Public Commander Keen Forum

Edit: I was over-eager, and posted this in the wrong forum. Could an admin move it to "Other Keen Stuff" please?


Hey all,

It's been a while since I contributed anything. One of the things I've always been fascinated with is level design, and the way a player's intuition / play style affects their approach to a new level. As part of a sort of experiment in how Keeners test the unknown, I've put together a little level for Keen Day '08.

Grab the Level Test here

Don't play it yet!

Here's how this is going to work:

Set up your DOSBox so that it runs at 320x240 (this is for filesize reasons) without scalers and such. It should look as close to original Keen as you can get it. (I've been informed by Malvineous that DOSBox's video capture will use the game's native resolution, and this step may be unnecessary)

Open DOSBox, and load the level pack. It looks just like a normal Keen1 game, except the first level is different.

Enter Level 1, and press Ctrl+Alt+F5 to start DOSBox's video capture feature (there are instructions on-screen for this, so you don't have to memorize it)

Play the level for the first time--this is important. I'm observing how Keeners explore. Who's cautious, who's slow, who gets everything, who gets nothing. When you die, get bored, or otherwise find the exit, press Ctrl+Alt+F5 again to stop the video capture.

Now:

Open your DOSBox \ Capture folder, and locate the Keen1_0000.avi file. Rename it with your username. (If you can, please ZIP / RAR it. Please don't use 7z or any other compression besides ZIP or RAR)

Log into this site with the Username: leveltest and the Password: play4u and upload your renamed file.

Post to let me know you've completed the task!

This is all being hosted by grafix, on the Keen Community webspace. I'm going to ask him to take this all down in about a week. It's primarily for my own feedback on a few basics about level design, but it can also be entertaining to watch your fellow Keeners explore.

This could also be a template for future competitions and/or contests!

Your task is before you: Go get 'em, Commander Keen!

(One last thing: Please don't post spoilers. I want this to be as clean a run as possible, when captured on video. Please do not post saying "Oh, I hated the part where (event) or Wow, it was cool when (event)." :) Thanks!)

Sounds interesting! I've never really thought about my level-exploring ways. I'll probably be able to post my first run sometime tomorrow.

Say, how do you actually play these capture avi's?

K-Lite Codec Pack. Open them with the included Media Player Classic.

This sounds interesting, but I won't be able to try it out until Sunday. Until then...

Very interesting idea and level, Xky. I have just played the level and my video has been uploaded.

How do you change your Dos Box resolution?

And why is it 240? Shouldn't it be 200?

In your DOSBox configuration file, there's a section for your video settings, right at the top, something like this:

Uploaded mine

Mine is now posted. (I installed the codec but it still wouldn't play any videos...but I assume it works.)

mine is uploaded too

It doesn't work. When I open Dos Box it goes full screen and crashes.

Well would you like me to upload a 320x200 video?

I don't think you need to change any DOSBox settings, it seems to capture at the game's native resolution anyway.

Xky, you might want to edit your instructions and tell people to zip the files before they upload them, mine went from 12MB down to 350kB when I zipped it, which is far more manageable.