MILDLY NEAT -- For all your random Keenery needs!

[Quillax]

Those are some strong-looking paws.

Anyways, I decided to go through all the mod work folders on my hard drive, dating back to 2014, and count how many of my own Keen levels I could find. I estimated that number would be over 100, but I never actually checked for sure, until now.
What I found was 89 complete levels, 26 unfinished levels, so 115 levels total. Out of those, I've released 1 (my mediocre Insalevs 3 submission). A significant proportion of these levels were from abandoned projects. Some were from levelpacks, some were from full mods. The vast majority were for Vorticons, I found less than 10 Galaxy levels total.
And this isn't even all the levels I've made! I know there's at least a couple unfinished levels that were on another hard drive that I haven't had access to since 2015, and I didn't include my levels for a certain 3-person Keen 2 mod that's been in development since 2017, because it's been so long I have no memory of which levels were mine , and it's entirely possible I missed some here and there.
I really need to finish and release some of my mods already...

Very interesting! I'd definitely love to see you finish and release some of your mods!

I looked through my modding folder, and there appears to be about 382 Quillax-made levels (give or take a few, but it should be close), all of which (aside from maybe a couple to a few) are completed. Most are for full mods, with 29 for levelpacks. Most levels are for Vorticons, with about 23 Galaxy levels, not counting the one or two I made that can't even load in-game. I never made any Dreams levels. Only 102 of those levels have been released online in public, about 27% of my levels. (That doesn't count the 33 levels I made for my NetKeen levelpack nor any of the worldmaps, the former of which bring up the total count to 415!)

It's a lot of levels, and that's not even all! I know I made many more levels (including an old 13-level Keen 5 levelpack) that are sitting in another computer. There's probably at least 50 of those...

[Roobar]

Fabian Sanglard has posted an amazing article that goes into the technical details of how Commander Keen managed to make it onto a platform with no hardware sprites or native multi-directional scrolling:

https://fabiensanglard.net/ega/

[Pandakeen]

Very interesting! I'd definitely love to see you finish and release some of your mods!

I looked through my modding folder, and there appears to be about 382 Quillax-made levels (give or take a few, but it should be close), all of which (aside from maybe a couple to a few) are completed. Most are for full mods, with 29 for levelpacks. Most levels are for Vorticons, with about 23 Galaxy levels, not counting the one or two I made that can't even load in-game. I never made any Dreams levels. Only 102 of those levels have been released online in public, about 27% of my levels. (That doesn't count the 33 levels I made for my NetKeen levelpack nor any of the worldmaps, the former of which bring up the total count to 415!)

It's a lot of levels, and that's not even all! I know I made many more levels (including an old 13-level Keen 5 levelpack) that are sitting in another computer. There's probably at least 50 of those...

Wow, I wouldn't even be able to find the time to beat 415 levels, let alone make that many!

Only around 38 of my levels belong to projects I'm actually planning to release. I only got fairly good at level design around 2018 and most of my levels before then are probably not good enough to really salvage for any of my current projects. But there might be a couple that are. I'd have to play them all to be sure.

Also, between the summer of 2020 and now, I've made about 3 Keen levels. Lately I've been challenging myself to make rough but playable Doom maps under a time limit of 90 minutes, mostly as practice but also to have a cache of levels that I can then polish up and put into other projects. I should try that for Keen, maybe I'll actually get some levels made.

Fabian Sanglard has posted an amazing article that goes into the technical details of how Commander Keen managed to make it onto a platform with no hardware sprites or native multi-directional scrolling:

https://fabiensanglard.net/ega/

This is fascinating! I've read Fabien Sanglard's in-depth dissections of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom before. Often times, any explanation of how they did smooth scrolling in Keen doesn't go past Adaptive Tile Refresh, and I was wondering for a while what Keen Galaxy did because there's so few areas where doing that would have any noticable speed gain.

[Quillax]

This year, on March 14, Tom Hall posted on his Twitter account, where he calls the day Keen Day (not Pi Day!): https://twitter.com/ThatTomHall/status/ ... 66799360#m

IT'S KEEN DAY! Keen's IQ at the start of his adventures is 314. He's a pi in the sky guy!

As far as I know, this is the first time Tom Hall outright says that March 14 is Keen Day. Whether he actually knows about the fan celebration or he just thought it up himself, I'm not so sure. Nevertheless, it's pretty cool to see him type Keen Day! Also, this might be interesting: https://twitter.com/ThatTomHall/status/ ... 24703744#m (not sure if it's a joke or not, though)

Also, someone did something pretty unique, by combining Commander Keen with... a claw machine: https://twitter.com/AbsconsionTTV/statu ... 02132482#m

It's certainly an interesting idea, and if you look closely, you can see a custom-made Keen toy!

Wow, I wouldn't even be able to find the time to beat 415 levels, let alone make that many!

Only around 38 of my levels belong to projects I'm actually planning to release. I only got fairly good at level design around 2018 and most of my levels before then are probably not good enough to really salvage for any of my current projects. But there might be a couple that are. I'd have to play them all to be sure.

Also, between the summer of 2020 and now, I've made about 3 Keen levels. Lately I've been challenging myself to make rough but playable Doom maps under a time limit of 90 minutes, mostly as practice but also to have a cache of levels that I can then polish up and put into other projects. I should try that for Keen, maybe I'll actually get some levels made.

Well, to be fair, most of my old levels are small, easy, and simple (something like the levels in Return on Mars), so it might not seem as daunting as it sounds. On the other hand, however, I was evil enough to make some levels (probably less than 50, I say) that would require tight jumps or repetitive and tedious maneuvers. For instance, there's a 128x128 level where you can traverse a huge maze that has 2x2 passages and no features (not even visual landmarks) whatsoever besides the top! Just a plain old maze, like the one from the first InsaLevs, except maybe bigger! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! (Luckily, you can just skip the whole thing by simply walking to the right, if you have the patience...)

I remember one old level for a Keen 2 mod that has like a garg-ton of enemies! It's still playable, but can get really laggy! Actually, if you get enough enemies onscreen, all of the sprites would turn into gibberish, and then the game would pretty much fall apart! That glitch wasn't intentional, although Mortimer would still be proud. I don't think I've ever seen anything like that in any of the mods released online (and I'm pretty sure I've played at least 2/3rds of them all, missing mostly the new stuff).

Hey, I haven't made many levels lately either, so don't feel too bad! Since the release of The Mortrix, all I've made were a few levels that are results of me playing around with the old Keen level editors, including KeenEdit (the old ASCII one!), KeenWright, and Keen MakeOver (and no, I didn't count those levels). It was kinda fun messing around and seeing what it's like to be in the shoes of those who made levels for the earliest Keen levelpacks and mods. With KeenEdit, I even put in my name, which translated to a seemingly-nonsensical set of tiles in-game. I feel like there's some sort of personality and charm in those old level editors that the newer ones don't have, although I can't exactly point my finger at it. (Maybe it's just my usual love for old stuff, or the novelty of using something unfamiliar to me after using Mindbelt for nearly my whole modding hobby.)

Fabian Sanglard has posted an amazing article that goes into the technical details of how Commander Keen managed to make it onto a platform with no hardware sprites or native multi-directional scrolling:

https://fabiensanglard.net/ega/

I've only skimmed through it, but from what I've seen, wow! I definitely want to read all of it at some point; I sure smell a Keen Award nomination!

[proYorp]

Recently I watched a video by Veritasium about the measurement of IQ, and the history and theory behind it. Very interesting to learn about. Some years ago when I was at a peak of my Keen lore obsession I read the Wikipedia article on IQ but this video makes it a lot easier to process the information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkKPsLxgpuY

I remember reading at one point that it's technically not possible to get an IQ over 200 or so due to the low amount of people in that range to test and collect a reliable average. This video however describes the formula used to generate the IQ number, which says that mental age is divided by actual age and then that number is multiplied by 100. Working backward from that -- 314 divided by 100 and multiplied by 8 -- tells us that Keen's mental age is about 25.12. I don't know many 25-year-olds that can build a spaceship from scratch but I'm sure at that age it's possible to learn.

This makes me think of something else interesting. I've heard it said that the age of 25 marks peak cognitive function, when the brain has finished maturing and before there is any chance to decay. Keen, at age 8, is already able to match the capacity of the average person at the peak of their intellectual ability with his still-developing young brain. His accomplishments at this age already stretch our ideas of what may be possible. In his future when he reaches his own peak of ability, his doings may well be outside of what we can even imagine. That is to say, to even write such a story as fiction, one would have to have at least his level of intelligence to even think of the things he would be capable of doing.



"Mortimer is a loser." --Stephen Hawking

[Roobar]

[Benvolio]

A proper upbringing! This is neat!

[Roobar]

John Romero will talk about Keen tonight on a live stream: https://t.co/U1xkrtSodZ

[Nisaba]

Bright and enthusiastic children's eyes light up. This brings back fond memories.
We build mods and games just for moments like this, don't we!
Fantastic photo! Thanks for sharing!

[Quillax]

Could someone please mirror that image on a different site? Facebook images don't seem to display for me, and from what Nisaba and Benvolio said, it sounds very neat!

[entropicdecay]

I remember I loved learning the Standard Galactic Alphabet as a kid and writing things in it. I think that was my first introduction to the idea of learning "another language" even if SGA itself is more of a cypher.

[Quillax]

As I was digging through YouTube, searching for Keen-themed Mario Maker levels, I found this cool recreation of Border Village from Keen 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGRgzVDxKBo

I really like how closely it follows the original level, emphasized by all the neat details. Reminds me of the time when I recreated Lifewater Oasis in the 3DS version of Mario Maker.

Could someone please mirror that image on a different site? Facebook images don't seem to display for me, and from what Nisaba and Benvolio said, it sounds very neat!

Hey, thanks for uploading the image to Postimg, Roobar! That's very neat indeed! That girl looks so happy and excited! Also, I think this is the very first time I've seen someone play Keen with a joystick, let alone on a TV.

[Roobar]

Commander Keen in Wizordum:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1735415439834947700

[Lower IQ than 314]

https://twitter.com/i/status/1735415439834947700

I'd be lying if I said I hadn't fantasized about blowing poison slugs to bloody mush at least once.

[Roobar]

I'd be lying if I said I hadn't fantasized about blowing poison slugs to bloody mush at least once.

Upcoming conversation with Tom Hall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx3N_8foNk0 I have no idea what it would be about.