Public Commander Keen Forum

So recently I was playing around with DeluxePaint for DOS, and discovered something interesting:

I found the exact font used to make the title screens in Keen: Vorticons! (Specifically, the "Olive" font at 12 pixels.) This means that any modder with access to DeluxePaint can create title screens in the style of Keen: Vorticons with an accurate font!

wait, what?
Episode nine: the truth revealed?

let's go! I'm all down for it

The one secret Tom Hall never wanted you to find out.

This is very neat... nothing delves to the core of my childhood quite like an MS DOS based paint program!

Ah, so that's what Keen 9 was really going to be called!

But really, this is a cool discovery! Now I don't have to use the Arial font when I make Vorticons-style title screens! (I think that's what I used when I did the ROM trilogy title screens.) That program looks very neat; I might have to try that out someday.

That reminds me, a few years ago when I first heard about DeluxePaint I downloaded it and experimented with the different effects for a few minutes, and ended up making something I thought looked kind of cool. I wanted to share it but never quite knew where to put it, and come to think of it this thread is the perfect place for it.



LOOK HOW 90s IT IS

Makes a lot of sense, to get 90s effects, use software from the 90s.

Video of an unfinished commander keen game by Ryemanni

https://youtu.be/hBQ07VwbkR0

Looks really dope.

A keen music remix: https://youtu.be/HvXKQR4wkDc

That is indeed a pretty keen music remix. Oh, wait! I made that.

proYorp wrote: ↑Wed May 25, 2022 0:48 That reminds me, a few years ago when I first heard about DeluxePaint I downloaded it and experimented with the different effects for a few minutes, and ended up making something I thought looked kind of cool. I wanted to share it but never quite knew where to put it, and come to think of it this thread is the perfect place for it.

LOOK HOW 90s IT IS

Makes a lot of sense, to get 90s effects, use software from the 90s.

this effect is super awesome looking. for what display resolution (width × height) have you created it? I am tempted to apply this effect to my game, although at the moment I have no idea where it might fit particularly well. But this needs to be used somewhere. Awesome find!

Looks like I just used the 640x400 canvas size, since that screenshot is the full image. The only 640x400 screen format option in DeluxePaint is "E-VGA - 256 colors" so I guess that's what I used.

I'm trying to remember what I did to get that effect. It looks like I used the "Raster" font. There's a parallax tool, which is what I used to get that "3D" look. Takes some fiddling to figure out how to use it. Requires you to select a "custom brush" out of your canvas, which is the tool that looks like it should be a selection box. Seems like I used the grid tool as well, and actually yeah the grid button is enabled in the screenshot.

It's interesting because the style of this artwork was directly influenced by what seemed like the most natural way to use these tools. So like I said, the super 90s effect was just an accidental product of using 90s software. This is actually a really fun program to play around with. A lot of the tools are mixed together or something so it's kind of tricky to figure out, but it seems like it's actually really powerful.



Also, when I was trying to learn how to use these tools I searched online to see if there were any tutorials, and I found these official guide videos that were ripped straight from a VHS circa 1991. It's incredible how this is similar to maybe a homemade tutorial on YouTube but it's got a whole different flavor. A whole hour long wow.... It's a literal time machine and it's fascinating to watch just to experience the atmosphere of "back then." Search "deluxepaint tutorial" on YouTube and there's a few of them. Wonder if Adrian Carmack used these tapes to study the tools of the trade....
YouTube link / Invidious alt

This video is for a different version of the program (DeluxePaint IV for Amiga, and I'm using DeluxePaint II Enhanced for DOS) but a lot of the concepts still apply. The parallax thing is explained a bit after 37 minutes in.

Captain Neat-O: a pico8 platformer. Maybe can be added as a fan made game?

https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=107459#p

Yeah, that's a good point! I think there's a few web games that should probably be added to KeenWiki somewhere. I think there was another one around here somewhere called Captain Rixot. I don't know if there's already a section on KeenWiki for web games, but I feel like I saw one or two old ones listed on there.

I guess these are more "homages" than Commander Keen games by name. I wonder if that would count.

Some interesting piano improvisation based on Tropical Ghost Oasis from Keen 4:
Derek Paravicini Copying and Switching Styles After a Single Listen (Commander Keen)

The other day I was absently thinking about how Keen's bullets are 16 pixels in size, and tiles are also 16 pixels. Suddenly I wondered, if you stand on your own bullet, could you survive deadly floors?

https://youtu.be/UrV2yjuT6I8

(Well, some. I guess the hitbox of the shots is smaller than 16 pixels. The drills will still kill you, so my original theory doesn't work. But it looks cool. )

That's a pretty neat trick, proYorp! Never thought it would actually work! I also didn't know you can get on your shot while it's moving downward!

proYorp wrote: ↑Sun Jun 19, 2022 7:23 Yeah, that's a good point! I think there's a few web games that should probably be added to KeenWiki somewhere. I think there was another one around here somewhere called Captain Rixot. I don't know if there's already a section on KeenWiki for web games, but I feel like I saw one or two old ones listed on there.

I guess these are more "homages" than Commander Keen games by name. I wonder if that would count.

Captain Rixot should definitely get a KeenWiki page, since it's obviously very influenced by Keen and has more to do with it than say Commander Keens Trek 96. And didn't KeenWiki have articles for Keen homages? I want to say there's one called Journey to the Center of Mars or something like that.

I'm not sure about Captain Neat-O, though. From what I looked up, it's made for a game jam ran by the one and only Tom Hall where you only use the assets supplied: https://itch.io/jam/toy-box-jam-3 You can see in the link I posted that "Captain Neat-O" also appears in the banner and quite a few other games. Perhaps the jam itself should get mentioned in KeenWiki, even if it's just in the Cameo Appearances page. There's one Pico-8 game posted here by DoomJedi that's definitely a Keen fangame, though: https://janpaul.itch.io/stranded-on-saturn