Feedback regarding the physics/gameplay in Keen 4 from the YouTube user Roobar
There was some feedback from a YouTube user called Roobar regarding the physics/gameplay of Keen 4 running through CGenius. This user felt something was a bit off regarding the overall feel of the overall experience, and thereby provided some feedback:
- Vertical movement feels much faster than the original
- The horizontal movement or maybe the whole game looks sped up for some reason
- Impossible pogo jump goes ridiculously high, much higher than the original.
- The impossible jump doesn't always register your keys. Unlike the original, here a lo of the times when I try to impossible pogo, keen doesn't do anything.
- The ledge climbing differs from the games running in MS-DOS
- When you shoot the slug, but it's on a slope just a little bit higher, it doesn't kill the slug. If the slug is a little bit below, the shot moves through the slug's head instead of killing it (i.e. bad collision)
- If you jump down from a standing still one-way platform and hold down, when landing on a slope keen jumps continually without jumping until you let off the down key
- If you're on a one-way platform and look up, keen will disappear
- If you look down and jump down while looking, and then jump, camera will not follow
- If you press jump and hold jump, keen will not jump again
- Unlike the original, the small enter key doesn't work
- Unlike the original, the numeric keys also doesn't work and you have to assign them
- When keen starts reading and you press and hold left or right key, keen wakes up, but doesn't move
This sure is a lot of feedback, I checked the YouTube channel of this user and found lots of Commander Keen videos, and there's a lot of Keen related videos to be found there. A bit off-topic, but I think this guy knows a bit regarding the Commander Keen series, as it seems like Roobar's behind a fangame that serves as a spiritual successor to Commander Keen called Planet Cloudius IX (video, homepage & Roobar in KeenWiki).
Some of the issues he/she has, has to do with the provided values for actual speed for certain actions, such as walking, jumping, pogo and such. There minor adjustments with the values might do the trick, but finding how much they should be changed might by both tricky & time consuming.
Maybe there's a good approach of doing just that, at least finding the differences in values fast. One way could be to use some kind of software to record a list of button combinations in a sequence, as in the timings and actual button presses while finishing a level in Keen 4 in DOSBox. While doing that, record the actual game footage so that's it's saved in a video file. After that's done, start the exact same level in Keen 4 in CGenius, record the gameplay footage, and then activate the "note sheet" of the very same button sequence so that the computer finishes the level using those exact inputs that's used in the previous gameplay footage of Keen 4.
In theory Keen then could move, jump, ledge climb, climb poles with the exact same button timings in the video footage from both Keen 4 running in DOSBox and Keen 4 running in CGenius. From there you could see the difference in movement speed and such just by comparing the video footage from Keen 4 running in CGenius with the video footage from Keen 4 running in DOSBox.
To make Keen 4-6 behave like a 1:1 copy gameplay and physics wise to the same games running in DOSBox might be nearly impossible, but if it gets close enough to the games running in DOSBox, I doubt people would notice.