Chocolate Keen

All discussion about the Commander Genius project (a Keen interpreter + more).
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gerstrong
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Chocolate Keen

Post by gerstrong »

I consider Chocolate Keen a project started by NY00123. He has been observing Commander Genius quite some time (since 2009) and also helped me a lot on it. Since 2011 I have had more to do with him, at least as far I can remember.

NY00123 has been working with other developers like QuantumG, Lemm, Levelass to mention some of them. Thanks to them, all this has been possible. He knows them better than myself. Chocolate Keen is a recreation of Keen 1-3 being build by the source code that was reversed engineered. It uses SDL like CG to get the modern code run. ChocoKeen also uses routines from CG, like for decompression, well why not? We have it working at a good stage.

It really tries duplicate the whole behavior of Commander Keen 1-3, even the enemy AIs. It is a nice project, I like the idea as well.

I really want to learn from that project, in case it is okay. What CG must become is more of an interpreter meaning, at some parts it needs to learn to interpret some of the code contained in EXE files. I think ChocoKeen does a better job on that hence providing the full Keen 1-3 gameplay as it was in DOS times. AFAIK most of it is identical to the DOS game, but I want to take a deeper look on it.

Btw. you can get it here:

https://pckf.rigeltechnical.com/viewtopic.php?t=253 ... sc&start=0

But... it has a different goal than Commander Genius, although bit similar. Chocolate tries replicate the original in its state as they are supposed to be played. It tries to maintain perfect physics and timer identical to that of the DOS version.

Commander Genius on the other hand tries to provide a newer bit different Keen experience and enhance it further. We also tried to remove issues the original games had. Identical AI as Choco or DOS Keen would be nice to have in CG, but it doesn't need to be. Important here is to provide some Keen gameplay engine, other 2D sidescroller games for that engine and enhance it further.

Keen on steroids like some interpreters do for Doom or Duke Nukem is what provides CG.

My wish would to do a fusion of Commander Genius and Chocolate Keen one day, but it would unify goals, maybe it's better left it that way.

Take a look at it!
Having fun developing stuff...
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