Commander Keen: 13 Years Later 190
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."
Other Games (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Other Games (Score:2, Informative)
Now, it would be nice if other game manufacturers released more titles for free, but there really isn't any reason that they should.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Other Games (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Other Games (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Other Games (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Other Games (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Other Games (Score:2)
Re:Other Games (Score:2)
Jouster
Re:Other Games (Score:2)
I'm still waiting patiently... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I'm still waiting patiently... (Score:2)
Of course if there had never, ever, been a MoM. it would Rock.
I never tried any of the Bards Tail games; they any good? what is it, soft porn of some sort? Will they run in Virtual PC like MoM will?
Re:I'm still waiting patiently... (Score:2)
It is *officially*
Master Of Magic (Score:1)
But then it was Civilization based, wasn't it?
If you loved Master of magic, you might love Age Of Magic [ageofmagic.org] when it is released. It is FreeCiv [freeciv.org] based. FreeCiv is an open sourced version o
Id's first and best (Score:2, Interesting)
Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure (Score:1)
GBC (Score:3, Informative)
I'll definitely be re-acquiring the Keen games however. Need something to do when not playing MOO3. All I need to do is find a working Gravis Gamepad. I don't think the USB version I have will work with the old school dos keen.
Gravis Gamepad (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Gravis Gamepad (Score:1)
I still have it today and it still works just great...
And he's still only a commander... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:And he's still only a commander... (Score:1)
Doom II (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Doom II (Score:1)
Re:Doom II (Score:1)
And apparantly unable to spell.
Re:Doom II (Score:2, Funny)
You're not old - you still feel the need to tell people your age. Young people always do.
Another Keen fangame.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Good, But... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is companies don't want to release most of their old games because times have changed and so have operating systems. With the terrible legacy DOS support in XP for things like games you are almost forced to run them emulated in linux (dosemu, etc..). Also, no matter how much companies say "we have no support line for this, use at your own risk" you'll always get contacts asking about this and that.
In reality, these games need to be released to a team of volunteer developers when they are no longer economically valuable to the Company. Then that team can update as the times change if there is still an underground following.
OR, the obvious choice which was discussed in an earlier topics is to start making games that are fun again as opposed to yet another graphically gorgeous First-person-run-through-the-hallway-with-a-rocke
-bart
Re:Good, But... (Score:2)
Or you can use doxbox [zophar.net], which, in my experience, works better than dosemu for old dos games. And it runs on XP natively
Re:Good, But... (Score:4, Informative)
Not to mention places like VOGONs [zetafleet.org] (Very Old Games On New Systems) which itself exists just to help people find ways to run said older games on newer OS's (mostly w2k mind you).
I just wish more companies would support efforts like this and release some source to older games OTHER than FPSes. I really appretiate the release of source from ID and everyone else, it's great learning material. But it would be nice if other genre developers also were intrested in preserving their 'art'.
ScummVM, my project, recently obtained the Beneath a Steel Sky source-code from the authors and we're now working off support for that. The difference in this case is that the engine -is- almost pure x86 assembly, so it would be rather a waste of time to GPL... for anything useful to be done, it would need to be mostly reverse engineered anyway. So this just makes it easier for us to do so dirty-room with commented assembly. Releasing it to a small dedicated group may be more appropriate in cases like this, to prevent splintering and stagnation, until the reimplementation is truely started.
Anyway.
- Ender
Boss Monkey: ScummVM [scummvm.org]
Founder: QuakeSrc [quakesrc.org]
Standard Disclaimer: It's 8:45am, I havn't had any coffee yet. Any spelling or grammatical errors are henceforth claimed as artistic license. It's art, damn it!
Whoops, mistyped URL... (Score:2)
Re:Good, But... (Score:3, Informative)
I have yet to find an old DOS game that doesn't work under VDMSound. I loaded up Ween: The Prophecy and had a blast. Along with Conquest of Camelot.
Heh... (Score:3, Funny)
Fido Freq (Score:5, Interesting)
The Dopefish for some reason reminded me of Sir Les Patterson, the Australian minister of Culture
Re:Fido Freq (Score:5, Funny)
I did ultimately end up running Linux on that machine (in summer 1992) and even then, it was fairly painful (partly due to the nature of Linux back then, but mostly due to the crappyness of the machine, it was an *early* 386 and the chip had bugs. I couldn't do kernel compiles on it (the compiler would segfault on any big files), but I could do enough compiling to learn C on that machine).
In 1993, I upgraded that machine to a 486 with 16MB of RAM...and...a SOUNDCARD! That was enough to run X with olvwm very well. I always used to show off about how it didn't need to swap during kernel compiles. Heaven
The Dopefish (Score:5, Funny)
Wait... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The Dopefish (Score:2)
Re:The Dopefish (Score:1, Interesting)
Dopefish has its own Web site... (Score:2)
This just in (Score:3, Funny)
In other news, over 10.000 geeks were spotted comitting suicide as their favourite nerdnewssite went down. About 20.000 others were found protesting outside their homes carrying portables with the words "/. come back".
Bystanders were heard commenting: "Makes you wonder what would happen if google ever went down".
BTW, I think you should annoy more Farscape fans, by creating a poll: "What will you do after farscape?"
Rewind (Score:2)
Just hit rewind or (re)play as appropriate...
The Price (Score:5, Insightful)
I noticed that Commander Keen was available a while back and I was actually going to buy it. But they wanted $15!!! for a download only game. The price point for a 13-year-old-download-only game should be about $5. I'm sure if I dug through the bargain bin at Toys R Us I could find a boxed version for $5.
Re:The Price (Score:1)
Re:The Price (Score:2, Informative)
I found my old Goodbye Galaxy disk and tried it out on an XP computer. I can't get sound to work, but gameplay seems fine.
Re:The Price (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The Price (Score:2, Informative)
I remember there being a sound blaster pro emulator for windows, acessing
...
...
google
Item Found! [mcgill.ca]
You could also try doing the right click, compatibility mode thing, not sure if
it'll work though.
--toq
Re:The Price (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The Price (Score:2)
Re:The Price (Score:1)
Re:The Price (Score:1)
Re:The Price (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm in the process of opening up a game house / pc bang, whatever you want to call it. During my research I found out that some companies require gamehouses to pay licensing fee's for each title they carry. This isn't just a one time fee or even something reasonable, if you're running a 40 pc gamehouse you can expect to pay 10k + per year per title.
Now my argument against this goes along these lines. Capcom, Atari, ect all provided more than just a cabinet when they sold you a game. You got a cabinet (physical security) Coin Mech (money validator) Access software (credits) Input Device (Joystick, buttons) Service contracts, monitor, and the game. Usually it was anywhere between a 50/50 to a 25/75 split for the quarters between the cabinet owner and the person that owned the property.
Now with a gamehouse, I'm providing those first 6 items, while the game company only provides the game. After looking at paying off employee's, loans, and a lease, these fee's are going to be eating up enough of my profits to where me, the owner is going to be lucky to break even at the end of the month. On top of all that I have a machine that needs to be replaced every 2-3 years to stay current with the CPL standard so I can host CPL qualifyers at my place.
Now I could see paying licensing fee's if there was some sort of value added service, like my cdkey's were bound to my subnet in their multiplayer authentication database, that way if some smart ass kid try's to steal it for use on their home computer it would just say "Hey you're not playing from toqers gamehouse, sorry" (Note, i'm doing my best to secure machines so it doesn't happen but you never know) At least that would take care of one of the 6 items I have to provide.
I'm going to pay these fee's only because I have too. I wouldn't mind testing the legal waters of this, but as a startup gamehouse I am in no position to do so. In the future though, I want the game companies to understand that if they don't want me taking them to court and suing their asses under fair use laws, they better step up to the plate and at least make a better case for these fee's than "Well you're making money on it" Better CYA now and start adding features to the gamehouse versions of your games, because I'm a comin for you.
Re:The Price (Score:4, Informative)
Incidentally, Epic Games' games, like Unreal Tournament and Unreal Tournament 2003 don't require additional fees for being used in a game house setting. All you need is a legal copy of the game for each PC it is running on:
www.epicgames.com/faq.html [epicgames.com]
Re:The Price (Score:2, Informative)
Intelligent move (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only they care about their fanbase but by what you say they know how to seduce the modders and give them incentives to mod their game, which will probably contribute to the success of the game.
1. Invite best modders of previous game for a superb visit.
2. Let them do their magic on the graciously offered new games.
3. Let the word spread of how cool the reception was (like you just did) and make other want to go there.
4. To go there they need to make high quality mods so their number is more likely to gr
Re:The Price (Score:2)
Re:The Price (Score:1)
I still have it, I just don't have a 5 1/4 drive to read the disks
15$? (Score:1)
Keen for palm? (Score:2, Interesting)
Commander Keen (Score:2)
Re:Not with my source codes! (Score:2, Insightful)
Pitiful (Score:2, Interesting)
Carmack's going broke or something?
Selling?! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Selling?! (Score:1)
I am sure that your personal information is worth more to Rockstar then the 15 bucks id is selling Keen for.
Re:Selling?! (Score:2)
Unless id decides to release a new Commander Keen games and wants to rebuild interest in the franchise, they don't really gain as much by giving it away (it's not like they need to increase fan loyalty). Of course, if it is $15, I agree with the other posts that it's a bit much (for some reason Galeon keeps crashing on the page so I can't see it).
PAGING ID SOFTWARE! (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, I don't have a right to have the game for free. But it's my opinion it would be the proper thing to do. This will certainly sour some folks on id.
How are the
Re:PAGING MR. IDIOT! (Score:1, Redundant)
Calling someone an idiot on slashdot uncalled for. That show's a lack of
maturity on your part, now go sit in a corner and think about what you just
said.
And if you think Id is sugar coated candy and spice that gives and gives, think
again. Read my post
here [slashdot.org] on this
very same article. Id is just as corporate and as greedy as any other
corporation. Just because they make the coolest games and contributes stuff to
open source, doesn't mean they're not in it for the money. Shame you got a +1 modifier.
Re:PAGING MR. IDIOT! (Score:2)
I read your post. If you don't like the terms of licensing a game, then don't license the game. Period. Better yet, try to negotiate more favorable terms. That's how business works.
The goal of running a business is to make a profit. You lamented how the "unfair" fees would cut into your profit. What's the difference between you wanting a profit and the company licensing the game wanting a profit?
Let me get this straight, you can call me a child,( "now go a
Re:PAGING MR. IDIOT! (Score:2, Interesting)
And evidentally you didn't read my post that well. It's more than just cutting into the owners profits, the current licensing schemes by Id, Valve, EA, Blizzard and others is going to leave me with $500@mo if i'm lucky. Even my minimum wage employee's will be making more than me, but this is the bur
Re:PAGING MR. IDIOT! (Score:2)
Id has a team of lawers to enforce the issue.. Here read a exerpt from
here [idsoftware.com]
b. Royalties. Licensee agrees to pay Id Software a royalty ("Royalty") at the
rate of twelve and one-half (12.5%) of Net Income. The term "Net Income" shall
mean all revenue received by Licensee from the commercial use of the Authorized
Copy, less only Licensee's actual and documented costs relating directly to such
use. A Royalty shall only be due for those months in which Licensee's gross
revenue from the commercial use of the Author
No technical support! (Score:5, Funny)
NOTICE: Technical support is not available for this title.
"
So, they overcharge for software, don't provide any version upgrades, and no technical support unless you pay. Sounds like buying software from Microsoft.
Re:No technical support! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No technical support! (Score:2)
What about Aliens Ate My Baby Sitter? (Score:3, Informative)
"The original Keen series was a trilogy of games. Keens 1-3 were collectively called "Invasion of the Vorticons". As Tom talks about above, the sequel was also to be a trilogy of games, but the id guys were convinced to break Keen 6 off and make it into an independent retail item. To this, the sequel that was distributed through Apogee was only two games. Episodes 4 & 5 were collectively called "Goodbye Galaxy", and Keen 6 was called "Aliens Ate My Babysitter". Keen 6 was sold by FormGen in retail, and since it was in retail, FormGen convinced the id guys to put in some off disk copy protection for the game. The fact that Keen 6 was broken off into it's own game, and the addition of the copy protection kind of made the "vibe" not the same as the original, but Keens 4-6 are awesome games, even if it's not a trilogy.
One last note about Keen 6. At the moment, there is no legal way to obtain the game - it was a retail game by FormGen that Apogee merely resold the title. As FormGen doesn't exist anymore, the game has been discontinued, and for now, there is no legal way to obtain Keen 6 (save for the 3 level demo which was created to promote Keen 6)."
I'm fortunate enough to have a copy (including the box!), but it's in 5 1/4 disk format and basically an item of nostalgia sitting on a shelf.
Re:What about Aliens Ate My Baby Sitter? (Score:2)
Dopefish Store (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.cafeshops.com/cp/store.aspx?s=dopefish [cafeshops.com]
Just give me a native SDL-Client (Score:1)
Inspiration for Commander Keen? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Inspiration for Commander Keen? (Score:2)
"Greendale is a bodaciously small town, Lane. I can't even get real drugs[1] here!" [1] - said while brandishing whipped cream in supermarket.
"This is pure snow! It's everywhere! Have you any idea of what the street value of this mountain is?"
"Now that's a real shame when folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that."
Mostly from memory but a
Re:Inspiration for Commander Keen? (Score:2)
Your post reminded me of what a friend of mine did back in primary school. Being scientifically inclinded, he wanted to build a space shuttle. Since he had heard that the space shuttle used solid fuel, he decided that his first step would be to put some gasoline in the freezer.
He is now about to graduate from a prestigious private university with a degree in Nuclear Physics. He's come quite a ways
Old goodbye galaxy glitch (Score:2, Insightful)
Aaah. (Score:1)
Recently I found a copy of Commander Keen 6 at a garage sale, complete with the boxes and everything. I scanned every single thing I could in there. Its 13mbs if anyone has an idea of how I could get it to them!
Keen was classic gaming at its finest (Score:1)
Note that id is not making Keen 6 (Aliens Ate my Babysitter) or Keen Dreams available for purchase/download.
I might buy it if... (Score:2)
Re:I might buy it if... (Score:2)
The most amazing part of this story is.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Which begs the question of whether computer gaming would be dead without John Carmack. I know not every game needs cutting edge 3d graphics (Europa Universalis) but many games would be greatly lessened without being able to create believable worlds (Jedi Knight II).
Brian Ellenberger
Re:The most amazing part of this story is.... (Score:2)
That is pretty bad and shows how far computer games were behind technology wise.
Well, games on _x86 PC_ platform were behind. All the other existing so-called "home computers" were able to do side-scrollers from day one (C64, Atari boxes, Apple II, Amiga, Atari ST). Of course, like you said, tables were turned with 1st person shoot-em-ups; there raw CPU power was needed, not (fairly simple) hardware graphics processor features
Keen was my intro to shareware (Score:2, Interesting)
Come to think of it, I never DID save the universe. Holy smoke!!! That explains a lot!
Commander Keen (Score:2)
Public libraries these days really suck, even with their new computers and internet terminals.
Blizzard is also reviving their old games (Score:4, Informative)
Blizzard Classic Arcade [blizzard.com]
And, much like id Software, Blizzard is offering visitors to play an on-line demo [blizzard.com] of their old puzzle game "The Lost Vikings".
Perhaps it's just a coincidence, or it might be a trend...
And I can't do anything else than smile at the fact that Commander Keen: The Universe is Toast was never made. I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that the same guys are responsible for that game as Duke Nukem Forever aka DNF aka Did Not Finish.
Prescient artist? (Score:2)
Re:Prescient artist? (Score:2)
It's the Nostaliga Kick... (Score:3, Interesting)
Getting back on topic:
Yes it would be nice to see Keen, Captain Comic and others of those type to come back and be available for the palm platform, or even as a free game for an X desktop (much like XBill and Xcivâ"think Keen as new FreeCell for your OS)-- but the age old adage stole holds - "If there is a buck to made... two bucks will be charged"
I also remember one day reinstalling Wing Commander 2 on my Pentium MMX, and losing very bad to the fact my computer was just to fast for the game⦠Would these games be recoded to account for the increase in processor speed since then?
should have it on phones (Score:2, Interesting)
It seems now that the new phones that are coming out that are color and all - the commander keen series would port over to that relatively we
Some of the best games... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Not me! (Score:3, Funny)
Ahh, good times. Good times.
What you get (Score:2, Informative)
I ordered the CD-ROM version and would like to tell the people what to expect:
Misguided nostalgia (Score:2)
Re:Not so keen on keen? (Score:2)
There was that one similar kind of game, with a green main character with suction cup hands...
And the preview versions would always come with that screen of colorful DOS text promoting the full version.
Re:Not so keen on keen? (Score:3, Informative)
The suction cup game was "Cosmo", and I still download it occasionally to play the shareware version. It's a superb game, reminds my of the early sonic the hedgehog stuff.
I never get anywhere with it, just useless at games I suppose.
Re:Commander keen (Score:3, Funny)
"We finally caught you, F.O.E. spy! The real Captain Goodnight would have had the secret decoder ring!" AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!