Prelude

[Levellass]

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https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/jtm4bnpt ... x4dt0&dl=0

[Roobar]

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[Nisaba]

[Nospike]

Well that was entirely unexpected.

Glad to see you around Lass, I hope you're doing alright.

[Soul Monster]

Well, didn't expect to wake up to this! Good to see you back Levellass!

You weren't kidding, that was pretty short, but it was unique and certainly had a bit of a Halloween theme to it with the black and white graphics and more gothic architecture. Hope there's more to come in this project.

Anyway, Happy Late Halloween to you Levellass!

[Nisaba]

I am still speechless. full of unsorted feelings.
it goes deep. and it fucl hurts.
thank you for finding an expression where words fail me....

[Quillax]

KeenWiki article created: https://keenwiki.shikadi.net/wiki/Prelude

It was kind of a pain trying to get the tilesets exported, I had to mess around with two different versions of KeenGraph (plus a so-called tileset exporter). What's weird is that one version works well with Prelude, but not Mura, while another version acts the complete opposite. Since VorticonView doesn't work well with V2 Vorticon mods, I created the level maps with Mindbelt, Print Screen, and MSPaint (first time I did that since Mort's Rescue).

Anyway, welcome back, Levellass! It's so great to see you again, and I'm happy to see a new mod! I played it through at least four times, and wow, that was pretty neat! It may be short, but the very mysterious story really had me thinking. It felt like something KeenRush would make (think about Fastest Gun in the Universe). Some of the levels had parts that seemed redundant (the white keys in the second level, for example, were pointless), but in this mod, they somehow add to the slight horror-ish atmosphere. Has anyone else loaded the save file included? It's kinda creepy. Also, throughout this whole mod, I had On the Run and Time (the part before the vocals come in) from The Dark Side of the Moon playing in my head; they seemed to really to fit!

All in all, it's a pretty cool way to bring life to a once-abandoned project! Definitely a nice way to spend a Halloween night!

Well that was entirely unexpected.

Glad to see you around Lass, I hope you're doing alright.

By the way, Nospike, how's Mura going? I remember seeing you post a few screenshots after you released the one-level demo. I still think it'd be a pretty cool mod. I was digging through the demo, and found a sword/knife that replaced the pogo, but using it makes Tikk commit suicide! I assume that the mod would get even darker in the end...

[Nospike]

Nice and clean wiki page. I'm curious about the Keengraph issue, Mura uses the (optional?) extended V2 tilesets and needs a special version of Keengraph for it, maybe Prelude doesn't.

By the way, Nospike, how's Mura going? I remember seeing you post a few screenshots after you released the one-level demo. I still think it'd be a pretty cool mod. I was digging through the demo, and found a sword/knife that replaced the pogo, but using it makes Tikk commit suicide! I assume that the mod would get even darker in the end...

It's not really going. I've tried to make some more progress in the last few weeks after a long hiatus (honestly, playing Prelude really moved me and I wanted to at least give it a shot) and it's difficult for me to summon the focus necessary to work on an old Keen mod project. Plus I ran into the old issue of being really bad at drawing sprite graphics and more complex backgrounds and stuff, but at this point I don't want to enlist anyone to help me with this again because I don't wanna cause any more disappointment than there needs to be if things just don't work out. And yes the game is supposed to get darker yet, although I don't want it to be needlessly brutal or edgy. The knife is supposed to also double as a melee weapon, it already kinda sorta works but the patching is dodgy and I wanted to redo it.

I do have plenty of cool new stuff (way more interesting than the first level imo) that's teased in the screens I released earlier as well as some additional stuff I haven't shown yet. 4 complete levels and some new concepts being worked on that I think are pretty good. I've been thinking on and off about whether or not I should at least continually release what I have every couple years, bite-sized and all, and maybe make some people happier that way than if I hadn't released anything at all.

[Roobar]

Speedrunning through this was fun.

https://youtu.be/kVd133-U4wY

[Benvolio]

I'm late to the party but really I have to say "Prelude" is a fantastic Vorticons mod. It speaks to the "less is more" adage in modding. It is uncomplicated, playable and crucially, partly due to being a small-scale project, gives a mediocre player like me a chance to play it to completion without getting stressed. The jump/mobility physics are slightly disconcerting at first but one adjusts. There is only one jump which challenged me due to the four tile jump height situation. Also amusing is the crouching mechanism, particularly the appearance of the player which (bearing in mind the modder is a Kiwi ) looks a lot like he's about to engage in a rugby scrum. The presentation of the mod, and the mysterious story text, completes the Halloween atmosphere.

To see more Levellass modding efforts of this standard would be a real treat in future!