Level Viewer for KEEN VORTICONS and GALAXY (and more...)

Here is where to post about the latest Commander Keen fangame or modification you've finished, a new website you've made, or another Keen-related creation.
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DHeadshot
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Post by DHeadshot »

K1n9_Duk3 wrote:Here we go, the Vorticons (& stuff) level viewer got it's LZW-decompression and can now be tested (sorry, no graphics for the infoplane stuff in this one).
Thanks!
BTW, do you think you could add an Open command/function, given that levels are in seperate files for Vorticons, so that the program doesn't need restarting for each level? Thanks.
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Post by K1n9_Duk3 »

DHeadshot wrote:BTW, do you think you could add an Open command/function, given that levels are in seperate files for Vorticons, so that the program doesn't need restarting for each level? Thanks.
I might do either that or let you "scroll" through levels just like in the Galaxy viewer. By the way, I put that sprite-displaying thing on a halt - at least for now.

With some neat code I spent this day scanning through the executables of every Galaxy-style game I could get my hands on (basically everything from Keen Dreams to Catacomb Apocalypse) and located the included data files. With that info, it should be possible to view pretty much any version of the Keen games, not just 1.4!

PS: Just got the Galaxy viewer to display the levels from Rescue Rover 2... :crazy
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Post by Levellass »

Many thanks!
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Post by K1n9_Duk3 »

Made some major progress on the GALAXY viewer. The program is now able to load and display the maps of almost every EGA version of Keen 4-6. The only versions that don't work are the Keen 4 1.0 DEMO and Keen 6 1.5 because they are not LZEXE compressed.

I won't be releasing the new version until I get Keen Dreams support done.
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Post by Levellass »

They're PKLite compressed I believe. Keen Dreams too I think.
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Post by Nospike »

Yeah, it's PKLite.
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Post by K1n9_Duk3 »

Levellass wrote:They're PKLite compressed I believe. Keen Dreams too I think.
Yes, but only version 1.00 of Keen Dreams.

Are you sure about Keen 6 1.5? It doesn't seem like it was compressed with PKLite, at least not with the same version that was used on the other files.
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Post by K1n9_Duk3 »

I just finished version 1.1 of the Galaxy Viewer - now you can go and view Keen Dreams (and some other games as well).

Of course, this works on the XMAS 2010 mod for Keen Dreams, too. You only need to rename some of the files.

EDIT: Just noticed that the .png files were missing in the archive. I uploaded a new version.
Last edited by K1n9_Duk3 on Sat Nov 05, 2016 21:43, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by K1n9_Duk3 »

Version 1.3 is out and introduces support for the CGA versions of the games. Now you can view the maps from all versions of Keen Dreams and Keen 4-6 that can be found on Bipship, including the CGA version of Keen Dreams that Levellass found.
Last edited by K1n9_Duk3 on Sat Nov 05, 2016 21:44, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Levellass »

Excellent! Are you allowed to include UNP with it?
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Post by K1n9_Duk3 »

Levellass wrote:Are you allowed to include UNP with it?
I haven't asked. But I think I should have included the whole UNP zipfile instead of just the exe. In one of the documents it says that UNP is "cardware", so it shouldn't be illegal.
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Post by Syllypryde »

tulip wrote:hah, I was just talking to spleen about this today. There never has been a satisfying way to display Galaxy levels, if you can get it to display sprites as well, this'll be awesome.
There still isn't. When I load up the viewer every level I bring up looks like garbage. Half of every level including worldmaps are half covered with white squares all over the place. Most of the background tiles all show up pure white and close to half of the items, such as point items appear as white squares. Either I am doing something wrong, or the viewer does not display levels properly.
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Post by K1n9_Duk3 »

Syllypryde wrote:[When I load up the viewer every level I bring up looks like garbage. Half of every level including worldmaps are half covered with white squares all over the place. Most of the background tiles all show up pure white and close to half of the items, such as point items appear as white squares. Either I am doing something wrong, or the viewer does not display levels properly.
Use F4 to export the images form the xGAGRAPH file and have a look at the exported files. If the images look okay, you're probably missing OpenGL drivers. The program uses OpenGL to display the graphics.

And by the way: the next version will probably support displaying sprites. As you can see, the program can export almost everything from the xGAGRAPH files correctly, so it's really only an issue of mapping the values in the info plane to a sprite number and displaying the sprite instead of the tile icons.
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Post by Syllypryde »

K1n9_Duk3 wrote:Use F4 to export the images form the xGAGRAPH file and have a look at the exported files. If the images look okay, you're probably missing OpenGL drivers. The program uses OpenGL to display the graphics.

And by the way: the next version will probably support displaying sprites. As you can see, the program can export almost everything from the xGAGRAPH files correctly, so it's really only an issue of mapping the values in the info plane to a sprite number and displaying the sprite instead of the tile icons.
I will have to check to be sure, but I do not believe I have OpenGL drivers. Plus I had forgotten you had not included sprite display in the viewer yet. That I believe is what Ceilick and Tulip were requesting at the beginning of this thread.
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Post by DHeadshot »

Still doesn't support Zoltan's Revenge:

Code: Select all

KEEN GALAXY Level Viewer v1.3 - Log File
========================================
Created: 12 Feb 2011 - 18:32:18

GAMEMAPS file is "F:\Programs\zrdemo\GAMEMAPS.CK4"
GAMEMAPS header is "&   ²  "
EGA graphics found.
Trying EGA Graphics...
Gotta find the right EXE now...
Looking for executables in "F:/Programs/zrdemo/"...
Trying "F:/Programs/zrdemo/CK4PATCH.EXE"... unknown.
Trying "F:/Programs/zrdemo/KEEN4E.EXE"... okay.
Reading locations from INI section "KEEN4E_14".
Game is: Commander Keen 4 EGA v1.4
Extracting EGADICT from executable.
Extracting EGAHEAD from executable.
Extracting MAPDICT from executable.
Extracting MAPHEAD from executable.
Reading GFXINFO from INI.

Graphics Reader initialization:
Reading unmasked image info from chunk 0
Reading masked image info from chunk 1
Reading sprite info from chunk 2

Closed: 12 Feb 2011 - 18:32:23
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