Okay! So after
finally having played the full release for myself last month, I'm finally getting around to responding to some of the replies on here. In hindsight maybe it wasn't entirely necessary to wait 'til after I played it for some of these, but whatareyagonnado.
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Nisaba wrote: ↑Mon Dec 14, 2020 14:57
DANG!
the colour palette is outstanding! excellent design choices
The palette was entirely KeenRush's doing, and I have to say, I don't think I could've done any better.
The colors were so much fun to work with, and really gave a strong direction to follow, design-wise. Really sets the whole mood.
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Benvolio wrote: ↑Sun Dec 20, 2020 12:54
[a lot of words]
Wow, it looks like you put a lot of thought into this. I rate this review 5 stars!
I love most everything about this. There is so much ingeniousness, so much hard work and so much love for Commander Keen and its category of game.
I'm glad it shows.
I definitely put a lot of thought and effort into the contributions I made. There was already so much potential in the aesthetic concepts, and I wanted to help make this mod the best it could be.
If I was slightly more meticulous I would check if [the font]'s been used in previous KeenRush mods - I suspect that it has.
Good eye! I'd forgotten about this, but apparently the font was modified (by KeenRush) from the one made for Planet of Agony.
Suffice it to say the map is one of the most beautiful I have seen and it really truly evokes the image of riding into the sunset with a vividness seldom achieved in EGA.
I do have to express my love for the world map.
Though I did most of the final artwork for it, I have to give KeenRush the credit for the theming and aesthetic. A desert at sunset -- such a powerful combination visually. That was the first thing that was discussed when I started work on this, and it made quite an impression on me. It was always a key focus and was often in my mind when thinking about the mod (in fact the initial correspondence thread for the worldmap info ended up being used for basically the entire development discussion because neither of us bothered to change it
), so I'm glad the mod ended up being themed and then named after it. I think the map turned out really well, and it's just nice to hang out in.
I am a fan of the fully open map design.
The level progression is done through time instead of space.
2) Overhead Adventuring
These levels are visually the most beautiful in the game. The enemy sprites are so amusing and fun to work around.
A lot of my artwork was for the dungeon/tomb levels. I did the primary floor and wall tiles, and all the sprite graphics there. But the beauty of the environment was present already with KeenRush's temporary working graphics -- the blue and purple and brown bricks and stones coordinated very nicely and crafted a deep atmospheric feeling all on their own. There was so much potential there, and I just did my best to bring it out.
I think KeenRush and proYorp have done a very good job in calibrating the difficulty of the new environments
The level design was solely done by KeenRush. I gave feedback on some things, and he referenced feedback received from his last mod as well, but I never touched the levels myself.
To have it all packaged into one mod was obviously a conscious decision of the modders
Again, I can't take credit for that. I think most things were already planned out by the time I signed on. This was primarily KeenRush's mod, I just helped out with some things.
Thank you so much KeenRush for sticking with Keen and with us and for applying your huge talents as an all round game developer to this cool niche community that clings onto existence decade after decade. Please keep modding - even if the next one is in 2025 or 2030. It truly is a worthwhile pursuit when you keep the standard this high.
Agree.
Thanks KeenRush!
Of course proYorp also deserves immense credit- the exact contributions they made we don't precisely know but I will take KeenRush's word for it that perhaps some of the pixel art with the highest levels of finesse would be attributed to proYorp.
Well, I'm here now, you could always ask if you have any specific questions.
Let's see... I did most of the graphics on the world map, a fair bit for the top-down levels (as stated above), the background and main solid blocks of the Luma levels (and the Luma itself, which I named
), and a couple sandstone tilesets for the platforming levels. Surprisingly I didn't end up doing many of the decorative/detail tiles. I guess because those were saved for last to get the important stuff done first....
One of the first things I did was the pyramids on the world map. I was sent a mockup of pyramids in a desert, with long shadows stretching out from them and anything big enough to cast a shadow, a setting sun in the sky.... That alone was kind of mindblowing, and I hadn't even seen any of the new tech yet! Like the dungeon levels later on, I could see so much potential that it made my imagination run wild. So I did a lot of the final artwork in those areas, but the artistic concepts were designed by KeenRush.
I did not draw the larger bitmaps such as the title screen and story images, which look really cool. I'm a fan of the abstract use of color and the minimalist shapes shown there. Honestly it's probably a lot better than how it would've ended up if I'd tried to draw full dithered cutscene images (which is what I was thinking I would do). Shading is not something I have much experience with.
So, as for "finesse?" That's probably at least a little subjective, in this case. Different skills in different areas. Sometime I hope to master that minimalism stuff. I'm still learning.
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TheBigV wrote: ↑Mon Jan 11, 2021 21:33
When I got to the first level with the Luma, I questioned if I was actually playing a source code mod.
Ok I sincerely apologize to everyone in advance for this but i
this popped into my head and refused to not be made
It's all patching! The patchfile, by my approximations, looks to be roughly 3 times the size in kilobytes of the average patchfile -- and that's without any notation.
I have no idea how most of this stuff works on a technical level. If I had to give a guess, I'd say that like a lot of surface-level modding (such as with XkyKeen1), it has a lot to do with clever reuse of existing resources. After all, there is some of that surface-level stuff going on here too.
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Anywho. I'll reply to more later.
Thanks again to everyone who's taken the time to write something here!
In other news, Shikadi-Netzwerk recently finished doing a playthrough of this. Check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... -HhR8sZrXo