Aliens Ate My Little Sister!

K1n9_Duk3 · Post by **K1n9_Duk3** » Thu Aug 05, 2010 16:54

Just finished my very first Commander Keen Fangame:

Aliens Ate My Little Sister!

Download:
Version 1.0
Version 1.1

Version 1.1 (mirror)
Please note that I might delete the mirror file once the ohost.de server is back online.

I've already posted some of the materials used over here and here

I'ts basically "The largest Keen level ever!" that wiivn posted, with some modifications so that you can actually play through it without getting stuck or having to cheat.

It's funny to see, that this playable Fangame version of the level is actually a lot smaller in filesize than the JPEG wiivn posted.

I also took my time and wrote a lot of help texts and a short story for this game. See for yourself.

Screenshots:

VikingBoyBilly · Post by **VikingBoyBilly** » Thu Aug 05, 2010 17:31

Hahahah, so that fixed tree limb thing was actually a prelude to a grand map. I don't think anybody even guessed that it wasn't bloogwaters crossing or even any other official keen 6 map

K1n9_Duk3 · Post by **K1n9_Duk3** » Thu Aug 05, 2010 18:27

Well, I didn't want to make any big announcements until I knew what I was gonna do with the map. I even made a post on the other thread, saying that I wasn't gonna finish the map at all. But then I thought it would be nice to see a small Fangame that demonstrates the abilities of KEENGINE, the engine that we (the Fan Site Celle community) are working on. I guess it will still be quite some time before we actually get to finish the Fangame that we started it for.

As a bonus, this small Fangame might even help to improve the engine, as I think it will be tested by a few more people that a simple TechDemo would. So if you find any errors or are experiencing crashes, tell me about it.

I know that there are still some bugs in the game. One of them will even produce a "BAD MOVEMENT" warning and put some additional information on this in the logfile. This usually means, that an Actor is moved further than he was supposed to, causing Actors to magically move through solid walls. But that should get fixed in one of the next versions of the engine.

Mink · Post by **Mink** » Thu Aug 05, 2010 19:25

Truly epic, and nice to see your engine in action (and haha, the iWrist was a nice inclusion). It'd be great to see even more levels added to this.

A couple bugs, though:
- Blooglets move way too fast, as does Keen while pogoing.
- I died a couple times (and once even somehow triggered the ending), seemingly at random, and I have no idea how it happened - one minute I was walking along, and the next I was bouncing off the edge of the screen. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't get this bug to repeat reliably.

And I know the current title's probably an offshoot of this, but I would've gone with 'Aliens Ate My Baby Sister!'

K1n9_Duk3 · Post by **K1n9_Duk3** » Thu Aug 05, 2010 20:29

Mink wrote:And I know the current title's probably an offshoot of this, but I would've gone with 'Aliens Ate My Baby Sister!'

At some point this week, that actually was the title I was going to use. But then I decided that she couldn't be that much of a baby, since I had her talking to Keen.

Edit: Here's the rejected title screen:

As for the movement, I want to make clear that it never was my intention to reverse engineer the original game. I'll leave that task up to gerstrong and the team working on Commander Genius.

And as I've said before, there are some bugs in the movement. If you encounter such a bug, quit the game and open the log.txt file. There should be some information on what had happened. It is the only entry that starts with a blank line, so it should be easy to find. Copy that text and post it here, so that I may go ahead and fix it. Please keep in mind, that the logfile gets overwritten each time you start the program, so you may need to save that text to another file if you want to keep playing.

As for adding new levels... if you read all the help texts, you should know how to start up the map editor...

Genius314 · Post by **Genius314** » Thu Aug 05, 2010 20:38

K1n9_Duk3 wrote:
Mink wrote:And I know the current title's probably an offshoot of this, but I would've gone with 'Aliens Ate My Baby Sister!'
At some point this week, that actually was the title I was going to use. but then I decided that she couldn't be that much of a baby, since I had her talking to Keen.

I think the title would have been fine. I've heard people refer to younger siblings as a "baby sibling," even if the sibling isn't that much younger. It's not too uncommon.

K1n9_Duk3 · Post by **K1n9_Duk3** » Thu Aug 05, 2010 20:42

Well, since you can edit all the texts displayed in the game AND you've got the title image, go ahead and change it if you like! I don't mind.

Genius314 · Post by **Genius314** » Thu Aug 05, 2010 20:53

K1n9_Duk3 wrote:Well, since you can edit all the texts displayed in the game AND you've got the title image, go ahead and change it if you like! I don't mind.

Haha, in that case, I'm fine with how it is.

Post by **tulip** » Thu Aug 05, 2010 21:27

Man this is truly awesome. iWrist, Skulls and Bones.. all nice gimmicks. And the level is really challenging.
You'll use that engine for the CKFSC Fangame if I didn't get that wrong. It's great, you should work a bit on the physics though, the steerability while pogoing is too much.

Post by **Ceilick** » Thu Aug 05, 2010 21:44

Wow! Awesome job! The menu is great and so are the physics! Really impressive. As far as keen's movement, everything feels right except the pogoing. Basically what Mink and Tulip said: too fast and too much maneuverability (which makes it harder to control for me).

Also, how do you get to the second yellow gem? I can see it above the sloped hill, but can't find a way up there!

DaVince · Post by **DaVince** » Thu Aug 05, 2010 21:44

Aw, it doesn't work in Wine (shows static instead of game content). Ah well. I'll boot into Windows later and try it out then.

Mink · Post by **Mink** » Thu Aug 05, 2010 22:19

K1n9_Duk3 wrote:As for the movement, I want to make clear that it never was my intention to reverse engineer the original game. I'll leave that task up to gerstrong and the team working on Commander Genius.

Yep, I hear you, but like Ceilick said, it's more a matter of being really hard to control Keen with such a fast pogo than being true to the original game.

And yeah, I'm looking forward to the CKFSC game a lot more after playing this.

K1n9_Duk3 · Post by **K1n9_Duk3** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 7:31

Ceilick wrote:Also, how do you get to the second yellow gem? I can see it above the sloped hill, but can't find a way up there!

It's difficult but not impossible to do. I hope you get what I mean. If you're stille having trouble, you might want to read all of the help texts for more info.

If you want to try the game under Linux or MacOS, get a copy of BlitzMax for your system (for some odd reason, there's no BlitzMax demo available for Linux) and grap the source code over here.

Shilor · Post by **Shilor** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 8:59

Wow this is fantastic! I love what you have done. Even the new iWrist was a nice touch. An awesome challenging large level. I like how friendly this was to run in Windows 7. Also the options to change resolutions was very neat. I also loved the Yorp from keen 6. it was a nice touch.

Cant wait to see more in the future.

Roobar · Post by **Roobar** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 11:03

Wow! That's so awesome man! You engine is working great! It's smooth and fast and all. And good job with recreating my map

. It's really cool playing on it.

As a notice, when I configured my controls, the left ctrl is displayed as key 165.

Also, this by far, is the easy-est keen level editor! I may come up with a new level. But I have some questions.

Is there an undo option?

Can you grab something that you've already build, cut it and move it?

In [LEVELS] can I add additional maps (i.e. when finish a level, next one to starts) or only the worldmap can be changed with another one?

Is there a full screen mode for the level editor or can the window be re-sized for larger view? Is there a zoom option?

I didn't try this yet, but I suppose the game supports 32 bit graphics. So it should support larger tilesets?

Thanks!