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Commander Keen Level Maps
- coroxout 9y agoI spent so many hours playing the first game as a kid, decoding the alphabet (which I would later discover it tells you how to read in episode 2 or 3 anyway), trying to get every last item, etc. My favourite bit was the dark, fiery secret tunnel underneath one of the larger levels (http://www.commander-keen.com/levelmaps/1/013.gif http://www.commander-keen.com/levelmaps/1/013.gif), which teleports you to the city on the right-hand side of the world map at the bottom of the level maps page, not really visible from the map screen when going between the main cities... but I no longer remember which of these maps is that city, alas (or maybe not alas: I hope I've put some more currently useful information in that part of my brain instead. Thanks for the nostalgia!)
- blatyo 9y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMjrI3pFsOA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMjrI3pFsOA
- danielvf 9y agoI too had a lot of fun decoding the language in Keen. Keen 5's victory sequence ended with a big message onscreen in keenspeak - I copied that down onto paper and worked out the alphabet from there.
- archagon 9y agoIs that the one where you have to freeze yourself to get over a barrier? I love that passage. Game secrets are a lost art!
- suprfnk 9y agoOr game developers got really good at them!
- korethr 9y agoYep, I remember that level. My sister and I called it the Pepsi Maze, because of its maze-like layout and the fact there were Pepsis everywhere. I believe this is the secret level: https://www.commander-keen.com/level-maps-1.php https://www.commander-keen.com/level-maps-1.php We called it the Teddy Bear Maze, for its higher occurrence of teddy bears than other levels. Though looking at the layout now, I don't think it quite deserves the 'maze' designation as much as the Pepsi Maze does. But all those teddy bears...you could rack up a few extra lives if you managed to snag them all. Looking at the levels, this one raises my curiosity: https://www.commander-keen.com/levelmaps/1/015.gif https://www.commander-keen.com/levelmaps/1/015.gif Note that there is a yellow keycard, but not a yellow door. I'm thinking either the level was never quite completed, or whoever took the screenshots to make these images took one after opening the yellow door. Reflecting on it now, I think perhaps the latter was the case, though I don't remember where the yellow door was. Either by one of the robots, or right before the drop out of the colored area.
- coroxout 9y agoYes, http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/Keen_1_Levels http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/Keen_1_Levels says the "teddy bear maze" is the secret level and that the yellow door never existed. Not sure if a mistake or red herring; probably the former but in a more tortuous level layout it would be kind of funny/cruel to make people work to get the green key to get the yellow key to get nowhere extra at all... Thanks to khedoros1 for linking to the wiki, which has lots of good stuff on (and also lets you look at the level maps while the originally linked site is down): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14656926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14656926
- bluedino 9y agoIs the tool available that made these maps?
- coldpie 9y agoI dunno about for these Keen maps, but I wrote a level dumper for the classic NES game M.C. Kids if you want to see what that looks like: https://gitlab.com/mcmapper/mcmapper/blob/master/main.c https://gitlab.com/mcmapper/mcmapper/blob/master/main.c Output: https://tcrf.net/Proto:M.C._Kids https://tcrf.net/Proto:M.C._Kids I'm contemplating turning it into a full level editor for the ROM hacking community, but I don't know how much use it would actually get.
- khedoros1 9y agoDo you mean the original level editor, or the one that produced the images on that site? If the former: http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/TED5 http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/TED5
- moovacha 9y agoVery fond memories indeed of playing this DOS game on old Celeron and Pentium II. The game is honestly much better than the Marios and Sonics that it was trying to mimic (at least part 5 and 6 were IMO)
- sharpercoder 9y agoI very much enjoyed the speedruns of this game done by CapnClever on twitch. He has records on most official games and also has run some of the unofficial games. It great to see someone running through levels I sweated blood and tears on as a kid. https://m.twitch.tv/capnclever/profile https://m.twitch.tv/capnclever/profile
- speps 9y agoFor those who don't know, it's made by id Software : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Software#Commander_Keen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Software#Commander_Keen
- jameskegel 9y agoI got it for free, along with Jill of the Jungle, and Wolfenstein 3D, with a Gravis PC Gamepad back in the day. They all came on two floppies, I was amazed that so much content could go on two discs that I could carry with me. Revelation: Today, it's amazing to me to have a 128GB ssd on my keychain.
- lanaius 9y agoCommander Keen 4 and Duke Nukem 2 with a Gravis joystick of some description.
- UweSchmidt 9y agoThis one maybe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravis_PC_GamePad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravis_PC_GamePad
- jff 9y agoWe got Keen 4 bundled with this Gravis joystick: http://mocagh.org/forsale/gravis-back.jpg http://mocagh.org/forsale/gravis-back.jpg I played Keen exclusively with a joystick for years and was pretty good at it. If you sat me down with the exact same joystick I could probably still play pretty well, but the much looser feel of a modern joystick would screw me up. When my brother and I would play Keen, we'd make the plastic on the joystick case creak from the frantic maneuvering!
- jameskegel 9y agoYes, that's the one! You could even screw this little stick into the d-pad and use it like a joystick, or like me, as a child you just broke it off in the hole and never told mom.
- mrob 9y agoThe entire top half of Keen 3 map 8 is inaccessible because of incorrectly placed blocks: http://www.commander-keen.com/levelmaps/3/008.gif http://www.commander-keen.com/levelmaps/3/008.gif It's not necessary to complete the level, and it's harder to notice when your screen doesn't have the resolution to see the whole thing at once, but it's interesting that it was released like this.
- tibbon 9y agoSome of those inaccessible parts of older game maps drove me up a wall as a kid. I'd see a hint of them, and then... how?!?!?
- thinkMOAR 9y agoCommander Keen and Captain Comic, i do not think i spend more time on anything else at that age.
- davedx 9y agoCaptain Comic was very difficult. Great game.
- thinkMOAR 9y agoI nearly finished it 'coop' haha :) i did the jumping my* brother the walking
- armadsen 9y agoFunny to hear that my brother and I aren't the only ones. We always played Captain Comic with me walking and jumping and him shooting (continuously). Neither of us were good enough to beat it alone as little kids.
- ovulator 9y agoCaptain Comic 2 seems to be almost impossible to find a working copy of. It seems it had some sort of copy protection that when the files were copied it locked you out of a majority of the game. It seems this would be trivial to get around, but there doesn't seem to be enough interest in the game to find any information on it.
- khedoros1 9y agoAny info on how it locks you out (text it shows? behavior of the lock?), how soon into the game, etc? The binary itself seems either packed, compressed, or obfuscated, and that's probably part of why you haven't found a fixed version.
- ovulator 9y agoIt has been a while since I tried. These are the only two sites I could find that mention it: http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/captain-comic-ii-fractured-reality http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/captain-comic-ii-fractured... https://raisedonvideogames.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/captain-comic-ii-copy-protection/ https://raisedonvideogames.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/captain-...
- cdubzzz 9y agoSee also: http://nesmaps.com/ http://nesmaps.com/
- lubujackson 9y agoMight as well go to the mother lode: http://vgmaps.com/ http://vgmaps.com/
- mrspeaker 9y agoI remember having Commander Keen on my 486 and it was the first game where I realized the levels were stored in plain ascii. Changing the ascii values would directly change the level... I lost so many hours of my life to that!
- lkbm 9y agoThey are?! I would've had so much fun with that as a kid. Is this true of all Keens? 4 was my first and favorite.
- khedoros1 9y agoDoesn't seem like it: http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/Commander_Keen_1-3_Level_format http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/Commander_Keen_1-3_Level_... http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/RLEW_compression http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/RLEW_compression Looking at a hexdump of the Keen1 file matches those specs. Keen 4 uses another, more complicated kind of compression, too: http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/Carmack_compression http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/Carmack_compression They might be thinking of earlier Id software games. Some of those weren't compressed, and you could at least edit them with a hex editor pretty easily.
- coroxout 9y agoThat wiki is brilliant, thanks!
- geon 9y agoI spent so much time redrawing tiles in Micromachines 2. Good times.
- giobox 9y agoOne of my colleagues recently fired up dosbox and showed me his old level editing tricks for a ton of DOS classics. I was mildly annoyed at my young self for having never considered trying this! Similar simple edits often work on save file data from games of this era as well, and often don't need a hex editor etc.
- metakermit 9y agoAh, such fond memories looking at these levels… This is where I learned my first command prompt skills – cd-ing through directories, dir /p-ing and running the various keen.exe programs :)
- georgehdd 9y agoWhat's up with the swastika in Keen 5 Level 4 (lower right corner)?
- thekaleb 9y agoIt seems to be a common theme among the creators' other games, e.g. Wolfenstein 3D.
- puddintane 9y agoAs thekaleb mentioned the creator seems to reference this symbol a lot in his games. Here is more of a back story (after some google-fu of course as I'm not very familiar with the games) Seems like Keen 5 has it as an easter egg to reference Wolfenstein [1]. And Wolfenstein uses it since the game has a "Nazi Party" within it (if you fight them or fight with them I'm not aware of) [2]. Interesting quote from [2] "The inclusion of the swastika led to the banning of the conventional game in Germany, as cultural stigma against the swastika is high there." [1] http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/Keen_5_Easter_eggs#Swastika http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/Keen_5_Easter_eggs#Swastika [2] http://wolfenstein.wikia.com/wiki/Swastika http://wolfenstein.wikia.com/wiki/Swastika
- jandrese 9y agoFor reference the plot of Wolfenstein is that you are a captured soldier trying to escape from a Nazi controlled castle. You are fighting against the Nazis.
- chungy 9y agoWhile probably a mistake on John Romero's part, Keen uses 卍 in its easter egg while the nazis used 卐 instead.
- bananabill 9y agoTrue but regardless of which one is technically correct, both pretty much share the same negative connotations now. I used to always hear people talking about how the swastika is really a sign of peace, but regardless of what it originally meant, it doesn't mean that anymore.
- rvanmil 9y agoGoogle cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.commander-keen.com/level-maps.php https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:... https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.commander-keen.com/level-maps-1.php https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:... https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.commander-keen.com/level-maps-2.php https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:... https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.commander-keen.com/level-maps-3.php https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:... https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.commander-keen.com/level-maps-4.php https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:... https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.commander-keen.com/level-maps-5.php https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:... https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.commander-keen.com/level-maps-6.php https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:... https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.commander-keen.com/level-maps-7.php https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...
- wyldfire 9y agoRelated: Video from WeAreDevelopers Conference 2017, "The Early Days of Id Software - John Romero" [1]. Great nostalgia. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFziBfvAFnM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFziBfvAFnM
- _lce0 9y agoaand we broke it. Web archive to the rescue: https://web.archive.org/web/20170628072214/www.commander-keen.com/level-maps.php https://web.archive.org/web/20170628072214/www.commander-kee...
- kronos29296 9y agoI remember playing Commander Keen 4 demo a lot (I finished all the demo levels) then searching for a free version full download in google. (I used to do that a lot when I was younger.) somehow they never yielded any free versions or downloads. The game was a blast. Then I played and completed Keen 1 when it was released as freeware. They felt like completely different games (Keen 4 is a lot bigger game than Keen 1 which is like Duke 1 compared to Nukem 2). I still have all 6 of them (Older me now knows how to get full versions without the stupid google search terms) but I no longer play them though they still as good as they used to be.
- AaronMT 9y agoThe old 'index apache warez keen4.zip'search engine trick. I was that kid.
- khedoros1 9y agoI played most of the way through the 1st one recently, and some of the 4th. In the mid-90s, my friend gave me a pirated copy of one of them. Maybe Keen 5? Or Keen Dreams? It had one of the piracy-protection things where you have to name the enemy to get past, and I only knew the names of 2 enemies. I'd keep exiting and re-starting the game until I found one that I knew. Captain Comic and Commander Keen were my Super Marios until about 1995, because we had a PC but no game consoles.
- Dowwie 9y agoI discovered Commander Keen through a "software of the month club" 3.5" floppy disk delivered by mail
- Waterluvian 9y agoSome of those would make great posters. I wish I could see the same for Jazz Jackrabbit.
- vatotemking 9y agoOMG I didnt know about Keen 1, 3, 5 and 6! Will have something to do in the weekend. I first played Keen 4 on floppy disks installed on Win 98.
- kawsper 9y agoFor me Keen 4 will always be the best one, it was the one I played the first :)
- khedoros1 9y agoI played Keen 1 first, and Keen 4 a couple of years later. We might've had at least the first one before we even had Windows 3.1. I remember the clamshell package that shareware kinds of games used to be sold in, because after installing Keen4, that package sat on the hutch above the computer desk for a long time, and I touched it every time I reached up to turn on the speakers. I knew about Keen Dreams at some point in my childhood. 2, 3, 5, and 6 were unknown to me for a long time (might've been in college in the early 2000s before I knew of them?)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- samueloph 9y agoA few years ago Tom Hall almost accomplished to release the source code of 4-6 online, i still can't believe we lost it on the final step. So close yet so far :( I've created a twitter account just to ask Tom about the progress. I still have hopes of seeing commander keen released as software libre. Here's the discussion on twitter https://twitter.com/0samueloph/status/668911938844401664 https://twitter.com/0samueloph/status/668911938844401664
- deepnet 9y agoJason Scott has archived Commander Keen, playable in Browser via DosBox https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_1_-_Marooned_on_Mars_1990 https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_1_-_Maroone... https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_2_-_The_Earth_Explodes_1990 https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_2_-_The_Ear... https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_4_-_Secret_of_the_Oracle_1991 https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_4_-_Secret_... https://archive.org/details/msdos__K6DEMO__shareware https://archive.org/details/msdos__K6DEMO__shareware https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_-_Keen_Dreams_1993 https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_-_Keen_Drea... Commander Keen created iD software. Also noteworthy for the use of John Carmack's adaptive tile refresh to smooth scroll on early 90s PCs.
- joshmn 9y agoMan oh man. I was born in '91; Keen has a special place in my heart. I remember when my father — a field-service engineer for then Digital (more server hardware than anything software) — brought home an early release of Windows 95 from a MSFT buddy. It was around this time of year, 1995. I managed to install it on whatever hardware we had laying around the house. Cool beans. Then I installed Keen. But the sound didn't work. I asked father dearest. He fuddled around and couldn't figure it out. I tried a different pair of Soundblaster Speakers (looked like these https://iak.olx.ph/images_olxph/834942014_1_1000x700.jpg?bucket=05 https://iak.olx.ph/images_olxph/834942014_1_1000x700.jpg?buc...), but no dice. Then I realized that it wasn't the speakers but the game, because the sound worked otherwise! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miZHa7ZC6Z0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miZHa7ZC6Z0 I took my father's pager and scrolled through, looking for the MSFT guy. I called him at 9am the next day. "Hi msft guy my name is joshmn I am guy-from-digital's son; I have a question about the operating system I have on this disk. Do you have a moment?" I remember my mom standing in the kitchen saying "what are you doing joshmn?" "Mom please one moment I am talking to the msft guy" She almost died laughing. I explained my issue with Keen and sound. I can only imagine he was amused. Luckily for me, his son had the same issue! It required a simple change in a text file somewhere, I can't remember where, but after an hour I finally figured it out. Same guy traded a SEGA Genesis for a whopping 23" CRT a few years later. My mom says I was a smart kid. Sure, maybe, but little does she know about how I couldn't find the second DOOM floppy for the installer. To replace it, I took a Windows 95 floppy, put a different sticker over it, and tried my hardest to write (physically, on the label) the same exact design/letters/words of the other DOOM floppy, changing the 1/x for 2/x.
- Markoff 9y agorelated link, Commander Keen 4 play in your browser https://classicreload.com/commander-keen-4-secret-of-the-oracle.html https://classicreload.com/commander-keen-4-secret-of-the-ora... though personally I prefer Crystal caves, have fond memories of playing it on computer in father's work https://classicreload.com/crystal-caves.html https://classicreload.com/crystal-caves.html