Slashdot Mirror
Commander Keen: 13 Years Later
16977 writes "I just noticed that Id Software is now selling downloadable versions of its classic titles Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons and Goodbye Galaxy. Although the game is over 10 years old by now, there is still a thriving community of Keen fans out there whose interest has not waned. We now have level editors for both Keen Vorticons and Goodbye Galaxy, unofficial Keen fan software, and of course the infamous Dopefish, which has by now made cameo appearances in well over a dozen computer games. However, we have yet to see Commander Keen: The Universe is Toast, the sequel to the previous Keen game that was planned but never made. With the original developers pursuing their own independent projects, it doesn't look like it will happen anytime soon. But in the meantime, die-hard Keen fans have been getting by, not unlike Farscape fans after their show was cancelled."
Can someone exlpain this to me?
Practicality? Keen came out in a different era. One of hitting the hardware directly, using mainly assembly language. The code is of virtually no use today. You could as easily rewrite the code from scratch in C/C++ than port it up.
HELLO?
Maybe they haven't heard the news: Rockstar Games is giving Grand Theft Auto away. Selling these old games just won't cut it anymore.
A long long time ago, I emailed John Carmack about releasing the Commander Keen 4 source code. He replied saying he did not know what happened to it.
Later a friend of mine and I attempted to clone Commander Keen 4 from a disassembly. It turns out that the codebase is very very *very* similar to the released Wolfenstein 3D source, which made things a little easier. We eventually gave up, but our work provided the information and impetus to help the community in making original Keen 4 maps, which has now been refined into a fairly easy process, I am told.
While all this was happening, John Romero made a post on the 3D Realms forums indicating that he had all of the source code to the Commander Keen games. I promptly emailed Romero asking him if he would release the source. He stated that he would love to release the source, but he would not do so without Carmack's blessing. I periodically prodded him about it, but with starting his own company and things, apparently the idea got lost in the shuffle.
As far as id offering these games on their website, this is no big deal. All the Keen games (except for Aliens ate my Babysitter and maybe Keen Dreams) have been available on the 3D Realms webstore for a very long time.
Are the old ones. For those seeking to play old DOS games in a modern environment, try dosbox (http://dosbox.zophar.net/) It does better than dosemu in a lot of games, especially with sound.
I just wish I could play Privateer with sound without actually having an ISA sounblaster card... Maybe one day....
Until then, Freelancer is surprisingly close in spirit to Privateer.
Also, to Star Control 2 fans, in case you didn't know (who doesn't by now?), check out http://sc2.sourceforge.net/. A full source release targeted at SDL... Very cool and cross platform.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.