Public Commander Keen Forum

Ok, I have some good news everyone. After so much striving and failure, I'm finally going to deliver a new Keen 1 mod soon. Or so I hope. I've done my best level work ever and sprites and graphics aren't half bad either. But the main thing, the levels, are good. Maybe for the first time in my career I can say the levels are good. I'm proud of many of the levels I've done in the past and I think some have pretty amazing designs and puzzles, but generally, these new levels are so much better. (All of my levels, even if insanely difficult, have been rigorously playtested and are 100% passable. Just had to mention that again.) So I'm really looking forward to having you people play these. These won't be typical KeenRush levels. It's a fresh start, more or less. You'll see soon, and hopefully will enjoy too.

At the moment I have 3 levels to start (got some ideas for them), 2 to complete, and the other 11 are done. Most tiles are implemented. One enemy needs to be designed and drawn, another needs to be fully coloured and outlined. Some other misc things. Generally it seems certain I'm far past the point of running out of steam, there is so much progress done that it will push me to do the rest, too. I hope to have this released in September.


As a side note: What do you people use to edit Keen 1-3 sounds? I'm sick of using my own difficult-to-use methods.

Can't wait! OK, but posting a new topic about news of a mod we don't know anything about it (at least I don't know) - this must be reeally good mod!

yauz!
this sounds like some real good news! you seem to be in an excellent modding mood. yeah, the-modding-zone!
as you already know I always adored your mods for their fresh and new ideas which they brought to the game. the difficulty was always a bit too hard for me but style and gameplay wise your mods are extremely exciting.

really can't wait until September! so I'm looking forward to any updates.

Good news everyone!

I request that an update concerning this mod be posted here in this topic two weeks from now.

(Don't know about sound edits)

Thanks gang! Nice to see there is interest. I shall give further news updates in this topic, as requested.

@Roobar: Hoping it will be good! And yes, I've not told of this mod before. I think I started it in the early spring.

@Nisaba: Yep, the modding zone has been on but it hasn't been too easy. Going from to to 100/mph.

I am filled with both anticipation and dread. Especially in regards to patches.

For sound editing I use Keenwave, which lets you draw a sound as a bitmap and import it, or build it in the program. (It can also try to covert wave files.) I hear a lot of people like WDC, which has similar functionality.

I hate the Keen modding sound section. there is no easy to use/ intuitive way to make it stupidly simple for a noob like me...

This may be an area that Abithar could focus on.

Yeah, the sound editing process is a nightmare for me too. So I might just as well not bother with it. I don't really care about new sounds. I more or less always play without sound while listening to music.

Lass, what's WDC?

Still working on the sprites... Some progress done. I hope to finish the other sprite today.

Wolfenstein Data Compiler: http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/Wolf_Da ... iler_(WDC) http://winwolf3d.dugtrio17.com/wiki/WDC

You can always permanently disable sounds and add background music. Alternatively I have at least SOME talent in making PC sounds with my own utilities so could do so on request.

Thanks for the offer but for this mod I have to do everything on my own. Some psychological thing. I'll use that offer for some other mod though. I guess I'll try to use KeenWave and if I don't get anything done then there won't be new sounds.

Looking forward to this. I'm quite curious what this mod will be about and what kinds of gameplay mechanics it'll have.

You must really want to punish yourself if you want to use your own tools for sound editing . Though I've only really used WDC's adlib editor and not the PC sound editor, they're very helpful tools. You don't even need to run them in the main WDC application or set up a WDC project file since they work as stand-alone applications.

troublesomekeen wrote: ↑Sat Jul 29, 2017 23:03I request that an update concerning this mod be posted here in this topic two weeks from now.

I think it's two weeks later now. As can be guessed, I've had my share of delays but things are nevertheless looking promising. There are still sprite frames to be done but I managed to do some good progress just today. It's time-consuming work for me... I find it really difficult to do some frames where the creature faces the player. Anyway, I've expanded some levels to make them even better (in my opinion), but the three still need to be started. But not to worry, it's a task that will be very enjoyable once I get to it. Managed to nail some great tile animations that were bothering me. All the essential tiles are there. GUI+font are looking nice - making them is the worst part of a mod for me. I should decide on the ending story, and if this should be a part of a trilogy or something. I'm still aiming for September but of course there are no guarantees with me...

Really looking forward to this mod!! We really need this!! 2017 is our slowest year yet!

Cheers. Yeah, it has been a bit quiet. I wish we'd get some new K1-3 mods other than this.

In other news: that extreme anger when you accidentally save an empty level over a real level because instead of pressing '6' for load you accidentally press '5' for save... This in my own editor, akeen. And my last backup of the level is before extensive changes, hours of work away. And just now I thought "should I run my backup script? nah, I must've run it after working last, so there's no change. I have the latest backed up." Of course I had NOT because I hadn't run the script, after all... Well, at least I've been taking some backups now, there have been times when I've lost entire levels this way, and o garg have I been so mad. The next version of akeen will have a simple take-a-copy-before-overwriting feature because this damn thing keeps happening to me. Well, other than this disaster, I've half-completed two other levels. There's only one level that hasn't been started. Now I'll try to focus on recreating what is gone.