[Lunick]

A while back in June last year John Romero and Tom Hall were in a Google Hangout chat about a game from Lootdrop, their new company.

A bunch of Keen fans asked about the source code and they confirmed it existed and they would look for it soon enough,thread with video.




You should be able to view the post here on Facebook.

[DustFalcon85]

Nice! Hope the codes gets released under GPL to the public.

[Komenja]

Awesome!

[DustFalcon85]

Tom Hall says the code releases has been approved by id. Standing by!

[necroslut]

That is good new I guess? Hope to get a release without the choppy scrolling.

[MusicallyInspired]

Ooooo HRP!!

[Lunick]

 DustFalcon85, on 10 September 2013 - 11:22 AM, said:

Tom Hall says the code releases has been approved by id. Standing by!

He says "per id ok" which I think means he has to get their ok first.

The binder has the source codes to Commander Keen 4-6 which will be interesting because number 6 doesn't appear to be owned by id.

John Romero said that he had the sources to 1-3 but looks like that was never found.

[Daedolon]

https://twitter.com/...8323201/photo/1

[MusicallyInspired]

So awesome.

[Lunick]

So how exactly would they go about releasing the source to Commander Keen 6? It was originally published only under Formgen who got bought out by GT Interactive who later on went to become Atari and we all know what happened there. Maybe a single person has the authority to that?

[DustFalcon85]

 Lunick, on 10 September 2013 - 05:15 PM, said:

So how exactly would they go about releasing the source to Commander Keen 6? It was originally published only under Formgen who got bought out by GT Interactive who later on went to become Atari and we all know what happened there. Maybe a single person has the authority to that?

So publishers are in charge of deciding which source code gets released?

[Lunick]

 DustFalcon85, on 11 September 2013 - 05:17 AM, said:

So publishers are in charge of deciding which source code gets released?

I have no idea. Keen Dreams was released on Android which appears to be using the source code and they said they wouldn't be releasing that to the public so, yes?

[Lunick]

http://www.pckf.com/...p?p=64619#64619

Quote

Hi everyone,

I am "the Keith person" that dumped the Keen code. It was stored on a SyQuest 88MB magneto-optical cartridge formatted with the NeXTStep variant of the UFS filesystem, likely on Carmack's NeXT cube at id in 1992. Tom and I had been talking off and on for the past couple of months about finding the cart and transferring its contents, since mentioning to him I have a working SyQuest 88 drive.

The cartridge contained only one file-- "keen4-6.compressed"-- but I renamed it "keen4-6.tar.Z" since that's what the NeXT .compressed format is and the ".compressed" extension would probably not be obvious to most people nowadays. I then put it on a USB stick and gave the tarball and the cartridge back to Tom. Other than that, I did not mess with it at all.

I successfully used dd to create an 88MB raw dump of the cartridge. Funny thing-- I had planned to dump the cartridge twice, just in case, but during the second pass, I kept getting errors around the 2 meg mark. Didn't know whether it was the cart or my drive acting up, but figured it better not to jeopardize the cart, so I just went with what I had.

The code itself is very similar to that of Wolfenstein 3D, even using some of the same files. I spoke with Tom yesterday and he believes it was built using a Borland compiler at the time (Turbo C? Some batch files reference td386.exe). The archive contains the code, some of the source assets, and some tools/utilities for building Keen 4-6, however it is very disorganized. There are multiple copies of the source, zipped and unzipped, scattered across various directories, and it will take a good programmer some time to sort it all out. I'm hoping Tom can have this cleaned up a bit before it's released somewhere.

The screenshot I posted on my Twitter account is of my MacBook Pro desktop, tarball freshly extracted, showing one of several directories full of code. I briefly skimmed it but haven't really delved deep quite yet. Tom most definitely wants to release it soon, but is still waiting for a response from id.

[DustFalcon85]

So any news a/b the source code releases? Still waiting.

[Lunick]

"No"

https://twitter.com/...765864209489920

[ReaperMan]

Bethesda sucks.

[Person of Color]

"Oh there it is. Right under the receipts for Stevie's implants, Rhaluka's tracking number, and the invoice from my shrink! Borderline personality disorder ain't gonna fix itself!"

[RunningWild]

I had emailed John Carmack and John Romero about this sometime over the past summer after breaking out my Book of id and playing Keen 4 a ton. Romero basically told me he still had the source as far as he knew somewhere but he'd need id's blessing on it. I then forwarded that to Carmack who said that he'd love to release it but he wouldn't push Zenimax on it at this point. So, there it is.

[Lunick]

But Tom already contacted id/Zenimax above and is probably still contacting them. Carmack is also gone from id now...

[RunningWild]

Well, believe me, I'd love to see the source released. But if Carmack thought he'd encounter a more-than-reasonable amount of resistance from Zenimax, and he was their golden star, then it's reasonable to think Tom Hall wouldn't be any more successful. You've got to ask yourself : What's their motivation? What's in it for them?

I had replied to John Carmack that I thought it'd engender the goodwill of the community and open the doors for that IP to be used yet again, effectively bringing it back from the dead, but there was no response to this. It seemed that John's mind was made up on the subject.

I'm sure the guy knew what he'd have to contend with legally in order for this to be released. Read up on the Doom 3 source release and you'll see what I mean. Zenimax offered him a good deal of resistance on that but he was driven enough to see it through at that time. This, I'm not so sure anyone has enough foothold in order to make it happen and Zenimax doesn't appear to have any motivation to do so.

[MusicallyInspired]

I strongly dislike the close-fisted attitude of today's game developers with regards to community modding and source releases of old games. This industry is going downhill fast.

[Inspector Lagomorf]

I just can't imagine that Zenimax would launch a billion dollar lawsuit over the release of a source code of a 20-year-old game, but I guess that's the sort of world we live in now.

[DustFalcon85]

 MusicallyInspired, on 12 December 2013 - 06:39 AM, said:

I strongly dislike the close-fisted attitude of today's game developers with regards to community modding and source releases of old games. This industry is going downhill fast.

This. The Video Gaming industry sucks ass nowadays. They don't give a thousand shits and fucks a/b their fans or the quality of the games. They just care a/b one thing: money. That's why I'm not buying an Xboner; not in a million years.

[MusicallyInspired]

I refuse to support any company that doesn't listen to their consumers. Even if that means not playing a game I'm really looking forward to. That's the power we have over them, unfortunately not enough people exercise it. We all need our games now and can't help ourselves and that's why they'll keep taking advantage of us.

[NY00123]

Although the following come from 2010, it may still be interesting to refer to the following posts on Bethesda's blogs at the least (note that regional restrictions may be applied):

- A post from December of 2010, remembering Commander Keen after 20 years: http://www.bethblog....20-years-later/
- An earlier post from March 2010; There isn't a lot which is written, and it's more of a link to an article on RockPaperShotgun (http://www.rockpaper...commander-keen/), but it's still a reference to the Commander Genius project which was done: http://www.bethblog....-mod-is-genius/. Truly, it is mistakenly named a "mod" in the post. That may simply be a mix-up with these VGA(-like) graphics (which may be unmaintained these days).

[Radar]

The last time I ever bought a game was 2005. I hate what games are nowadays. I don't play anything new. I don't even care enough to pirate this stuff.

[MusicallyInspired]

I've only recently been getting into indie games....a lot of stuff is just artsy with not much gameplay and more focus being on presentation and story/conveying emotions, but there is a portion where the good old gameplay magic still exists. I highly recommend the scene.

[Radar]

Oh, I'm totally with you on that. Indie games are great. I was talking about the lame big corporate trash.

[RunningWild]

 DustFalcon85, on 12 December 2013 - 07:33 AM, said:

This. The Video Gaming industry sucks ass nowadays. They don't give a thousand shits and fucks a/b their fans or the quality of the games. They just care a/b one thing: money. That's why I'm not buying an Xboner; not in a million years.

I could go on a diatribe and write a thesis about why and how I agree with this. And this is coming from a diehard capitalist. A long time ago I had worked very hard (read as 70-80 hour weeks for years. Girlfriends did not like this) to even get interviews at game companies and, following that, taking the dreaded programmer test. I met John Carmack (and American McGee, Chris Taylor, and Warren Spector) at the 2001 GDC after he won an award for the Quake 3 engine
(old pic, but you get the idea

Spoiler

).
More recently I was a key organizer for the local chapter of the IGDA. But, at this point, I care so little for modern games, that I wouldn't even want to be involved in any tier of development on them. Games have gone the Hollywood model and look where that's gotten Hollywood, much less the game industry.

At this point in time I'm an independent developer because, while I live or die by my own merits, which is how I like it actually, I work on *only* projects I actually truly give a shit about. Which means I can put my full passion for the games that made me love games period (Duke 3D et al) and put it squarely back of the project I'm working on.

But, I digress. This very recent article on Cracked describes a lot of the issues plaguing the last generation of the game industry and why it's going to get worse before it gets better :

http://www.cracked.c...t-to-crash.html

All this shouldn't be taken as fear-mongering however. Just that the vehicle needs to steer itself into the guardrail and be totaled before it can be rebuilt from-the-ground-up properly. I estimate this time is imminent and I'd like to take part in that rebuilding.

[MusicallyInspired]

Absolutely. That was a good read. I've been waiting for a video game renaissance for a while now.