This is where you can post your Commander Keen related stories, artwork, or other stuff that is related to Commander Keen but otherwise doesn't belong in another forum.
I do like the idea that time travel is just a shift to another dimension that started at a different time, so it's offset from the current universe's time line.
Of course that means the 'abandoned' timeline is out there somewhere... what if Mort discovered this? Started picking up more of himself from these universes, building an army of 315s?
What you really need, not what you think you ought to want.
So I was just watching Gandahar last night. Although there were some loose ends to the story, the overall premise has potential as inspiration for a Keen mod featuring time travel.
Billy the Blazehog jumped across the pit of acid... misjudged and fell. There was a quiet hiss followed by bubbling. Time... twisted, the years moved backwards.
A young Blazehog played happily in the grass outside his home.
Years passed.
An invasion. The Grand Intellect. Death, destruction. An older Blazehog setting out on a mission for revenge. A plant found, a location scouted.
Billy the Blazehog jumped across the pit of acid... misjudged and fell. There was a quiet hiss followed by bubbling. Time... twisted, the years moved backwards...
What you really need, not what you think you ought to want.
I'm no fan of time travel really, too much paradox avoiding and thinking many steps ahead and trying to make a coherent course of events when you move through time. Makes brains explode. I go by the belief that time travel is impossible, but nothing's stopping you from making a time travel level, as long as it all works out.
The whole time travel paradox thing I think works best when time traveling creates an alternative, parallel universe with the "prime" universe [as used in the movie Star Trek (2009)].
The only problem with that, is that correcting the "original" timeline is impossible and thus removes tension from stories like Journeyman Project where the plot revolves around keeping the timestream intact.
Two viable possibilities for using time travel in a story without messing it up:
1) Time travel creates a new timeline which branches off of the old one
2) Things that happen during time travel always happened exactly in that way; i.e. you can't change things by time traveling because your actions are determined by fate due to time travel
Unfortunately, all too often, writers don't follow one of these simple rules, and thus create time travel stories that don't really make sense.
3) You don't "move backwards in time." You actually set everything in the universe to go through it's previous actions in reverse. Thus you're not really going back in time, but using a "system restore point" like a computer saves its state at a certain time that you can reset back to the way it was on that date, but it's not literally changing to that date when you move it. But like system restore points, there's no way to move forward in time doing this, so you have to destroy reality as you know it to achieve this. So your reason for time travelling better be a good one.
That's a good idea as well, and I'm surprised that I haven't heard of it. It could make for quite a compelling story - high stakes and sacrifice, especially if the protagonist(s) go far enough back in time, with no way for them to return to their regular lives (and possibly even their own time period) in the end.
(Although that would be a bit heavy for a traditional Keen game. I'm digressing a little again).
Everytime Keen dies there is a dimensional split where, in one: Keen dies and the other: keen goes on.
The dimension where Keen dies collapses in on itself due to the universe(Keeniverse) being centered on Keen.
This can only happen a limited number of times (lives) before Both the universes collapse back to an original split (what we know as the beginning of the game)
mortimermcmirestinks wrote:
Now I wish MoffD wasn't allergic to me.
MoffD wrote:Everytime Keen dies there is a dimensional split where, in one: Keen dies and the other: keen goes on.
The dimension where Keen dies collapses in on itself due to the universe(Keeniverse) being centered on Keen.
This can only happen a limited number of times (lives) before Both the universes collapse back to an original split (what we know as the beginning of the game)
This is why Mortimer McMire exists - to destroy any split universes that are created when Keen dies.
I go by the belief that time travel is impossible, but nothing's stopping you from making a time travel level, as long as it all works out.
