It's quiet around here.

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Deltamatic
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It's quiet around here.

Post by Deltamatic »

There haven't been any posts for a while.
Is CKCM development continuing in the IRC?
Last time I checked, Commander Spleen was going to come up with a map and something else, I forget what. But those haven't been posted, and it's been several weeks or a month or something since he decided to do it.
So, just wondering what's going on.
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Tulip
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Post by Tulip »

It is quiet, yes, I believe lemm kept pretty much everyone up to date here on the forums too with his implementation progress, but other than that I think not much happened.
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Post by doomjedi »

Yeah, what's going on?
lemm
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Post by lemm »

Here's what is going on:

The last patches I did were for the world map (a month ago). Initially I was trying to avoid patchin the world map, because I thought it would be a pain to do, but then it turned out it would be more of a pain not to patch it, so it's been reversed. So now there can be anything on the world map; sprites, menus, you name it, or it could just be simple like keen1.

In terms of planning all of this plot stuff out, I'd say we're about half-way there. You can see the "work" http://yourworldoftext.com/ckcm. I'll start trying to implement the ideas, but I have school and such now so it might take a little longer than before. If anyone wants to maybe amalgamate that into a .doc or .txt ( as much conceptual stuff as possible, obessively detailed, but no implementation details), that would help me patch faster.

Other stuff that could be done:

level map. Levellass has a nice one started with some fantastic tiles in the dropbox. it could be completed to match deltamatics sketch

level tilesets: lots of tiles, but no tilesets. make bitmaps, test levels.

maybe a new menu system: as I said, the menu is now completely patchable because it was all intertwined with the worldmap. So, whatever types of menus you want can be coded, any types of sprite animations, sliding bitmaps, camera panning. Or just keep it the same.
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Post by levellass »

Yes, I think our next step should be tilesets and test levels. We can start compiling the graphics we have and people's additions into proper tilesets for levels and make test levels to test them out and show them off. It might be wise to get some sort of roster for who is doing what tileset.

As an aside, all the tilesets in my current mod project are meant also as graphics for this mod so they can be copied in or used wholesale if anyone wants to correct the palette.
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doomjedi
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Post by doomjedi »

We need spmeone to make a more ogranizied and detailed description of needed tile themes, art styles and concepts.
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Deltamatic
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Post by Deltamatic »

Okay. I'll do it.
In fact I'll do it today, just to get it over with.

Commander Spleen: I think that doing your planning on Your World of Text was a bad idea, since people have been vandalizing it a lot. You could just plan it on Notepad, or a new hidden YWoT page.
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Post by CommanderSpleen »

Heh, I did a proportionate amount of that vandalisation. But it's not terribly disruptive. Or wasn't at the time...

Planning it out on paper is probably a better idea though. What's holding me back with this (besides my general non-Keening stint at the moment) is figuring out a balance between linearity and exploration. I don't want to make it so effectively every level must be completed, but nor should there be too many unnecessary dead ends.
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Post by Deltamatic »

To have nonessential levels without dead ends, have multiple paths from point A to point B with levels on each path. So you have options and progress at the same time.
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Deltamatic
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Post by Deltamatic »

No posts on here in the past few days, is anything happening?
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Post by levellass »

A music TSR is being made, as is a text and sound editor. The actual mod hasn't undergone too much change. I'm waiting until tiles are all set up before doing any tileset stuff.
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Post by CommanderSpleen »

Pretty sure the next step will be setting up the tilesets. I'll start tackling this in the coming veek.
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Post by lemm »

As far as programming goes, the keen hand hang is done (you can hand hang the green fringe in the test level). With the exception of keen crawling and the firefly, the sprites are done. They will need touchups but that can only happen once they can be tested in real levels.

Two major things need doing.:

1) The organization of graphics into tiles. There are a bunch of tiles graphics sitting in the dropbox, but they have not been put into 16-colour bitmaps of 13x70 tiles, which the Tileset Tool can handle. What needs doing on this front is: Define how many different tilesets there are in the game, and assign each level a tileset. Cut up existing images and place them into tilesets. Start making levels, and suggest additional tiles to fill up the tilesets. I imagine there will be roughly six themes: slug vllage, lick castle, forest, arch site, canyon, meadows + swamp.

2) The macro-level vision of the game. As you may know, I had to yank the menu stuff, ordering info stuff, previews, and other game screens for the purposes of re doing the world map. Need to redefine which screens are going to be in the menu, what they say, and so forth. Probably story, contributors/about ckcm, high scores are three screens to start with. Need to lay out what the screens should look like and say, all in exacting detail. Screens can use any number of popup boxes, scrolling help dialogs, previews type screenshots, bitmaps, sprites and tiles.
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Post by levellass »

You Lemm must also detail how you make these screens.
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Post by Deltamatic »

lemm wrote:Screens can use any number of popup boxes, scrolling help dialogs, previews type screenshots, bitmaps, sprites and tiles.
Apparently we could do a ton of stuff with them. Separate credits screen and making-of screen, perhaps? Would the screens need their own tilesets to draw from, or would they all draw from one level, or one level per screen, or possible multiple levels per screen? I'm asking because I'm wondering if we could afford to have unique graphics for the screens, though I guess we could even if it all drew from one level's tileset, because it's an entire tileset, after all.
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