Commander Genius and Galaxy Engine progress

All discussion about the Commander Genius project (a Keen interpreter + more).
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gerstrong
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Commander Genius and Galaxy Engine progress

Post by gerstrong »

As the other topic failed a bit in keeping the point, I decided to open a new one for discussions and will start posting our first proof, that we are working on it and able to show any graphics of the game:

Image

To really proof, that it's not a mockup as far as possible, I applied the scale3x filter.

I also can send you a video if you want.

We (the CG-Team) only want to let you know, that we are heavily working on it all the time and if someone is interested to help us, he is very welcome.

One thing I can promise you. It will be the best experience (especially scrolling) you ever had playing Commander Keen!

Enjoy the Screenshot! More may come soon, as we progress to get the engine done.
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DSL
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Post by DSL »

Awesome job so far!
I hate scalers though ;)
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Post by pizza2004 »

I know exactly what you mean, I always just use the one that makes it larger myself.
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Post by matonen »

Looking good, though I agree with DSL about the scalers. :P

Can't wait to try this!
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Post by gerstrong »

You really complain a lot about that. At least it can be disabled anytime, so don't worry...
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DSL
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Post by DSL »

gerstrong wrote:You really complain a lot about that. At least it can be disabled anytime, so don't worry...
It's good that you got it working though. Didn't want it to sound like i was complaining really... But i guess scalers is a good way to show the work in progress.

Keep doing it awesome!
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Post by DaVince »

I don't hate scalers, but it looks like this one is doing a terrible job at scaling Keen. The dithered pixels should blend into one color, not display as huge pixels...
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Post by gerstrong »

It's the original scaleX filter that uses CG, but you are right, it doesn't look that good.
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Post by Sciz CT »

DaVince wrote:I don't hate scalers, but it looks like this one is doing a terrible job at scaling Keen. The dithered pixels should blend into one color, not display as huge pixels...
You'd need a blur filter for that instead of a smoothing filter.

Glad to see you're still plugging away at this, gerstrong.
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Post by gerstrong »

Thanks Sciz CT,

of course we won't give it up, even if it will take more time to do that.

Thanks for the hint
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Post by DaVince »

Sciz CT wrote:
DaVince wrote:I don't hate scalers, but it looks like this one is doing a terrible job at scaling Keen. The dithered pixels should blend into one color, not display as huge pixels...
You'd need a blur filter for that instead of a smoothing filter.
Not necessarily... HQ2x, for example, is a smoothing filter that does have specific rules to blend these patterns.
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Post by Sciz CT »

DaVince wrote:Not necessarily... HQ2x, for example, is a smoothing filter that does have specific rules to blend these patterns.
HQ2x and its ilk sort of do it, but not especially well. You get a kind of fuzzy look that's still clearly pixelated.

The best example I can think of for this sort of scenario is the original Sonic games on the Genesis/Mega Drive. The artists were smart and used various patterns (primarily dithering and straight vertical lines) to get past the 64-color limit by letting the RF/composite output do the blending for free. Kega Fusion is the only emulator I've come across with rendering modes that actually duplicate the effect properly. Some of the old Sierra games have CGA modes that use the same trick.

Having said that, I'm not sure that Keen was designed with that sort of blending in mind in the first place. Kinda curious to see if it would work well or not.
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Post by DaVince »

You could always include the NTSC filter in that case... It tries to emulate the TV look (with inaccuracies strange TV artifacts and all) and it's used in at least 4 emulators so far, I think.

It'd be a weird/interesting effect for Keen, though.
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Post by thehackercat »

Hmm, that would be a good filter to use for the help/intro screens. Maybe even for the Wrist Computer! The analog-TV look would be nice and archaic-looking, perfect for the invented technology of an 8-year old genius in the 90's.
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Post by gerstrong »

About the filter we will think about. We might add new ones, but later...

Here is another shot, showing you of what we can do now in CG...

Sorry, it's not really much. We had a lot of problems getting the resources in, there is still a lot to do.

As I'm a student and also have an extra job. Well, it's difficult to find time in developing on it. I won't give up, but it will take time.

The other thing is that the team is too small. We offered people to join us, but nobody wants to.

I know the source code is way big for such a small game, but that is because it's well split up into sections.

For example for the modders there is a section where they can add patch code parsing, so they get their mods working. CG offers a lot of features which for the normal player are hidden, but great for the people that want to get out the most of Commander Keen Vorticons series.

We have VGA Tiles for better graphics, alternate music and sound, cool graphical effects, level replayability and much more. The gameplay is also much smoother than in DOS. Well, you can try it out yourself and you'd know.

About the galaxy engine, yeah. I promised that we will do it. Piece by piece I'm adding code, so we can use that engine. and of course the patcher still works, so we can support the galaxy and alien mods, too. I especially do that for Keen 7, 8 and 9 by Ceilick and his team.

Using Doxygen, I have commented some code and more will come. This might help getting into the code a bit for those who are really interested in the development. Let's make our dream happen and get Keen 4-6 working on CG. Smooth graphics, multiplayer mode, awesome effects, and much more!

Here a small shot, which can be seen when you load CG with Keen 4 (version 1.4).

Well, the most recent available version won't show that. More like it, it will do the next version, or maybe you get a working menu of Keen 4 style. I will see what I can do...

Image

Good things may take time :-)

And of course, we still support the vorticon engine, so you can report bugs and we will work on it. On our page, there is a bug reporting system and we try to solve them always...


http://clonekeenplus.sourceforge.net/
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