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To add to how pointless lives are, I've played through these games and have not gotten a Game Over once. I nearly did with Keen 3, but I know that if I build lives up from the start and purposefully collect a load of points, I'll chip through them one by one until I finish the game with about three or so. It doesn't matter from Keen Dreams onward, since I can savescum and therefore never lose an entire life all game. There's even no point to get a purposeful game over, since there's only unique cutscenes in some of the games. Getting the extra life jingle is pretty satisfying though.
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Feb 8, 2015 01:21
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Since you can save outside of levels isn't it still impossible to run out of lives if you just reload?
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Feb 8, 2015 02:13
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Poil posted:Since you can save outside of levels isn't it still impossible to run out of lives if you just reload? Pretty much, but there's no real incentive to in most of the Apogee platformers outside the really early ones (We're talking Monuments of Mars early.) It's one of the reasons Keen is looked on so fondly, for the most part: The levels are challenging, but the games as a whole? Much less so. I can't remember ever getting a game over. In any of them.
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Feb 8, 2015 02:29
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 Part 1: Start of Something Swell
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Feb 10, 2015 22:28
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I've never understood why the ammo packs in Keen 3 look like the triple shooter killbots from the previous games. E: Also, not-so-hidden PENIS spotted at 11:23! THE BAR fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Feb 10, 2015 |
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Feb 10, 2015 23:04
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Back when I first played these games this was my favorite out of the first third. Only because the vorticons had houses and stuff. Of course I never managed to beat it. I reached the last boss but I could never figure it out, and the noise made me dislike the level so I never really spent any time at it.
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Feb 11, 2015 00:51
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You "Hope" he doesn't get the "moms are tough" reference. You're terrible, Dirty Deeds Done.
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Feb 11, 2015 16:09
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Xenoveritas posted:You "Hope" he doesn't get the "moms are tough" reference. You're terrible, Dirty Deeds Done. Would you believe me if I said that was unintentional?
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Feb 11, 2015 17:18
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Easily, but it's too perfect a coincidence to not mention. 
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Feb 11, 2015 17:42
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Xenoveritas posted:You "Hope" he doesn't get the "moms are tough" reference. You're terrible, Dirty Deeds Done. Now now, let's not snow on his fireworks festival, besides, it's hard to get lightning to strike twice, so let's just keep it vanille.
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Feb 11, 2015 18:10
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From the tech nerds to the FF nerds, we have all the bases covered. Part 2: This Video is a Real Dick
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Feb 12, 2015 22:37
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To be fair, it's not surprising that Keen dies in one hit. I mean, he's just this little kid fighting against a well-trained well-armed army of spacemen/dogs/somethings. In the canon ending he died somewhere in the beginning of the first part. It's just that you are filling him with confidence, allowing him to go onwards against all odds.
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Feb 12, 2015 23:30
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That mission did look mildly annoying.
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Feb 12, 2015 23:32
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I'm not sure that shaming Romero is something that actually works.
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Feb 13, 2015 00:21
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Carbon dioxide posted:To be fair, it's not surprising that Keen dies in one hit. I mean, he's just this little kid fighting against a well-trained well-armed army of spacemen/dogs/somethings. He's a Packer fan, we keep on truckin' no matter how
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Feb 13, 2015 00:31
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You forgot about those 'clam shell' spike things, from the first game when trying to think of the various spikes. What are those things, anyways? Speaking of unreachable stuff/secrets, I remember this snippet of 'level design tips' for one of the early FPS. It might have been Wolfenstein, could have been Doom. It basically said to be a dick to the player and have secret triggers in inaccessible areas. Outside of the level geometry. With the goal of having players comb the level just trying to find that 'missed' secret. I also came across someone recreating Keen 1 in 3D, the '2.5d' kind where it's still a sidescrolling thing. There's also more mods for this series than I thought there would be.
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Feb 13, 2015 02:53
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Poil posted:That mission did look mildly annoying. Yeeeeeeeeeep. Seyser Koze posted:He's a Packer fan, we keep on truckin' no matter how I don't mind the one hit Keen kill, it works quite well for Keen 1 and 2, but there's a number of levels in Keen 3 that are way too hard or too long and Keen doesn't control brilliantly even at the best of times, so it just doesn't work. Kgummy posted:You forgot about those 'clam shell' spike things, from the first game when trying to think of the various spikes. What are those things, anyways? Pat Pats! Yeah, I don't know what they are either. Apparently it's a plant? quote:There's also more mods for this series than I thought there would be. Yeeeeeeeeeeeep Even after doing Keen 7-9, I could do another thread of other mods on top of that, there are some good ones, but I think ending it at 9 is best. As much as I love Keen, it's too much for me.
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Feb 13, 2015 18:32
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Part 3: Oh For Fort Sake Nearly done...
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Feb 13, 2015 20:00
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Interestingly I have no memory of those levels. Maybe my brain erased most traces of them. What the hell were they thinking?
Poil fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Feb 13, 2015 |
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Feb 13, 2015 20:37
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Hall: We have two days! Romero: poo poo
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Feb 13, 2015 20:54
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Crosspeice posted:Even after doing Keen 7-9, I could do another thread of other mods on top of that, there are some good ones, but I think ending it at 9 is best. As much as I love Keen, it's too much for me. Keen 7-9 are actually really excellent attempts at both creating new levels -and- furthering the story in a logical manner. They're pretty good mods!
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Feb 13, 2015 23:10
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Those later levels.  It's like "rear end in a top hat Keen" but the only reason rear end in a top hat Mario works is because of how tight Mario's controls are. Keen's controls are absolutely horrendous and this is basically the worst thing you could possibly do with Keen. I'd love to see Keen 4-6 redone in VGA with digitized sounds.
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Feb 14, 2015 01:22
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Woolie Wool posted:Keen's controls are absolutely horrendous and this is basically the worst thing you could possibly do with Keen. Keen 1-3, anyway.
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Feb 14, 2015 03:09
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Thank you for playing through these games! They were a pretty big part of my childhood, too. I made my own Commander Keen costume for Halloween when I was in 3rd grade, but unfortunately everyone just thought I was a Green Bay Packer. What kind of football player carries a ray gun?
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Feb 15, 2015 21:04
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Part 4: The End for Commander Clown It's finally the end, but the game will not let us go so easily. You can probably guess as to my opinion of this terrible game, but I do like the setting and how there's usually some cool background details here and there. It's much better than the bland setting of Keen 2. But christ this game is way too difficult. The first few levels have a nice balance, though, they're not too long and not insultingly easy, but the later levels are absolutely terrible and while wouldn't look out of place in Keen 4 onward, do not fit the gameplay of the classic Keens AT ALL. Add to how shoddily made and glitchy this game is does not help in the slightest. I can see that since 13 levels are completely optional they're allowed to do whatever they want, but why do I get the slight suspicion that they didn't mean for only two levels to be mandatory before the boss and just didn't realize until too late. So yeah, it's no surprise that this is my least favorite Keen game in the entire series and one I was not looking forward to. But hey, it's all uphill from here! (Seriously, Keen Dreams is my GOTY after the tripe that is Keen 3)
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Feb 15, 2015 21:11
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Man, I remember these games from way back. I was terrible at them... I noticed that your Youtube videos are rendered at 360p, and I know that the Youtube compression does unpleasant things at that level, including low-bitrate sound. Can I recommend a nearest-neighbor doubling of the video before you send it to Youtube? Getting it up to 720p at least gets rid of a lot of compression artifacts.
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Feb 15, 2015 22:21
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On the plus side, great things came out of Keen 1-3. Mainly Keen 4 and Apogee's Secret Agent (which was made on the same engine but cleaned up immensely). So, no matter how bad Keen 3 was, it at least spawned good things.
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Feb 15, 2015 22:53
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HomestarCanter posted:I noticed that your Youtube videos are rendered at 360p, and I know that the Youtube compression does unpleasant things at that level, including low-bitrate sound. Can I recommend a nearest-neighbor doubling of the video before you send it to Youtube? Getting it up to 720p at least gets rid of a lot of compression artifacts. ...huh. I never actually checked that, but yeah, you're right. It extends to basically all my SA LPs, but at least for some of the earlier ones there's a 720p "HD" option that makes the videos look like not poo poo. I'll make them 720p from now on. Wait, how do I do that? (I am dumb at thing, shown by how I've been uploading 360p vids for the last year) Crosspeice fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Feb 15, 2015 |
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Feb 15, 2015 23:08
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The caves are actually the best map in Keen 3, not the worst. Other good things to come out of Keen 1-3: the teddies.   
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Feb 15, 2015 23:24
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Crosspeice posted:Wait, how do I do that? You need to either record at a higher resolution, or process your source video before uploading. I'm checking if Handbrake is able to do Nearest-Neighbor, which is the method you want for any pixel-art video. Edit: Nope, Handbrake is in no way what you want for this... I'm sure someone around here knows how to do it. Edit Edit: Really, all I know is the name for it and what it does. If you can figure out how to take your original video, do an integer nearest neighbor resize (2x should get you above 720p, 3x if you want to be silly) then send that to youtube. If you get the option to use the 60fps feature, go for it. HomestarCanter fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Feb 16, 2015 |
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Feb 16, 2015 03:24
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One method I heard of was to upload the video to youtube and sync everyone beginning to watch it, then just comment over it and combine the audio files + video into another video. I don't know how it's done, mind, but it seemed pretty simple. On the note of the actual video: My god. The Caves of Oblivion. I sat there for a good fifteen seconds just staring when you cut to the real way to win them. And that level's NECESSARY to complete the game?!
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Feb 16, 2015 05:58
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Valgaav posted:On the note of the actual video: My god. The Caves of Oblivion. I sat there for a good fifteen seconds just staring when you cut to the real way to win them. And that level's NECESSARY to complete the game?!
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Feb 16, 2015 11:30
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Valgaav posted:One method I heard of was to upload the video to youtube and sync everyone beginning to watch it, then just comment over it and combine the audio files + video into another video. I don't know how it's done, mind, but it seemed pretty simple. Yup, when a level's blocking the way like that, its hitbox won't let you move past it until you've done it. There are some minor exceptions, and the in-map cheat lets you noclip through, but playing it vanilla? Yeah, mandatory dick-move level. John Romero has been known to mention the game design was a bit dickish, and that some score items were never actually meant to be collected. But you can actually decipher Galactic Standard Alphabet from the first game, because it gives you a massive clue with the "THIS IS THE HOLY [POGO] STICK", where only the POGO is in english. From there, it's a matter of what words make sense.
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Feb 16, 2015 11:38
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So, why are the two of you watching such a low-quality video when you're doing the commentary? Why not watch the same video you use for the final product?
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Feb 16, 2015 14:01
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I export a low quality video and send it over Mediafire for Deeds to download. Then we sync up over Skype and do the video. Since this is a fairly basic game, we would usually lose nothing by this 20mb video, but it had a lot of trouble dealing with the terrible background. The rest of the video (and indeed in every LP we've done), we could see perfectly fine. I should be able to tinker around with my exports to get higher than 360p as well, I do kinda like tinkering, but a video will be up tomorrow regardless.
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Feb 16, 2015 16:22
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If it's any help, I found these while digging around the Tech Support thread. http://salp.wikia.com/wiki/Youtube_Encoding_Guidelines http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Resize The joys of knowing the trivia and theory while having absolutely no practical experience...
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Feb 16, 2015 23:05
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I believe I've found a way, at least, in the test video I put up, there was a 720p option. I'll also have a bit of time to fix it for my next LP if there's any big problems, but for now, seems to be working fine.
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Feb 16, 2015 23:24
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 Part 1: You've Got to Eat Your Vegetables Okay, I think it looks not poo poo.
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Feb 17, 2015 01:55
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Ah, nice, crisp pixels. Also, that "boo-wop" jumping noise is sweet music after the square waves of the previous games.
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Feb 17, 2015 07:08
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You lack the pogo stick, but, equally important, you also miss the ability to climb up ledges like you can in Keen 4-6. And the new graphics really sell the whole exploration aspect of the Keen series, something Mario never tried to pull as well.
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Feb 17, 2015 10:09
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