Foray in the Forest (development thread)

[Landola1]

Marv.

it’s on!
After such a long time of development, I am super happy to finally announce that the release of Foray in the Forest is just around the corner:

[Soul Monster]

it’s on!
After such a long time of development, I am super happy to finally announce that the release of Foray in the Forest is just around the corner:

Yyyyyyyyyes!!!

[Roobar]

it’s on!
After such a long time of development, I am super happy to finally announce that the release of Foray in the Forest is just around the corner:

OMG I can't believe!

[Quillax]

I knew it! I knew it! I knew Foray in the Forest would come out in Christmas! Do I get a cookie for guessing correctly? Though, according to Nisaba's signature, FitF is already out in our local grocery stores. Anyone willing to verify that? I'll have to check mine.

Anyway, I hope this will be really good! I think we all have high expectations for this mod -- hopefully they'll be fulfilled, or better yet exceeded! Looking forward to Christmas!

You've certainly spent enough time on it and taken this project far beyond the original concept of a levelpack to make what will no doubt be your magnum opus!

Yeah, I'm still amazed at how much this project has evolved! I think the last time I've seen a game go through such a huge shakeup mid-development is Conker's Bad Fur Day (game that came out in 2001, was originally yet another 3D platformer featuring a cutesy cartoon animal, but received complaints for being too derivative, so it got turned into an adult satire of the very type of game it was going to be). Though, Nisaba told me that the project was always intended to be more than a levelpack, but I have the impression that at first it would've been something like The Eight Accumulators (i.e. levelpack with some new graphics), unless I'm wrong and it really was planned to be the next Battle of the Brains/Atroxian Realm from the get-go.

That reminds me, is Mr. M still involved in any way?

You might've already received an answer to this, but in case you didn't, I once asked this two years ago, and here's what Nisaba said:

There's one question I've been wanting to ask for a long time now: Is Mr. M still involved with this mod? Did he even agree with any of these recent decisions? [...]

That is a fair question.

as you all know _mr_m_ lost most of the project files due to a hard drive fail back in 2012. so the project was literally dead.
I then decided to recreate all the things (blurry screenshots, low res video recordings) that I could lay my fingers on from scratch, cause I loved and still love the initial vision of this mod so much.
Behind the scenes _mr_m_ and talked about the project for a while and discussed some of his ideas and plans. eventually he was even able to recover at least some material that was intact from early-to-mod 2010. He then sent me the dumped files which contained 4 versions of the mod and some more or less intakt IMF files as well as some WIP sketch sheets to curate and prepare for my use.
Next to that I was searching the forums and digging through each and every old IRC post (literally thousands) I could find (shoutouts to NY00123 for providing most of them!).

that all said, I revived what I could and worked as close as possible to the original sources. Every now and then _mr_m_ was so kind to answer my questions and gave me feedback on my progress.

I'm telling this to give you an idea what efforts I've made and how how true I'm trying to stay to _mr_m_'s plans & ideas. And yet projects evolve over time. So there will be quite a number of things that are new and clearly show my handwriting. This is of course due to the circumstances. we were able recover 5 level maps whereas only two of them were in their final stage. this wouldn't make a full mod, would it?
So I decided to study the genuine spirit of those existing maps and took this as a base for the rest of the project. Staying true to the idea of requicken lost or abandoned modding attempts and other Keen related creative pieces I also included left over stuff from other community remembers that are worth presenting (a bit like what I did with Buried in Oblivion).

all in all, this mod stays true to it's origins and of course aims to represent the look and feel of it's roots.
And yes, this mod takes place on Gnositucs IV even-though there will be a twist that I can't spoil just yet. And no, it was always planned to be more then a simple levelpack, but yes it should feel very much Keen 4 vibe like and I think it will.

let me just share two quotes to give you an better understanding:

[...] i feel like ive diverged away from the keenish-ness of my levels
in an effort to make more 'realistic' enviroments [...]

[...] i'd rather have 8-10 quality levels than 15 crappy ones [...]

We will now have 20 quality and extensively tested levels. Each and every map comes with special designed graphics and something unique which will only be featured in this very location. A lot (!) of sweat went into this and I think I can say that Foray in the Forest will be an exciting place to explore.

From the sounds of it, it looks like while Mr. M provided some ideas and feedback, Nisaba took the wheel for this mod.

It's funny how the releases of this year's modern games don't excite me at all. Yet...I am really eager to play this mod

Same. This community is the reason I don't need a PS5 or XBOX whatever they're on. It doesn't help that companies knowingly release games unfinished and buggy now, and refuse to fix anything despite all the fan backlash that it causes. Plus, a lot of games are just brands at this point, and people are bored with new releases because they spent so much time on just improving the graphical technologies, but now that they've made them so lifelike, the novelty has worn off and people are looking deeper into the other flaws and seeing them for what they are: repetitive, glitchy, boring, cash grabs with no challenge to appease the lowest common denominator.

So thanks PCKF, for still putting effort into your work to bring us Keen fans quality content for all these years and beyond!

And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Well said, Soul Monster! I agree with both you and Dave216. Nowadays, it seems like the indie developers (including our modding community, as well as others plus fangame creators) are the ones who are paving the way for quality games that primarily aim for just that: quality, not easy money. I'm so glad that we have such a talented and dedicated community!

Though, of all the AAA game companies, Nintendo seems to avoid some of the common poor business decisions others have adapted and still put some effort into their games (they're at least functional and not overly buggy), although I don't find their modern games interesting enough to sway me over and they seem to eliminate some of the challenge and quirks their older games had as if to appease the mainstream audiences. Plus, they seem to have somewhat adapted the practice of releasing a game that's shallow in content and then frequently updated to add new stuff (which, by the time that happens, most players will move onto something else). I've tried Super Mario Odyssey and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (considered by many to be some of the best of the Switch's library) for a little bit, and while they seemed okay, I feel like I've had far more fun with Super Mario 64/Sunshine and Super Smash Bros. 64/Melee. I think I just like it better when games were simple but tight, focused, and fun, rather than bloated to the extreme with loads and loads of content to justify the price tag and cover up any flawed gameplay and designs (playing Ultimate felt like there's peanut butter in the buttons, probably because of the high input buffer).

[Nisaba]

I knew it! I knew it! I knew Foray in the Forest would come out in Christmas! Do I get a cookie for guessing correctly? Though, according to Nisaba's signature, FitF is already out in our local grocery stores. Anyone willing to verify that? I'll have to check mine.

[clb]

The game looks great!

Is the source code available somewhere?

The file COPYING.TXT license file that is distributed with the game package contains the following:

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections
1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange; or,

but I was not able to find any mention about the source code in the zip, making the package seemingly contradict itself on its license?

The reason why I was interested in the source was that I noticed that the game was stuttering on my 80 MHz 486, so I thought I'd give a peek to the sync code to see if I could make it run smooth like https://github.com/juj/KEEN70HZ.

Awesome work from the development team!

[Nisaba]

The source code is on its way. It is currently being tidied up a bit, more clearly annotated and superfluous items removed.

To clear things up a little:
Under the GPL v2 preamble it is actually not mandatory to ship the source code right away. In that sense there is no contradiction here. However one has to distribute the source code if someone asks for it, which you did.

[Bounder]

Could someone tell me what settings to use in Abiathar to load Foray in the Forest levels?

I can get the maps to load, but I can't figure out how to get the graphics or tileset to load properly.

[The_Guy222]

Hi,

I wanted to say that I registered just to post here about this mod.

I had been aware of Commander Keen mods, but nobody had ever advertised FITF where I could see it. I found it by accident when I was downloading some classic mods.

The production value of FITF is astounding.

There is a term known as "aesthetic completion," in which all the visual elements of a work cohere perfectly. FITF has that - from the greenery and earth tones, to the "greener" UI elements. The classic dithering adds to it.

And all this on an EGA palette.

That's the other thing: what was done with the palette is astonishing! Some colours were swapped out, notably the peach-orange was brought in. This made an unbelievable difference to the levels. There is at least one developer of modern Sierra-style games using a custom "EEGA" or "Enhanced EGA" palette that was mentioned earlier in the thread. [I forget the developer / games]. But FITF does it for real! On a working DOS machine! Just as there are C64 and other retro-system developers making impressive games on the old hardware, so are you keeping DOS in the mix.



If the retro developers behind the Telwynium / Perilous Night / Tachyon Dreams and the new Crimson Diamond take anything away from this, I hope it's that [on a VGA and likely a real EGA monitor with enhanced cards], you can swap a few colours out. Maybe it's time for some EGA 640x350 adventure games!

BTW Here's a good article about the new retro EGA:

https://www.timeextension.com/features/ ... modern-day

[K1n9_Duk3]

Could someone tell me what settings to use in Abiathar to load Foray in the Forest levels?

If you just want to view the levels, you're probably better off using GalaxyView 1.9 instead of Abiathar. You should be able to find a download on the KeenWiki. Just open MAPTEMP.CKS in uGrab and click OK three times.

If you want to create your own levels, that's another story. The source code archive should contain all the necessary files, including an Abiathar project file, but it seems that the source archive is no longer available, at least for now. We moved all the infoplane icons from the game's tileset into an external bitmap file to free up some space. That bitmap file is also included in the source code archive and editing the levels without the icons would be extremely confusing.

You might be able to export the tileset images with uGrab and use them to edit the levels in Abiathar. F11 should give you what you need. uGrab 's log file should also give you valuable information for setting up an Abiathar project file. But you would still lack the infoplane icons.

Since none of the header files are linked into the executable in FITF, you should be able to play modified levels right away without having to modify the EXE in any way. Just keep in mind that a few things like the level progression between some of the levels and Keen's "respawn" points in the mummy level are hard-coded.

Another thing you should keep in mind when you modify the levels is that FITF supports completely different levels for each difficulty setting. Levels 0 to 29 are for the normal difficulty, levels 30 to 59 are for easy difficulty and levels 60 to 89 are for hard difficulty. The normal levels are mandatory (must exist), the easy and hard levels are optional. If the easy or hard version of a level doesn't exist, the game will load the normal level even when playing on easy or hard. Make sure you start a new game with the right difficulty when you want to test your level.

The production value of FITF is astounding.

Thanks for your compliments. Hearing or reading that people enjoyed our game and cared enough to come here, register and leave a message always warms my heart. I'm sure Nisaba appreciates it at least as much as I do.

Just to clarify: The palette swapping in FITF is a VGA only feature. If you play the game on an EGA system (or you start it with the /HIDDENCARD parameter), you will just see the default EGA colors the whole time. I know that it might be possible to tint the colors on EGA systems, but there were some technical limitations that made it practically useless for FITF. I figured that most people would play FITF on VGA-compatible systems anyway.

Using a custom VGA palette on top of a game that is basically running in an EGA 16-color video mode wasn't unheard of back in the 90s. Titus Software (of Superman 64 infamy) did it in 1991 with The Blues Brothers, Prehistorik and Moktar a.k.a. Titus the Fox, and Apogee did it with Duke Nukem II (1993) as well. There are probably a few other examples that I don't remember at the moment.

[Bounder]

A strong second from me on the astounding production value of FITF. It exceeds what would have been a six-figure budget for a game in the late 80s/early 90s (which with inflation could be hitting 7 figures now). The original Hero's Quest (EGA version) had a budget estimated over $200k (in 1989 dollars), and frankly I think FITF exceeds it in both visual design, game play, and complexity.

Regarding the custom palette on EGA, the original EGA with an Enhanced Color Display is capable of a 64-colour palette - but only in 640x350 mode, which wouldn't be very useful (and contemporary 286-class hardware wouldn't be capable of running a game like Keen on that, not to mention all the graphics would have to be redrawn for the different aspect ratio). "Fallback" to the standard RGB colour palette seems acceptable, but with an extra "treat" for anyone with a VGA. Personally, I've enjoyed playing FITF both in an emulator with standard EGA settings and a simulated scanline setup like a real RGB monitor would have and then on a real VGA with a real VGA CRT.

One of those "what ifs" that is fun to think about is if this game had been released back in 1989 or 1991... playable on the kind of typical Packard Bell 286 back then, excellent performances on any 386 with a VGA, stunning music for anyone with an Adlib card, and the game size wouldn't have been too bad for contemporary hard drives back then.

[The_Guy222]

I agree. It's nice to see modern systems developing for classic hardware.

Making an EGA game doesn't require the same level of investment as it would have in 1989

So you can splurge, and add content that would have been financially unfeasable back then. One of the features of modern development for old systems is that you can stretch the hardware 'to the max,' which was not done in the classic period due to time and financial constraints.

[Frankly, I don't think we've seen many attempts to find out what a 286 was 'really' capable of, but then there are too many different 286 systems to target for hardware tweaks and undocumented features.]


What you wrote about EGA and 286 reminds me of this article:

https://cohost.org/cathoderaydude/post/ ... edy-of-ega


Essentially, IBM could have 'started' with EGA with the original IBM-PC, if they had allocated it some more RAM. The 4-colour limitation of CGA was simply excessive cost-cutting by IBM.

Could have allowed for Keen-like games much earlier.

Instead, they cheaped out on CGA, had to wait for EGA. EGA had the high-res feature, but very few monitors existed to take advantage of it. And, as you point out, most processors couldn't make use of it.

If only they had at least made the 64-colour extended palette available in the CGA-compatible resolutions. That way, a 286 could have run them in 240P or so. Interestingly, FITF is the closest thing to what the writer of that blog article desired: use of extended palette colours in low-res 'EGA' mode.

Anyway, I'm really pleased at the tasteful and subtle enhancements that FITF brings to Keen, and to DOS gaming. I have tested FITF in Dosbox Staging .81, which runs it as a 'VGA 16-colour mode.' We'll see if I can get it on a real DOS machine, one day.

[Bounder]

Yes, the CGA (and EGA and VGA) are the stuff of tragedies, yet at the same time, the severe limitations of the PC led to an abundance of creativity from game developers.

Making the CGA have more than 4 colours isn't as easy as it sounds. Memory bandwidth was pretty tight, and the CGA actually didn't have enough bandwidth to even do 80x25 text mode without having artifacts when writing to memory (known as "CGA snow"). The EGA didn't have any wider memory bandwidth - it just organised its memory into 4 different "planes", so instead of 1 bank of 16kB, it came with 4 banks of 16kB. That meant a lot of extra circuitry to control those banks.

IBM did try to come up with a better video subsystem that was both cheap and suitable for gaming in the PC jr; the shared-memory architecture, however, made the computer abysmally slow for things other than graphics. But it did do 320x200x16 well, well enough to make King's Quest the iconic game it was and launch an entire industry.

The EGA likewise had the tragedy of its expanded colour palette being unavailable in 320x200 modes, due to design constraints of being compatible with old 5153 monitors. (In my experience, this wasn't very sensible, as very few people who bothered to buy an EGA didn't go and get an enhanced 5154 monitor too; most people who got an EGA wanted to have high-quality colour text without the slow phosphor delay of the cheap 5151 monitor.)

If we had it all to do over again:

#1. The CGA could have had switchable palettes for its 4 colour modes with a minimal amount of effort - basically a handful of extra TTL logic chips. But when the CGA was designed, they assumed most people would use it with a composite monitor for graphics and simply use artefact colours, and the use of an RGB monitor would primarily be for text. Likewise, they assumed the use case for the high resolution mode would be with a (monochrome, non-composite) TV or other System M monitor (such as the IBM PC Portable).

#2. I would have engineered the CGA to have square pixels, or at least had a horizontal pixel clock capable of a 256x192 mode (with square pixels). This would have been substantially better for games and for designing for them.

#3. For the EGA, I would have made sure that the 64-colour mode would work on the lower-resolution modes. (This would have been technically feasible with a different electrical signalling method for the 5154 monitor.) Whilst we're at it, I would have either found a way to offer more than 64 colours or would have hand picked a different palette. The circuitry to do this in the monitor would have been of marginal cost.

#4. I would have introduced a 32kB "budget" EGA that could emulate CGA and provide a 320x200 16 colour mode but nothing else (specifically, this model would not be capable of driving a 640x350 text mode or MDA monitor) and remove some of the supporting circuitry. This could have quickly replaced the CGA without as much additional cost. A "daughterboard" to upgrade it to a full EGA with 256kB could still have been offered.

#5. Finally, I would have stuck a very basic sound card on the 32kB "budget" EGA, probably just the SN76489 sound chip the PC jr (and later Tandy 1000) used. This would have been a tiny incremental cost. Whilst we're at it, put a game port on there too.

[clb]

Not sure if this was a known issue yet, though it looks like there is a crash bug in the game that does not reproduce on DOSBox, but only if playing on real DOS hardware.

1. Start a game on Hard.
2. Enter Asparagus Roots or Donut Dome level.
3. Collect the Ammo pickup at the start of the level, or die in the level.
-> the game will crash.

Video: https://oummg.com/dump/fitf-crash-asparagus-roots.mkv

The cause of the crash is a seemingly mixed up convention of CK_Object::user4 field, which is sometimes stored 0 to represent uninitialized, and other times -1 is stored instead.

E.g. https://github.com/juj/foray_in_the_for ... BJ.C#L7173 initializes user4 to zero, and https://github.com/juj/foray_in_the_for ... ISC.C#L353 initializes user4 to -1.

But then CK_ObjDropNisasi only looks for zero value, and crashes.

https://github.com/juj/foray_in_the_for ... db84fL7736 avoided the crash for me on a 486 PC.

[clb]

There's also a bug that if you save at the last level (the lab thingy), and then try the bad ending, game quits -> then if you try to reload, the game will load at the start of the lab level, not where you saved at.