Java Commander Keen clone

WIP games, tools & toy projects Archived Projects
#1

Hi

http://opax.swin.edu.au/~paradox/

I posted this to the old forums about 4 months ago, but since then, I’ve done a bit more work, and I am about to begin development again. I’ve been working on a java Commander Keen clone, written in java! I hope to be doing more work on it over the school holidays. I’m also looking, for people to give me a help, coding or doing graphics … hint, hint :wink:

I would really appreciate people trying it out and giving me feedback. When I get the time I hope to do some refactoring, and then work on a level editor. Hopefully once I get that done, it should be pretty easy to turn into a full blown game!

Anyway, try it out, and let me know what you think…

  • Luke
#2

Very good! I used to love the original Apogee versions. You could easily make a very good full game from what you have!

#3

Hi

Wow, I’m surprised to see anybody reply to this post, it is so old :slight_smile: And here I was thinking my game was to slip by un-noticed.

Anyway, there will be a new version comming out soon. I have done a lot of refactoring, and improved the archetecture. Hopefully it should give me a better code base on which to continue to add new features.

The code is GPL, so I am hopening somebody will pick it up and help me make a game out of it. It wouldnt take very little modification indead to make a full game from it.

Eventually when I have enougth experence, I hope to implement multiplayer. I can think of nothing more fun than playing CTF on pogo sticks :wink:

  • Luke
#4

heh, Yeah, I saw that it had no replies! I took a quick look at the code last night, I’ll check it out some more later. Look forward to the next version.

#5

Oh, no :slight_smile: The source code is very bad! If you want to see some espically bad stuff, look at the hard-coded level in the constructor of World and the terrible state machine that is KeenActor. Yuck!

I’ve been refactoring alot in the new release. I just moved away from the hard coded level, to loading levels up from an XML format, so that is alot nicer. I hope I can refactor KeenActor, because it really, really needs it, but I’m not sure if I will have the time.

Happy new year!

  • Luke
#6

I’m really impressed with what you have done so far and I look forward to the refactored version.
BTW, great idea using Java Web Start. All Java applications should be distributed this way. Anything else is a pita :slight_smile:

#7

Thanks!

Java Web Start is fantastic! It really minimises the things that can go wrong at a users end. I dont want to be one of those programmers that is always bagging users, because they are “to stupid” or anything, but it seems to me that anything that can go wrong at the users end, will eventually go wrong.

My first version I distributed in a zip file, with two .bat files. One called run.bat and one called compile.bat. All you had to do was make sure you had jdk 1.4 installed, extract the zip, and double click run.bat

Unfortunately there were alot of problems with people trying to get it to run. Some of them, I never figured out what was going wrong.

Java web start greatly simplifys things. Make sure you hava jdk 1.4. Click here :slight_smile:

  • Luke
#8

I guess my only comment (other than OH MY GOD this is soooooooo amazing) is…How the heck did you start such an amazing project? I wouldn’t have the SLIGHTEST idea where to begin!!!

Please give technologically blind yet full of determination game developers like me some idea as to where I would begin in creating a platform game.

#9

Cool! It even runs fast enough on my company’s notebook with an 8MB absolutely outdated GFX card.

Nice work!!

#10

I used to love commander keen :slight_smile: Keep up the good work!

#11

[quote]Cool! It even runs fast enough on my company’s notebook with an 8MB absolutely outdated GFX card.
[/quote]
You think yours is absolutely outdated. Man, Commander Keen runs fast on my computer with an ATI mach64 2MB. Good work! And it has a lot of potential. But aren’t the enemies supposed to hurt you?

P.S. It would be appreciated if you could add some levels, because the level designer seems a bit awkward and buggish. :slight_smile:

P.S.S. It would be kind of cool if you can add a multiplayer coop or deathmatch play. Just a suggestion, since I know that it would take away the original Keen theme. ;D