Commander Keen translation project

Here, you can get help with anything or just chat about the original Commander Keen games.
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nanomekia
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Post by nanomekia »

Out out, you demon of spam-pidity!

Funnily enough I was just coming to make a bit of an update. I'm still mucking with the font bitmap a bit, it's just slow going because oh lord WAT DO LIFE. I should be able to pop a sample up soon.
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Post by MoffD »

nanomekia wrote:Out out, you demon of spam-pidity!
Smells like Dilbert in here :V

Interesting progress so far, although you have quite the task ahead.
mortimermcmirestinks wrote: Now I wish MoffD wasn't allergic to me.
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Post by nanomekia »

MoffD wrote:Smells like Dilbert in here :V
Oh good. I was hoping someone would get that. :D
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Post by nanomekia »

Le wee setback.

My dad's got pneumonia, my mum's in an autoimmune flare, I have a few various infections but am the least ill person in the household so I'm basically doing everything around the house in general. Plus I keep staring at the font bitmap like "wat r u doin", which is probably a result of being generally overworked but it's really not helping.

Worry not, I still intend to make this happen, it'll just be slower than a snail in molasses in January.
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Post by Nospike »

Oh dear. I hope everything ends up well for you. :(
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Post by nanomekia »

We'll be alright, it'll just be hell till we are. :P

This is as far as I've got on the font bitmap - oh bugger I don't think it's all going to fit...

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Post by Levellass »

Quite possibly. You may have to sacrifice things like the point item images.
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Post by Keening_Product »

And do you really need all the symbols?
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Post by nanomekia »

Levellass wrote:Quite possibly. You may have to sacrifice things like the point item images.
Keening_Product wrote:And do you really need all the symbols?
You guys are my saviors; I was afraid I wouldn't be able to take any of those out.

So let's do this. Which items in the bitmap absolutely HAVE to stay?
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Post by Nospike »

Just the menu frame tiles. The bitmaps are used in the help section/ending message etc. to illustrate the point item descriptions, a Keen sprite that accompanies his quotes, you've probably seen it all. The text with the gray background can be replaced with white background symbols as well, I'm pretty sure there's a way to insert it into normal white background text somehow... you could edit some of the game's graphics/levels (like the ordering info screen background) so that it doesn't look bad.
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Post by nanomekia »

Ah, excellent. The menu frame tiles are those red and yellow bracket-looking things with the lines next to them, right?
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Post by Nospike »

I... I think so... I mostly meant the white/gray ones in the top row next to the cursor tiles. Basically anything from the start of the actual character tiles down to the item tiles is fair game. The gray-bg text less so, but there just has to be a way. Levellass could tell you more about that I'd wager.
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Post by nanomekia »

I...didn't even notice those till now. Derp much, self? :dopekeen

I'll wait for 'lass to weigh in then!
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Post by Levellass »

The first row is pretty much all needed, it makes windows and the blue pointer used in menus. If necessary the blue pointer can in fact be reduced to one, non-animating tile, freeing up 5 tiles.

You'll probably want to keep the arrows on the second row though the rest can pretty much go.

The third row has symbols you may or may not want.

Rows 9 and 10 contain help file point images, slightly rearranging the help can free up both these rows bar the four tiles of Keen's sprite.

If you always use capital letters for 'red' text then you free up the bottom two rows as well. However using the bottom section of the bitmap is hard; the values don't actually map to proper letters in ASCII and a lot of notepad programs can't deal with them well.


In fact this raises the question of how you'll convert from ASCII to symbols; you're going to have to take your translated text and run it through some sort of process that results in a series of gibberish values (Like 'mghJk Laht hy lppq') that displays properly in the game itself.

How are you planning on doing that?
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Post by nanomekia »

To be honest with you I am not at all sure. I can easily get the Unicode versions of these symbols but I really don't know how to go about ASCII...

This is looking a bit like a hopeless endeavor now isn't it?
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