Introducing Omnispeak

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Multimania
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Introducing Omnispeak

Post by Multimania »

Given there's half-an-hour left on Keen Day here and I haven't got anything else, I'm releasing a preview of a project I've been working on on-and-off for quite a while.

Omnispeak is a re-implementation of the Keen:Galaxy engine in c99. It should (in theory) have perfect physics, by virtue of being based on the disassembly, but it is unfinished and buggy, so don't get your hopes up!

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I don't have as much time for this as I'd like, so progress is quite slow. I've plans to finish cleaning this up and trying to launch a bit of an open-source project to finish a bug-for-bug recreation of the keen 4 and 5. I've got some bugs working already :)

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So far, it can only run a tiny bit of keen 5, and only works on linux, but it'd be awesome to see keen 4 or maybe even netkeen running on more platforms natively.

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Thanks must go to Andrew Durdin for his awesome keen4 decompilation, and to lemm, whose source for netkeen helped me fix uncountable bugs when cleaning this up for release. Thanks also to everyone in the keen community for keeping keen alive!

Hapy Keen Day,
-- multimania
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Post by NY00123 »

Well, here is the surprise:

I've got a 64-bit Linux installation. While on a trial to execute "./keen5e.x86-64 1" I get the message: "bash: ./keen5e.x86-64: No such file or directory"
...the execution "./keen5e.x86 1" loads the game with level 1 :O
I do wonder what's wrong on the 64-bit side, although that's a bit off-topic for now.

Looks like, at least partially, the approach of re-implementing everything, using the original EXE, actually seems to do the job. Maybe it's just me, but the physics feel accurate (although, truly, there's a higher framerate in the graphical sense). Even when I try the impossible pogo trick (and compare to a "standard" pogo jump), the differences seem so similar to vanilla Keen 5 (within DOSBox)!

To the few who wonder, I've tested this on the very beginning of level 1, as well as near the pole in level 2, jumping towards the switch for the bridge.
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Post by StupidBunny »

This is pretty impressive. :) Your attention to detail in reimplementing the engine is pretty incredible. Good work so far!
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Post by lemm »

oooo neato.


There's still a couple of bugs in netkeen physics where small sprites (like shelly bits) will clip through left and right blocking tiles move up and through the platforms. Hopefully they aren't present in your version. (Although, I think I saw a similar bug in BioMenace where Snakes bullets would end up on the other side of crates...)




I think I've fixed a few bugs in NK_PHYS.C since the last release, and I added some more comments:http://pastebin.com/XqTXc748. Hopefully this helps a bit.
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Post by gerstrong »

Hey Multimania,

did you get my PM?
Having fun developing stuff...
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