Public Commander Keen Forum

Hello all, I hope you are keeping well.

I'm not sure to what extent interest still exists for the humble Keen1 mod.

Nevertheless, here's one which I've made in the past two months or so, please check it out and let me know what you think.

Yes it's a bit challenging in parts but hopefully overall it's adequately balanced in its difficulty, if not for a beginner player, at least for the average Keen player.

And yes the SGA thing is a bit of a gimmick, probably quite annoying... but it looks cool which is all that matters!

Click here to learn more on the Workbench.

Or just click here for the download link.

This year explodes in mods compared to the last one! Well done! Looks dope for a 2 month mod. The higher difficulty drives me a little back, not gonna lie. But will check it anyways.

Far out that title screen is cool.

When I apply the shooting patch (http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/Patch:K ... Vorticons) ) something weird happens to the game. Like colors changing.

When I apply the infinite lives patch (http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/Patch:L ... nite_lives) it doesn't work.

Which shooting patch were you trying to apply?? I'm sure there's plenty of potentially clashing patches in the game.

I was hoping that there would be ample opportunities to gain "extra keens" especially with the heightened value of point items but perhaps this needs fine tuning.

There will already need to be a version 1.1, as I have gone and made an egregious typo on the title screen.

The #Change the controls to Space, shoot; Enter, status.

Your mod is hard. I like some challenge, if I have unlimited lives. But I don't like to load every time I lost a live/ all lives.

It's so hard to gauge how difficult a mod should be.

For instance, galaxy mods, which dominate the scene nowadays, I find very hard. I am constantly saving game as I play through Ocflore for instance. I understand that a vorticons mod is different because no in game saving, but I think it still has to be possible to have difficult situations in Vorticons mods. KeenRush has done this many times. I accept that many parts of my new effort are quite tricky but in many cases, some trial and error will show the player that there is a very easy solution for *some* of the challenges, especially where the garg robots are concerned.

Unfortunately, the modder is at a disadvantage over the game developer. If this exact mod was retailed in 1992 for $15.99, you'd have every nine year old in every school comparing notes about how they had dealt with each part and no-one would rest until they had the game beaten. But when modding a 30 year old game, one's audience will try once or twice, then say "meh" and go do something else.

Anyway for this game, the levels are not massive (mostly 50x50 tiles) so hopefully the map saving will suffice. The relatively closed map is a conscious decision, which some people won't appreciate, but it ensure more of the 12 levels are played.

Apologies for double posting!

Hi all, I plan to do a version 1.1 for this quite soon. But before I do I would be interested to hear if anyone else has had a look at playing this and if there are any suggestions to be made? I am thankful for Roobar's feedback on gameplay and am inclined to agree that the difficulty is too high, whilst at the same time maintaining that I do think that making a game challenging is part of what keeps it interesting. Just maybe a touch less difficult than we have here. I do hope some more people will have a look, as I do believe a project with full conversion of graphics, levels and sounds to what is hopefully a moderately respectable level of quality still warrants some attention on pckf in 2020.

don't forget to tease people with screenshots of in-game action like so:

I have only had time to get a few levels in so, but for the most part I think its pretty cool. I like the graphics. From what I've seen so far my only suggestion for 1.1 is to agree with Roobar about the difficulty curve. Admittedly I'm a bit rusty at Keen 1-3 as I usually play the galaxy games/mods these days, but I thought it started off a little too harsh. I prefer the first level to be an introduction to the mod (especially when it has all new graphics and enemies) so you kind of learn your surroundings, and the enemy behaviours, appreciate the new graphics and learn what kills you etc. Then feel free to ramp up the difficulty from there, and then later in the game start letting all the evil out of your system. This way when it starts getting harder, the player is already invested in the mod and wants to keep trying. If the game starts off too hard, it gets tempting to just not bother going any further. I like games that start off easy, but steadily increase in difficulty to the point of getting brutally difficult at the end (though it should always stay fair).

Good mod though, I like it.

First of all, I got really excited when I saw that you finally updated your website! You even added pages for your previous mods (after Bunny Basher 2)! I remember visiting that website so many times back then, and thus I've played your mods many times (though I haven't beaten all of them yet)!

I played several levels of this mod one day. It's really fun!

It is a challenging mod, but the difficulty has been manageable for me so far. It helps that the levels don't take much time to go from start to finish -- definitely an improvement over your earlier mods. There's also plenty of ammo as well as points in some levels. I think the Tank Robots are a bit too much to deal with. They don't stop before shooting, their shots are fast, and they seem to be indestructible. (Also, I actually find rapidly shooting to be much safer than using the pogo stick, but that's probably just me.) The first level was kinda tough because of that (though I didn't get a game over). They aren't so bad after that.

I like how you often do interesting experiments with your mods. The SGA gimmick is really interesting, even if it takes me much longer to read the text -- definitely good for those who want to be fluent at reading SGA! I have yet to read the story and "Previews!". I like how you patched the enemies -- the Gargs in particular are very fun (especially in the level where they're, like, everywhere)! The decision to go for a fast-paced, Doom-like, shoot-em-up kind of gameplay is an interesting one, though it does add to the difficulty as you can only take one hit. Too bad there's no health patch for Keen 1. The new sound effects are also neat! The graphics are good, probably the best I've seen in your mods so far. I really like the cartoon feel of it!

I did notice a few typos in the help text:

* "gamaplay" should be "gameplay"
* "scrteen" should be "screen"
* "dos" should be all capital letters

It's a good mod so far! It may be hard, but that's not really a bad thing. If you want an easy mod, there are at least several of them you can download from KeenWiki. If you want to be challenged, then you should play this! I don't think the levels need to be changed at all, aside from maybe the first level and Tank Robot behavior.

It's nice that Vorticons mods are still being made! (Not saying that Galaxy mods are bad -- those are also great!)

This is neat! Like many others I got completely stomped by the difficulty curve at first, but I'm getting the hang of it. The new sound effects, creative enemy behavior, and especially the new graphics are all top-notch. This feels more like a polished game than a mod of an old one.

I can't decipher SGA at any reasonable speed. Having to guess what the menu options, etc. say kind of simulates the effect of being too young to read the screens when I first played Keen .. interesting effect that.

Hey Benvolio, I beaten your mod last night! I tried to understand what was going on in the ending, but the graphics were distracting me (nice ending image!) and I'm not a fast SGA-reader so I could only get the first few words in a couple text boxes! I laughed when I read "Keen googles". thehackercat makes a really good point on the SGA text; never realized that!

I was surprised when I entered a level that started off with Keen in a gray, outside area with a realistically-designed statue. It really has a barren, slightly eerie vibe to it! There are some really creative uses of the enemies; I really love the part in the last level where the Gargs were all around and slowly moving towards you, but if you jump, they all start going everywhere fast! The "Garg me!" message is very amusing! Also, I found the secret in the level where you get the blue mixture. Nice one!

The only moment that felt totally unfair was this one spot in a certain level (can't remember which) that has a blue item down in a corner on the ceiling. You can see the item but not what's down below, so if you go down after that item, you'll fall down into toxic waste! There is a can platform below, but I couldn't get on that in time. I don't know if you can even get that item.

I really enjoyed the mod overall! The difficulty is just about right for me and it's so well-made, which is impressive considering how much time you spent on this (and this is coming from someone who spent two months making The Morticore, and that doesn't include beta-testing)! I hope you'll make another mod someday! It would be cool to visit Ireland with Keen! (Too bad there's no Ireland Keen smiley.)

Hi everyone.... I'm really grateful to you all for playing and passing comment... interest is a large part of what keeps a creative pursuit going! I am glad (and slightly in awe) of anyone who has beaten the game. I hope the following will not come as an insult to your achievement. But...

I hereby announce version 1.1 (downloadable now from my webpage where you found the original); this might require deleting cache or going incognito. Basically I've left the sprite behaviours the same because I think they are fairly unique. Instead I significantly softened up the difficulty of all the levels and now I hope a wider audience will find the game enjoyable. Death is still a common event but I think an average player will enter into a steady state of losing and gaining lives if they are paying at least some attention whilst playing.

This does not delegitimise the first release so if you liked it then please retain it as a sort of "hard mode". (No I didn't concoct a Levellord style batch file to orchestrate this, but feel free to do so).

Everyone who responded on this thread so far has earned a mention in the Readme.

OK will check it out.