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Ultimate Commander Keen 4/Commander Keen 4 Ultimate Edition

Posted: Sat Jun 08, 2019 1:11
by szemi
Well, ladies and gentlemen! I present you my work that took me 2 months (NON-STOP).

Here is:


ULTIMATE COMMANDER KEEN 4

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Ultimate Commander Keen 4 (or a.k.a. Commander Keen 4 Ultimate Edition) is a fan-made, enhanced update and an unofficial expansion pack for the original Keen 4 game including several bugfixes (I fixed as many as I could; bugs that can be ignored/avoided and are useful were not fixed) and newer stuff, but also unused features as well that are in Keen 4 Demo, but weren't used in the full version.



Here are the important changed you should know about:
  • On the startup screen, the three year numbers (1991, 1992, 1993) can be found along with the "id Software, Inc." sign, which now has dark blue outline with yellow letters.
  • At the bottom of the loading screen, the game says: "Initializing..." "Loading..." "Ready - Press a key".
  • At the bottom of the startup screen, an "ULTIMATE EDITION - (C)2019 Szemigi" sign has been added.
  • On the terminator text screen, the big "COMMANDER KEEN" sign has dark-cyan shading.
  • On the terminator screen, the letters have blue-yellow color palette.
  • All the demos have been re-recorded.
  • Added (not enterable) stone houses in Slug Village and Hillville.
  • Keen can now jump onto and walk on the roof the stone houses.
  • Help menu can only be called in-game for technical reasons.
  • The "ORDER INFO" has been renamed to "INFORMATIONS", which only mentions how to play Ultimate Keen 4 and how to obtain the other episodes.
  • On the terminator screen the "ID" logo has been changed to "Id" (Keen 1-3 type).
  • "About ID" has been changed to "About id/ME".
  • "About id/ME" now uses 2 types of Id logos: on the first page the current, on the next page the old one is used.
  • All the 15 text colors have been used in the game (except the dark red due to having dark red background color in the game).
  • All the creatures have description.
  • The drop now have image in the help menu.
  • In the "STORY" section, Keen's father and mother now have portraits.
  • The Help now says "COMPUTERWRIST" instead of "COMPUTER WRIST".
  • In the ComputerWrist menu, at the command line parameter section, the game mentions to run "KEEN4E" instead of "KEEN4".
  • The game has two title screens.
  • Added plus 5 unlockable bonus levels:
    • 18. Three-Tooth Lake Shallows
    • 19. Ancient Village
    • 20. Cave of Coolness
    • 21. Desert Town (must be completed)
    • 22. Pyramid of the Allowed (second secret level and energy source level as well)
  • Added a 9th member to rescue: the Oracle Maintainer. (It's plus one member I created myself for this update as a more challenging task.)
  • All the musics - including the demo version of the worldmap, the extended Oasis music, the Bullfrog and the Dopey - has been used.
  • Keen's Neural Stunner is now green in the game (special thanks to Zilem).
  • On the scorebox, Keen's weapon is now green.
  • The High Scores level has now entry text (since it's now level 24).
  • On the high score screen, the name, the score, and the member columns are now wider.
  • In the Perilous Pit level, the "imaginary pole" has been removed.
  • The player can no longer go outside of the Pyramid of the Forbidden.
  • Keen can no longer perform the "air door" trick.
  • The invisible door tile has been fixed.
  • Keen can no longer "teleport" in the Lifewater Oasis level and the unreachable area has become available.
  • The player can no longer sink into the floor in Well of Wishes.
  • The flag no longer clips in front of the scorebox.
  • Joystick 1 and 2, Gravis Gamepad menus now have owner bitmap header.
  • The typos in level entries, level names, Oracle member message window, Oracle Janitor message window have been corrected.
  • The F10+C has been removed for being useless (due to the secondary song list patch that overwrote this cheat).
  • The 1UP sprite that appears after collecting 100 drops is now dark-light cyan.
  • The keygem sprites now look unique.
  • The blue gem and its holder now have normal blue shade.
  • Keen has own separated switch-flicking/door opening sprite.
  • Keen's unused computerwrist-watching sprite has been used as a part of Keen's bored animation.
  • 2 dopefishes have been removed from Well of Wishes and has been put into the other underwater level to avoid memory problems.
  • F10+T, and P cheats now have been removed as well for being unstable.
  • In Cave of the Descendents, the 5 Shikadi Sodas and the 2 waterflasks can now be collected without cheating or dying.
  • In the Pyramid of Shadows, the acid pool's bottom is surrounded by pyramid-type ground tile.
  • Again, in the Pyramid of Shadows, the 7 flasks and the Neural Stunner can now be collected without cheating or dying.
  • Keen cannot escape to the Oracle member via the secret passage in the Pyramid of Shadows (where the 7 flasks and the Neural Stunner are).


Most important thing: Since the game cannot have 3 (only 2) WoW-type scrolling levels, that's why the worldmap has normal level-type scrolling. Extremely sorry for that!


Demo video footage:
https://youtu.be/GHDDo416uDg

Download now!
Mirror 1: https://www.dropbox.com/s/v3mhkarwj74b27x/UCK4.zip?dl=0
Mirror 2: https://www.4shared.com/zip/UFPBN5hJda/UKEEN4.html

Rules:

* No unnecessary criticizing and nitpicking like "the loading screen looks dumb" and things like that, etc.!
* No complaining that the new levels are unplayable and each tiles don't look good. (I tested the new 5 bonus levels in hard mode and they can be completed + I tried to make as good new tiles as I could.
* Stop ruining the fun, I worked on this update hard!

* Only and only constructive criticism allowed.

Re: Ultimate Commander Keen 4/Commander Keen 4 Ultimate Edition

Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2019 18:55
by Awesome-Keener
Nice job. I like the new levels.

Re: Ultimate Commander Keen 4/Commander Keen 4 Ultimate Edition

Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2019 21:21
by szemi
Thanks very much.

Re: Ultimate Commander Keen 4/Commander Keen 4 Ultimate Edition

Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2019 22:56
by Awesome-Keener
I have a question,
why did you switch the blue and green gems around?

Re: Ultimate Commander Keen 4/Commander Keen 4 Ultimate Edition

Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2019 7:30
by szemi
As the original order of colors: red, yellow, green, blue.

As for the color-switching: I didn't have mood to change blue to green REALLY, so I just did recoloring and it won't be changed at all.

Re: Ultimate Commander Keen 4/Commander Keen 4 Ultimate Edition

Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2019 17:29
by stayfrosty
The Cave Of Coolness is the best of the new levels IMO

Re: Ultimate Commander Keen 4/Commander Keen 4 Ultimate Edition

Posted: Sun Jun 30, 2019 15:57
by cs89
I tried to search the way to the one additional level (Desert Town), but sadly I didn't find it. :confused
Which level has the secret path to the Desert Town level?

Re: Ultimate Commander Keen 4/Commander Keen 4 Ultimate Edition

Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2019 7:41
by szemi
Complete the Cave of Coolness (level 20) to unlock Desert Town (level 21). It's the only method as I mentioned in the first post: "+5 unlockable levels"

Re: Ultimate Commander Keen 4/Commander Keen 4 Ultimate Edition

Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2019 18:16
by Grandy02
I like all those little details you put into this, such as the possibility to stand on the roofs, the demo version music and other additions in the help menu, and the houses from the Keen 7 tech demo. The new levels are cool, too. Nicely done! :)

Re: Ultimate Commander Keen 4/Commander Keen 4 Ultimate Edition

Posted: Tue Jul 23, 2019 0:36
by troublesomekeen
It appears that walk-on roofs is a long-standing modding tradition among keeners, seen as far back as 2012 (I suspect the genesis is closer to 2009). I'll be darned if I can find which mod I saw it in first. Probably a Levellord project. :dopekeen
The slanted roof is a little bit tricky. There's the steep slope tiles and then the more gentle slopes. To match the slope of the roof with the sloop of the tiles usually means added a flat top tile between every two sloped tiles. But then it doesn't look quite right because Keen is essentially jumping into the background. Planes, you know. Either the house must be brought into the fore which would block the path or Keen must walk along the green grassy bits closer to the base of the Shadowland Trees and never set a foot on the brown path. :foot

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Re: Ultimate Commander Keen 4/Commander Keen 4 Ultimate Edition

Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2019 23:39
by szemi
Update!


There was a bug in the tileset I didn't realize, which was the same as in Keen Dreams. It was the 'Jump through the EXIT' tile property bug in case of the green-brown ground tile (only). It has been fixed, so the Dropbox file has been updated along with the 4shared.com file.

As a minor change, the player now must win or lose only 20 matches, not 21.

Re: Ultimate Commander Keen 4/Commander Keen 4 Ultimate Edition

Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2019 0:15
by Scilicet
This is possibly a stupid question, but would someone please tell me how to get into the new levels? Do I need to complete the old ones first? I'm trying that now. I thought K4 1.4 was shareware and so was bundled in the pack. Do I need to do another download to get the stuff to make it work?

Re: Ultimate Commander Keen 4/Commander Keen 4 Ultimate Edition

Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2019 9:08
by szemi
Complete level 16, which will unlock level 17 + 18 (18 is the first bonus level in this case). After completing level 18 you unlocked level 19.

So in short: You must complete the others (19,20,21) in order.
Unlock level 20: Complete level 19. Etc.

Level 22 is the second secret level, so I don't wanna really tell as if I did so, it wouldn't be secret.

Re: Ultimate Commander Keen 4/Commander Keen 4 Ultimate Edition

Posted: Tue Oct 01, 2019 0:32
by szemi
Final (?) update finally:

Thanks to Piece of Pie Software's Ultimate Keen 4 gameplay video on YouTube, I realized a few other mistakes, which I fixed in the past few minutes:

- in Cave of Coolness, where the Bounder and the Shikadi Gums are, I added 2 stone platforms, so that you no longer must use the jump cheat to get upper back in case you forgot to activate the bridge, which leads to the second blue keygem door
- tile property mistakes for the Crystalus and the stone ground tile corners have been fixed as well

Re: Ultimate Commander Keen 4/Commander Keen 4 Ultimate Edition

Posted: Wed Oct 02, 2019 5:21
by Zak6009
Is "Sister Revenge" releasing any time soon?