Commander Keen: Galaxy Reimagined (Public Beta available)

[Trebedo]

Could someone explain to me how to start the game? i'll be honest i dont understand how .NET 7.0 works

[namida]

Once you've installed it, you should be able to simply run GalaxyReimagined.exe and it'll run.

With that being said - it shouldn't be much longer now until the game is released. Basically just fixing bugs (and dealing with suggestions) that beta testers raise, as well as still needing a title screen, at this point.

[namida]

Assuming no major game breaking bugs that need more time to fix (or test the fix for) arise, I plan to release the game some point over the coming weekend.

...well, assuming I either get an offer of help with the title screen by then, or manage to put together something I'm happy with myself.

[Nisaba]

Assuming no major game breaking bugs that need more time to fix (or test the fix for) arise, I plan to release the game some point over the coming weekend.

...well, assuming I either get an offer of help with the title screen by then, or manage to put together something I'm happy with myself.

please specify "help with the title screen". do you need pixel power or some' else?

[namida]

Assuming no major game breaking bugs that need more time to fix (or test the fix for) arise, I plan to release the game some point over the coming weekend.

...well, assuming I either get an offer of help with the title screen by then, or manage to put together something I'm happy with myself.

please specify "help with the title screen". do you need pixel power or some' else?

Pretty much - I'm not really any good with large artwork on that scale, pixel or otherwise. I was envisioning maybe asking about just something that combines Keen 4, 5 and 6's screens (in the sense of displaying a small slice of all three), obviously with a single "COMMANDER KEEN" caption and appropriate changes to the text, but part of it is that I was wanting to see who offered and what they thought was within what they're willing and able to do. The only real "bottom line" I have for it that it should stick to the 16 color palette used by the Galaxy games.

If anyone was going to try something, ideal order would be Keen 4 on left (or top), 6 in the middle, 5 on the right/bottom. This reflects the order you travel to the respective worlds in Reimagined. Same size (ie: 320x200) as the existing ones.

EDIT: Here's a mockup of the kind of thing I'm envisioning, although if anyone has other ideas, I'm open to hearing them.

[Nisaba]

Here's a quick&dirty early alpha sketch. This is to give an initial overview of the idea, to take your title of the game somewhat literally and show how Keen might reimagine the galaxy. If you are interested, I could put some work in it and make it look, well, less like a blocky collage.

[Tormentor667]

Oh Nisaba, please finish that It looks already so original and awesome!

[namida]

Here's a quick&dirty early alpha sketch. This is to give an initial overview of the idea, to take your title of the game somewhat literally and show how Keen might reimagine the galaxy. If you are interested, I could put some work in it and make it look, well, less like a blocky collage.

Ooh, I very much like that! I won't give details here but it ties in very well with something in the game too... The one thing I would note is that neither of the level graphics used in it are levels that appear in Reimagined.

I'll send you images of the world map levels when I'm on PC so you can see which ones are used.

[namida]

How's this for unusual - I encountered a situation where a particular level was impossible on Easy. Not on Normal or Hard, only on Easy. (I guess if I think about it, that's kinda like the secret ending to K5.)

The reason in this case was because I had set Giks to not jump at Keen when playing on Easy. However, getting them to jump was necessary to get them to the right place in a few spots. I tweaked it in the latest beta so that now, they still jump at Keen on easy, but their horizontal movement when jumping is a bit slower.

[namida]

With regards to a release - one of the recent changes I've made makes me a bit hesitant to declare it "stable" so quickly. However, this is very much a "just in case" approach, and I don't want to hide the game for any longer just because of it.

With this in mind, I still intend to do a public release this weekend. What's changing is that rather than aiming for a full "complete" release, this is going to take the form of moving from private beta to public beta. Don't get me wrong - pretty much all the issues I know of are ironed out at this point, unless they're ones I've made a conscious decision to leave as-is. It's just that I'm not quite confident enough yet about the risks of issues I don't know about.

[lestagio]

Well, I'm late to the party. I touched this a month or two ago, but never bothered writing anything about it. I hadn't played the demo much, either. Just about half of the first level.
Now I just played through all of the levels in the demo, and this is awesome!
It keeps the soul of the original game, but some great tweaks and changes. Everything feels much more crisp, from the movement to the graphics. I'm excited to see a full release come shortly!
I haven't found any glitches, everything seems to work well. Do you plan to have fullscreen support for this? Because right now, the game simply plays in a window. This isn't a bad thing, and I can most certainly play through the whole game, but I am just curious if you are adding fullscreen. I played around with cheats for a bit and did not have any problems. I was glad that the game loaded right up. Sometimes attempting to start programs with a command line parameter crashes the program.
Finally, a question for the future: Do you plan on making a reimagining or remake of Keen 5 in this engine? I believe it would be interesting to see.
Anyway, good luck on your development! I hope that the full release/public release comes out shortly.

P.S - What is the point of "Pyramid of the Test"? I found it when I was looking through the files and loaded up the level in game. Was this just a place to mess around with physics and objects? Either way, I got a laugh when it said "Keen fucls around in the pyramid of the test."

[namida]

Do you plan to have fullscreen support for this? Because right now, the game simply plays in a window. This isn't a bad thing, and I can most certainly play through the whole game, but I am just curious if you are adding fullscreen.

Yes. The private beta builds that some people have been testing, already include support for this (as well as for changing the window size).

Finally, a question for the future: Do you plan on making a reimagining or remake of Keen 5 in this engine?

The full game covers Shadowlands, Fribbulus Xax and the Omegamatic. No need for a seperate Keen 5 game.

P.S - What is the point of "Pyramid of the Test"? I found it when I was looking through the files and loaded up the level in game. Was this just a place to mess around with physics and objects? Either way, I got a laugh when it said "Keen fucls around in the pyramid of the test."

Yeah, indeed, Pyramid of the Test was a level I used to try various things out during development. (At this point, it's now been removed altogether, as I don't need it anymore.)

[namida]

Figuring out where to go next can be a bit confusing in this, so I've added hint icons. Don't worry - they can be turned off in Settings if you're a fan of exploring and finding things on your own!

When enabled, a red, blue or green exclamation mark will appear over levels of interest while on a world map. A red mark indicates that the level is blocking your path, and can be completed with the items you currently have (pogo, stunner, etc); it will also appear over the BWB Megarocket if you need to travel to another world in order to progress (it will not appear over the BWB if you have goals in both the current world and another one). A blue mark indicates that the level contains an item (pogo, stunner, etc) that you can acquire with the items you currently have. Finally, a green mark indicates - when your current goal is to collect more of these - that the level contains a gnosticene or similar that you can rescue with your current items.

EDIT: I expanded this so that the blue / green marks will also appear over the BWB if applicable and accessible ones exist in other worlds (as long as none exist in the current world too).

[lestagio]

The full game covers Shadowlands, Fribbulus Xax and the Omegamatic. No need for a seperate Keen 5 game.

Ok! I did not realize this. I am glad to hear it though, as Keen 5 is my favorite official Keen game.

[namida]

Alright, public beta is here. I know it's not quite the weekend yet but close enough.

https://nv.wtf/GalaxyReimagined_0.9.5.0_Beta.zip
Requires .NET 7.0. Only a Windows build available at this stage, but it should run fine on Linux using WINE.

Title screen is still a placeholder, and it's likely that some bugs still remain.

If you had the private beta builds - please do not extract this over the top of them. Delete them first, or extract the public beta to a new folder. This is because of a change in how the data files are stored (they're now packed into a single file, I didn't bother with this for the private betas); it will pick up the old files if they're still there.

More info edited into the first post.