OFF TOPIC THREAD: Where derailing the thread is impossible!

[Roobar]

But that's not really Commander Keen related.

[Pandakeen]

It looks like Bubzrulz's account got hacked by a spammer. I've never seen something like this happen on PCKF before

[proYorp]

I saw the spam posts. That's unsettling. Why would someone come and hack a random account on a niche little forum? How? Should we all change our passwords?

[Keening_Product]

I've never seen something like this happen on PCKF before

Thought this was sarcasm before realising Fleex's amazing efforts mean anyone with <4 years experience here probably hasn't seen a large-scale spam incident.

re: passwords, maybe they used LastPass

[Roobar]

When AI kicks in:

[Benvolio]

Terrifying! This definitely qualifies as "Other Keen Stuff" and possibly as a dedicated AI thread within that subforum.

[Roobar]

Unless AI starts producing something that's actually cool on the Keen subject, I don't think there's a need for a separate thread for terrifying images. These were really just experiments, laughable at best.

[Roobar]

Anyone has heard of K1n9_Duk3 recently? He hasn't been active here for years now, unfortunately...

[kvee]

I'm here in an attempt to derail this thread. How is everyone?

[Quillax]

It looks like Bubzrulz's account got hacked by a spammer. I've never seen something like this happen on PCKF before

The same thing just happened with his account on KeenWiki. Was making pages containing a jumble of words including "unlimited cheat", "coins", and "spins". Luckily, I noticed it very early on, so I quickly cleaned up the mess and blocked the account for a few days (though, I'm not exactly sure if that'll deter the spambot afterwards; we'll see).

Anyone has heard of K1n9_Duk3 recently? He hasn't been active here for years now, unfortunately...

According to his profile, K1n9_Duk3 has logged-in just about this morning. I wonder if he's been working with anyone on Keen projects. It would be nice to see him post again, though; I've always liked his in-depth explanations of the Keen engine!

Also, that AI art is a little creepy at first glance! Especially the first one! Imagine if someone made a Keen mod with graphics that are all AI-generated, with the story and dialogue written by ChatGPT and levels designed by Markeen. Jeez, I'm not sure if that would be cool or terrifying...

I'm here in an attempt to derail this thread. How is everyone?

I'm doing okay here! Haven't been very active here in a while, but I'm sure we've all taken our breaks every once in a while. Good luck on the derailment; I've heard it's about as possible as building a time machine!

[Gridlock]

Been a while since I've been active here. Hope everyone is doing okay.

Thought I'd share what's going on with me. I've mentioned once or twice before that I'm working in the games industry now, coming up on 5 years (holy heck time flies). This last week I launched a game I've been working on as Development Director for quite a long time: LISA Definitive Edition. If you haven't heard of the series, the LISA games are cult classic RPGs that came out about a decade ago. We did full-on remakes from the ground up of LISA: The Painful and LISA: The Joyful for PC and consoles, including new features and content. Fair warning: while these games have plenty of humor and brilliant weirdness, they also deal with very dark themes and subject matter.

LISA has definitely been one of the most exhausting and all-consuming projects I've worked on (alongside Doki Doki Literature Club Plus back in 2021), but I'm also incredibly proud of the mountains we moved to make it happen. It's currently the 16th highest rated Switch game of the year on Metacritic, so that's pretty cool.

Can't say what the future holds just yet. Although I occasionally get the itch to do something Keen-related, I think I'm past that point in my life. Though, I am pursuing a horror-game pitch that takes quite a bit of inspiration from Atroxian Realm, which would be a dream project for me. I guess we'll see what happens.

Someday I'm hoping to catch up on the Keen mods that have been been released in recent years. It's so hard to keep up with everything that comes out these days in general.

Wishing you all the best!

[proYorp]

dangit i was already about to start a thread for exactly this kind of thing
like i had it half written and was planning to post today
i will edit out the part about the offtopic thread

Anyhow, good to hear life seems to be treating you well Gridlock. Most of those things are off my grid but I am glad that some years ago I was able to support you a tiny bit by buying a game from one of the companies you worked at. Serenity Forge if memory serves. I never ended up playing it much, but I'll say it was there for me once at a moment I really needed something different to take my attention. I definitely don't regret it.

[Roobar]

It seems that the German Keen fan site celle forum is completely gone. And with it, perhaps a lot of graphical and other assets.

[Quillax]

Hey, good to see you, Gridlock! Sounds like you've been doing quite well in your life, which is good!I'd love to see more Keen content from you, but if you'd rather move on from that and focus on your professional career, that's understandable. I mean, I sometimes get an itch to make a Keen mod or some fangame (last time I worked on one that wasn't just me messing around with TGF was late 2019) or something fun, but I also sometimes wonder if I'd be better off making games that I can fully consider to be my own and sell for some good money. On the other hand, I'd probably have to get a newer game-creation tool like GameMaker Studio 2 or learn how to program games with C, not to mention I'd have to create all of the assets by hand unless I go look for some free-to-use ones like in OpenGameArt.org. Plus, I'm sometimes not quite sure if my ideas would really stand out well on their own and work better as indie games rather than mods/fangames, or is that a sign I'm being unoriginal? Would I even enjoy working on games for nearly my whole life? Maybe for some people it's better to leave a hobby as a hobby...

Man, this kind of topic seems to rarely pop up on PCKF (unlike another forum I'm part of); I sometimes considered making a thread about it, even before you posted. Besides you and me, I remember seeing Bernie and Benvolio talk about whether they want to make something they can sell versus making more mods. Bernie vanished some time after his last mod (I remember him saying that "modding ruined [his] life", whatever that means) and Benvolio said the aforementioned stuff back in like 2005 or 2006. The latter of whom is still making mods to this day and I don't know if he's ever done much (if any) with original games. I'd like to see what he says about this.

You seem quite proud of where you're at, anyway, and happiness is what really matters in the end.

It seems that the German Keen fan site celle forum is completely gone. And with it, perhaps a lot of graphical and other assets.

Links to those who are not familiar with that community:

http://www.keenfansite.de/
http://ckfsc.webnwork.com/forum/ (forum)
http://ckfsc.webnwork.com/wiki/ (wiki, which is still up, although in a poor-looking state)

Man, I know the forum seemed to be falling apart for a long time, but it sucks to see these websites and communities crumble to dust. I hope they were at least archived. Seems like dosclassics.com has also met a similar fate, unfortunately. Since a few years ago, it only showed a blank page but the dosclassics.com/old directory was still up and viewable. Just recently, though, it looks like all of its URLS take you to some "this domain is for sale" page. This includes PCKF ezboard discussion threads that were linked by PCKF Archive. spatang.com is still up; I even sent an e-mail to the address listed in that site three years ago about the problem with dosclassics.com, but I never got a response.

[proYorp]

It seems that the German Keen fan site celle forum is completely gone. And with it, perhaps a lot of graphical and other assets.

Man, I know the forum seemed to be falling apart for a long time, but it sucks to see these websites and communities crumble to dust. I hope they were at least archived. Seems like dosclassics.com has also met a similar fate, unfortunately.

Aw man that sucks. I never attempted to read much of the German forum (via Google Translate lol) but I know they at least had their own set of emotikeens that were considerably well-designed.

Grandy please tell us you got something.