Talk:Commander Keen

Sarge Baldy: Commander Keen 1 was the first game released under the id Software name, in December 1990, as shown by their own site. The guys who formed id Software had of course made games before for different companies; I think this is made clear by the stuff about Softdisk in the article but feel free to add more elaboration if you want. Also, please don't mark substantive changes like that as minor. DopefishJustin 20:43, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)

Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure

Where in Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure does Commander Keen or another Commander Keen item make a cameo? It's not in the Apogee FAQ and it's not in the Look back at Commander Keen article. 81.70.123.72 14:45, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Actually I think the reference is a mistake, as I don't remember any Keen cameos in Cosmo myself, nor am I able to find any information about it online, except for mentionings it exists without any proof. --Retodon8 07:19, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

EGA

"John Carmack, a game programmer at Softdisk, found a trick that would allow smooth-scrolling graphics in PC games, but only with the 16-color EGA graphics card."

I'm interested in "the trick" that allowed smooth-scrolling on PC's. What was it difficult before EGA cards? --Commander Keane 11:38, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Carmack called this "adaptive tile refresh": the computer was tricked into only redrawing those items that changed, instead of the entire screen. So for example if a white cloud has to pass by on a blue sky, using standard methods the entire screen would have to be rerendered to make the cloud drift to the left. Using Carmack's method, the engine was fooled into thinking the cloud was in the top left of the screen, and as soon as it was redrawn, and the old position overwritten, the engine ended the redraw. So for example if the cloud was at (15,3) and had to move to (14,3) Carmack's trick was equating (14,3) with (0,0) as far as the redraw was concerned. This was combined with a second trick were pixels were prerendered before they came into view, so the redraw appeared instantanious to the game player.

I've not really explained it well, the real info is in David Kushner's "Masters of Doom" which discusses this in high detail. I highly recommend getting this book (if you can still find it): ISBN 0375505245 . User:Anárion/sig 12:16, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Just to make it clear: this trick was impossible in CGA cards. EGA was done in a software layer, allowing for tricks like these and the palette swapping which allowed EGA to have 64 colours (four palettes of 16 colours). CGA was done completely in hardware. User:Anárion/sig 12:31, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for great explanation Anárion. I'll check out the book.--Commander Keane 00:22, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The story

The story part of this article needs some work. I think that the stories of Keen 1-2 should be added, although those are already shortly described in the Keen games section. Teklund 14:18, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguation page.

I hate it when freaking pages don't have a disambiguation page like this. Commander Keen is not the only use of the word KEEN! 24.184.5.205 02:36, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I assume you're talking about the Keen page. Why not just edit the that and add links to other "Keen" things? That should be an instant solution to your problem; more effective than complaining about it here. I can't think of anything but Commander Keen myself. Well, the meaning of the word, but no other real subjects. (Please type 4 ~s to add a sig to your edit.) Retodon8 12:43, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I did a "Search" for "Keen", "Kean", "Keene" and "Keane", and there are a LOT of entries to add if you want a complete DAB page. Linking to Keane (disambiguation), Keene, both DAB pages themselves would help. (Kean doesn't exist, and Keane is about a band.) I also found Keen Toons and a LOT of people with last names from the 4 words I mentioned above, so good luck creating a complete DAB page. :) Retodon8 19:34, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Never announced?? How do we know?

* Monkeystone Games made plans to release Keen Chronicles through a Softek International April 2002. It would have consisted of all Keen games packaged together for Microsoft Windows and Pocket PC, but it never got out of the planning stages, and was never even announced. Industry Media's website features the logo that would have been used.

How do we know of Keen Chronicles if it's never even been announced??