Commander Keen 2 Gold Edition - pseudo-version 1.33

[szemi]

Time has come!


Firstly: Merry Christmas for everybody!

On the other hand:
As a Christmas present, here is Keen 2 Gold Edition, which is a slightly updated and enhanced version of the original game! Just like Keen 1 Gold.


Download now and enjoy: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hmqoefr6j9v9i ... D.zip?dl=0

Don't forget the demo video either: https://youtu.be/t7YKtbyRLXg


Note that unlike in Keen 1 Gold, the new levels are now included non-separatedly!


Also: Don't forget to read the Readme.txt file!

[gerstrong]

Tried this on Commander Genius and it works great:

Code: Select all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3w-Jy68SyM

I like this version more than Keen 1 Gold. Good thing there aren't two sides to play. The levels are like mods tradition, very hard.

For a real challenge it is very good. I also like the new tiles.

[szemi]

Thanks.

In the meantime, Keen 2 Gold has been added on KeenWiki.

http://www.shikadi.net/wiki/keen/index. ... &redlink=1

(Updating needed!)

[Mobiethian]

Outstanding modding, as always! It's fun to play and I also like the new additions a lot. It's definitely a holiday treat!

[Levellass]

Might want to check your wiki link there Szem.

I'll play this once the christmas rush is over.


However I AM curious about one thing; why do you keep the cheats in instead of just disabling them... and why alter them at all? For Keen Vorticons at least they were intended to be there. (In Keen galaxy there are both intended cheats like Boss and BAT and debug cheats.) They're not exactly a flaw and I personally delete the cheat patches to play, for me it's how the games were intended to be.

[Levellass]

Tried this on Commander Genius and it works great:

Except... a few patches don't work, like the Elite's not shooting in the dark. Tsk tsk.

[szemi]

Since it's a gold edition like CK1 Gold, I wanna prevent people from cheating as everything is fully playable.
The only cheat is Shift+Tab.

[gerstrong]

Tried this on Commander Genius and it works great:

Except... a few patches don't work, like the Elite's not shooting in the dark. Tsk tsk.

@Levellass: I have found this:

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#Elite doesn't jump OR shoot in the dark
%patch $40FB $83 $3E $96BEW  $00 $74 $21 $E8 $76E1W  $8B $16 $5AF0W  $D1
             $E2 $3B $C2 $73 $16

I can compare that pattern, but let me be honest, but there must be a better way. What would you suggest? Can you pinpoint, how to interpret such code patterns? What would you do in my case? With data segments I have not that many problems, but this one seems to be some simple code I need to interpret.

Because I want to improve mod support it would be helpful if you'd give me a hand.

By the way, in the next release, if you choose "easy mode", The vorticon elites and robots will behave like they do in this mod.

[K1n9_Duk3]

Code: Select all

#Elite doesn't jump OR shoot in the dark
%patch $40FB $83 $3E $96BEW  $00 $74 $21 $E8 $76E1W  $8B $16 $5AF0W  $D1
             $E2 $3B $C2 $73 $16

I can compare that pattern, but let me be honest, but there must be a better way. What would you suggest? Can you pinpoint, how to interpret such code patterns? What would you do in my case? With data segments I have not that many problems, but this one seems to be some simple code I need to interpret.

I would use a complete disassembly of the target executable to find out if this patch modifies an entire instruction or if the patch inserts the code into the middle of an instruction. Then I would use that knowledge and my 80286 manual to convert the machine code into assembly mnemonics to figure out what the new code actually does. As an alternative, I guess you could also let CKPATCH produce a fully patched executable and run that through a disassembler if you don't want to convert the machine code by hand.

Unfortunately, I don't see a solution on how to handle patches like this automatically. The best you can do would be to search for recognized machine code patterns and then change the scripts/variables in CG accordingly.

For automatic handling, you'd need to run a CPU emulator that interprets the original executable, but that's not how CG works, right?

[gerstrong]

In Easy mode we now have that behaviour. Nice isn't it?

[szemi]

Question: Who will update the KeenWiki page of Keen 2 Gold?