Commander Genius (Aka CloneKeenPlus) 0.3.0.3 Release

All discussion about the Commander Genius project (a Keen interpreter + more).
gerstrong
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Commander Genius (Aka CloneKeenPlus) 0.3.0.3 Release

Post by gerstrong »

Okay,

It should be one of the most stable versions and have very small, minor issues with the games of Episode 1-3.

Check it out, and have fun!

http://clonekeenplus.sourceforge.net/
Last edited by gerstrong on Tue Aug 25, 2009 14:45, edited 2 times in total.
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DaVince
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Post by DaVince »

It's... It's beautiful! *sniff*

Menu bug: press down, then up. It'll skip the first option and go to the most bottom one. Probably set the menu option check one too high. :) I'd also like it if the menu selection kept going if you hold the directional key.
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Post by gerstrong »

Are you sure you have the most recent version. I'm going to upload pre2 of version 0.3 since the last appears to be a bit old. I hope it didn't have that bug.
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Post by Ceilick »

Looking good, I think i said so before, but the jumping is finally perfect :)
Also nice work on the highquality graphics, really like how the domes of darkness are going.

I used the keen 1 provided on your website, and ran into these errors:

-Whenever keen shoots right, he shoots himself somehow and dies.

-While on the pogo, Keen isn't very maneuverable. It's not the same as the original keen 1.

-I had some weird bug occur when i was pogoing and facing right against a wall.

-when Keen is on a block 1 high and a yorp is walking below him, the yorp doesn't push him. Similarlly, the yorp hitbox is way off. It needs to be higher and thinner.
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Post by gerstrong »

Oh no, what a bad bug that shooting one!

Now I also see it. I don't even know, where it appeared.

I'm going to check it and release a fixed version as soon I get time to it. It will be today.

Until then use pre1 if you want to enjoy a game!
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Post by gerstrong »

Thanks Ceilick,

the hitbox coordinates were transposed due the new input-file read-system. It is fixed. Thanks again.

I also changed the pogo physics are bit more. I hope it's better to manouver now.

Have fun with pre-release 3 of Version 0.3.
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Post by Roobar »

Testing with the latest version...

I would suggest you to add reset controls option in the menu. Or when you're in the menu to change a key, and if you press enter by accident, make an cancel optional key to undo. What happened was that I've changed a key for player two, but I didn't knew what was the key before.

For the fun, I've changed the jumping button with the P key, which is used for pause. Maybe you should disable using some keys so there won't be any interrupts or something. I also changed all the moves, fires, jumps etc with only one key. It's also fun when you change most of them with Esc button for example :). If I change my keys using g o d as in my control scheme, I may end very often in switching on/off god mode :). I know with deleting the controls file everything is fine again, but you shouldn't allow this.

Now, there's definitely an issues with the resolutions. By default, the resolutions is 640x480x32. When I press enter to change it, it comes to 320x240x16. There's also an resolution 640x480x0 :).

One I changed the resolution to 320x240 and then I wasn't able to change it to bigger resolution until I reinstall the game...

From 640x480x32 software, I changed to OpenGL. Then I changed the resolution to 320x240x16 and the game crashed. Log ends here:

"Blitsurface = creatergbsurfacefrom
OpenGL Init(): Interface succesfully opened!
showmapatpos(90, 32, 32, 0);
loadmap(): file data/level90.ck3 opened. Loading..."

After that, I wasn't able to start the game, until I deleted genius.cfg file, started the game to create a new cfg file and then started the game to finally run.

I don't know why, but when you jump with pogo over an yourp, your pogo disappear.

The physics looks really different now. The moving left/right in the air. I don't know yet if it's for good or not, but they are definitely not the same and maybe less keenish.

I don't know if this is an issue or not: first time entering the level with "you see in your mind..." and the yorp is glowing. After you read the message, the yorp is not glowing. Second time you enter the level, the yorp is not glowing, but you still can read the message.
Maybe, if you enter this level for five times, the message will start to appear in the standard galactic alphabet lol.

Actually after that, in the other levels where there is a such a blinking yorp, his eye doesn't glow too even if you enter a level for a first time.

I don't know why or how happened, but the left teleport in Keen 1 continues its animation even after you move away from it.

I believe there are still some tile bugs with the boss of Keen 3.

I also experienced the left wall bug.
Last edited by Roobar on Wed Jul 15, 2009 19:22, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by gerstrong »

I see, there are still some bugs. It will have to stay as pre-release, until bugs are fixed.

@Iv4n: Keens pogo is disabled when you jump on a vorticon that's normal.

About the resolutions: I have implemented a new system in which you can edit your resolutions yourself in a list called "resolutions.cfg". It seems that it doesn't work properly though. Bug accepted.

About the physics. I changed the inertia of the pogo and it changed the jump inertia. It's really difficult to seperate them. I noticed that much later. So also next version is like it was before.

Teleport: This is a mysterious bug since CloneKeen. I don't get it often, but it happens. It must be something about enabling and disabling the animation.
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Post by gerstrong »

I have uploaded version 0.3pre4. I didn't link it to the downloads page, because there are still some known bugs left, which I'm still fixing.

For those who want to test jumping and pogo again, this is a good version. Also for some mods (silcar 1), the support has been improved.

When a more stable version is out. I'll inform you. I'm working on the bugs Iv4n wrote here!
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Post by gerstrong »

Hi Iv4n,

i was checking your problem about the resolutions, but I don't the errors you mention. Maybe you can sent me your package, to check your configuration. Thank you!

About the other bugs, I'm working on it!
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Post by gerstrong »

Okay, next try Prerelease 5!

Sorry Iv4n. I still cannot find your resolutions bug. Did you also copy the "resolutions.cfg" file?

The "Reset" function isn't implemented. I will do it in the next prerelease. Don't get me wrong. I'm a bit afraid of in getting new bugs by doing that. So give me more time. I'll think about that feature if I implement it until release 0.3 or later.

Other good news for Windows users: You surely remember that the EXE-File is very big (About 26 MB if not more). I have learned how to use some tools of the GNU Compiler and managed to reduce the size dramatically. I think it also helps to speed up the program. Try it out! You will be scared, if you see how small the package is now :-) But don't worry, it still runs.

On other news and only here in the forum I want to comment something about "Tools". While developing Commander Genius and browsing resources of DOS-games I was thinking if I seperate some functions of the source code and compile them as tools. Examples would be:

- UNLZEXE, or something similar.
- UNLZW
- Sound Tools, Level tools, Tile editor, etc.

I know that these apps already exist and its algorithms are as well known, but I have discoverd, that there are many apps which don't work very well. If someone is interested (I was thinking in DaVince) in developing tools around Commander Genius, he is welcome. The Gamemodding community and I are able to provide a lot of information. With the knowledge in the source code you can create for example a level-editor or level-map viewer.

Everything is possible! It would be nice to have a collection of tools for Commander Genius, so Tulip and other modders would create its own games with more ease.

These tools of course wouldn't depend on the interpreter. They also should be compatible with the dos-games. Let's see what we can do.

I don't want to do everything. I'm just one man and the project already got very big. My personal goals of the project are to get the code tied a bit more(I think classes help a lot. I'm starting to believe that Keen1 was developed in C++. At least a C++ Compiler was used for the binary I discovered lately so it may be) and to get support for Commander 4-6. After that Dreams would also be nice. You can do much more than that, but you must decide, what to do first and everything is work and needs time.

So if somebody is really interested in Keening, loves the games and want to help us, he is very welcome!
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Post by Roobar »

I'm not sure it's from resolutions cfg. I've made a completely new installation. I presume it's from my version of Windows (as before there was some issues with specific versions of windows).

Try rar it instead of zip it and you'll make the archive even smaller!

As for the tools, I don't know. If someone is interested, then ok, but if it will push back the starting of work for Clone Keen 4-6, then I'm against it (as I really want to play Keen 4-6 in OpenGL at higher resolutions and scaled :)))))
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Post by DaVince »

There seem to be a lot of new problems popping up... Are you doing make cleans before recompiling everything? That'd ensure that everything would be the latest version. (Why am I even saying this? :p)
If someone is interested (I was thinking in DaVince) in developing tools around Commander Genius, he is welcome.
Correct, but I kind of felt that making another editor would be useless if there's such a great one like Mindbelt out there. :)

I might reconsider and do it anyway, just so that I gain some experience, so that there's a cross-platform solution to Keen modding and so that all extra steps like unlzexe'ing the Keens or extracting the graphics into a BMP would be completely automated and you can just get into the modding.

For anyone listening, I am/was planning to do this in Ruby. Or Python if you can give me a good reason. :)
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Post by gerstrong »

Okay, I'll work on other things for now.

You are right DaVince. Sometimes the cleans fail or I don't run them, but I check them for being the most recent builds.

The main trouble with the source code, that it is written partly in C and C++, is that the file names got inconsistent and that makes it more difficult to understand what it going on.

I have been cleaning out a lot the source code lately, and adding more classes and C++ code. Why it is better? Well if you do it right, you can save lines of code and I think this is pretty. Also there are classes which are faster than using standard implementations.

For example tile loading. Tiles are either extracted from the exe-file or read from the tiles.tli. Both have its problems:

1.- The extraction doesn't know how much it will extract, so it reserves 50 MB of the main memory and copy the data to a new structure. After that it frees those 50 MB. It can have been done with realloc, but in C++ you can do it with vector, which is less code. Now the next version use the vector class and copies all the stuff to a simple array also defragmenting the memory a bit. I also noticed, that the tiles were read when starting every level, that isn't needed, so I also removed it.

2.- Tiles.tli? Not every mod names the file that way. So what will we do? I want to autodetect the pat-file and get the tli-file from there. That should improve the compatibility with more mods. I want to make CG the way it can read more stuff out of the pat-file.

However I only will implement some basic functions, because the development of a new menu system and Keen 4-6 has higher priorities.

I haven't heard of new bugs, since the latest pre-release. If nobody doesn't complain anymore, I'm going to kick out the release with the improvements I told. I hope to get that finished. If someone still find bugs and report them here or under sourceforge, and it will be another pre-release until release is out.

I want get a perfect release, although I think it has reached a good state.
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Post by tulip »

I'm looking forward to .pat files working in CG, and I think I can be of help there.
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