List of all Commander Keen Speedruns

Post by **tulip** » Sat Jun 21, 2014 17:57

I don't want to sound like "meh it's easy" but I think that Keen Smile is relatively friendly towards speedrunning because there is almost no element of chance. I figure speedrunning something like decree of the skree would be a lot harder since the difficulty in those mods comes from spamming monsters, and they move on a random pattern, whereas in Smile pretty much everything is predictable.
But yeah great to see Smile getting some love, it's still in my top favourite mod list.

CapnClever · Post by **CapnClever** » Sat Jun 21, 2014 19:36

tulip wrote:I don't want to sound like "meh it's easy" but I think that Keen Smile is relatively friendly towards speedrunning because there is almost no element of chance. I figure speedrunning something like decree of the skree would be a lot harder since the difficulty in those mods comes from spamming monsters, and they move on a random pattern, whereas in Smile pretty much everything is predictable.
But yeah great to see Smile getting some love, it's still in my top favourite mod list.

Funny story about that. Maybe you remember when I made that post about "air jumps" in the Vorticon series:

Me Two Months Ago 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...

I've been having a good bit of trouble with jumps that require an exact height to accomplish (Keen Smile has several), so I wanted to know exactly why. Turns out that extra pixel movement is accounted for both horizontally AND vertically! Thankfully there's one frame where it doesn't matter for the sake of these jumps, but I have only that frame to get for perfect consistently: otherwise there is a statistical-averaged two frame window to achieve success, or a ~0.057s reaction capacity.

But from my experience, let me put it this way. Episode Dash was a nightmare to run because of all the enemies, and quite a few times I just had to hope they weren't perfectly in my way. Episode Smile is a nightmare to run because I have to learn how to be frame-precise in a 35FPS game for a significant portion of maneuvers. Personally I prefer the latter, because at least I have the chance to become good enough to achieve consistency. All this said, however, the game still takes 20+ minutes to beat, and there's still an annoying amount of RNG to handle.

Post by **KeenRush** » Mon Jun 23, 2014 22:09

Damn, you're one cold-blooded Keener. *tips helmet* This is just crazy... Amazing video. I can't say much else than: thanks for playing and making this.

It's so nice to see someone liking this (or at least getting some bizarre kicks from it anyway

) enough to play it like this! Nice work indeed.

CapnClever · Post by **CapnClever** » Sat Jul 12, 2014 7:30

I haven't posted anything in a while because I haven't gotten any "really good" runs. Keen Smile's made a lot of progress (current best is a 24:21, but now I'm looking for sub-21 or so) and I've done some heavy-glitch running for Keen8 and gotten that near six minutes, but neither are where I want them to be for "immortalized" video posting. (If you're curious and don't mind checking out the raw streams of said runs, Keen Smile is here and Keen8 is here.)

I DO, however, have a real update, in the form of a much better Keen2:

Keen 2 any% 6:16

Having run Keen Smile for a few weeks, Keen 2 just didn't seem as bad (except Moscow jump because FUCL Moscow jump). So I chopped off a half minute there. I also learned better movement in a few levels when routing the 100%, so there's a fair bit of that added in as well.

CapnClever · Post by **CapnClever** » Thu Jul 24, 2014 6:52

It took me a whole month, but I finally snagged a good time:

Keen Smile any% 21:19

You can make the last level even faster, if the guard bot shoots few enough times to get by him and reach the balloon at the bottom (at which point you can then do the next section fast enough and the bot's not in the way, saving another balloon trip). A whole minute, as a matter of fact! But the rest of the run is really tight, and I have no patience to try again.

With this I can FINALLY get back to working on other mods. It's been so long, I really don't know what to try: any suggestions?

Roobar · Post by **Roobar** » Thu Jul 24, 2014 16:10

Wow! That was insane!

You might try Yorphius II Deluxe or Keen 59.

Post by **tulip** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 19:13

CapnClever wrote:I figure this is worth the double-post:

Yorphius II DX any% 3:24

He did that a while back and it rockd

Post by **KeenRush** » Mon Jul 28, 2014 19:54

Wow, so good, both of them! You've totally mastered Episode Smile. That Keen2 is pretty impressive too -- especially that damned jump and doing it in the dark!

Maybe you could do this next: viewtopic.php?t=3063 "Save Spot!" It's a cool mod with excellent, large levels.

CapnClever · Post by **CapnClever** » Mon Aug 04, 2014 17:23

By the way I'm currently working on Keen4 any% again. CaneCraft picked it up about a week ago and pulled off a 10:17, so I countered with a 10:15 a few days later. However, in spite of some really good movement in many places, there's a really glaring mistake, so I'm working on an even better time (which is why I haven't made a YT video for it). My theoretical best time is actually a 10:08 right now, but something close to 10:10 is my aim.

And then I swear I'll probably do some mods. Or maybe Keen4 100%... and my Keen2 and Keen3 100%s are pretty mediocre... I'll get to mods eventually again, really. Keen Smile did NOT break me with respect to mods!

Oh, and I don't believe I've mentioned this here, but I'm also looking into routing and running the Dangerous Dave games. Mostly, the trilogy after the first one that's kind of boring. I won't keep you updated here, since it's a Keen speedrunning thread, but you can always check for good runs on my YouTube channel.

Post by **Levellass** » Tue Aug 05, 2014 5:18

I'm certainly keeping an eye out. Dave eh? Always had a soft spot for those games.

Roobar · Post by **Roobar** » Tue Aug 05, 2014 16:34

Mostly, the trilogy after the first one that's kind of boring.

But it's the complete opposite! I consider the first one a classic and the others boring, but oh well - different tastes.

CapnClever · Post by **CapnClever** » Tue Sep 02, 2014 4:23

'Kay it's been forever, didn't feel right to only show one run, so I have three!

Keen2 100% 10:00
Keen4 any% 10:12
Keen4 100% 17:07

And now I feel comfortable going to some mods. FOR REAL THIS TIME.

CapnClever · Post by **CapnClever** » Mon Sep 29, 2014 7:36

I've been playing Dave and Wolf3D, but Keen was calling, so I took a week to arrive at this speedrun.

Onward: Silcar 1: Nightmare Before Teatime any% 7:09

I'm planning to look at all of these episodes and see which ones are good runs. This one was decent as a run, but I didn't like the game casually all that much. A couple of well-gimmicked puzzles are nice but there's a lot of "let's add obstacles here just to get in the way" design and it got old after a while.

Post by **Levellass** » Thu Oct 09, 2014 7:45

It has a nice look though. It was a solid run.

CapnClever · Post by **CapnClever** » Tue Oct 14, 2014 23:51

Oh right, this has been done for a couple days now!

Onward: Silcar 2: Flee From Fleet any% 8:56

Mostly this run has a crapton of luck in it and I don't want to spend a week or two bringing it down the half-minute or so that can probably be cut. The very end of the run is really unfortunate (I mean you SAW that mini-purple dude, he was gunning for me) but a lot went well besides. I'm genuinely surprised that the door clip works on the sixth level (the one where you save Lindsay), didn't think you could go right-to-left. This is also a VERY ammo-tight run, which is why I pick up extras in the first and third levels: even with all that, I only had one spare at the end (which could've saved me time on the youth but I doubt I would have turned around in time).

As for the game itself? I thought it played a lot better than the first Silcar. Only a couple levels were annoying, many felt well-paced this time around and featured enjoyable progression. Still don't like the randomly-placed hazards, but that's a complaint from one trying to streamline movement.