Public Commander Keen Forum

Underworld Ultimate has been updated.

The "Secret Level Stuff" level should now be fully playable and a little less difficult. I also changed a few other levels to reduce the difficulty a bit. See changelog for details.

Edit: fixed url

K1n9_Duk3 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 06, 2021 21:16 Underworld Ultimate has been updated.

I am getting a "404 Not Found" error when I clicked on your link.

You should download it in the first post

There was a typo in the url in that post ("underwolrd" instead of "underworld"). It's fixed now. At least I got it right when I updated the first post in this thread.

Is there a Vorticon-Mod Bug Hunt? Or maybe Keen Dreams? Since I made Keen Dreams 2 Another Helping of Veggies and Xmas 2010 with Levellas and Ceilick.

Just FYI: I found another bug in Underworld Ultimate. If you return to the world map after triggering the boss in the final level, you won't be able to enter the boss level again. I already fixed this issue but I'd like to wait for some comments and feedback regarding the difficulty in the current version before I release the next update.

Yeah, lower the difficulty if you can.

Roobar wrote: ↑Sat Jan 09, 2021 6:18 Yeah, lower the difficulty if you can.

I think the biggest problem with the difficulty is the placement of enemies in many levels. There are times when there are too many enemies and hazards in small confined areas.

It would help if you could point out all the places where the enemy placement or the general layout of the level made things too difficult for you.

I already did a playthrough on easy and I already modified the parts of the levels that I felt were just completely broken or required pixel-perfect accuracy.
I don't exactly have all the time in the world and I don't really see myself playing this game over and over on all three difficulty levels. Honestly, I don't actually care about anything but the easiest difficulty. I don't think I have ever completed any Keen game or mod on normal or hard. So if you can't point out specific areas that give you trouble, I'll either leave the difficulty as-is or make easy difficulty the only option and be done with it.

For those who missed it, I just wanted to let you know that I added some lists to the first post, pointing out the remaining mods that have patching bugs in them and the mods that don't. So if you're not sure what to expect from any of the Galaxy-mods that I haven't updated so far, check those lists.

There are a bunch of mods that I have decided not to update, at least for now. Feel free to contact me if you would like to suggest something that might change my mind.

A bug remains in The Eight Accumulators when enter is pressed on the Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket level. The game crashes with an error:

US_CPrintLine() - String exceeds width

A problem with the level name loading on the enter menu?

I had much problems like that in my mods and I fixed them as well. It's very easy. The level name (location in the Status Window) is too long

CHOCOLATE MILK wrote: ↑Fri Jan 22, 2021 11:34 A bug remains in The Eight Accumulators [...]

Thank you for pointing that out. It's fixed now (same download link as before). In case you're wondering what caused this bug, the level name was

The Bean-With-Bacon Megarocket

and I changed it to

The Bean-With-Bacon
Megarocket

The ID Engine doesn't insert any automatic line breaks (and neither does CKPATCH), so all line breaks have to be placed in advance by the programmer/modder. Having the full name as one single line made the text too wide to fit in the level name box in the status window and that's why the program exited with an error message.

K1n9_Duk3 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 22, 2021 21:35 ......The ID Engine doesn't insert any automatic line breaks (and neither does CKPATCH), so all line breaks have to be placed in advance by the programmer/modder. Having the full name as one single line made the text too wide to fit in the level name box in the status window and that's why the program exited with an error message.

Modders have had issues in the past when they create a Galaxy mod and rename the new levels that the new level names could be no longer than the original level name or it would cause the game to crash. I came across the same error back in the day when Ceilick started a thread about updating and improving The Keys of Krodacia to be similar in construction as Dead in the Desert and Battle of the Brains. Besides having better music the plan was to also rename the levels. In his opinion he wanted more Keenish sounding level names rather than the "generic" names he had. In the discussion we came up with alternative names for most of the levels and most of these names were indeed better than the original names, though this new update never did happen. So the next time I played Keen7 I went into the patch file and renamed most of the levels to the names we suggested. As mentioned above many levels wouldn't play anymore simply because the names were now too long.

Syllypryde wrote: ↑Sat Jan 23, 2021 20:59

K1n9_Duk3 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 22, 2021 21:35 ......The ID Engine doesn't insert any automatic line breaks (and neither does CKPATCH), so all line breaks have to be placed in advance by the programmer/modder. Having the full name as one single line made the text too wide to fit in the level name box in the status window and that's why the program exited with an error message.

Modders have had issues in the past when they create a Galaxy mod and rename the new levels that the new level names could be no longer than the original level name or it would cause the game to crash. I came across the same error back in the day when Ceilick started a thread about updating and improving The Keys of Krodacia to be similar in construction as Dead in the Desert and Battle of the Brains. Besides having better music the plan was to also rename the levels. In his opinion he wanted more Keenish sounding level names rather than the "generic" names he had. In the discussion we came up with alternative names for most of the levels and most of these names were indeed better than the original names, though this new update never did happen. So the next time I played Keen7 I went into the patch file and renamed most of the levels to the names we suggested. As mentioned above many levels wouldn't play anymore simply because the names were now too long.

Well, there are two different things, we should take in account.

Like K1n9_Duk3 already mentioned, there is a limit of characters per line. If expanded the game gives an error message. So your level name shouldn't exceed the maximum width of X characters in order to be displayed properly. In other words, when a text window is given a line of text too wide for it, the message "US_CPrintLine() - String exceeds width" occurs.

However, expanding length of the original level names is another thing. What you described has to do with an exceptionally long string of text which is loaded somewhere expecting a short string, such as a level name. This often happens when a terminal $00 is left out of a text patch, mixing two strings into one big one. So while expanding the original level name, I assume that you guys overwrote another text string, so that the game keeps reading TWO texts, which also causes a game crash. It is easy to have a patch that is shorter than the old text; nothing needs to really be changed. But one that is longer will probably overwrite something important.
You can fix this by rearranging a number of things within the patch file in order to create more space for each level name text string. This is a bit of a complex task but it is sure doable. In short, your new level names can expand the original level names, as long as you put in the extra work. This means looking for code segments that can be shortened, shifting things around a bit and of course readjusting pointers and the like. This may sound a bit overwhelming as it requires some knowledge of how patches are organized.

The good news is:
you don't have to do any of this. Just share Ceilick's and your updated list of level names. K1n9_Duk3 or I will take care of the rest.