Difficulties

All discussion about the Commander Genius project (a Keen interpreter + more).
pizza2004
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Difficulties

Post by pizza2004 »

I was wondering if anyone could tell me what the differences are between the different difficulties of Keens 4-6 and Dreams. I'm trying to decide how to make an easy difficulty in Keens 1-3, and I would also like to improve the hard difficulty to fit in better.

I'm doing this for Commander Genius, and I would like to say that we are working hard on getting a new version out, sorry we have been taking so long, please be patient, we are working on it. Please visit our forums at http://clonekeenplus.neejean.org/ for more information or to contribute ideas or the such on what we should do.
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Post by shikadi »

u jump higher on easy difficulty then on normal or hard

on normal there are some extra creatures in the levels.
on hard there are some more extra creatures in the levels.

in dreams enemies are stunned, not killed
on easy they are stunned for 15 seconds.
on normal they are stunned or 10 seconds
on hard they are for 5 seconds.
nothing usefull here
pizza2004
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Post by pizza2004 »

Thanks! That is great to know, this means that everyone who had trouble with the playing of the game before, we will make an easier difficulty for everyone to try, this will take a bit of work, but the higher jump thing will be part of it, as well as other things.

This makes me think, who like to see the pogo stick implemented in Keen Dreams when we make it compatible with Commander Genius? I think I might try to make it so that you can turn the pogo stick on and off as well as toggle killing so that you can truly kill enemies. And I might try to add a few levels to Keen Dreams, just because it is the shortest of the games and it would be more fun if there were a few more levels. If anyone here wants to, go ahead and design 4 more levels that you think would be fun in Keen Dreams, then I'll look into having them in the CG version of Keen Dreams.
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Post by TerminILL »

I don't think extra levels would work all that well. Keen Dreams is what it is, and extra levels aren't what it is. Pogo and permanent removal of enemies would really be game-breakers in a lot of situations, because the levels weren't designed with either of those in mind. But they could be put in as "cheat" options or something, for those who want to see what it would have been like if they had been in the game.

Here's an idea for CG as a whole, not just Keen Dreams: when cheats are activated, put a little note in the high scores, or make it possible to turn off display of cheat high scores for the ultra-competitive. There's nothing more annoying than making a good run only to come second to some guy who G+O+D and C+T+Space'd their way through.
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Post by tulip »

In addition the Neural Stunner gives 8 shots in easy, and 5 in normal/hard.

- Pogo in Dreams: No! As Draik said, the levels were not designed for that. Plus the graphics for this would have been designed, and storywise it would be illogical for Keen to suddenly have the pogo.
- Permanently stunned enemies: Why not, you can add this option to the game options.
- Extra Levels: No! Keep the official Episodes as they are. Adding options is not a problem but adding levels is. Focus rather on compatibility with Mods.
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Post by pizza2004 »

Okay then, that is enough feedback for me! I think that pogo wouldn't be too difficult to add, but definitely not a priority, probably just an option or something we add once we are finished adding support for the game into CG. As far as your suggestion goes Draik, I'll take it to our forums for discussion, thanks for your opinion!

For extra levels, I think that if we don't want extra levels (doesn't mean they wouldn't be secret) then we won't add them. However, I would like to make the highscores thing into a menu for the demo so that it matches Keens 4-6. Plus, I would like to know if once we are all done with making it compatible with all of the Keen games, if anyone would be interested in helping design Keen 4-6 graphics identical to Keens 1-3 for use with our engine in order to make the original trilogy with Keen 4-6 graphics, then they would all match and it would be totally awesome!

Oh, and all of the bugs listed on the Keen Wiki for the different games are going to have some sort of attempt to fix them embedded into CG, so I hear that Keen Dreams is really buggy, well then we can fix that. I also think that it would be cool to eventually have a game selection screen based on the Keen Dreams menu, and make it so that the controls graphics and audio could be controlled from that, although we would leave them in the regular game for when you're playing and you want to change them as well.
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Post by VikingBoyBilly »

tulip wrote:storywise it would be illogical for Keen to suddenly have the pogo.
So why is he wearing his helmet in his dreams when he's not wearing it in bed? I don't understand that :p :helmet Image
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Post by pizza2004 »

That is actually what I thought when I started playing it a day or two ago. Plus the pogo and permanent death would be options you turn on and off, most of the time it would just be like normal.
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Post by gerstrong »

Well, I saw it coming.

The new engine has been developed the way, you can choose between more than two difficulties. I was think about making easy, normal and difficult. We can do it this time.

Was just an extension and idea. We can add it easily
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Post by VikingBoyBilly »

pizza2004 wrote:if anyone would be interested in helping design Keen 4-6 graphics identical to Keens 1-3 for use with our engine in order to make the original trilogy with Keen 4-6 graphics, then they would all match and it would be totally awesome!
Sounds cool to me :)
I'd love to see keen walking on a slightly isometric version of mars instead of a completely flat side-view one 8)
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Post by gerstrong »

well, I tried that in the first level of HQP, but it didn't get popular.

Also Backgroung could be made, but I think not everybody accepts this.

What you can do with the latest release, is to use VGA Tiles (up to 32-bit colours)
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Post by pizza2004 »

The difference with my idea is that it would require that you have both Keen 1 and Keen 4, then it would use the graphics and display functions from Galaxy, but dip back into the AI from the first one, and complete with new graphics of the enemies and tiles in Keen 1 made to match the look of Keen 4, it would go back and load the levels from the originals. Do you see what I am getting at? Just a suggestion for later on, because I think it would be pretty awesome to have the graphical style of all the Keen Games match.
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Post by DaVince »

Sounds like an idea to consider once Keen 4-6 support is implemented a decent amount.
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pizza2004
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Post by pizza2004 »

Yeah, pretty much the only reason I bring it up is so that people here can start making the graphics of it. Because we won't be able to implement that sort of thing for a while.

I want to know why no one has made a comprehensive list of the differences on the wiki. It doesn't matter too much though, we can just use what has been said here to create the easy difficulty. And I don't know about the hard, it should have more enemies if it can, while easy has less.

Actually, someone needs to examine every level of Keens 1-3 (Except the kitchen one and the mountain one in three that were poorly designed, I made a few slight changes to make those work correctly, so please get those from me first.) and go through and say which enemies should be removed from easy difficulty, and show where to add enemies in hard difficulty.
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Post by Genius314 »

pizza2004 wrote:Actually, someone needs to examine every level of Keens 1-3 (Except the kitchen one and the mountain one in three that were poorly designed, I made a few slight changes to make those work correctly, so please get those from me first.) and go through and say which enemies should be removed from easy difficulty, and show where to add enemies in hard difficulty.
I think the official levels of Keen 1 should be easy mode, rather than normal. Keen 1 is much easier than Keen 2 and 3, and removing enemies would almost make it a joke.
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