Returning to the age of fan games?

You can discuss anything about fan-made Commander Keen games here.
GoldenRishi
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Post by GoldenRishi »

A few notes:

1.) So I would say that the one thing I've learned is that, actually, I'm an experienced programmer. I have done a pretty diverse number of programming things, and that has definitely translated into this being pretty easy for me to pick up and do. I mean, I'm greatly aided by the tools that exist nowadays, but learning how to do things in OpenGL and SDL2 is not hard at all. I still have a lot of work to do (e.g. a lot of game logic), but it's amazing how quickly I'm picking C and C++ back up. The (relatively) new C++11 standards are amazing.

2.) That being said, this is something that's actually very-do-able, and I wouldn't say even necessarily hard. There's lots of people who have programmed basic 2-D platformer game engines, and have done so within a few 1-2 hour webinars. Like I said, I'm using all free, open source software, and I have a lot of what I think are good ideas for making the games/game engine easier to mod, etc.

3.) Right now, I've switched over entirely to Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon (Except for a lot of gaming). So this will be written in Linux and ported to Windows and possibly Mac OS. The code itself should be capable of being run almost out of the box, however, for the other OS'es because everything is designed to work on all platforms. So porting should be largely trivial.
Mobiethian wrote:Recently I had a discussion with Nisaba regarding fan games and I wondered if there were any existing Keen engines for Multimedia Fusion 2. I have version R250, I believe.

If there is one, I'd be glad to make some Keen fan games. And having the ability to implement tiles using an extended color palette would be awesome. If not, an engine could be created (given enough time). This might be something to consider if anyone else here has experience with MMF. I do somewhat, especially from using the Sonic Worlds engine for my own fan game for many years. But I'm not very experienced with the coding (Event Editor) stuff.
I haven't ever used MMF/TGF/CNP/etc. I used GameMaker back in the day, where I basically re-programmed everything in GML.
(Used to be LordofGlobox)
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Roobar
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Post by Roobar »

GoldenRishi wrote:A few notes:

1.) So I would say that the one thing I've learned is that, actually, I'm an experienced programmer. I have done a pretty diverse number of programming things, and that has definitely translated into this being pretty easy for me to pick up and do. I mean, I'm greatly aided by the tools that exist nowadays, but learning how to do things in OpenGL and SDL2 is not hard at all. I still have a lot of work to do (e.g. a lot of game logic), but it's amazing how quickly I'm picking C and C++ back up. The (relatively) new C++11 standards are amazing.

2.) That being said, this is something that's actually very-do-able, and I wouldn't say even necessarily hard. There's lots of people who have programmed basic 2-D platformer game engines, and have done so within a few 1-2 hour webinars. Like I said, I'm using all free, open source software, and I have a lot of what I think are good ideas for making the games/game engine easier to mod, etc.

3.) Right now, I've switched over entirely to Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon (Except for a lot of gaming). So this will be written in Linux and ported to Windows and possibly Mac OS. The code itself should be capable of being run almost out of the box, however, for the other OS'es because everything is designed to work on all platforms. So porting should be largely trivial.
Haha. It sounds like it's something super easy to do.
GoldenRishi
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Post by GoldenRishi »

wiivn wrote:Haha. It sounds like it's something super easy to do.
It's definitely not "super easy to do," but it's quite manageable if you have some time, patience, and dedication.
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IsisIIa
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Post by IsisIIa »

Sounds great. You should check out the Isis IIa engine - it aimed to do a lot of the things you are talking about, and came close, but never quite made it to the open source and fully customisable stage.

It had a whole ton of features - you'll find all the details and downloads elsewhere in the forum - included with the download is a sample level you can edit using a large tile set and a freeware level editor. It may give you some ideas/inspiration.

It was written in Python, using the PyGame library for SDL support.
KeenEmpire
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Post by KeenEmpire »

IsisIIa wrote:Sounds great. You should check out the Isis IIa engine - it aimed to do a lot of the things you are talking about, and came close, but never quite made it to the open source and fully customisable stage.
No source code?

It's sad to see it just be discarded without note.
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