SVGA Tileset in Keen 4

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gerstrong
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SVGA Tileset in Keen 4

Post by gerstrong »

Hello,

for the next release which is coming tomorrow in fact, I'm planning support for SVGA tiles in Keen Galaxy series.

I created two tilemaps for foreground and background and well, they look like this when playing the game:

Image

Image

Image

They are yet ugly, but the fact that you can use as many colors as you like I think could be something interesting for modders. Those graphics will become better and will be packed with the next HQP, later to be released.

Tell me what you think about it. I have been very busy lately, so I don't think you will get many surprises in CG 1.8 unfortunately, but a lot of bugs has been fixed and as usual a bit of physics adjustment has been performed. Well, Dosbox fusion is there, so modders or modplayers, please use this or the original dosbox whatever you prefer...

After this release I will release another one a bit sooner, something like 1.8.1, because sure someone will find something to improve.

I had added this feature sooner, since there was a guy working on a new tilemap, but he quickly dissappeared, like many team-members did in the past.

Well, that's all for now.

For the next milestone, which will be version 2.0 I want to give you something special. I think Netplay is on what I will focus next. I promised that for a long time and must be integrated. The potential is there and I think this time the code base is solid enough for that.

There is Keen Dreams to be supported, I know, but NY00123 already created a port of the released code, so take this instead or convince him or somebody else to add it to CG. It might be added some time and it will be great to have a decent open port for android devices, but for now you will have to wait or buy the other one that costs some money.

And about modifying Keen. I might be able to create a new game with CG, if someone has an idea and want to extend the gameplay to a new level, well, here we are. You can use the physics of Keen 1 or 4 or whatever of those games you want, combine them, create a truly new experience without having to hack old dos games and take limitations into account. Interested? Come and tell us about your idea.
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Post by Levellass »

Geez, wow.
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Post by gerstrong »

Updates:

Look at Miragia with real translucency, possible with Commander Genius!

Image

Image

Image

But that's not all!

The next minor version will bring a lot of bug fixes for better gaming experience.

There are some graphical errors in the images, but we are improving by getting ride of them.
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Post by Keening_Product »

That's going to take quite some getting used to.
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Post by guynietoren »

Are you just reworking all the tile sets manually? Some of the tiles just look blurry except for the edges.
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Post by gerstrong »

Yes, the tilemap is a png which is loaded by Commander Genius. It has translucency and you can use as many colors you want.

The masks setting to a colour between black and white make objects as translucent as you want. I like that effect.

But I'm a programmer so I need to practice more on the style and make it more beautiful... :-)
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Post by Tormentor667 »

Unfortunately this doesn't look like an improvement to me... it looks more like gauss-garbage :(
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Post by Keening_Product »

The translucency is pretty damn cool, actually. Not a massive fan of the other changes, but I understand they're a work in progress and I'm just hardwired into the oldschool Keen look.
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Post by gerstrong »

Well, okay, then translucency looks alright, is nice to read.

The style of Galaxy Keen is pretty special and maybe meant to be EGA only.

But well, maybe you have an idea in how to improve it.

We can also leave it as it is and only use translucency...
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Post by Levack »

The tanslucency idea is awsome! :)

The rest of the graphics just look like they where blown up and got blurry.
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Post by StupidBunny »

Cool! The translucency definitely has a lot of modding potential.

The colors do too...the actual tiles in those screenshots do look waaaay too JPEGgy but you yourself acknowledged that they're pretty rough so it's forgivable. :P
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Post by gerstrong »

Hi,

so it looks like translucency is okay. I'm going to take the EGA graphics in again, and leave out the gaussian filter.

But how would you improve the graphics, in case, would you?

Should we replace dithering by more colors? Or is the dithering better left in?

Let me know about your opinions, I really want to improve a bit the graphics, but you should like it.
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Post by Levack »

Well, what do they look like on x4?
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Post by Levellass »

I personally wouldn't change the EGA palette. To me that's part of what Keen is, its oldschool limits. Where would you stop at changing things? Add more sounds? More intelligent enemy behaviors? At some point you stop being Keen and start being a game builder with a Keenish feel.
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Post by gerstrong »

Levellass wrote:I personally wouldn't change the EGA palette. To me that's part of what Keen is, its oldschool limits. Where would you stop at changing things? Add more sounds? More intelligent enemy behaviors? At some point you stop being Keen and start being a game builder with a Keenish feel.
Maybe we should elaborate that discussion somewhere else, because often it returns, especially when talking to members like ny00123.

I have nothing against it, but I think some people would like to have a gameplay like Keen and more colors. Others want the original FPS it had and sense all the feeling of choppiness, due to hardware limitations. It is still awesome what id-Software pulled out using low end systems, in term of how they are observed today.

Well, we have dosbox fusion for very old school, we have the Commander Genius with higher FPS and physics which I know are a bit off, acknowledged. And you still can stack over HQP, which will be the package where those tiles are going to be. And outside the CG ecosystem there is still the original great Dosbox Software and all the chocolate ports and Netkeen. It all comes to a choice.

So more important than what Keen should be, is what we want, and well, the choices are plenty.

Getting back to the tilemap, yeah, I should use EGA with slighter modifications and see what you think about it, so less blurry. I'll try that.

I'm going to post some Scale4x screenshots, when it is ready... :-)

After that I might upload another CG Release, because many bugs fixes are there, especially for Keen 6.

Also for mods, I would like to support more stuff much easier in future and I think with translucency, which by the way is in vorticons engine supported as well, there is more freedom. So cool music, more graphics, why not? You can still turn it off or use something else.
Having fun developing stuff...
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