Keen goes Pi: Play Commander Keen mods on a Gameboy

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.

The Raspberry Pi

never heard of
3
10%
I prefer strawberry cakes
4
14%
need get one myself
7
24%
I grew up with a i386, of course I own a Pi
8
28%
#! python
2
7%
soldering is way to nerve-wracking
5
17%
 
Total votes: 29

User avatar
Zilem
Vortininja
Posts: 197
Joined: Thu Jun 11, 2015 2:50
Location: Europe; Denmark
Contact:

Re: Keen goes Pi

Post by Zilem »

Nisaba wrote: Sat Feb 17, 2018 8:54 What the fucl? 45% import fee. And I've always thought Denmark was member of the European Union?! What's wrong with you guys It would be even cheaper to get on a plain and pick up the package at Kites door...
For some reason i did not reply to that i guess the tab with the replay were one that error'd out along time ago Image

No the import fee of the of that import were a worth of +45% of the shield "portables"s Retail price (shipping costs excluded)

The import fee back then were 25% of the listed value with additional fees if the item was of 1k+ Dkr Value. i don't recall what that were...
on anything with a higher Value of 10€ (75 Dkr)

The import fee were changed a few years agoso now cheep items could just above the limit ended from +110% to 300%~
due to a flat import free of anything just above 100 Dkr and +25% of the items value added on top
But costlier items would be cheeper in in additional +% cost until exceeding (i think it's) 50k Dkr, for additional fees.
which changed how the system worked upside down
Guess who Benefits the most from this?: Mr Corperate inc Image

So yes This new system; made a set of dice for 14$ (91 Dkr) ended up with 19$ (124 Dkr)
as the shipper added the shipping cost as part of the value Image
and ended up costing 460 Dkr, These Dice were for an old 1994 boardgame. (Mutant Chronicle: Fury of the Clansman)
-
Funny was, there was a set in UK ware just 40 Dkr costlier then the other with the import fee...
I'd kind of rather had bought that just out of spite for Dansk Import...
did i mention they take 2-3 days to ship a letter that you have an Import bill, rather then use something Digital like Nem-ID or Postnord's sms Service.

A couple of days ago i received a Big Packaged with a Boardgame (Deep Madness and Expansions)
and the import fee was fair just +29% and much less then i expected to pay (300~ Dkr less) Image
although i found out 1 item is missing in the package..... Image
and import tax on that one alone, is... +187% Yikes! :garg
The Difference Between a Mod and Fan art?, a Fan art is a Concept and a Mod is that Concept put into life.
User avatar
DoomJedi
Vorticon Elite
Posts: 888
Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2009 11:22
Location: Israel

Re: Keen goes Pi

Post by DoomJedi »

What the fucl? 45% import fee. And I've always thought Denmark was member of the European Union?!
Here in Israel we don't pay import fee, sure for AliExpress and such (at least for orders of personal non-commercial use), unless really rarely customs open one to find an item over 70 USD. But chinese and others declare for cheap price anyway.
So price you see is the price I pay.
User avatar
Nisaba
Janitress
Posts: 1594
Joined: Fri Jan 01, 2016 23:34
Location: The Outpost
Contact:

Re: Keen goes Pi: Play Commander Keen mods on a Gameboy

Post by Nisaba »

DoomJedi wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2019 6:38 Well, I didn't intent to make a collection.
I was just going for the best handheld...
quite a nice collection there!
the RG350 looks fabulous and it' sounds truly powerful. plus it comes with vibration motors, that's neat! very interesting handheld, especially for that price!
the interface on the other hand looks ugly as hell. have you ever tried to edit the firmware? and how about the positioning of the second analoge stick (bottom right)? looks like it might get in the way during play whenever you need to hit the B button...
nitpicking aside: have you tested the HDMI output? and does it come with a feature like build in Bluetooth so you can play multiplayer games with your friends? it does feature an OTG connection, doesn't it? and what about the button mapping for DosBox games? how does the the RG350 handle that? I'm really curious.
and as I understand it, the RG350 is opensource, right? this makes things really interesting.
out now (link) : Image
User avatar
Nisaba
Janitress
Posts: 1594
Joined: Fri Jan 01, 2016 23:34
Location: The Outpost
Contact:

Re: Keen goes Pi: Play Commander Keen mods on a Gameboy

Post by Nisaba »

next to all that I'm also very much into builds which focus on "unusual" goals like this device over here. "It's a simple and small device that plays Tetris in a more active and frustrating way. There are three buttons for left, right, and down, but you have to shake the whole thing to rotate a piece. It uses a 0.96" OLED screen, has an 18-hour battery life, and is enclosed in a laser-cut acrylic case. Overall dimensions: 45x55x29mm."
Image
Link: https://sudomod.com/forum/viewtopic.php ... 214#p64908


or this Sega Dreamcasts visual memory unit turned into a playable handheld by wermy:
Image
https://www.youtube.com/embed/gNoBQ5nTe ... ure=oembed
out now (link) : Image
User avatar
DoomJedi
Vorticon Elite
Posts: 888
Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2009 11:22
Location: Israel

Re: Keen goes Pi: Play Commander Keen mods on a Gameboy

Post by DoomJedi »

Nisaba wrote: Mon Dec 09, 2019 20:19 quite a nice collection there!
Thanks (I also have big HDMI/TV famiclone, one other I gave away), it was a bit larger collection, but I managed to sell my RG300 v2, and as said, RS97 broke down.
Most expensive device there cost me still under 70 bucks (after discount), which means those devices are the best thing per a buck you can get.
the RG350 looks fabulous and it' sounds truly powerful. plus it comes with vibration motors, that's neat! very interesting handheld, especially for that price!
Yeah, this new-gen device (meaning true opendingux (opk apps) and at least 1GHz processor, old-gen devices like ldk/RS97/RG300 were around 600 MHz before overclock (which could go up to 740 MHz depending on luck) - though could still deliver quite powerful emulation) which is very popular now, on Aliexpress and everywhere, sure on retro handhelds communities.
It sure delivers. Including for DOS, SNES and playstation 1 games (including 3D racers and heavier games) that run without noticeable fps lags, and many of them - at solid 60 fps.

Still, as said - upcoming GKD350H will be even more powerful, with 1.5 MIPS processor that overclocks up to 2 GHz.
the interface on the other hand looks ugly as hell
You mean buttons or opendingux? Yes, so far opendingux used in RG350 lacks some basic features (like scraped images and such) and falls far behind RetroFW/CFW which was used on RG300 and such old-gen devices. The issue is that RetroFW doesn't work with ips screen drivers, so it can't be used with RG300/RS97 ips versions and with RG350. But opendingux is open source, and there is alot of active development on it, which mean future updates and improvements to catch up with RetroFW/CFW and go beyond those.
RetroFW/CFW are fantastic operational systems. Including image scraping.
and how about the positioning of the second analoge stick (bottom right)? looks like it might get in the way during play whenever you need to hit the B button...
Yeah, this was a complaint/grunt ever since first design layout of it leaked on retro handhald discords. People were worried.
So far I find it comfortable enough, surprisingly.
But if you don't like it - GKD350H and Pocket Go v2 are for sale soon :) GKD350H lacks R2/L2 though. And Pocket Go v2 looks good - and design-wise has the best of all worlds, but comes from a company of bad handheld reputation.
have you tested the HDMI output?
HDMI output doesn't work yet, it should be enabled in future OS updates. Guys on retro handheld forums say that if the makers won't release update by the end of the year, they will start developing HDMI support themselves by community efforts. It's more of a software thing, the HDMI out is wired internally.
and does it come with a feature like build in Bluetooth so you can play multiplayer games with your friends?
No, no bluetooth nor WIFI on those devices (google Retrostone v2 though).
But for that price...
it does feature an OTG connection, doesn't it? and what about the button mapping for DosBox games? how does the the RG350 handle that?
Yes, it has OTG connection. RG350 supports external gamepad/OTG/mouse/keyboard. Didn't try those yet, waiting for USB-C adapter to arrive, so I can test my gamepads with it. But from released videos those should work, but not all emulators support it.
And with OTG - donnow but it might support external bluetooth gamepads with USB dongle.

Button mapping is done by DOSBOX emulator itself it seems, and it does quite well, even for DOS games with many buttons, like by beloved "Wilson ProStuff Golf". I didn't have control issues beside some mouse-based games like Supaplex, Sharkey's House of Pool, Scorched Earth.
It also has virtual keyboard activated by L button - for more complex actions.

[/quote]and as I understand it, the RG350 is opensource, right? this makes things really interesting.[/quote]
Yes, it is - part of why it's such a hit on retro handheld communities. It was just recently released, development on it just started, with time it'll uncover more of its abilites, capabilities, performance, emulators will get improved.
It already supports really tons of games beside old consoles - with fantastic fps. Including Doom/Freedoom/Heretic/Hexen/Strife/ROTT/Duke3D/Hexen 2/Wolf3D/Quake/Quake2/Quake3/Super Mario War etc etc....has clones of many known games - from arkanoid and pang through Outrun (Cannonball) to flappy bird, and tons of emulators. Comes with good image viewer, video player, music player, file commander etc.

Are you part of retro handheld discords? There are new updates almost daily there - new games, emulator updates, skin packs etc. For RG350 and not only.
User avatar
DoomJedi
Vorticon Elite
Posts: 888
Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2009 11:22
Location: Israel

Re: Keen goes Pi: Play Commander Keen mods on a Gameboy

Post by DoomJedi »

Developing for the RG-350 is the same as the GCW Zero.
First, you grab the toolchain here :
http://www.gcw-zero.com/develop

Put the cross compiler in /opt/gcw0-toolchain or at least do a symlink to it.
You can cross compile with said toolchain.

If you want to generate OPK packages for your GCW0 apps, here's a script from PCSX4ALL :
https://github.com/gameblabla/pcsx4all/ ... ake_opk.sh

Modify it according to your needs
User avatar
Nisaba
Janitress
Posts: 1594
Joined: Fri Jan 01, 2016 23:34
Location: The Outpost
Contact:

Re: Keen goes Pi: Play Commander Keen mods on a Gameboy

Post by Nisaba »

is quite interesting to see the development of those handheld communities. back in early 2016 it all started more or less with wermys first hacking attempts he shared online to build a DIY handheld. of course this wouldn't be possible without the retropie community which started in 2013. a year earlier the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the development of single-board computers which changed the marked for hacker, makers and tinkerers radically.
and here we are now with a wonderful variety of options to choose from. even the big video game companies understood the signs of the times and decided to also jump on this trend (NES mini, Genesis mini, PSX mini etc...)

Depending on your taste, you can choose the easy route and buy a ready-to-go product, or even figure out unique ways of building a handheld yourself. tons and tons of options.

my build comes with a 4× Cortex-A53 1.2 GHz, 1 GB GPU, HDMI, WiFi, 640x480 HD LCD, 5000+mAh lipo battery and so on and so forth. I did some advanced overclocking on earlier builds (up to +30%) but I haven't had the need to do so on my current project. I can emulate up to psx, dreamcast & n64 games. n64 is a bit laggy when it comes to sound but this is due to the emulation limits... psx games on the other hand run fluently on this hardware.
DoomJedi wrote: Tue Dec 10, 2019 7:50 Button mapping is done by DOSBOX emulator itself it seems, and it does quite well, even for DOS games with many buttons, like by beloved "Wilson ProStuff Golf". I didn't have control issues beside some mouse-based games like Supaplex, Sharkey's House of Pool, Scorched Earth.
It also has virtual keyboard activated by L button - for more complex actions.
I have a question for you. I re-compiled the Atroxian Realm source code in order to make it fit my button layout plus some extra features, like giving savestates a current time-tag and so on. would you mind testing it on your device as well. Would be interesting to see whether this makes things easier (DOSBox wise) on your side as well.
Are you part of retro handheld discords?
yipp
Last edited by Nisaba on Wed Dec 11, 2019 10:18, edited 1 time in total.
out now (link) : Image
User avatar
DoomJedi
Vorticon Elite
Posts: 888
Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2009 11:22
Location: Israel

Re: Keen goes Pi: Play Commander Keen mods on a Gameboy

Post by DoomJedi »

Seem like impressive specs/features indeed.
Currently unmatched by the cheaper handhelds. Keep it up, your seem to be a fantastic handheld.

...tried installing some stupid beta OS update today, f... up my whole OS, now need to reinstall latest stable OS all over again...should have sticked with stable releases only...
Now will take some time before I can test anything on DOSBox, need to reinstall tons of things, especially as being emotional formatted my internal SD card before I could backup stuff from it. Which means more restorations/ definitions etc etc.
User avatar
Nisaba
Janitress
Posts: 1594
Joined: Fri Jan 01, 2016 23:34
Location: The Outpost
Contact:

Re: Keen goes Pi: Play Commander Keen mods on a Gameboy

Post by Nisaba »

ah, and you've mentioned SMW (Super Mario War). some time ago a started a mod but never really had the stamina to finish it.
    • Image Image Image Image
out now (link) : Image
User avatar
Nisaba
Janitress
Posts: 1594
Joined: Fri Jan 01, 2016 23:34
Location: The Outpost
Contact:

Re: Keen goes Pi: Play Commander Keen mods on a Gameboy

Post by Nisaba »

ps.:
talking about handhelds; I'd love to see this bad-boy come alive:
https://www.rennerflorian.de/wp/project/gameboy1up
Image
out now (link) : Image
User avatar
DoomJedi
Vorticon Elite
Posts: 888
Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2009 11:22
Location: Israel

Re: Keen goes Pi: Play Commander Keen mods on a Gameboy

Post by DoomJedi »

Looks cool :)

Regarding Super Mario War - fantastic idea! Please PLEASE finish it!
(BTW noticed there is no SMW for RG350 so far, I do have it on LDK and RG300)
I actually made quite some new skins for SMW (with retro game characters), can share if you want.

Regarding all-Keen battle (that is an abandoned project) - after my current project (new enhanced edition of my "Operation Eisenfaust : Origins" mod), I plan to resurrect my BomberKeen project (at least under LZwolf engine with help of LinuxWolf), sure you can give me a hand on this effort.
This project just got to...exist.
Image

Image

Maybe 2 projects can be joined together for ultimate Keen characters battles :) Heh, after that - Battle Load Keen Runner :)
Last edited by DoomJedi on Wed Dec 11, 2019 21:15, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
DoomJedi
Vorticon Elite
Posts: 888
Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2009 11:22
Location: Israel

Re: Keen goes Pi: Play Commander Keen mods on a Gameboy

Post by DoomJedi »

My RG350 back to action fully, even with bunch of new emulators (yours is retropie-like in emulators?), most systems have more than one emulator to choose from, some even 3 options.
Really love ohboy emulator for gameboy - it has best buttons remapping including quick load, quick save, reset and exit. All with 1-button press.
Have favs for other systems as well, in particular love emulators with quick save and load.

Checked your mod on my RG350, it runs fine, but mapping is pretty much the same as the original versiuon - X for shoot, A for jump, and B for pogo, which is okay for me anyway. It runs perfectly fine.
User avatar
Nisaba
Janitress
Posts: 1594
Joined: Fri Jan 01, 2016 23:34
Location: The Outpost
Contact:

Re: Keen goes Pi: Play Commander Keen mods on a Gameboy

Post by Nisaba »

naa, RetroPie sits on top of a full OS (Raspbian in this case) and it builds upon EmulationStation and RetroArch. The image comes with a bunch of pre-installed emulators like, I don't know, maybe 120 or so. If you are a power user and want to dive even deeper into the material a ton of additional emulators can be installed afterwards as well (such as SMW, scummVM, Reicast or mame4all-pi). plus RetroPie is equipped with a large variety of configuration tools to tweak nearly everything.
For classic GameBoy games I picked an emulator called lr-gambatte. lr-tgbdual on the other hand runs two instances of the same game for either two-player link cable games (also over network) or parallel play on the same system.
button mapping and hotkeys get managed by RetroArch which will take effect on all retroarch/libretro based emulators.
next to that I added a custom splash screen and created a self made theme. (although there are endless pre-made themes to choose from)

thanks for trying. may I ask you to compare both Atroxian Realm versions in terms of saving and loading, please!? You might also have noticed that I changed the menu info texts to match the new button layout. (instead of "ESC exits" it now says "Button a exits" and stuff like that...) Of course I could compile things again so that they fit your systems button layout respectively your personal picks
out now (link) : Image
User avatar
Nisaba
Janitress
Posts: 1594
Joined: Fri Jan 01, 2016 23:34
Location: The Outpost
Contact:

Re: Keen goes Pi: Play Commander Keen mods on a Gameboy

Post by Nisaba »

Super Mario War / combat of the foes:

yeah, I know. this needs to be done some day. ATM my mod "Foray in the Forest" has top priority. but afterwards I'm gonna continue working on this idea.
Your BomberKeen character skins are awesome! love 'em! maybe we can somehow merge both ideas into a new, yet unknown game....

my vision is to have a Keen related game which won't feature our beloved hero. instead it should be based around enemies and foes taken from the Keeniverse. The not-so-basic outline for the plot is that Commander Keen again is about to save a galaxy far far away. Meanwhile in a parallel universe some capricious villains are about to turn everything topsy-turvy. In absent of Keen these creatures of the night crumble and stumble everything within their reach. But being not so much blessed with brains (approximately caused by permanently stumping on each one another's heads), they even antagonise each other. Chaos is all around, the galaxy is on war!
That being said, one can select a foe by his choice and start chasing and preying upon challengers to become the most high-flying Lynx of the Nyx.

well, it would be awesome if each character comes with a special attack or a secret weapon or something. but I haven't figured that out yet...

but I'm surly interested in your BomberKeen project as well. do you think of it as a classic Bomberman clone?
out now (link) : Image
User avatar
DoomJedi
Vorticon Elite
Posts: 888
Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2009 11:22
Location: Israel

Re: Keen goes Pi: Play Commander Keen mods on a Gameboy

Post by DoomJedi »

naa, RetroPie sits on top of a full OS (Raspbian in this case) and it builds upon EmulationStation and RetroArch. The image comes with a bunch of pre-installed emulators like, I don't know, maybe 120 or so. If you are a power user and want to dive even deeper into the material a ton of additional emulators can be installed afterwards as well (such as SMW, scummVM, Reicast or mame4all-pi). plus RetroPie is equipped with a large variety of configuration tools to tweak nearly everything.
Well, as I use Retropie myself (just not in handheld version), and am a member of Retropie facebook group, I'm aware of all that (and use many of those emulators). Retropie is impressive indeed and very configurable.
Emulation Station adds relatively alot on the processor though and can affect fps.
For classic GameBoy games I picked an emulator called lr-gambatte
This is indeed the gameboy emulator of choice on retro handheld communities in general, as it's known to be more accurate emulation-wise than competitors. Have it as well on all of my retro handhelds.
But I'm a quick save/load junkie, as I save and load alot. It's easy on retropie to save and load - but not on opendingux handhelds. So OhBoy gives me what I want, on cost of some emulation accuracy I can't notice anyway.
. lr-tgbdual on the other hand runs two instances of the same game for either two-player link cable games (also over network) or parallel play on the same system.
Sounds cool :)
(although there are endless pre-made themes to choose from)
I use on my retropie nbba theme I manually improved - to support more systems (and backgrounds) and have better/hires console images that look good on large TV. Can send you if you are interested, took me alot of time to choose and tweak best images for each console, including pokemini, game&watch, wonderswan etc.
You might also have noticed that I changed the menu info texts to match the new button layout. (instead of "ESC exits" it now says "Button a exits" and stuff like that...)
Yes indeed (checked) and this is great.
Post Reply