 2010 22:13

In level terms, about 10 tiles per second...

Grimson · Post by **Grimson** » Mon May 17, 2010 5:00

= piece of cake to dodge!

c64cosmin · Post by **c64cosmin** » Tue May 25, 2010 14:22

Hello, my name is Cosmin and I wait for a good time for this mod. I'm into programming and arts (both visual arts and music production), if Ceilick or you, the team can explain me a bit of the Adlib Keen limitations, I could try to compose some of the music. I just want to know what are the sound limits and what should be the atmosphere, pretty dark as I saw olso what would be the file type to export into ( I supose *.MID)

Great work until now, big up from me.

VikingBoyBilly · Post by **VikingBoyBilly** » Tue May 25, 2010 15:46

A Romanian, eh? I'm totally sigging your English!

RoboBlue · Post by **RoboBlue** » Tue May 25, 2010 19:17

You got his name wrong, VBB.

I don't think much of the music should be dark, because that would get very boring to listen to. In Keen 5 and Keen 6, the last level had dark and foreboding music, but every other level had upbeat exciting music.

Post by **Ceilick** » Tue May 25, 2010 21:09

Hi Cosmin, I'm not a real expert on the limitations, but I'll try to collect the information I do have (i've posted it in several locations before so I'll try to find that).

We're not really sure on musical direction right now, but I do think we'll won't to retain at least some of the jazz/funk from the original games. Some of it may be 'darker' than the originals, though.

Edit: Here's what I've got

Ceilick wrote:Keen uses the IMF format, and you can convert midi files to imf using this program: http://winwolf3d.dugtrio17.com/download/IMFCreator

Advice on compositionfrom Mr. M

Mr M wrote:My advice to give you three (and anyone else), is to abuse the IMF instruments, and be sure to check the number of discarded notes in IMF Creator the ideal number is 0, which will almost always result in a glitch-free song. What sounds amazing in MIDI may not sound so good in IMF; I know I've learned that the hard way. I've also learned the hard way not to use too many automated channel volume controls.

Also, check out Bobby Prince's blog if you haven't already. What better place to get advice than from the man himself? I won't parrot his words here, just read it:

http://www.bpmusic.com

And

Mr M wrote:Set IMFCreator to 560 tics/sec in the "Options" menu (Keen uses 560 Hz IMFs) and render your midis at 80% of your intended tempo. 560 tics/sec causes the songs to play faster, 20% to be exact, so the midi file needs to be slowed to compensate... unless of course the song sounds better 20% faster.

Also, Mr. M, you should think about writing a tutorial of some kind for Keen music composition for Galaxy Mods .

Post by **Levellass** » Wed May 26, 2010 9:12

A Romanian, eh? I'm totally sigging your English!

Take this cross! Please, take the cross.

The only better people when it comes to english are the Hungarians.

c64cosmin · Post by **c64cosmin** » Wed May 26, 2010 10:56

@Ceilick Thanks a lot with the information, I should experiment a bit with this program and I will further inform myself about music in Keen.

@RoboBlue Totaly agree with you, I think that music in the Shikadi base should be dark and the music in the Shikadi world should be ,like you say upbeat exciting music.

@VBB thanks for the quote in your signature but how Robo says, you got my name wrong, my nick is KosmynC64, my real name is Cosmin, in Romanian 'K' and 'Y' are not used so thats why I use that acronim.

EDIT: I managed to change the songs from Keen, I will start the song production now and I will send some variations soon.
Thanks one more time Ceilick for the info. Big up for you all.

c64cosmin · Post by **c64cosmin** » Wed May 26, 2010 16:10

I did 3 songs, I will post them as soon as I can get the Patch to work. I want you to hear exacly what I hear in the game so you can take conclusions about what I made. As I said the Patch doesn't work. I have CK5PATCH, I have my UNZLEXE'd KEEN5E and I have this PAT file

Code: Select all

%ext CK5

#Patch the sound header:
%patchfile  134768 "AUDIOHED.CK5"

#Patch the sound dictionary:
%patchfile  216970 "AUDIODCT.CK5"

%end

But I always get this error : Error: Unrecognised version of KEEN5E.EXE
I get this error with the UNZLEXE'd file and with the original file too.
Please help, I really want to evaluate my work in K5.

_mr_m_ · Post by **_mr_m_** » Wed May 26, 2010 16:54

I don't know why it took me so long to notice, but I see you're still using the new scorebox I made for you last year.

Also, I need to send new songs to you and the mod team to review. I've got a backlog of stuff that I've worked on off and on since I finished the stuff for Mink's puzzle pack and would love to have some feedback on it.

c64cosmin · Post by **c64cosmin** » Wed May 26, 2010 17:37

Here I have the three song I was talking about, the MIDI files are the original MIDIs that I edited and the WAV files are recording from the sound board which represents what you hear within the game engine.

http://www.mediafire.com/?yytjnn3nagn

Hope you like it, I can make more and I can make some better ones with some inspiration.

Post by **Ceilick** » Wed May 26, 2010 17:40

Cosmyn: Make sure you are using version 1.4 of keen 5, you can get that here: http://www.bipship.com/collective/11

Also, what tool are you using to import your imf files?

Edit:Woh, you snuck in a post while I was typing, listening to your songs now!

c64cosmin · Post by **c64cosmin** » Wed May 26, 2010 17:54

I'm using KeenWaveBeta or something like that ( I took it from shikadi.net from the modding dedicated section) I managed to play the imf files in Keen4 using the Keen7 but I don't manage to play them in Keen5, I downloaded Keen5 v1.4 and I get fuzzy things while loading.

Please give feedback to those 3 songs.

Post by **Ceilick** » Wed May 26, 2010 18:07

These songs sound pretty good, the only downside I think is that they are a little more simple than the original keen songs. I think they could use another track or something.

Also, for now on please post links to your songs in a private message to me

c64cosmin · Post by **c64cosmin** » Wed May 26, 2010 18:07

It seems that 2 adresses are wrong, I think Levellass could guide me a little, dude if you could give me the good adresses for the files. Olso I searched shikadi.net for the adresses, but I need both of them.

Thanks Ceilick, I will inform you about further versions of the songs. And about the complexity of the songs, I rather let them so because I think too much tracks will turn the songs to noise and that is not good. Two or three instruments always do the job.