CCCC OOOO M M M M AA N N DDD EEEE RRRR CC OO OO MM MM MM MM AAAA NN N D D E R R C O O M M M M M M M M A A N N N D D E E R R C O O M M M M M M AAAAAA N N N D D EE E RRRR CC OO OO M M M M M A A N NN D D E R R CCCC OOOO M M M M A A N N DDD EEEE R R K K EEEE EEEE N N K K E E NN N KKK E E E E N N N K KK EE E EE E N N N K K E E N NN K K EEEE EEEE N N COMMANDER KEEN NEWSLETTER :) Issue-5: August 10, 2002 Working Title: Special Issue (C) 2002 by Joseph Burke all rights reserved. All trademarks are properties of their respective owners. Warning: This document may not be distributed without permission. ----------------------------------------------- Newsletter Homepage: http://www.commanderkeen.net Newsletter Index: [1] Featured Articles [1.1] Commander Keen Awards (Who could be the winners!) [2] Fan Game Reviews [2.1] Commander Keen Episode X [2.2] Bacteri-Yuk [3] Website Reviews [3.1] Commander Keen Fan Site Celle [4] Monthly Fiction [4.1] [5] Keen Community News [5.1] Random level generator! [5.2] Possible plot for "Universe Is Toast".. [5.3] Dark Hood translated it! [5.4] News flash in Public Commander Keen Forum! [5.5] Commander Keen Book Club! [5.6] Keen bugs.. :( [5.7] Your Keen Game News, sir! [5.8] Yet another Romero interview.. [6] Miscellaneous Stuff [6.1] Fan Art [6.2] Announcements [6.3] Credits ----------------------------------------------- [1] Featured Articles (We aren't looking for a permanent "Featured Article" writer at this time, but if you want us to publish an article for you, we'd be most obliged. Email us at "info@commanderkeen.net" about this.) [1.1] Commander Keen Awards (Here come the winners!) The Commander Keen 2002 Awards, are over! At the public Keen forum administrator Flaose, announced the winners. The winners names were placed in a plaque, or on a high score board similar to the one in Keen4. You can see this board in three different ways, Small http://www.classicgaming.com/cc314/art/keenawards02s.jpg Big http://www.classicgaming.com/cc314/art/keenawards02.jpg and BMP format www.geocities.com/korathiii/keenawards02.bmp Who the winners were was kind of a surprise, because I don’t think anybody was expecting one person to win four awards! Congratulations to TMST, (To Much Spare Time) for pulling it off; he also created a funny, "Award Acceptance Speeches," at the Keen forum. That speech can be found here, http://pub128.ezboard.com/fpubliccommanderkeenforumfrm12.showMessage?topicID=61.t opic Each of the winners will receive a golden CG trophy, we have copies of these trophies here; although who’s getting what trophy hasn’t been announced yet. Here’s a small copy of the trophies, http://www.commanderkeen.net/screens/misc1.gif You probably noticed their all thimble sized, sorry about that, but they’re the only copy we were able get. (We’ll probably have bigger copies available next time.) For now I think we can speculate, that the trophy of Keen, is for the Keenest Person of the Year award. We’ve taken the time to talk to some of the winners, and my thanks to them for responding on short notice. ---------------------- First we talk to Chris Hendricks AKA Ilsoap, CK-Newsletter: What did you win your Keen award for and how do you feel about it? Ilsoap: I won the award for Best Animation and Best Song, both in regards to my Shadowlands Episode I Animation. First of all, I'm really glad that so many people enjoyed the animation. If there hadn't been the response from it that there was, I wouldn't be working on Episode II right now. :) Question: Do you think you’ll win a Keen award again; are you going to try? Answer: I intend to try to win a Keen award again with Episode II, and if I'm able to make it come out in time, Episode III as well, but I'd also like to try to put more nominations in some other categories. Possibly a Commander Keen-related sand castle. :) Question: Is there any advice you’d like to give fellow Keeners? Answer: Submit something! There was only two entries in the animation category, so there was a lot of room for others to give it a shot! Also, to those of you who were nominated, but didn't win, don't sweat it! Adurdin didn't win for his Keen1-3 mod editor, but without his program, there wouldn't have even BEEN a "Best Mod" category. Question: You created a long animation, can you tell us about your struggles with it? Answer: Well, I could probably fill a pretty large space with the struggles and challenges I had with the animation, but I'll list a few of the more prominent ones here: 1. The Shikadi, Shikadi Master and Ship. These were some of the hardest characters to figure out how to properly animate. I wanted to try and stay as true to the original drawings as possible when animating the Shikadi, but it was difficult trying to figure out how transparent to make them, how the Shikadi Master's energy bolt attack would look, and how I would make their ship worthy of energy beings. Originally, the ship was more complicated, but due to the nature of online animation, I had to strip it down a bit. One thing that I had to decide was what color a Shikadi's tongue would be. I tried green and even orange, but settled with white. 2. Storyboard. When making an animation like this one, you have to do a lot of planning. There were several things in the original planning that never actually got animated. For instance, there was going to be a short scene where, as King Lick is bouncing towards the Shikadi ship, he's stopped by a Shikadi, and an argument ensues that ends with King Lick lighting the Shikadi on fire with his flame mouth thing. Also, I had originally wanted the Shikadi Master to talk to his Shockshund a bit as he was leaving in that cutesy voice that people use when they're talking to poodles and such. Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to make the Shikadi Master sound cute, so I threw that out. 3. The Bird. For some reason, it was REALLY hard to draw figure out what that blue bird would look like. I had to go over the sprite sheets a couple times before I had a design I liked. I've attached an earlier drawing of the Bird so you can sort of see what I mean. (Pic of bird: http://www.commanderkeen.net/screens/misc5_b.gif) Anyways, I could go on awhile with that, but you get the point. Fortunately, in Episode II, I don't have to animate Shikadi, but I do have to animate a battle. Should be interesting. Anyways, thanks Keeners, for giving me these awards! ---------------------- Now we talk with Tore T. Stubhaug AKA Chogall, CK-Newsletter: What did you win your Keen award for and how do you feel about it? Chogall: I won the Keen award for Online Community Service, and am honored by the fact that I was chosen for this award. Managing the Keen message board and parts of CC314 is sometimes a time-consuming task, and being the busy student I am, I haven't always followed up things as much as I should. But it's good to see that the people in the Keen community are satisfied with the job. Question: Do you think you'll win a Keen award again; are you going to try? Answer: Honestly, I haven't thought about that. I'm probably not going to do anything particular for the purpose of winning an award, but if nothing unexpected happens I'll continue to be an active member of the Keen community. Question: Is there any advice you'd like to give fellow Keeners? Answer: Hmmm... The latest developments in unofficial games and editing tools have been awesome and I think that we should all try to use the new discoveries that have been made in order to make something really Keen. Question: Can you explain what's hard about your job at the forum? Answer: Because of the increase in size of the community, the forums are very busy. Dealing with problematic persons used to be a hard task, but our current members are very well-behaved, so I don't need to be a Operator From Hell. So in a way, my job at the forum isn't particularly hard -- it just requires quite a bit of time. As an administrator, I have to stick around often in order to make sure that everything goes smoothly, and assist people who need technical help. I'm glad that Flaose is an admin as well, because he is a master at inventing new fun stuff to keep the forum a cheerful place. ---------------------- Next up Andrew Durdin talked with us, CK-Newsletter: What did you win your Keen award for and how do you feel about it? Andrew: I was nominated for Keenest Person, and twice for Best Editor (once for KeenMod, and once for KeenWright); however, I was awarded Best Editor only, and TMST got the Keenest Person, who was far more deserving of it. Question: Do you think you'll win a Keen award again; are you going to try? Answer: If I ever do come out with my all-in-one editor for Commander Keen, I expect it'll at least be nominated for a Keen award in future. But I'm not going to chase after another award. Question: Is there any advice you'd like to give fellow Keeners? Answer: Yeah: If you've got an idea for something Keenish, like a new fangame or mod, then do it, and make sure you finish it. It doesn't matter if you're not another ID software, at least you can have fun creating it, and hopefully others will have fun with it afterward. Question: What goes into Keen4-6; do you ever think your crazy? Answer: The primary ingredient is time: lots of it. And certainly some of my family think I'm crazy to do so much with Keen. But it's great fun, and I think there are aspects to what I've done that will be useful in other areas, so it's definitely not a waste of time. ---------------------- And the last person who emailed us back was John Schurman AKA KorathIII, CK-Newsletter: What did you win your Keen award for and how do you feel about it? KorathIII: I won my award for my Javascrpt program: HangKeen. Question: Do you think you’ll win a Keen award again; are you going to try? Answer: I'm currently trying to get to know some more Javascript so can make a new program - it'd be neat if that too won an award! Question: Is there any advice you’d like to give fellow Keeners? Answer: None whatsoever. Question: Have you used all your ideas for online Keen stuff? Answer: Nope, my next project which I talked about is going to be an online virtual bounder. It might even be more than that - I might have a foob, a yorp, and something else. Each will have it's likes and dislikes, favorites and allergies, needs and.. things it can do without. If I can get a cookie to work I might make it so you can save your online virtual pet to play with later! ----------------------------------------------- [2] Fan Game Reviews (if you want your game reviewed please email "forge315@commanderKeen.net") Rating System Horrible (1-2) Bad (3-4) Okay (5-6) Good (7-8) Excellent! (9-10) [2.1] Commander Keen Episode X Game Rating Excellent (8/10) Quality - 10/10 Originality - 9/10 Keenishness - 8/10 Overall - 9/10 Wow is probably the only thing you’ll say once you play this MOD. It’s so tightly nit together into one neat package you’d almost forget it’s a MOD. The game has great graphics, an engaging storyline, and wondrously designed levels. Not to forget the distinctly well-redone foes; they’re the best yet. The tiles in this game are well thought out and are creative in design; they’ll remind you of the earlier Keen, games in their simplicity, but remain distinguished because of that creativity. There’s also the title screen and ending sequence artwork, that’s very likeable and looks professional. The plot is an interoperation of, "The Universe is Toast". It starts at the ending of Keen5, where Keen goes home and nurses his parents back to consciousness. Then he translates the message he found in the Omegamatic, and finds out that Mortimer, is going to blow up the universe and not the galaxy. So Keen, heads to Mort’s, mothership. (That he mysteriously knew the location to.) Once at the ship Keen, must steal four vital parts, and escape. As Keen fights his way through the ship, the plot evolves by via little intercoms, which Mort, uses to taunt you. It’s rare but it can happen, this game has both nice graphics and level design. What’s good about the level design? A uniqueness to each level that gives it a Keenish feel, and excellent point placement coupled with foes to obstruct your path. Though there are two things wrong with the level design. One, the background was a boring gray. Two, the tiles are used in such a repetitive manner that it wasn’t until the eighth level that I saw a real change; and even that was only a recolorization of one tile from blue to red. So you could say this game has certain weaknesses however they’re nothing that I care about and they wont stop me from playing again. That’s right this a MOD is replayable! - Forge315 ---------------------- [2.1] Bacteri-Yuk Game Rating Okay (6/10) Quality – 4/10 Originality – 7/10 Keenishness – 7/10 Overall - 9/10 I usually get frustrated at CNC games, but I’m not with this game. Why? Well it was short and thanks to having a save feature I was able to complete it quickly. However when I think more directly about this game it seems more like a beta that shows what it can do or wants to do, and isn’t actually a game. So read on if you want, but this is not a great game. Plot can make or break a game, and for this game it made it; though not a very good game. Okay, it’s a Monday morning and Keen, awakens to find out he’s sick; and being sick is not good since he’s a genius and likes school. So he creates a microscopic clone of himself and sends this clone into his body to help fight the infection. That’s kind of creative, huh? (the goodness ends here folks.) The gameplay in this game doesn’t feel Keenish, shooting is difficult because Keen, shoots in exactly the direction he’s going; so if you wanted to shoot a foe to your right as you fall off a cliff – you can’t! Keen would shoot down instead. Then the general movements of jumping and walking are pretty good, but you don’t have a pogo stick, (and we all know that was one of the mistakes in Keen Dreams). Level design is not a strong point of this game, it’s kind of just an excuse to show you the graphics or part of the story to make up for ugly gameplay. Although a strong point of the level design is that it’s fairly varied; you might be jumping across a conveyer belt while avoiding rocks on it, or fighting a boss, or swimming underwater. (That would be bodily fluids; disgusting…) Most of the time the art in a CNC/TGF game is borrowed graphics; taken from the original Keen games. However this game has mainly new graphics except for the Keen, sprite; and a few other things. The graphics didn’t particularly impress me though, but they were nice and colorful. I would only download this game if you can handle cheap gameplay and don’t mind varied bugs. - Forge315 ----------------------------------------------- [3] Website Reviews (If you want your website reviewed, please email "yorpy@commanderkeen.net") Rating System Horrible (1-2) Bad (3-4) Okay (5-6) Good (7-8) Excellent! (9-10) [3.1] Commander Keen Fan Site Celle Good (8/10) Quality - 8/10 Originality - 8/10 Keenishness - 9/10 Overall - 8/10 http://www.keenfansite.de/ This site is in German. I used the altavista translator and it was readable for me in english though most sentences were somewhat awkward. Most everything on the site is organized so that its easy to find what you are looking for. But I did find the frames rather annoying at times. The site has a wealth of information. There are the stories, items, enemies, level names, sga translations, and cheats for most of the episodes. Also you can test your Commander Keen knowledge with some fan quizzes and tests. There is even a forum for you German speaking Keen fans. It seems like the author has put a lot of time and effort in this site. Working to fill in the gaps the author can create a great reference for German Commander Keen fans. - Yorpy ----------------------------------------------- [4] Monthly Fiction [4.1] We're working on getting a more stable monthly fiction or something equivalent. ----------------------------------------------- [5] Keen Community News Hi Keeners, here's the news of special issue of the Commander Keen Newsletter! The final days of summer vacations are here, (at least my summer vacation is about to end soon), so enjoy what's left by playing Commander Keen and drinking ice cold Coca-Cola, for example. If you are going to see a movie, go and see the Scooby-Doo movie. "So in summary, Scooby Doo (the movie) ROCKS! It makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, like when you've just swallowed a live kitten." - Too Much Spare Time, Proofreader and Misc Stuff It looks like there are at least two who like that movie! Well, without further "talking", enjoy the news! - KeenRush, The News Guy :D [5.1] Random level generator! Wow! One ingenious Keen fan, ChargingMoose (yep, he is the hex dude), has started a new, interesting project: A random level generator! If my knowledge is correct, the RLG reads a user-made script file, then randomizes, for example, three slugs, if three slugs are specified in the file. The commands are as yet unknown, as is all else about the RLG, but the creator says that it can produce very playable levels. The Commander Keen Newsletter is staying tuned! Check it out right here: http://pub128.ezboard.com/fpubliccommanderkeenforumothercommanderkeenstuff.showMe ssage?topicID=408.topic ---------------------- [5.2] Possible plot for "Universe Is Toast".. Ilsoap has started very interesting topic about the plot of "The Universe Is Toast". There is a lot of discussion about the Stupendous Sandwich of Chungella IV and of course we e-mailed Tom Hall and asked about it. You can read about that in the topic - It's well worth checking out - here: http://pub128.ezboard.com/fpubliccommanderkeenforumtheoriginalcommanderkeenga.sho wMessage?topicID=389.topic ---------------------- [5.3] Dark Hood translated it! Just some days ago we got a new member in to Commander Keen community, called Dark Hood. Dark Hood's claim to CK fame is the translation the morse code from the music of the Bloog Control Center (Keen VI). The hidden message sounds like this: SOS SOS DE KEEN SOS SOS K. Read more about it, what it means and what the man responsible for the message, Bobby Prince, said about it (thanks to adurdin for e-mailing him)! Look for this topic right here: http://pub128.ezboard.com/fpubliccommanderkeenforumothercommanderkeenstuff.showMe ssageRange?topicID=405.topic&start=1&stop=20 ---------------------- [5.4] News flash in Public Commander Keen Forum! And when I say News Flash, I'm not talking about animations, I mean that now Public Commander Keen Forum members can choose their own personal forum title... when they have posted 314 messages! And this means that when you eventually evolve from "Grunt" to "Vortininja" you could change into an arachnut, for example! So if it reads Vortininja under your name, Chogall the admin will change it when you e-mail him with your desired title through torets@bigfoot.com But remember, he will only do that if you have more than 314 posts, and you have been a member of this forum for at least six months.. So that's: torets@bigfoot.com Check out the topic here: http://pub128.ezboard.com/fpubliccommanderkeenforumother.showMessage?topicID=996.t opic ---------------------- [5.5] Commander Keen Book Club! The hub of Commander Keen community, the PCKF, has now a new category called the Book Club. It's a place for those who like to read to discuss books. The first book up for discussion is Lovelock by Orson Scott Card and Kathryn H. Kidd. Be sure to join if you like books. Read all about it in the new category right here: http://pub128.ezboard.com/fpubliccommanderkeenforumfrm14 ---------------------- [5.6] Keen bugs.. :( There has been some talking about cool Commander Keen bugs lately in the Public Commander Keen Forum. Follow these links, maybe you'll find something interesting: "End Level" doorway bug http://pub128.ezboard.com/fpubliccommanderkeenforumtheoriginalcommanderkeenga.sho wMessage?topicID=400.topic Smile! You aren't in keened camera! http://pub128.ezboard.com/fpubliccommanderkeenforumtheoriginalcommanderkeenga.sho wMessage?topicID=387.topic Keen Dreams can be even easier! http://pub128.ezboard.com/fpubliccommanderkeenforumtheoriginalcommanderkeenga.sho wMessage?topicID=390.topic ---------------------- [5.7] Your Keen Game News, sir! Once again, not in any order... The coolest news firt: Some news from Isis and a screenshot! Head over to topic made by Byrd no7 and read the whole thing: http://pub128.ezboard.com/fpimentogamedevelopment.showMessage?topicID=490.topic Commander Keen - "School's Out!" is now released, read more in this topic: http://pub128.ezboard.com/fpimentogamedevelopment.showMessage?topicID=493.topic A Keen Fan named therealdopefish opened a topic where there's a link for some screenshots from his upcoming game, "RKP3: Attack of the cones". And I have to say, they're real eye candy! ;) Find more in this topic: http://pub128.ezboard.com/fpimentogamedevelopment.showMessage?topicID=494.topic TCL999 has released three level demo from his game Vorticon VI: Episode II, learn more from this topic: http://pub128.ezboard.com/fpimentogamedevelopment.showMessage?topicID=485.topic BlueIllusionX (formerly known as DeathSaber) plans to remake his old Commander Keen Masked Crusades: Asino's Uphail game. Read more here: http://pub128.ezboard.com/fpimentogamedevelopment.showMessage?topicID=486.topic Can you believe, it has only been how many weeks from the previous newsletter, and there are MORE new Keen games? I think Keen is one of the most popular game series, if we think about the amount of fan games made using Keen elements. ---------------------- [5.8] Yet another Romero interview.. Thanks to Forge315 (the mastermind behind this newsletter :D) for this news.. There is a topic about a John Romero interview in the 3D Realms forums, just here: http://forums.3drealms.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=7;t=005716 ---------------------- See you in the next "real" issue! :) - KeenRush ----------------------------------------------- [6] Miscellaneous Stuff [6.1] Fan Art This is Forge, again; and for this month we have ... FIVE! We have five pieces of fan art this month! Wow, bet that wont happen again. Anyway, only two of these pieces are original, and were made rather recently; first a short Yorp animation made by Bkewl, second a WinXP boot screen, made by me. (You can expect more from me; not every month though.) The animation by Bkewl, http://www.commanderkeen.net/screens/art22_2.zip Another animation by Yorpy, (this is really old) http://www.commanderkeen.net/screens /art24_2.zip An old DopeFish pic by VolteFace, (old than the above) http://www.commanderkeen.net/screens/art25_2.jpg A background for fan game Isis by eK, (this is old too) http://www.commanderkeen.net/screens/art23_2.jpg And the XP boot screen, by me http://www.commanderkeen.net/screens/theme1_b.zip We’ve also redesigned the fan art section a little and will be adding stuff to the new categories. http://www.commanderkeen.net/fanart.htm ---------------------- [6.2] Announcements We should start making progress on the new design soon; Keen fan KorathIII, has volunteered to help and he’ll be given a task regarding his abilities with CSS. There may also be some big change, though I suppose it wont be noticeable change since you can’t see it, but we might be changing servers in about a month; don’t know yet though. Another thing that’s new is we now host our own forum, instead of having an add bugged forum at EZBoard. Go see our new forum! http://www.commanderkeen.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl - Forge315 ---------------------- [6.3] Credits To Much Spare Time: Proofreading KeenRush: The news MRCMarky/AEWorld: Award Pics Yorpy: Website review Forge315: Newsletter composition Other thanks: Ack -- there's no one to thank this month! Wait! Thank you for receiving this newsletter. :) ----------------------------------------------- "Swim swim hungry, swim swim hungry." Burp!