Abandoned Projects: Keen Crisis Earth & Pirate Mod

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Ceilick
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Abandoned Projects: Keen Crisis Earth & Pirate Mod

Post by Ceilick »

Couple of abandoned mods.

First is Keen Crisis Earth. Group project, abandoned over a year ago, kind of fell apart because of lack of tools and a level editor aside from ted5. Large amount of work done by Paramultart, NY00123, and myself. Here is the demo level and the development files, if anyone wants to pick this up.

Download: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3654819/Keen/BM%20Keen.zip

Second is Pirate Keen, a keen 2 mod Keenrush and I started in 2006, but we moved on to other things. I picked it up again a year or so ago, changed it to keen 3 and did a bit of work, but again, I lost interest. There is one playable level, and the development files are here if anyone wants to make use of them.

Download: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3654819/Keen/Pirate%20Mod.zip
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Roobar
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Post by Roobar »

Should we do something before playing the pirate mod because all the graphics are messed up?
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Levellass
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Post by Levellass »

So much to steal, so little time.


Also, if nobody else does, I shall attack the Pirate mod with gusto. (It would be better attacked with modding, but there you go.) It'll just have to be stuffed into my existing mod queue.



Also, the pirate mod zip contains... a pirate mod zip. Might want to look at that.

Should we do something before playing the pirate mod because all the graphics are messed up?
The graphics are 'messed up' because someone hasn't built new levels for the new tiles.
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Ceilick
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Post by Ceilick »

To play the demo level, walk up to the doubel paw print on the world map. It is between the original keen 3 first and second level.

The second "Pirate Mod" zip within the initial folder is the original Keen 2 version of the mod, which doesn't have anything playable.
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Post by Benvolio »

Ooh great stuff!! I never liked Biomenace's gameplay but I do like the work that you did. Perhaps if this project were to continue it would have benefitted from some patching to bring the mechanics a little more in line with Keen Galaxy. Anyhow congratulations for what you did get done in the uncharted territory of Biomenace.

Pirate Keen looks like a very fun concept that really could lend itself to some epic mods. I guess not a huge amount was changed in this mod but I do rather like the vortipirates!

Merry Keenmas for those (In the Americas) for whom it is still Keenmas. For everyone else, just think, this time exactly 20 years ago we should have been playing the Official TUIT excitedly.
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Paramultart
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Post by Paramultart »

Hmm... Can't remember if I got a heads up like a year ago or if you really just released the BM mod without even considering it.
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Nospike
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Post by Nospike »

My antivirus goes crazy when I try to extract the pirate mod zip. Apparently a backdoor. Is something wrong with it or just a false alarm?
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Post by Ceilick »

Mine does too; seems to be an issue with unlzexe, which doesnt need to be in there anyway. I've removed it, try redownloading.
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Nospike
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Post by Nospike »

Works now. Dayum it's a sweet idea for a mod, though some of the sand graphics are way too bright and hurt my eyes. The vorticons are awesome.
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Post by Boreas249 »

For the Crisis Earth mod, were you guys using the same editor that was used to create the user levels for Biomenace? (I.E. Mangle is Back from the Dead)

I know little to squat about modding Biomenace, so it's hard for me to see what the problem was... I myself would like to touch it up/revive in time (with your permission of course) if I only had the proper tools...

... and some help of course. I'm quite creative, but I have no artistic talent, if you know what I mean.
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Post by NY00123 »

Boreas249 wrote:For the Crisis Earth mod, were you guys using the same editor that was used to create the user levels for Biomenace? (I.E. Mangle is Back from the Dead)

I know little to squat about modding Biomenace, so it's hard for me to see what the problem was... I myself would like to touch it up/revive in time (with your permission of course) if I only had the proper tools...

... and some help of course. I'm quite creative, but I have no artistic talent, if you know what I mean.
Well, I have had two attempts at tinkering with Bio Menace: First with "Mangle is Back from the dead" (originally under the codename of "Snake is back to the city"), and a bit later with "Crisis Earth". For the first of the two, I simply used TED5 for level editing. Whenever I modified tile properties, I simply used TED5's built in tile property editing capabilities. It may be less user friendly than some alternatives, but I didn't do it so many times, I suppose.
When it comes to Crisis Earth, though, a minor modification of ck456tli (created by CK Guy) with basic support for Bio Menace (added by Mink) was used. Problem is that, somehow, TED5 seemed to interfere with the modified properties, often resetting them. I recall that Levellass wrote a small command-line tool to copy tile properties from one file to the other, as a workaround.
Furthermore, I know that Ceilick prefers to use a level editor other than TED5. Mink did try to implement Bio Menace support into The Omegamatic, but he encountered some unexpected difficulties, I recall.
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Post by troublesomekeen »

Nospike wrote:My antivirus goes crazy when I try to extract the pirate mod zip. Apparently a backdoor. Is something wrong with it or just a false alarm?
Same thing here. I reckon it's some sort of false alarm on account of DOS stuff. The antivirus also very much hates the unlzexe in my Keen Dreams mod folders. I don't think AVG has any idea what unlzexe is. Nor I, for that matter.
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Post by Paramultart »

I still don't recall being given any notice whatsoever regarding this "release" of Crisis Earth.
Either way, I put a LOT of work into the project and I don't approve of it debuting like this, nor do I give permission for someone to "pick it up" and make it their own.
This is not Ceilick's mod and I don't appreciate this lack of consideration.
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Post by Levellass »

*patpats*

Indeed, tis so much potential. I'm only just beginning to understand how Biomenace works.
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Post by Boreas249 »

Paramultart wrote:I still don't recall being given any notice whatsoever regarding this "release" of Crisis Earth.
Either way, I put a LOT of work into the project and I don't approve of it debuting like this, nor do I give permission for someone to "pick it up" and make it their own.
This is not Ceilick's mod and I don't appreciate this lack of consideration.
I thought you had effectively cancelled it, and I really didn't want to see it sink and die, it has loads of potential... so I was planning on sending out a request to reassemble the team (had they still been interested) and help bring it to life... Didn't know you still wanted to do anything with it, I'm sorry about all this...
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