Commander Keen in: Foray in the Forest

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

Though you could pick the same creatures and give them different graphics/behaviors, while still leaving them instantly recognizable as themselves.
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Post by Ceilick »

I'd think either the level-specific enemies the treature-eaters/ancients or the berkeloids are the two prime candidates for 'new enemies' while not detracting from the game. Both appeared only in one level in the shadowlands and its possible they're only found at those locations.

The berkeloid is probably the more useable of the two; I imagine something similar to xky's 'old ozark' from his abandoned mod would be neat.
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Post by Mr. 314 »

Deltamatic wrote:Though you could pick the same creatures and give them different graphics/behaviors, while still leaving them instantly recognizable as themselves.
yeah thats a good idea...different variations of the same species
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_mr_m_
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Post by _mr_m_ »

I got my hands on a recent release of Wombat Game Tools...

And ended up with a new (borrowed) backdrop, courtesy of Cosmo. Since Cosmo used the same palette as Keen, dropping it in the Keen 4 tileset was a snap. Just took a little resizing (Cosmo's backdrops are wider than Keens by about 30-40 pixels?). And from Screenshot #6, it might need a little touching up to blend in with the rest of the tiles..


In addition to that, I might have some inspiration for a few monster replacements after going through a few other games in Wombat...


It seems that the more I play around with modding tools, the more gets changed in my mod...
I finally got around to tinkering with CKTli...fixing some problems with my already modified tilesets. :lol
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Post by Levellass »

The more I patch, the more I find myself modifying my mod too; it's a hard habit to break, work expands out in front of you. This may well evolve into a complete mod in itself.

I suggest 'babying' the existing characters. Blue chicks maybe, boundettes, mad puffballs...
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Deltamatic
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Post by Deltamatic »

You could explain the abundance of young monsters by saying it was springtime.
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_mr_m_
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Post by _mr_m_ »

:lol Mod the bounder to be smaller and extremely hyperactive. There's patches for it, so I'll see what I can do
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Post by Syllypryde »

Keen 4 was in the Shadowlands. Your mod could take place on another area of the planet. Graphically, this could allow you to alter the monsters a little bit, but of course, they would still be the same species as their brothers and sisters in the Shadowlands. So far the graphics you have already altered look great. This mod definitely has promise and I am looking forward to seeing it complete.
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Mobiethian
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Post by Mobiethian »

I'm excited for this already. I like the teasers and the game title too.
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Post by Dynamo »

Looks very nice.
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Post by _mr_m_ »

Thanks for the encouragement, everyone!

I had a little bit of downtime between classes today, so I put new tiles (not replacements) into the tileset, patched them up, and made Screen #7.

Giving credit where credit is due, I took the tree, rock and grass tiles from BioMenace (Wombat Game Tools to the rescue!), edited them up a bit, and made the proper "black and white cutout" (if you've modded the tileset before, you know what I'm talking about) for them.

The only thing I made myself per-se was modifying the original green-brown pathway, and resized and attached the grass tiles to it. This is it's own tile now, so I have a clean and 'unkempt' version of that path tile.

Keen can go behind the tree (as previewed in the screen shot), as well as some branches; Keen can walk on the branches, too!

For some reason, I think the tree looks a little awkward the way it's shaded. Maybe it's just me though.
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Post by Mink »

Looks nice so far, but I think the shading on the trunk could use a little touching up. As it is, it doesn't seem quite Keenish enough. You may also want to consider tapering the ends of the branches a bit; they look a little too rectangular now. The grass and boulder, however, blend very nicely with the rest of the tiles.

And I find KeenGrout to be a fantastic time-saver when it comes to creating the masking portion of the tileset. Have you tried it out before?
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Post by _mr_m_ »

Thanks for the tip on KeenGrout!

It seems this does almost the exact same thing I considered making a Photoshop layer for.

In regards to the tree and branches...thats what I get for copy-paste into the tileset. I haven't bothered to edit them yet. I was more interested at the moment to get the branches working in-game
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Post by VikingBoyBilly »

I love the name KeenGrout. I just love saying it out loud over and over! You really gotta emphasize it too. Like "KeeeenGRRRRRROOOOOOOOUUUUUT!!!!!!!"
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Post by Ceilick »

Couple of things:

-I'd remove the white on the rock and make it dark and light grey. The shape is good and if you can get it to match the rock platoform tiles in screenshot 6 I think it'd look awesome.

-I think it's not so much that the tree isn't shaded keenishly so much that it doesn't match the rest of the trees due to the red. Couple of ways around that: reshade existing keen 4 and cosmo trees with a lot of red, take the red out of the biomenace tree, or make a new forest background that matches this style.

-Regarding the tree base: it'd be cool to have a spread of roots down there, have the bottom be larger and what not.

-Regarding branches: I understand theyre not done, but definately check out how keen 6 does tree branches as well as look at the way Monster Bash does trees around 4:20 of this vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdGWhTvb ... C8&index=1
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