Vorticons version 1.32

[trilean]

Hi everyone,

long time lurker, first time poster

Recently, I finally restored my first PC (Highscreen 486 SX-25) Currently, I'm in the process of sorting and re-aquiring my games collection of those days. Now I am a bit OCD about this and would like to get the final version for each game. I own both the Steam and GOG version of the Keen Complete Collection. Both ship the identical version 1.31 of the Vorticons episodes:

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Size   MD5                               File
 58335 ebb6a4a7df66063510996ebacc527fa7  steam/KEEN2.EXE
118672 c66535658db1fccbb93d5859192c5fa0  steam/KEEN2X.EXE

 61599 441f21f7b045a8446f8067bb84afb75d  steam/KEEN3.EXE
127616 e3924515cfc19d74df4fbf6d431b6384  steam/KEEN3X.EXE

 58335 ebb6a4a7df66063510996ebacc527fa7  gog/KEEN2.EXE
118672 c66535658db1fccbb93d5859192c5fa0  gog/KEEN2X.EXE

 61599 441f21f7b045a8446f8067bb84afb75d  gog/KEEN3.EXE
127616 e3924515cfc19d74df4fbf6d431b6384  gog/KEEN3X.EXE

(The files with 'X' in their name are the unlzexe'd versions)

The games contain the strings:

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Loading Commander Keen part 2... (version 1.31 1/23/90)
Loading Commander Keen part 3... (version 1.31 1/23/90)

Apart from the Keen Wiki entries for Keen 2 and Keen 3, and the fact that for Keen 1 version 1.32 and even 1.34 are publicly available, I could not find any information on a version 1.32 of K2 and K3. The Keen Upgrades/Downgrades thread also doesn't list 1.32 for K2/3. Can anyone confirm the existence of this version? Does anyone know where to get them or maybe even have access to it?

Best
Philipp

[K1n9_Duk3]

Hello, and welcome to the PCKF!

I would also like to get my hands on versions 1.32 and 1.34 of Keen 2 and 3 just to satisfy my own curiosity, but I'm not sure if they ever existed in the first place.

Version 1.32 of Keen 1 was a "pre-registered" copy that was bundled with some "Advanced Gravis" products. There is an extra text screen at startup and the ordering information screen says you can order the trilogy for $20 if you mention the Gravis pre-registration. The regular price for the trilogy is $30 in the other versions. The screens list Apogee's regular address and phone number, so you probably would have received the regular registered version 1.31, not a Gravis version 1.32. As I said above, I am not sure if a version 1.32 of Keen 2 and 3 ever existed. If it did, it must have been extremely rare.

The situation is similar with version 1.34 of Keen 1. This is a version that was put together for Apogee's publishing partner in the United Kingdom, Precision Software Applications. If a version 1.34 of Keen 2 and 3 ever existed, the only way to obtain it might have been to order it from Precision Software Applications in the UK. And on top of that, Apogee appears to have terminated this cooperation in 1994. The "Apogee Software World Wide Dealers List - September 1994 Revision" states:

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NOTE:  Transend Services Ltd., Gold Medal Software and
       Preceision Software Publishing are no longer Apogee
       representatives within England.

The Keen 1 v1.34 executable prints the date string "8/7/91" at startup, so it must have been created in August 1991. That means Precision Software couldn't have been selling "their" version of Keen 1-3 for much longer than 3 years (unless they had a publishing deal with Id Software that didn't involve Apogee). And they clearly weren't the only ones who sold and shipped the registered versions of Apogee's games in the UK at the time, which could make the PSA version even more rare.

I have reconstructed the source code for every version of Keen 1-3 that I could get my hands on, including versions 1.32 and 1.34 of Keen 1. And I have not been able to find any version of Keen 2 and 3 later than 1.31.

What I know for certain is that version 1.32 and 1.34 of Keen 1 use a slightly different EGAHEAD format than the previous versions. So even though it would be possible to compile version 1.34 executables for Keen 2 and 3 based on my reconstructed source code, those would not work with the existing graphics files. And even then, there would be no point in using those versions because they don't actually fix any bugs in the code, they just add a new bug (version 1.34 doesn't exit to DOS when the game tries to quit with an error message). This could explain why only version 1.31 is being distributed these days.

So, at least as far as the code is concerned, there is nothing to be gained by using the post-1.31 versions.

Sure, there's always a slight chance that some level design issues might have been fixed in one of these later releases. Keen 2 and 3 still have a couple of problems in version 1.31: The city names ROME and MOSCOW are swapped on the world map in Keen 2. And the Rome Tantalus level is designed in such a way that it's (theoretically) possible to exit the level without destroying the Tantalus ray, which would make the game unwinnable. In Keen 3, the final level requires the player to shoot things, but doesn't provide any ammo pickups at all, also making the game unwinnable if the player doesn't have enough ammo and there are no other levels that the player can return to to collect some more ammo.

There is also the fact that level 15 of Keen 3 (the big mountain before the final level) cannot be completed the "normal" way by entering the caves, collecting the 4 keys and unlocking the doors at the bottom. A passage near the end is only 1 tile high, making the area with the 4 doors and the lower exit inaccessible. I don't think this is a bug. Even if that area was accessible, there are spikes after the last door that also make it impossible to get to that exit without cheating. And even if you manage to make it past the spikes, you can still get stuck if you jump to collect the toys above the exit. If Keen lands on top of the exit, it will be impossible to get back down again. All these problems lead me to believe that the caves in this level were specifically designed to waste the player's time with something that ultimately doesn't lead anywhere. There is that sign at the beginning of the level that says "go up", indicating that the player is supposed to jump over the mountain instead of entering the caves. There is also a bouncing Jack in one of the caves that the player would have to go through to get through the caves, and the Hint Sheet explicitly states: "Jacks are almost always deadly. Do not enter areas where you see them."

BUT: When it comes to Keen 1-3, the level files are standalone files that can be modified or replaced without having to update the executable. That means you might not get the whole picture if you only compare the executables and not the level files.


On a related note, I don't think going for the "final" version of a game is always a good idea. Perhaps the best example is Jill of the Jungle. The final official version of this game is the one that is referred to as "1.2(d)" on the ModdingWiki. This version has many bugs that weren't present in the earlier versions:

• Tile animations (water, lava) do not work at all.
• Tiles do not get redrawn automatically after flipping a switch or touching a button.
• Digitized sound effects sometimes get corrupted and stop playing or play parts of other sounds.

In this case, your best option is to install a fan-made patch that fixes these bugs while keeping the other improvements that version 1.2(d) added (better memory management, more robust music playback code).

Another example where the "final" version is not necessarily the best is Wolfenstein 3-D. The highest version number for Wolf3D is 1.4, but there are several different revisions that all claim to be version 1.4 on the startup screen. The "final" version of this game should be the one distributed by Activision (it has the Activision logo on the startup screen). This version, like the GT Interactive version before it, is missing the in-game help screens (the game files are identical in the GT and Activision releases, only the executable differs). The versions published by Apogee had a "Read This!" section on the "Options" menu screen, which the later versions don't have. Since the later versions were distributed by retail publishers, they probably would have come with a printed manual, so removing the in-game texts wouldn't have been quite as bad. However, the version that's sold on GOG (the Activision version 1.4) comes with no kind of manual whatsoever. From what I've heard, Apogee's publishing deal for the Id Software titles has expired, meaning you might no longer be able to buy a version with the in-game help text anymore. Unless one of the smaller online stores is still selling the Apogee version, of course.

There are also some other aspects that make the "final" version of Wolf3D feel like a lesser product. The BJ portrait on the intermission screen doesn't animate anymore (they must have messed up when importing the images, both frames of the animation are using the exact same image now) and the infamous CALL APOGEE SAY "AARDWOLF" sign was replaced with a boring pile of bones.

[Litude]

Versions 1.32 of episodes 2 and 3 do exist and match episode one version 1.34 date-wise (i.e. they are the PSA versions). The shareware and registered versions did not always match. E.g. the first full release was v1.1/v1.0/v1.0 and the next one was v1.3/v1.1/v1.1 before the final Apogee release of v1.31/v1.31/v1.31. PSA was v1.34/v1.32/v1.32. Obviously it means Gravis v1.32 was shareware only and if a v1.33 existed it too was shareware only.

You should be able to find it by searching for keen version 1.34 on a website known for archiving the web.

[K1n9_Duk3]

Very interesting. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

[K1n9_Duk3]

Just to make it more clear for those who didn't dig as deep into comparing the various versions of Keen 1-3, Keen 2 and 3 tend to use a slightly different version numbering scheme than Keen 1, mainly because the shareware episode appears to have gotten a couple of updates before the other episodes were released. Keen 2 and 3 version 1.0 fall in between versions 1.1 and 1.3 of Keen 1 as far as the code is concerned.

If I understand this correctly, there exists a version 1.1 of Keen 2 and 3 that was built from the same shared code base as Keen 1 v1.3. Version 1.31 is the only version where the same version number acutally indicates the same revision of the shared code for all 3 episodes. And it looks like they resumed their trend of mis-matched version numbers with the Precision Software version. The Keen 1 PSA release claims to be version 1.34, while the Keen 2 and 3 executables of that release claim to be version 1.32, even though they list the same date as Keen 1 v1.34. These are the strings the PSA releases print when you start the game (you practically never get to see them when you run Keen 2 and 3 in DOSBox unless you are running DOSBox at less than 1000 cycles):

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Loading Commander Keen part 1... (version 1.34    8/7/91)
Loading Commander Keen part 2... (version 1.32    8/7/91)
Loading Commander Keen part 3... (version 1.32    8/7/91)

Now that I finally had an opportunity to look at "version 1.32" of Keen 2 and 3 and compare it to version 1.31, I think I should share the results of this comparison.

The short version is that all the level files are identical, only the EGA*.CK? files and the game executable (which also contains the sounds and the various texts) differ between these versions. Extracting the data from the executables shows that sounds, tile attributes, help text and story text and also remained unchanged.

The actual differences are:

• The Id Software logo in the intro sequence and the one on the "About ID" screen use a lower case "d" instead of the slightly smaller upper case "D". Maybe they wanted to make it more obvious that it's supposed to be pronounced like "it" and not "eye dee". This seems like an odd choice, considering that subsequent games like Keen 4-6 and Wolf3D went back to the old shape of the Id logo before they redesigned it to the fully lower case "id" logo that is used in Spear of Destiny, Doom and all the later games.
• The title image was modified. They added the line "COPYRIGHT © 1990 Id Software" at the bottom. This was missing in Keen 2 v1.31, and Keen 3 v1.31 used all upper case letters ("COPYRIGHT © 1990 ID SOFTWARE"). Version 1.32 also added the missing dark red shadow for the episode's name. In version 1.31, only the word "Episode" had this shadow. Only the Keen 1 title screen had the red shadow for all letters, they probably missed that fact when they modified that image for episodes 2 and 3. Version 1.32/1.34 also adds a light gray shadow for the "Invasion of the Vorticons" text.
• There are some differences in the EGASPRIT.CK2 file as well, but the exported sprite images are still 100% identical for both of these versions of Keen 2. Since the sprites all start at a paragraph-aligned address in the EGASPRIT file, there are some unused padding bytes in between some of the sprites and it looks like some of those unused bytes differ.
• The text message on the "About ID" screen was rephrased to remove all references to "shareware". By this time, the team probably already had the publishing contract with FormGen for Keen 6, so shareware wasn't their only business model anymore.

  We are a group of Software Artists
  whose goal is to bring commercial
  quality software to the public
  at shareware prices.
  
  Our effort is only possible with
  your support. Without it, we cannot
  continue to make this fine
  software so affordable.
  
  Thank you in advance for your
  contribution to the future of the
  growing shareware market.

  We are a group of Software Artists
  whose goal is to bring high quality
  PC entertainment to the public at
  reasonable prices.
  
  Our effort is only possible with
  your support. Without it, we cannot
  continue to make this fine soft-
  ware so affordable.
  
  Thank you in advance for your pur-
  chase. We will continue to provide
  the PC market with great software.

• The "COMING SOON FROM ID SOFTWARE" section of the "Previews!" text has been removed completely in Keen 2 and 3 v1.32. In the PSA version of Keen 1, they replaced the "The Fight for Justice" blurb with an announcement for "Goodbye, Galaxy!" (that claims there will be a 256 color VGA version of the games). For whatever reason, they didn't add that announcement in Keen 2 and 3.
• The section about ordering the other episodes from Apogee has been removed from the ending texts (when you win the game).
• The DOS end screens also differ. Keen 2 and 3 v1.32 use the same screen as Keen 1 v1.34, which is a bit smaller (18 lines instead of 23 lines) and lists the phone and fax numbers of Precision Software and the prices in Pounds.

I haven't gotten around to adding support for these versions of Keen 2 and 3 to my reconstructed source code, so I can't say if there are any code differences beyond those I already covered with Keen 1 v1.34. But I did see that the PSA versions of Keen 2 and 3 have the same quitting bug as Keen 1 v1.34, meaning the game doesn't actually quit to DOS when the code tried to exit with an error message.

Something else that might be interesting from a historical perspective is that all files in the PSA release seemed to still have accurate data and time stamps. For those who don't know, Apogee liked to tamper with the date and time stamps of the game files before releasing them. In version 1.31, all files show exactly the same date and time (1991-01-01, 1:00 pm). Apogee weren't the only ones who did that. Most of the files from my copy of MS-DOS 6.22 show a time of 6:22 and that can't be just coincidence.

[Litude]

Thank you for that thorough analysis. I would guess that if there had been substantial bug fixes in the PSA version, a new Apogee version would also have been released. So it is really not that surprising that most changes pertain to ordering information and more up to date info about id software. I guess it is also very likely that it matches episode 1 v1.34 codebase wise, though you never know.

I think it is interesting how decided to make the version numbers match for some releases, but for other releases they did not. Even for Galaxy v1.4 matched while the others did not. Did it depend on who of the team bumped the version number? Or did they just occasionally decide to try having them match each other before reverting back? Who knows...

The modify dates are certainly interesting when trying to figure out accurate release dates for the titles/versions. E.g. it is clear that episodes 2 and 3 were finished no earlier than December 18, 1990. Scott Miller writing a congratulation letter to id on December 19, 1990 and sending the full trilogy to Michael Denio on December 20, 1990 certainly suggests that the original trilogy was probably completed either on December 18 or December 19.

They also reveal that Keen version 1.0 must have been compiled before or on December 10 and December 2 at the earliest. Since the disk label was modified on December 7 maybe Scott wanted to send the shareware version to pre-existing or new customers on Friday of the previous week so it would arrive at their mailboxes around the same time the actual shareware release would happen.

Also interesting is Scott Miller's letter on December 20, 1990 mentioning that the game was released as shareware on December 10, 1990. This is not contradicted by the available modify dates (the last file used by version 1.1 has the very same date). So perhaps the commonly known/used release date of December 14, 1990 is incorrect after all?

[K1n9_Duk3]

I finished adding support for version 1.32 of Keen 2 and 3 into my reconstructed source code. I had to modify a few aspects of the code to get it all to compile into 100% identical executables, but most of them were only necessay because verion 1.32 of Keen 2 and 3 lack some compiler optimizations. This revealed that some of the code must have been written in a slightly different way than what my reconstruction used before. The only "new" thing I had to add was the "1.32 8/7/91" version and date string for Keen 2 and 3. Everything else is identical to Keen 1 v1.34, except for the compiler optimizations and source file order. That means all the actor code is still the same as in the previous versions.

As far as version 1.32 of Keen 2 and 3 is concerned, I can finally conclude that the only thing this release fixes is the lack of shading in the title image. Overall, it's different but not necessarily better than version 1.31.

One aspect I forgot to mention in the previous post is that the "Ordering Info" menu option and the corresponding screens and animations were removed from the code in the PSA releases. While I don't think anybody cares about the text on these screens, I feel that the animations were interesting to look at, especially in Keen 3.

Because of the non-quitting bug, I would definitely NOT recommend the PSA release if you intend to run the game on real hardware. If the game runs out of memory and tries to quit, the bug will cause the game to keep running, which means the following code will treat the memory at 0000:0000 and following as if it was a proper memory allocation. That part of the computer's memory stores the interrupt vector table, so writing to that address range will corrupt the interrupt vectors. In the best case, this will just lock up the system, but it could also cause the computer to execute bad code that corrupts parts of the harddisk or something like that.

---

Since Litude mentioned a v1.3/v1.1/v1.1 release, I was about to ask if anybody could tell me where I could find copies of these versions. But then I dug through my files again and noticed that I already had copies of Keen 2 v1.1 and Keen 3 v1.1 lying on my harddisk and didn't even know about it. So I also added full support for these versions in the new release of my reconstructed source code. In this case, I really only had to add the make files and some extra directives to display the version number "1.1" for episodes 2 and 3 of the version 1.3 code base.

If anybody cares, Keen 2 v1.1 only differs in the executable when compared to Keen 2 v1.0 and v1.31. The levels, graphics, sounds, tile attributes and embedded text files are all identical. The text-based DOS exit screen differs from the one in v1.0, but matches the one in v1.31. The level and graphics files in Keen 3 v1.1 match the ones from version 1.31, but not the ones from version 1.0. The sounds, tile attributes, DOS exit screen and embedded text files are also identical to Keen 3 v1.31.

Disclaimer: I have had these copies of version 1.1 lying around for probably two decades now and I have no idea where they originally came from, so I can't say for sure if these are fully authentic combinations of executables and data files.