List of all Commander Keen Speedruns

Here, you can get help with anything or just chat about the original Commander Keen games.
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KeenRush
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Post by KeenRush »

An interesting post. (And great runs.)

As for mods, I would like to suggest Yorphius II, my first mod, but more interesting could be XkyKeen3, which in itself is based on speed running. :)
My newest mod - Commander Keen: Sunset: viewtopic.php?t=8568 | codename H.Y.E.N.A.
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DHeadshot
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Post by DHeadshot »

Go on, Speedrun Keen Smile! :P :mortlol
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Post by Fleexy »

DHeadshot wrote:Go on, Speedrun Keen Smile! :P :mortlol
Well, it's not very speedy, but I am going to do a "let's play" of Episode Smile. Here's episode 1; check the Fleex Plays Keen thread for new ones (or subscribe!)
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Post by KeenRush »

:lol That's great. Liked watching that! Looking forward to the next levels. Videos like this make me wonder what the garg I was thinking back then, when I thought in my delusions that the mod was going to be far too easy for the common Keener. :crazy
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Post by CapnClever »

KeenRush wrote:As for mods, I would like to suggest Yorphius II, my first mod, but more interesting could be XkyKeen3, which in itself is based on speed running.
I couldn't find a mod under the name "XkyKeen3" but I'm guessing it's the mod titled "Episode Dash" by XkyKeen, which is modded from Keen3? I'll make sure to look into it. Also, Yorphius II appears to have recently been "remastered": should I play that version or the original?
DHeadShot wrote:Go on, Speedrun Keen Smile!
Keen Smile looks, um, really hard (props to Fleexy for a preview!). I'll file that one under "casual play" right now and see if the game as whole isn't too crazy to attempt fast. To be fair, however, a lot of games might seem easy but end up being incredibly difficult anyway, either by exploiting hard-to-perform maneuvers or the luck of the draw from randomness. All of the original Keen games have at least one such obstacle in their speedrun that a casual player wouldn't dream of worrying about, so it's not always about the intentional content. Keen Smile might be a "hard but relatively normal" game: I'll have to research it first.

The biggest example of unintentional shortcuts that comes to mind (because I played almost eight solid hours of it last night and only managed a 7:17) is Keen2. If you check the Moscow Tantalus Center, you'll notice a three-tile gap that would bypass almost the entire level if cleared. And, in fact, it CAN be cleared! It's just ridiculously hard. There's a very, very specific timing of moving and jumping in which Keen begins to fall off of a platform but then hops in mid-air: you've probably done it by accident before without thinking much of it. Executing this trick allows Keen to traverse enough horizontally without requiring much space above him, and it works beautifully in the Moscow TC (theoretically the level can be finished in 20-25 seconds with this jump).

Of course, there's also the Vorticon Elite in the way and he's ended a lot of my runs through that level. To counter most of his randomness, I've decided to include the light switch at the beginning of the level as part of my route, wasting roughly a second but greatly improving the odds of getting past the guard. So now, not only am I performing what I assume to be a frame-perfect jump, I'm doing it with a visual handicap. So yeah Moscow is really frustrating: it easily makes Keen2 the hardest of the Vorticon trilogy to get a "good time" (in this case, under seven minutes) in.
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Post by troublesomekeen »

Mercy me, KeenDash? KeenSmile? How about something more like...
Eight Accumulators, or Mr.Black's Levelpack--just to ease into the mods.
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Post by KeenRush »

Yes, I meant Episode Dash. It's also common to call Xky's three mods with such names -- but of course you as new here couldn't have known that. :) As for Yorphius, you could play the original or the deluxe, both should have 100% identical gameplay and levels.

As for Smile, it is very hard, and I would say a fast run is impossible. :no Unless you're a robot.
My newest mod - Commander Keen: Sunset: viewtopic.php?t=8568 | codename H.Y.E.N.A.
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Post by Levellass »

I tried a Tool Assisted Speedrun but sadly Deep Blue gave up after three hours of play.


Mod speedruns will be interesting. I've designed all my mods with deliberate shortcuts so they can all be completed in under 10 minutes. (Of course all the bugs mean this will probably cause a crash so there you go.)
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Post by CapnClever »

Here's a new one, not amazing but I'm happy with how the last level turned out so at least watch it for that:

Keen 6 any% 3:37

I whipped out the DOS emulator to frame-advance on Keen2's ridiculous corner jump (see previous post) and learned that it is, indeed, frame-precise (to the nearest draw frame anyway). Worse still, because Keen advances an extra pixel every three frames, there's a 1/3 chance that the timing is different. So I officially hate that jump now: once I get a sub-Xarthok time (which is 6:58) I will be done with that run forever, probably. It's a really fun run besides that jump, too!

I'm probably going to start looking into some routes for the mentioned mods soon: it won't be a while until actual attempts will start, since these games are essentially unrouted for the sake of learning them. I will, however, try to post updates on interesting, perhaps unexpected shortcuts through levels. (Or maybe those would be posted better in a separate topic? I don't know if this should be the "speedrun" thread, regardless of content, or if I should either make a separate thread for detailed discussion or post in the appropriate mod topics because it's related to them.)
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Post by Roobar »

It's still amazing. With only two mistakes, I think the time could be cut a little bit more (like 3:35) and that should be the most out of Keen 6 I think.

Still, beating almost all of the Keen 6 levels with the impossible bullet feels cheap, but that's a problem of the game itself.
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Post by CapnClever »

If you're interested in a non-glitched run, I just picked up sub-Xarthok on Keen2!

Keen 2 any% 6:45

All that really leaves is Keen4 and maaaaybe Keen1 to optimize a bit, but then I'll be working on specifically-glitchless runs and mods. (No promises on glitching out the mods tho'!)
wiivn wrote:With only two mistakes, I think the time could be cut a little bit more (like 3:35) and that should be the most out of Keen 6 I think.
Assuming the route I use, there's about 1-2 seconds of small time losses besides the IBT (Impossible Bullet Trick) fails. And even after THAT, most of the jumps I use to perform the IBT are at maximum height for the highest frame window to get them right: I could probably save as much as five seconds if I were to jump as little as possible. So sub 3:30 is possible here, it's just stupid-hard and no I don't want to try it.
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Post by tulip »

I'd love to see mod speedruns, the only one I remember was Keen Q by shikadi.

But I think since modders tend to design their mods so you have to enter every single level in order to complete it, I guess the speedruns won't have those impressive times in the end.
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Post by DHeadshot »

CapnClever wrote:All that really leaves is Keen4 and maaaaybe Keen1 to optimize a bit,
What about Keen Dreams and Keen GBC?
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Post by Levellass »

Do not speak of the devil, or he will appear.

Also, more youtube goodness. I thank you for this.

CapnClever wrote:I whipped out the DOS emulator to frame-advance on Keen2's ridiculous corner jump (see previous post) and learned that it is, indeed, frame-precise (to the nearest draw frame anyway). Worse still, because Keen advances an extra pixel every three frames, there's a 1/3 chance that the timing is different. So I officially hate that jump now: once I get a sub-Xarthok time (which is 6:58) I will be done with that run forever, probably. It's a really fun run besides that jump, too!
This is far more involved than anything I could even comprehend. I shall work extra hard on making excessively speedrun-optimized mods in future.
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Post by guynietoren »

Perhaps later on we'll have rewritten part of the Keen source to allow more content, and thus make levels more linear.

I couldn't dream of doing a GBC speed run... I would have to actually beat the game first. Still stuck on the first few levels. The level select cheat doesn't really help if you can't beat any levels anyway. Although the infinite lives cheat is nice as you don't start from very beginning of the level when you die.
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