ADG Episode 95 - Commander Keen

[@FyberOptic]

Multiple hardware tricks went into making this game a smooth side-scroller. The EGA card's hardware was more robust than CGA in numerous ways. One of those ways was in a series of latches related to video memory. One latch allowed control over which bit planes in video memory that were going to read or write from. Another latch held the last byte read or written from video memory. Another latch controlled bitmasking of the data read or written from the video memory. You also had a register which allowed you to set the starting location in video memory from where the screen would be drawn. That's certainly not all, but that's some important ones. All of these allowed for various tricks to help improve performance. For scrolling, you could change the starting location in video memory from which to draw, to the extent of one "tile" worth of data, while quickly pulling pixels into a latch and immediately write them elsewhere in video memory to shift all the contents of the screen by a tile, write new tiles into the off-screen area that you just shifted out of, change the video memory start location back again, and it would all appear as seamless scrolling. It was so fast because your assembly loop wouldn't require reading or writing video memory into system memory to move the bulk of the screen contents, since the latch held the data you needed, which saved a lot of cycles. EGA wasn't intentionally designed for this, since nothing on the PC was ever really designed for gaming, but clever programmers (such as John Carmack) figured out how to exploit it for maximum gain. It's techniques which would be used far into the VGA days as well, to an even greater extent.

[@elimalinsky7069]

PCs back in the late 80s and the early 90s had no dedicated hardware for drawing graphics (apart from Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga and Ataris ST), thus they had to rely on raw processing power instead. Consoles had dedicated 2D sprite-based raster rendering chips so they could draw graphics much faster (but could not handle polygonal graphics or ray casted scaling very well). Computers had the edge over consoles for allowing much more data on disk, thus having more complex and content rich games, and having more RAM and processing power, allowing for simulators and other CPU intensive games. That's why 8-bit and 16-bit consoles had plenty of side scrolling platformers, but could not handle games like Elite II: Frontier for example.

[@akalyx]

interesting...thanks for writing all of this

[@pecet]

Best video game series for PC imho. Maybe I'm blinded by nostalgia but i just love them.

[@thegamingconnoisseur4151]

This was one of the games Ihat was on a partition on my uncles hard drive with custom code.

[@andlinux]

I'm a big fan of the Commander Keen series, played them all and more than once. Commander Keen was Tom Hall's baby but Carmack wanted to develop more violent games like Doom.

[@majmunx9703]

Love the series, there probably wouldn't be Doom without this...

[@StephanS]

I love the look of the first games over the later ones, but the later ones had better controls. Somehow this game has a very special and particular atmosphere.

[@Pixelmusement]

+Stephan S Accurate statement, provided you ignore the existence of the GBC version. :P

[@StephanS]

Yes, because there are sooo many good games for the PC where the GB(C) version is just meh.... Commander Keen, Serious Sam, Carmageddon.... etc. PS: Guess the game i'm playing right now

[@thewhyzer]

I survived the third episode by skipping almost every level, since most of them are optional. Stocked up on ammo in one or two levels, cheesed through the penultimate level by going over the mountain, then died a few dozen times to the final boss before finally beating it.

[@DFuxaPlays]

Commander Keen, good memories and nostalgia. Then I remember the controls...

[@acuerdox]

so sad that it has came to this we tried to warn you of all of thiiiiis!

[@Alianger]

no. 4 seemed like the first good one to be honest, don't have much nostalgia for this one though.

[@RoboticMagus]

It's too bad the "complete" collection is missing a few games.

[@Pixelmusement]

Although it's understandable given that the sixth game was a boxed commercial release, the rights to Dreams is currently owned by someone who really shouldn't, and the GBC release is actually pretty bad. :P

[@RoboticMagus]

@@Pixelmusement The lack of the GBC game I don't mind at all. I used to play 4 and Dreams back in the day. So I want Dreams for nostalgia reasons and the sixth game because I missed that one, like the fifth game. I understand the rights issue, but I don't like it. I'll probably grab the collection during a sale sometime anyways. It would be worth it to be able to play 4 again.

[@Compucles]

@@RoboticMagus But "Keen Dreams" is available on both Steam and the Nintendo Switch.

[@RoboticMagus]

@@Compucles Seems like it did recently release on Steam. Almost 2 YEARS after I made this comment, mind you. On top of that, it looks like a real low effort port.

[@jacobthesitton9142]

Man, I can't play this game probably on my laptop because it REFUSES to use EMS for some reason. No matter what I do.

[@Pixelmusement]

+MeatBeat EMS doesn't exist by default. You need to use special parameters with EMM386.EXE in your CONFIG.SYS to get it going.

[@jacobthesitton9142]

I knew of that. I just think there's something wrong with the version of DOS I use on it. I've used the exact same DOS configuration on many PC's in the past. So I think it's my fault.

[@White_Tiger93]

it's sad that, Commander Keen is a good platformer PC games of all times. I sometimes do wish Commader Keen would go beyond DOS, I mean in a way of Super Mario did, make Commander Keen a exclusive PC games in each era that can competing ith Super Mario franchise!! I don't mind if it get milk like crazy like Super Mario did, at least Pc do need something for it as an exclusive platform. but yeah, that's just my crzazy wacky thought though. but man, it would be awesome to have Commander Keen 3D platformer Hd remake or something in this era of gaming.

[@Pixelmusement]

+Gunslinger SyayoRPG/CRPG They actually DID try. For instance, I have the GBC cart for Commander Keen. It's... not very good. The controls are wonky and the limited screen space makes the levels feel claustrophobic, combined with not being able to see half the jumps you're trying to make across death pits. I don't doubt we may see a reboot of the franchise some day, but the initial attempts to turn it into something more than it was failed pretty hard. :/

[@RoboticMagus]

They are actually working on a sequel now with an adult Keen.