How to play fan made levels on modern laptop

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JackDaniels^
Meep
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Mar 26, 2023 20:26

How to play fan made levels on modern laptop

Post by JackDaniels^ »

Hi All,

I used to play commander keen a lot and was an active member of this forum (username: JackDaniels), but cannot seem to be recovering my account. On my old PC, I played a lot of the fan made levels through DosBox.

I recently downloaded the CK level pack through GOG. It provides a convenient link to play, opens Dos Box automatically and then can select CK 1 - 5. When I try to replace the maps in the designated file path with fan made levels (e.g. Ceilick's CK4 level set), when going through GOG Galaxy, it will not load the game.

Can anyone help me out with this?

Also ... bonus points if anyone can tell me where I can buy the non-demo version of CK6!

Thank you!
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Fleexy
Tool Smith
Posts: 1432
Joined: Fri Dec 12, 2008 1:21
Location: Abiathar C&C

Re: How to play fan made levels on modern laptop

Post by Fleexy »

Welcome back! If you can email me (my username @keenmodding.org) from your old account's address, I can reset its password for you.

[EDIT: I completely missed that you said you used DOSBox before. Sorry for the excessive explanation below. TL;DR DOSBox is still the way to go for playing Keen on modern computers, and I probably shouldn't post while sleepy. :lol]

On a modern computer you will need DOSBox, like GOG uses. When you download a mod or level pack, there will be a .BAT file to launch the modified game. (That's why overwriting the original games' level files didn't work - some patches have to be applied in memory to the game program for it to load modified Galaxy levels.) Some people find it easiest to drag-and-drop the launcher .BAT onto the DOSBox icon to start it. Others like to just open DOSBox and use the classic DOS prompt. To access Windows files from the DOS environment, you need a "mount" a Windows folder as a virtual drive and then switch to that drive:

Code: Select all

mount K C:\real\path\to\your\Keen\stuff
K:
You can then cd around (if needed) and run the game's launcher .BAT file.

For mods of the shareware episodes, most mods will include everything you need. But for the non-free episodes, you will first need to copy the files mentioned in the mod's README (often just the .EXE) from the original game. It sounds like you found the game files in GOG's folders, so you can copy them from there to the mod's folder using the normal Windows file manager.

Let us know if we can help further!
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