Engines to use for making games/keen mods

[Levellass]

I'm sorry, WHAT?


When did that happen?

maybe i should do it in Keen 5 but, like i asked, is it really much of a big deal if it comes with the keen5e.exe file? i hate the idea that the user would have to get their own keen 5 exe, like with the 'battle of the brains' TUIT mod. (the whole thing is stupid anyway- i came across a download of keen 5 in about a minute of Googling).

We as a community are well known to be stickers for honesty. I would wager it's something that we value above all else. If you provide a download be assured that any Keener hosting it will strip out the Keen 5. (Nobody will censure you though.)

Frankly I prefer Keen 4 since it is the engine I know the most about. (It has few limitations for me.) Keen 5 is good if you can get Lemm roped in since he knows that engine top to bottom.

[NY00123]

I do wonder how has nobody brought up a few re-implementation/reverse-engineering related efforts to bring the original games to modern platforms? Yeah, these may not have additional tools for modding, but at least stuff can be coded.

A few examples:
- CloneKeen, a reimplementation of Keen 1-3.
- Commander Genius (formerly CloneKeenPlus), a reimplementation of Keen 1-6 based on CloneKeen (or at least it originally was). Also has a bit of code from Omnispeak.
- Omnispeak, a possibly-not-yet-ready reimplementation of Keen 5 based on reverse engineering efforts. As far as I know it has mainly been tested on GNU/Linux, but with a few efforts it should be possible to make it compatible with Windows (if it's not already the case).

[Paramultart]

Game Maker isn't really an engine, per se, it's an Integrated Development Environment. It offers its own programming language, which is C based, and which is pretty great for people who want to learn how to program games.

Uhh, no. Game Maker was written in Delphi, which is a variation of Turbo Pascal.

It's fun to dink around in, and perfect for developing indie Windows games in record time, but probably counterproductive in terms of teaching you the ins and outs of programming.

[Plasma Captain]

Game Maker isn't really an engine, per se, it's an Integrated Development Environment. It offers its own programming language, which is C based, and which is pretty great for people who want to learn how to program games.

Uhh, no. Game Maker was written in Delphi, which is a variation of Turbo Pascal.

It's fun to dink around in, and perfect for developing indie Windows games in record time, but probably counterproductive in terms of teaching you the ins and outs of programming.

I beg to differ. Yes, Game Maker was written in Delphi, but the Game Maker Language is very similar to things like C, C#, Java, etc. That's what I meant.

Also, it is very good for learning how to program. It can teach you object-oriented programming before any actual class will get you there. I know this from experience; I was using it perhaps 12 years ago, before I ever took a programming class. When I took Visual Basic in high school, I basically whizzed through the class because most of the stuff taught in the class was already firmly implanted in my mind.

With that being said, one will likely pick up some bad habits, such as instantiating things on the fly instead of allocating a finite number of objects to appear. But that's beside the point.

[Bernie]

Frankly I prefer Keen 4 since it is the engine I know the most about. (It has few limitations for me.)

I wouldn't mind the Keen 4 engine again, but is there any way to resize the tile images? i remember once you said something about using some of the picture sprites (or whatever you call them) as tiles. sounds weird though.

[Gridlock]

Maybe what lass meant is that you can place the sprite icons in the level as tiles as well, theoretically giving you another 5 rows of tiles to work with. Other than that I don't believe it's possible to expand the tilesets (though I wish it was).

One of the biggest things that bugs me is how you can't place teleporters on the K4 world map. It sounds trivial, but it can really limit how you design your world. In other words, practically everything has to be interconnected somehow (so you can't easily transport to different locations or underground areas like in Keens 5, 6, 8, and 9.)

I do wonder how has nobody brought up a few re-implementation/reverse-engineering related efforts to bring the original games to modern platforms?

I've seen some neats projects created in those engines, but personally I've never found one I've liked. Trying to copy the Galaxy engine just seems like a futile effort. I'd almost rather see a brand new engine, as we wouldn't be judging it by what it isn't.

@ Gridlock

I'm surprised that they should have different engines for what are essentially (engine-wise) the same game

It is a little strange, especially because they seem the same on the surface. But if you think about it, there's stuff like the impossible bullet that only works in one keen engine. Each game has certain features coded in that the others don't have. Strangely enough, certain mechanics like switch bridges actually work differently in Keen 5 than K4 and K6.

[Fleexy]

The impossible bullet works in Keen 6 because they accidentally assigned the goplat's collision to the bullet smash. The engine and architecture is the same.

[Levellass]

* Inserting impossible bullet into Keen 4 and 5 is trivial

* Using the enemy iicon tiles in Keen 4-6 does give you extra tiles to work with

* It is also trivial to take background tiles and make them foreground tiles (And vice versa.)

* It is possible to convert sprite images into tiles or bitmap images with a little more effort. At present it is not know how to expand the actual EGAGRAPH size.

* Teleporters can now be easily placed on the map in Keen 4, this sacrifices Miragia.

[Plasma Captain]

* Teleporters can now be easily placed on the map in Keen 4, this sacrifices Miragia.

Okay, that is news to me, and that is awesome.

[Bernie]

now that i think about, teleporters in the worldmap doesnt seem like such a big deal. make a sprite that when keen touches it, it transports him to a certain X and Y corordinate (which are game stats). i guess.

[Levellass]

I wish; I can't seem to find the damn x\y map coordinates; in theory the patch is pitifully easy but in practice it's like trying to stick a pin under your fingernails; painful and ultimately pointless.

[Bernie]

hehe, oh right. patching and coding is annoying like that- they seem to go contrary to logic sometimes. then sometimes certain things are patched so easily :s

[Bernie]

so ive been messing around with some tiles and i wanna see how they look
now im thinking about going with either keen 4 or 6 (theres only 12 lines of tiles difference between the tile sheet for keen 4 and 5, but theres around 40 lines more for keen 6.)

So anyways- with keen 6, one of you guys says that it seems to support less memory- is this really true? and also how much patching know-how is there between you guys? (particularly with the 'lass). it seems to have the least patching help in the keen wiki atleast.
actually now that i remember, i hate that switch in keen 6 (i mean, i like it, but i wouldn't want to use it). is it possible to patch in a switch like in keen 4 and 5 to be in keen 6?

and one last thing- the 3 galaxy engines are pretty much the same, right? i mean, just some different coding for certain enemies seems to be the main difference (and the more dynamic platforms- which i don't care too much for what im doing).

[Levellass]

* They're about the same

* Lemm may be able to help you on that giant switch thing, ask him.

* I know rather a lot about Keen 6 but nobody has requested patches for it so none have been cooked up. It should easily be possible to do many of the things done for Keen 4. (You will notice on the wiki I have occasionally been lazy and just used a porting program to turn a Keen 4 patch into Keen 5 and 6 patches simultaneously.)

* As far as I was aware there was no memory differences, all three games use 490K of memory. I should be surprised to learn this wasn't the case.