KeenTales! (woo oo)

You can discuss anything about fan-made Commander Keen games here.
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troublesomekeen
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KeenTales! (woo oo)

Post by troublesomekeen »

Hello, everyone.
My first efforts to mod DuckTales was back in October, 2015, which can be seen on the 98th page or so of the Off Topic Thread in the Miscellaneous section. Thanks to kvee and our intrepid band of keeners, the project has been resurrected and a new update is available! But not for download. Progress has been made which can be seen in the shape of a video showing here:
https://youtu.be/d3lZQ-0lYK0

I do have a level editor and it looks like I can also edit the enemy sprites. There are not a whole lot of foes in this game, so we should see further updates on more sprites soon. Hopefully afterwards I can keen-ify most of the tiles, too.

What game is this, you ask? Don't you know? In a super dimensional transitory timeline, Carmack and the team got a call back from Nintendo Headquarters. Thinking it was Nintendo's lawyers threatening a lawsuit over Dangerous Dave, John quickly slammed the rotary phone back on the hook. But a persistent second and third phone call saw the fledgling company cramming their heads together to better hear the voice of Hiroshi-san who wanted to commission the crew to develop a title for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Finally this was the breakthrough they had been waiting for!
But what to do? Once again turning to their creative director, id software began work on the very first Commander Keen game, years before the beloved Invasion of the Vorticons.

So, uh, should I make each level of DuckTales Keen-themed episodically?
There are five levels in DuckTales:
The Amazon
Transylvania
African Mines
The Himalayas
The Moon

Should I turn the Amazon into Vorticon VI? Transylvania into The Shadowlands? African Mines into Tuberia? I was thinking that's what I'd do. Thoughts? Ideas?

Anyhow, I don't think I can possibly mod Ducktales 2 because the graphics are compressed. Ducktales isn't a particularly great game and the more I play it to test out my sprite frames, the more I feel like it--surprisingly--has a lot in common with Commander Keen GBC. Okay, maybe only a little bit in common. You have to hold the Down key to activate the pogo stick in both games.
So yeah! I think it would be great fun to have something close to a Keen game on the old NES platform.
Image
Commander Keen in... Canteloupe Quest!
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Roobar
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Re: KeenTales! (woo oo)

Post by Roobar »

troublesomekeen! It's been soo long since you have finally returned to work on your Canteloupe Quest KD mod and now you have already been distracted with something else!

Nevertheless, it's a cool idea! It only makes sense to mod this into a Commander Keen game given that it's probably the only other game (besides Keen) that has the pogo stick as a gameplay mechanic. I haven't played the original, but I've played the remake. As for the levels, given the limitations and that it's not that similar to Keen (you can't shoot), it would be hard to remake the Keen levels. It's probably better to make completely new levels. Take for example the NES Crystal Caves. It's cool, but I've already played through Crystal Caves levels many times.

As for which one would be which: The first world (Amazon) should be Keen 4. The second world: Keen 3. The third world: a Keen Dreams theme would fit quite well. The 4th world: Keen 5. The last one should be Keen 1 (Moon -> Mars). Or maybe the spaceship (a.k.a. Keen 5 theme) should be the last world.

Also, you said that there's an editor. Are there any levels or mods made? I'm not really familiar, but if something cool is out, I may want to try it out.
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