Keen time travelling

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Keening_Product
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Keen time travelling

Post by Keening_Product »

Why not?

Has Keen time travelled in a mod that I'm forgetting or something?

And I'd like opinions: would you prefer to see Keen do it by making a new machine, adding to the BwB, adding to his wrist computer or by accident/space anomaly/Q/whatever?
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szemi
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Post by szemi »

Not a bad idea. ;)
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Post by Boreas249 »

I think Zoltan travelled back in time, not sure.
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Roobar
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Post by Roobar »

I think it's not that good idea. Time traveling is excessively used. It's been squeezed many times. It's not a new or fresh idea. There are many examples where time traveling, when went into a franchise, the franchise whether it was a game or a movie, gets stale and out of fresh ideas.

The more important question though is why Billy would want to travel back in time? Maybe preventing Mortimer from born? And what will be the time paradoxes if Billy interfere with the past? Being with an IQ of 314, Billy should know that traveling back in time actually would be like moving to a different universe. And everything that he change there won't affect his own time and universe. And that means, when he returns back to his time, nothing will be changed. What will happen if he stays for long time, like 2, 3 or 10 years in the past and returns back? Does he mature or does the time sops when he is back in time? And if he prevent something from happening, how he will know what is the effect of this in the long term if he doesn't stay long enough to know it and if it was worth it?

There are so many questions actually (we even discussed this before), which we should answer first before start doing time traveling, so in the end it doesn't even matter what or when he change in the past. Therefore time traveling is not a good idea.
Last edited by Roobar on Mon Mar 18, 2013 18:58, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Benvolio »

What would be very cool would be if time travel was actually incorporated into a Keen level, modded or fangame. If there was a fourth dimension added to a puzzle on top of keycards, bridges, one-way tiles et cetera.

If for instance you had to, I dunno, get a green keycard, go through a green door to an area with a time travel portal and another green door. Enter the time portal, to go back 10 minutes, then get the green keycard again, then go to the green door area again and open the second green door, allowing you to proceed.

Obviously that wasn't very clever or well thought out but there are real geniuses in this community who could probably think up something fascinating. In a mod it would have to be an illusion with teleporters or something. But in a fangame the engine could maybe record exactly the position of everything during the course of the game, thus allowing the player to return to a previous time.


Or alternatively one could simply make a standard old-style mod called.... SEVENTIES KEEN! Actually wait we already had tulip's Bleen! :P
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Roobar
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Post by Roobar »

You're most probably talking about reversing the time, which we saw in Braid.

Another thing that could be done is switching between present tileset/level and past tileset/level (like in Zelda 3). But that's also like switching between universes and not actually time traveling.
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Post by Benvolio »

very true. but consider, time travel is as good as impossible. Thus any representation thereof, be it The Time Machine (1960) or someone's keen mod, is an illusion! so in the fictional suspense of disbelief it is time travel whilst in all reality it is like you say, just a switch of universe.

I wasn't talking about reversing time, rather a jump to a previous (or future) time. Maybe keen would see himself - Prisoner of Azkaban style - and maybe that would be an integral part of the story of the level. Perhaps a boss has an IQ of 3140 so in order to outsmart it, ten Keens are needed and so the player has to strategically deal some death blows to the boss while also seeking out the next time travel portal so that he can go back in time and be duplicated.
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Post by KeenEmpire »

realkeenplayer (I believe) had a level where you would try to avoid your past self in the armageddon machine.

Now if only I could remember the rest of it..
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Post by Ceilick »

Time travel could be cool, but as a means to further a plot; time travel shouldn't be the plot.

I like Benvolio's ideas, particularly approaching it within a level, and wiivn's idea; what if Keen goes through a section of level, then 'time travels' to the 'same' area but everything is old and decayed, or decimated by Mortimer...
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Post by Flaose »

I like the idea a lot! It wouldn't even be that difficult (with the exception of memory constraints, I suppose) to create the same level two or three times to represent different time periods, whether puzzle based or aesthetic based.
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Post by Lava89 »

Flaose wrote:I like the idea a lot! It wouldn't even be that difficult (with the exception of memory constraints, I suppose) to create the same level two or three times to represent different time periods, whether puzzle based or aesthetic based.
Yeah, a Journeyman Project style mod would be cool. Like seeing Keen go to say, Rome or Egypt. Mort wanted to destroy the galaxy in GG, then the Universe in TUIT, why not use the time stream to create destruction?

Enslaving Earth's past would be awesome, or enslaving an alien race way before Keen's time so they become stronger with future technology and even more loyal to Mort by the time Keen would fight them.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. :P
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Post by Levellass »

I worked a bit on this; getting certain items meant that certain objects in the level ceased to exit (Or appeared.), doing something in level x would undo your completion of level y, and so on.

One item i had was the 'scroll of choice' in Keen 4. Getting the scroll of choice immediately meant you had already picked the harder difficulty level. (On easy, you picked medium, on medium, hard, on hard, there was no scroll.) The entire game was then at the new difficulty.

Another item was the 'pi jump' (Don't ask.) Getting various jumps would alter levels in the game. So for example blowing up the reactor in the past meant the level 4 building was not the evil security company headquarters, but a lemonade stand. Level structure would be mostly preserved, but signs would change, hazards be gone or moved and suchlike.

Then there was the time freeze. Does what it says on the tin.

Many of these ideas will be given a non time travel implementation in upcoming mods.
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Post by troublesomekeen »

Benvolio wrote:In a mod it would have to be an illusion with teleporters or something.
Reminds me of MrBlack's "Duality" level in his Keen 4 levelpack. Door tiles could be made to look like Time Machines or some kind of time-warping-zones (i.e. Chrono Trigger). Erk. I think I got that backwards. One could place "Miragia/Door tiles" over background tiles that look like a Time Portal.
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Post by Bablet »

Isn't saving a whole bunch in the game just convenient time travel? XD That's what I always thought of it as!

... Okay, I rationalized. Either way.
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Post by Levellass »

Alternate dimensions; each time you die and reload, Mortimer McMire wins in a universe.

Each game you play creates hundreds of universes where Keen dies.


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