Commander Keen source code released

Note that "Keen Dreams" is the game sometimes called "Commander Keen 3.5" or "The Lost Episode"; unlike episodes 1-3 and 4-6 which were made by ID for sale by Apogee, Keen Dreams was (I think) the last game ID made to fulfill their contractual obligations with SoftDisk. It's interesting in a number of ways - the engine and art is very clearly halfway between the first and second Keen trilogies, it's the only game where Keen doesn't have his iconic pogo-stick or his Neuralizer Ray gun.

A little slice of history regarding one of the technical foundations of Commander Keen, for those that aren&#x27;t aware:<p>&quot;Then, the first breakthrough. John Carmack devised a smooth, scrolling routine similar to that used for the background of Nintendo games but never before possible on the PC.&quot; [1]<p>The technique is called, <i>adaptive tile refresh.</i> [2]<p>[1] <a href="http://www.3drealms.com/keenhistory" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.3drealms.com&#x2F;keenhistory</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_tile_refresh" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Adaptive_tile_refresh</a>

<a href="http://github.com/keendreams/keen/blob/master/kd_main.c#L279" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;keendreams&#x2F;keen&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;kd_main.c#L279</a><p>God, <i>so</i> wish I&#x27;d known this at the time.

<a href="https://github.com/keendreams/keen/blob/master/id_us_a.asm#L65" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;keendreams&#x2F;keen&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;id_us_a.asm#L...</a><p>&gt; baseRndArray dw 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,54,75,129,204<p>Hah he got the Fibonacci series wrong (it&#x27;s supposed to be ...13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, unless he did this on purpose).

This just caused a rush of nostalgia from a generation of PC computing that seems like a lifetime ago.<p>Norton Commander, Jazzy the Jack Rabbit, TheDraw, the Gravis Gamepad...

I have to say I saw every single pixel of every Keen game and I MUCH preferred the pure side view games over the isometric side view games of Episodes 4-6 and Keen Dreams. Episodes 1-3 had such an amazing, precise pixel design and a great sense of movement. The leaping just FELT right, with a slight pause while you pumped off the balls of your feet.<p>The later games, although much more detailed, with a larger character, had a weird floaty feeling to the controls that I never quite enjoyed playing as much.<p>That said, I loved all the games and it was an amazing sense of discovery. I remember the moment the shareware model finally took hold of me and I realized that I wanted the next episodes enough to pay for them.

Only slightly related but I read &quot;masters of doom&quot; recently and I can&#x27;t recommend it highly enough. It is a very entertaining read even if you are not crazy over video games. It tells the story of the two Johns, and mention Commander Keen among other things. Great read

There&#x27;s also an html5 version: <a href="https://github.com/JoeAnzalone/HTML5-Keen" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;JoeAnzalone&#x2F;HTML5-Keen</a>

Slightly related (from the same era). But the composer for the music for Unreal, Unreal tournament, Deus Ex, Tyrian, Jazz Jackrabbit and others has a music bundle for sale.<p><a href="http://loudr.fm/bundle/alexander-brandon-bundle/hq4hZ" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;loudr.fm&#x2F;bundle&#x2F;alexander-brandon-bundle&#x2F;hq4hZ</a>

Of note to anyone mentioning &quot;Masters of Doom&quot; are the following two items :<p>- Apogee Catalog from this time period : <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/134559074/Apogee-Catalog" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scribd.com&#x2F;doc&#x2F;134559074&#x2F;Apogee-Catalog</a><p>and<p>- The Book of id (from the Id Anthology) : <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/137817173/Book-of-id" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scribd.com&#x2F;doc&#x2F;137817173&#x2F;Book-of-id</a><p>Bask in the nostalgia.

I suddenly had a flashback to selecting soundblaster as my audio device..

I think the most interesting part of this (socially) is this:<p>&gt; This release was made possible by a crowdfunding effort.<p><a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/let-s-get-keen-dreams-re-released-legally" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.indiegogo.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;let-s-get-keen-dreams-re-...</a><p>Looks like they got most of the way, then someone must&#x27;ve paid the rest outside of indiegogo.<p>What other classic games could be saved this way?

After Keen 3, the id guys were still under contract with Softdisk for another game. They made Keen Dreams to fulfill this obligation, but it wasn&#x27;t released until some time after Keen 6.<p><a href="http://www.thefloppydisk.com/articles/commander_keen_the_game_that_made_id/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thefloppydisk.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;commander_keen_the_gam...</a>

Apparently they sold 2-6 until recently - people were buying 1991 software?<p><a href="http://www.3drealms.com/keenhistory/keenhistory4.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.3drealms.com&#x2F;keenhistory&#x2F;keenhistory4.html</a><p><i>Keens 2, 3, 5, &amp; the full version of 6 are commercial software, and it is not legal to download them from anywhere.</i>

&quot;There is not enough memory available to play the game reliably. You can play anyway, but an out of memory condition will eventually pop up.&quot;<p>Wow, I can&#x27;t imagine a modern game giving this warning and still atempting gameplay. Guess a lot of people with low RAM machines had to take their chances back then.

Carmack&#x27;s piracy protection was bleeding-edge stuff, back then!<p><a href="https://github.com/keendreams/keen/blob/master/kd_main.c#L397-L413" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;keendreams&#x2F;keen&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;kd_main.c#L39...</a>

On your marks. Get set. Compile to JS using LLVM in 3...2...

I&#x27;m fairly sure my ancient copy of Teach Yourself C in 21 Days came with a CD including the book text and Borland C++ 3.1, which is mentioned on github as working. UPC code 0672310694, or: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Yourself-21-Days-Sams/dp/0672310694/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1410927432&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=0672310694" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Teach-Yourself-21-Days-Sams&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0672310...</a><p>You can get yourself into trouble trying to use a newer version of the Borland compilers. 3.1 was the last to support native 16-bit code, or something like that, I believe.<p>However, I&#x27;d take a crack at making the Turbo C in the Embarcadero Museum work: <a href="http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/20841" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;edn.embarcadero.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;20841</a><p>I honestly don&#x27;t remember what the difference between &quot;Borland C&quot; and &quot;Turbo C&quot; is (the former includes more) so I don&#x27;t know if that will work. But the museum download is free...

<a href="https://github.com/sulix/keen-dreams-sdl2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;sulix&#x2F;keen-dreams-sdl2</a><p>The Linux port

If anyone&#x27;s keen into doom, check out <i>Doom 2 the Way id Did</i>. In particular, look for the secret level (which also has the entrance to the other secret level).

Very nice!<p>Unfortunately only Keen Dreams, but at least! I was waiting for this quite some time. I&#x27;m not sure if the other Keen versions will eventually follow.<p>I think the project Commander Genius (<a href="http://clonekeenplus.sourceforge.net/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;clonekeenplus.sourceforge.net&#x2F;</a>) should also be mentioned here. (Disclaimer: I was a developer of CG.) Keen 1-6 should be fully playable. Keen Dreams not yet, so this Open Source release might be helpful.

I remember this game but I still did a Google Image search to remind me:<p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?site=&amp;tbm=isch&amp;source=hp&amp;biw=1360&amp;bih=569&amp;q=commander+keen+1&amp;oq=commander+keen+1&amp;gs_l=img.3..0j0i24l9.3919.6645.0.7416.16.15.0.1.1.0.116.1233.13j2.15.0....0...1ac.1.53.img..0.16.1236.d4kYfL6v96I" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?site=&amp;tbm=isch&amp;source=hp&amp;biw=1...</a>

Pretty much the only platformer I ever really liked.

I&#x27;d love to find the portion of code that has Keen moon the camera if the player is inactive for a period of time

Keen was amazing, I hope we see more of them released like this... IMO Keen Dreams was the worst of the lot.

only ~33k lines of code for everything in C&#x2F;asm. yet today, it feels so strange that an equivalent game in our &quot;much advanced languages&quot; will probably end up about the same or larger. Are we really progressing?

I tried to compile this from within DosBox, but I couldn&#x27;t find a `makeobj` binary to build the stuff in the static directory. Does anyone know where that would come from?

What about the source code for Episodes 1-3?<p>Don&#x27;t let the Vorticons win!!<p>I&#x27;ll never forget the day I discovered the Vorticon alphabet in episode 3. Mind blown.

This is brilliant. I played Keen Dreams for hours and even completed it. This will make very interesting reading.

Are there instructions for compiling this somewhere? I don&#x27;t see a makefile or configure.

Someone should port this to a language that isn&#x27;t C, not that I&#x27;m volunteering.

Did anybody manage to build it?

My childhood rejoices!

This is awesome! Commander Keen was my very first PC game on my very first PC (a 386DX with 2MB ram and a 80MB hard drive).<p>And it was a great game!

This is a good day for humanity.

8-space tabs? Yuk!