Editing the final text screen of Keen 4-6

A catch-all of miscellaneous Keen:Modding utilities.
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leandrotlz
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Joined: Fri Jun 06, 2008 11:14 am

Editing the final text screen of Keen 4-6

Post by leandrotlz »

Hi,

I wrote a page on the KeenWiki on how to use TheDraw to edit the final screen. It's at http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/TheDraw

I want to upload a custom .zip that includes TheDraw and a small utility by myself to make the editing process easier. It contains a drawscr.bat file that strips the header from the ?msc0000.bin file, loads it in TheDraw, then puts the header back once TheDraw exits.

Should I upload that file using the Wiki's own "Upload a File" feature, or does anyone else keep an http or ftp server for small Keen-related files?

Read you later,
Leandro.
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XkyRauh
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Post by XkyRauh »

Wow, thanks! "This is Neat." (I think that's the only Keen-related emoticon I would wholeheartedly support...)
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CommanderSpleen
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Post by CommanderSpleen »

Wow, that looks like an excellent utility. The article is a fine contribution to the wiki. Great work.
Mink
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Location: Providence, RI, US

Post by Mink »

Thanks for doing this. I've been wondering how to edit the final screens for a while. This will be useful.
leandrotlz
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Joined: Fri Jun 06, 2008 11:14 am

Post by leandrotlz »

Thanks. I replied to your thread about editing the loading screen of Keen 6 because TheDraw can be used to edit that bit too; I was going to add it to the wiki but I didn't know how to go about posting the current bit of screen for visitors to edit. The relevant part of my post is:
leandrotlz wrote:I saved the following to ck6scr.bin:
°°°°±±±²²²² Ûº] _C_o_m_m_a_n_d_e_r_ _K_e_e_n_ _i_n_._._._"_A_l_i_e_n_s_ _A_t_e_ _M_y_ _B_a_b_y_ _S_i_t_t_e_r_!_"_ ]º] ²²²²±±±°°°° °°°°±±±²²²² Ûº] ] ] ] ] ] ]C]o]p]y]r]i]g]h]t] ]1]9]9]2] ]I]d] ]S]o]f]t]w]a]r]e] ]I]n]c].] _(]v]1].]4])] ] ] ] ] ] ]º] ²²²²±±±°°°°
Then opened it with thedraw ck6.bin. It worked perfectly. I used the following patch file to apply it:
%ext ck6
%version 1.4

# Replace the loading screen
%patchfile $1FDE7 ck6scr.bin 0 320

%end
My patchfile line explicitly declares the number of bytes to load (320) because TheDraw saves 16K binary files. For final distribution is easy to trim that, but while editing I just leave the 16K file and let the patch file do the job.
Mink
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Post by Mink »

Good job! That's a much better way of doing it than I was.
levellass
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Post by levellass »

Ah, we gain yet more control over Keen. was wondering how long it would be before this was tackled; we know the format, so there was no reason it shouldn't be editable. (I myself have made a utility to edit those pesky 'COMMANDER, etc' texts.)

A brilliant, concise and informative addition to the wiki more power to thee good sir.

I see you are making a small automated utility to handle the stripping and recompiling of the file, is there a link to this?
leandrotlz
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Post by leandrotlz »

levellass wrote:I see you are making a small automated utility to handle the stripping and recompiling of the file, is there a link to this?
I just posted it here:

<removed, see below>

I tried uploading it to the wiki itself but they don't like .zip files.
Last edited by leandrotlz on Thu Jun 12, 2008 4:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
leandrotlz
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Joined: Fri Jun 06, 2008 11:14 am

Post by leandrotlz »

Sorry for the double post. I updated KeenScr so it can change the loading screens too. I edited the Wiki page with more info.

Image

From the readme file:
Make sure the following files are on the same directory:

KEENSCR.EXE
THEDRAW.EXE
CK4LOAD.BIN
CK5LOAD.BIN
CK6LOAD.BIN

If any of them is missing, you will get black space instead of the part
of the loading screen for that episode, but everything else will work
fine. It is recommended that you have all 3 files in there, however,
and they are included in the KEENSCR.ZIP file. When ready, run:

KEENSCR LOAD

The program will create a combined KEENSCR.BIN with the data of all
three files, allowing you to edit them all at once, then run TheDraw.

Make your modifications to the screen, and then save it as KEENSCR.BIN
overwriting the generated file. You MUST save it in Binary format when
TheDraw asks.

Once you are done editing, exit TheDraw and the program will load the
screen you saved and write back the separate CK?LOAD.BIN files.

The file KEENSCR.BIN will remain in the harddisk in case something went
wrong, so you don't lose the edited screen.

In order to apply the screen to your mod, use one of the following
lines in your patch file (they are all for v1.4)

%patchfile $1fe47 ck4load.bin
%patchfile $20cd7 ck5load.bin
%patchfile $1fca7 ck6load.bin
Download link: <removed, see below>
leandrotlz
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Jun 06, 2008 11:14 am

Post by leandrotlz »

Grafix kindly gave me an account in in files.commanderkeen.org so I uploaded keenscr in there, with its QB4.5 source code.

So, forget about MegaUpload, direct download is at:
http://files.commanderkeen.org/users/le ... eenscr.zip
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