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[Henry Panic]

Commander Keen is seen as a legendary franchise that 'proved' computers could have colorful scrolling platformers and is considered the series that launched ID Soft into celebrity status, leading to their work on Wolfenstein and Doom.

It's often considered one of the biggest technical achievements in gaming and an important milestone.

My question is: why?

Were there some DOS users who locked themselves from the outside world? Have these last few decades of poor journalism allowed this story to go unchallenged so long it stuck?

Let me show you why this shocks me in an extreme way.

Here is Commander Keen:

Here is an Amiga game from the same time:

What exactly are people saying that Carmack accomplished with Commender Keen?

I just saw a history video on a big game site that talked about how important Commander Keens impact was on the industry, and how Carmack used his magic fingers to produce something that no one else was able to do. It's a very common tale that's been around for decades.

But how do you look at Commander Keen next to a contemporary and still honestly believe that?

I don't see a single advantage Keen has over Spellfire. Keen looks like something a college kid threw together in his bedroom overnight for a college project. Due the next morning.

 

[64bitmodels]

I don't think anyone is saying that. I think people like it because Carmack made it.

 

[Hendrick's]

Commander Keen was easier to pirate.

 

[existensmaximum]

Wasn't it a lot easier to make side-scrolling games on the Amiga than on a DOS PC? But regardless, yeah Keen really wasn't great. Quite bad level design overall compared to contemporary Amiga or console games. Maybe it was just a lack of completion on PC?

 

[brian0057]

It was considered an achievement because PCs at the time couldn't render a sidescrolling game as smoothly as consoles could.

 

[Fuz]

It's often considered one of the biggest technical achievements in gaming and an important milestone.

...no?

 

[theHFIC]

Because even in 1990 Amiga had one foot in the grave. IBM PC was the future going forward and the developments for side scrolling (vertical annd horizontal) and first person shooters helped dump a few shovels of dirt on the Amiga grave.

 

[64bitmodels]

Because even in 1990 Amiga had one foot in the grave. IBM PC was the future going forward and the developments for side scrolling (vertical annd horizontal) and first person shooters helped dump a few shovels of dirt on the Amiga grave.

Wasn't it a lot easier to make side-scrolling games on the Amiga than on a DOS PC?

OK, that makes a lot of sense.


Why was IBM/DOS in the 80s so underpowered in comparison to Amiga though?

 

[RoboFu]

Amiga and c64 are very different from a dos computer with no real gpu

 

[DeltaPolarBear]

I don't see a single advantage Keen has over Spellfire. Keen looks like something a college kid threw together in his bedroom overnight for a college project. Due the next morning.

It was meant to be a Super Mario port. The art is thrown together to reuse the tech once Nintendo rejected PC gaming. And Nintendo never changed their position to this day.

 

[Henry Panic]

Because even in 1990 Amiga had one foot in the grave. IBM PC was the future going forward and the developments for side scrolling (vertical annd horizontal) and first person shooters helped dump a few shovels of dirt on the Amiga grave.

Lol no, almost every gaming capable device including the IBM itself had better scrolling games than Keen.

Quite bad level design overall compared to contemporary Amiga or console games. Maybe it was just a lack of completion on PC?

Amiga and c64 are very different from a dos computer with no real gpu

I had considered this but then found these PC games came out the same time:




https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ4OOoc5DZY&pp=ygUNQ29udGludXVtIGRvcw==




https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3-DzlT68o4Q&pp=ygULRG9zIHplbGlhcmQ=

and compared them to Keen:



Even if we only limit this to PC and the same time it still falls behind other games.

Maybe fans of Wolfenstein and Doom like him so much (and forgot about Romero) that they wanted to stretch his success back a few years?

I agree...It is a technical achievment on PC,

Is it? The games in the videos above seem to be better achievements imo.

 

[Henry Panic]

OK, that makes a lot of sense.


Why was IBM/DOS in the 80s so underpowered in comparison to Amiga though?

Almost came out in 1991. It was launched the end of 1990 not the 80s.

That's why it's so strange.

 

[Self_Destructive]

The people who make your favorite games today look up to people who made games like Commander Keen.. and they do so because they managed to do very difficult things using clever tricks which the hardware shouldn't have been capable of.

John Carmack is legendary for that reason. He made things work which shouldn't have.. on the platform that he worked on.

 

[Ivan]

I agree...It is a technical achievment on PC, but if you look at the industry as a whole, it looks terrible. There is a certan charm to games of that type, though. Something like "impossible ports", the thing that shouldn't work.

It is just not easthetically pleasing and wouldn't intrigue even a kid from that time if it has seen anything outside pc. I remember myself thinking the same about early first person games, Wolfenstein and even Doom. I appreciated revolutionary new approach, but I clearly remember myself thinking that that's just plain ugly compared to beautiful 2D games and that I'll continue preferring them.

 

[Henry Panic]

The people who make your favorite games today look up to people who made games like Commander Keen.. and they do so because they managed to do very difficult things using clever tricks which the hardware shouldn't have been capable of.

John Carmack is legendary for that reason. He made things work which shouldn't have.. on the platform that he worked on.

So are the guys who made the more technically impressive games at the same time more legendary?

 

[Neff]

DOS users

locked themselves from the outside world

There's your answer.

 

[Balducci30]

In September 1990, John Carmack, a game programmer for the Gamer's Edge video game subscription service and disk magazine at Softdisk in Shreveport, Louisiana, developed a way to create graphics which could smoothly scroll in any direction in a computer game. At the time, IBM-compatible general-purpose computers were not able to replicate the common feat of video game consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System, which were capable of redrawing the entire screen fast enough for a side-scrolling video game due to their specialized hardware. Carmack created adaptive tile refresh: a way to slide the majority of the visible screen to the side both horizontally and vertically when the player moved as if it had not changed, and only redraw the newly-visible portions of the screen. Other games had previously redrawn the whole screen in chunks, or like Carmack's earlier games were limited to scrolling in one direction.[4][25] He discussed the idea with coworker Tom Hall, who encouraged him to demonstrate it by recreating the first level of the recent Super Mario Bros. 3 on a computer. The pair did so in a single overnight session, with Hall recreating the graphics of the game—replacing the player character of Mario with Dangerous Dave, a character from an eponymous previous Gamer's Edge game—while Carmack optimized the code. The next morning on September 20, the resulting game, Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement, was shown to their other coworker John Romero. Romero recognized Carmack's idea as a major accomplishment: Nintendo was one of the most successful companies in Japan, largely due to the success of their Mario franchise, and the ability to replicate the gameplay of the series on a computer could have large implications.[25]

Of all people to question - kinda weird John Carmack is the target when he’s forwarded video game graphics many times throughout his career

 

[Pedro Motta]

Comander Keen was the first game on PC to use a smooth 60 fps scroll and larger level streaming, only been done before by Super Mario Bros on the NES. At least that's what I saw John Carmack say in a video somewhere.

 

[Ivan]

Comander Keen was the first game on PC to use a smooth 60 fps scroll and larger level streaming, only been done before by Super Mario Bros on the NES. At least that's what I saw John Carmack say in a video somewhere.

Not even close to 60 fps scrolling. It barely works, that was the achievement . And even gameboy and c64 had 60 fps scrolling...

Carmack is a legend, of course, but this is not about him, but the game itself.

 

[01011001]

Commander Keen is seen as a legendary franchise that 'proved' computers could have colorful scrolling platformers and is considered the series that launched ID Soft into celebrity status, leading to their work on Wolfenstein and Doom.

It's often considered one of the biggest technical achievements in gaming and an important milestone.

My question is: why?

Were there some DOS users who locked themselves from the outside world? Have these last few decades of poor journalism allowed this story to go unchallenged so long it stuck?

Let me show you why this shocks me in an extreme way.

Here is Commander Keen:

Here is an Amiga game from the same time:

What exactly are people saying that Carmack accomplished with Commender Keen?

I just saw a history video on a big game site that talked about how important Commander Keens impact was on the industry, and how Carmack used his magic fingers to produce something that no one else was able to do. It's a very common tale that's been around for decades.

But how do you look at Commander Keen next to a contemporary and still honestly believe that?

I don't see a single advantage Keen has over Spellfire. Keen looks like something a college kid threw together in his bedroom overnight for a college project. Due the next morning.

the Amiga is not a PC my dude.
your whole argument is therefore completely irrelevant.

Commander Keen was a technological breakthrough because IT WAS ON A PC

 

[64bitmodels]

Commander Keen was a technological breakthrough because IT WAS ON A PC

he listed other games that came out earlier in the same year that had smooth scrolling & better graphics as well so it's not really a thing only Carmack did. He just got the most recognition for it because he'd end up making Doom later down the line.

 

[Henry Panic]

In September 1990, John Carmack, a game programmer for the Gamer's Edge video game subscription service and disk magazine at Softdisk in Shreveport, Louisiana, developed a way to create graphics which could smoothly scroll in any direction in a computer game. At the time, IBM-compatible general-purpose computers were not able to replicate the common feat of video game consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System, which were capable of redrawing the entire screen fast enough for a side-scrolling video game due to their specialized hardware. Carmack created adaptive tile refresh: a way to slide the majority of the visible screen to the side both horizontally and vertically when the player moved as if it had not changed, and only redraw the newly-visible portions of the screen. Other games had previously redrawn the whole screen in chunks, or like Carmack's earlier games were limited to scrolling in one direction.[4][25] He discussed the idea with coworker Tom Hall, who encouraged him to demonstrate it by recreating the first level of the recent Super Mario Bros. 3 on a computer. The pair did so in a single overnight session, with Hall recreating the graphics of the game—replacing the player character of Mario with Dangerous Dave, a character from an eponymous previous Gamer's Edge game—while Carmack optimized the code. The next morning on September 20, the resulting game, Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement, was shown to their other coworker John Romero. Romero recognized Carmack's idea as a major accomplishment: Nintendo was one of the most successful companies in Japan, largely due to the success of their Mario franchise, and the ability to replicate the gameplay of the series on a computer could have large implications.[25]

Of all people to question - kinda weird John Carmack is the target when he’s forwarded video game graphics many times throughout his career

Carmack has done very little to move graphics forward unless you pretend his contemporaries don't exist, he mostly makes advanced for the time compromises/alternatives for something he hasn't figured out yet, such as polygons.

I also find it funny Carmack the genius didn't realize SMB3 can't play on a standard NES and works because of hardware enhancement by the ROM.

The irony of this story is incredible. Wants to prove PC hardware can do something without help, by trying to recreate levels from a game that can't run on an NES alone and needed help.

 

[Pedro Motta]

the Amiga is not a PC my dude.
your whole argument is therefore completely irrelevant.

Commander Keen was a technological breakthrough because IT WAS ON A PC

This! Consoles were doing it, not the PC. That was the achievement.

 

[01011001]

he listed other games that came out earlier in the same year that had smooth scrolling & better graphics as well so it's not really a thing only Carmack did. He just got the most recognition for it because he'd end up making Doom later down the line.

I don't see a PC game listed in the OP, I only read the first post. the only game listed there is an Amiga game, and the Amiga is not a PC

 

[64bitmodels]

I only read the first post.

that's why you missed it dummy

Lol no, almost every gaming capable device including the IBM itself had better scrolling games than Keen.




I had considered this but then found these PC games came out the same time:




https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ4OOoc5DZY&pp=ygUNQ29udGludXVtIGRvcw==




https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3-DzlT68o4Q&pp=ygULRG9zIHplbGlhcmQ=

and compared them to Keen:



Even if we only limit this to PC and the same time it still falls behind other games.

Maybe fans of Wolfenstein and Doom like him so much (and forgot about Romero) that they wanted to stretch his success back a few years?



Is it? The games in the videos above seem to be better achievements imo.

 

[Balducci30]

Carmack has done very little to move graphics forward unless you pretend his contemporaries don't exist, he mostly makes advanced for the time compromises/alternatives for something he hasn't figured out yet, such as polygons.

I also find it funny Carmack the genius didn't realize SMB3 can't play on a standard NES and works because of hardware enhancement by the ROM.

The irony of this story is incredible. Wants to prove PC hardware can do something without help, by trying to recreate levels from a game that can't run on an NES alone and needed help.

What are you talking about wolfenstein, doom, and quake engines are were revolutionary, Call of Duty was based off quake, Half life was based off Quake

 

[64bitmodels]

that being said, despite the graphics commander keen looks like it'd be a much more fun game to play than the other 2 PC 1990 scrollers he listed so... yea

 

[ZehDon]

For starters, you're comparing the first game in an indie shareware series to an arcade port that landed three years after its arcade release, developed by a large video game developer. Out of context, you're not seeing what id actually achieved. And based on some of your posts in this thread, you seem to have an axe to grind for John Carmack. Anyway, Keen landed on the home computer first, had console style screel scrolling, and it used the shareware model, allowing the game to go everywhere. No one was doing any of this this on PC when keen released. Commander Keen also evolved dramatically in its second trilogy, released late 1990, which is largely where its technical achievements were truly cemented:

What Carmack initially achieved was probably close to what Radan did: simple selective screen updates to enable scrolling. This approach had a lot of draw backs, and you can see it in Radan pretty clearly. Designers were required to make sure levels had large fields of repeating titles, to allow the machines to actually draw out the images because the hardware simply couldn't handle too many tile changes. Radan's stages were also broken up, split two parts each I believe, whereas Carmack's initial "adaptive tile refresh" allowed for effectively unlimited scrolling, at least on the horizontal plane. Carmack's second solution, however, is where he left everyone else in the dust. Employed in the second trilogy, Carmack's new technique meant that designers no longer needed to create large fields of repeating tiles, they could employ unlimited scrolling on the vertical and horizontal planes, and they could have way more objects, enemies, and interactions in the world. Keen went from doing what the consoles were doing in the first trilogy, to leaving everything else behind in the second trilogy. And, Keen was effectively free - at least for the first 1/3rd.

Keen showed the world that consoles weren't the only place games of all kinds could flourish. Of course, ids next game, Wolfenstein 3D, set the world on fire and the rest is history. Fun fact: the level editor used for Keen was also used to make the levels in Wolfenstein 3D.

 

[64bitmodels]

For starters, you're comparing the first game in an indie shareware series to an arcade port that landed three years after its arcade release, developed by a large video game developer. Out of context, you're not seeing what id actually achieved. And based on some of your posts in this thread, you seem to have an axe to grind for John Carmack. Anyway, Keen landed on the home computer first, had console style screel scrolling, and it used the shareware model, allowing the game to go everywhere. No one was doing any of this this on PC when keen released. Commander Keen also evolved dramatically in its second trilogy, released late 1990, which is largely where its technical achievements were truly cemented:

What Carmack initially achieved was probably close to what Radan did: simple selective screen updates to enable scrolling. This approach had a lot of draw backs, and you can see it in Radan pretty clearly. Designers were required to make sure levels had large fields of repeating titles, to allow the machines to actually draw out the images because the hardware simply couldn't handle too many tile changes. Radan's stages were also broken up, split two parts each I believe, whereas Carmack's initial "adaptive tile refresh" allowed for effectively unlimited scrolling, at least on the horizontal plane. Carmack's second solution, however, is where he left everyone else in the dust. Employed in the second trilogy, Carmack's new technique meant that designers no longer needed to create large fields of repeating tiles, they could employ unlimited scrolling on the vertical and horizontal planes, and they could have way more objects, enemies, and interactions in the world. Keen went from doing what the consoles were doing in the first trilogy, to leaving everything else behind in the second trilogy. And, Keen was effectively free - at least for the first 1/3rd.

Keen showed the world that consoles weren't the only place games of all kinds could flourish. Of course, ids next game, Wolfenstein 3D, set the world on fire and the rest is history. Fun fact: the level editor used for Keen was also used to make the levels in Wolfenstein 3D.

This explains a lot and makes a ton of sense. Keen's levels in the gifs and videos posted look far more open ended than the other games likely due to Carmack's far superior solution of scrolling. Thanks for your insight!

 

[Johnny Concrete]

The OP got banned. Is John Carmack a mod here?

 

[Guilty_AI]

Console warring for 80s machines must be a new record.

 

[Northeastmonk]

I love Commander Keen. Wtf? I loved collecting the soda bottles.

 

[Holammer]

Never played Keen, but PC at the time did not have chips to support any of the 2D trickery the C64 or Amiga enjoyed. So they had to do everything with code and throw CPU at it.
Same thing happened on the Spectrum and there it's honestly more impressive, with games like Cobra, which features 2 channel audio, sprites and smooth scrolling. Not bad for a machine with a beeper for sound, no dedicated video chip and only 48k of RAM. But it had a toasty 3.5MHz Z80 and if you have enough CPU, you can brute force anything.

 

[Mr Hyde]

OP got shit canned for console warring in his own thread

 

[FUBARx89]

Cause of Carmack, man was(is?) A legend for pushing boundaries in tech. Doom, Quake & Wolf never of been as big as they where without the tech Carmack pushed out for them.

 

[64bitmodels]

is it really appropriate to call him a console warrior when he was PC warring?

That being said he was bullshotting and spreading misinformation which made me think far less of Keen and the technical accomplishment that Carmack accomplished (i knew commander keen before this but i didn't know why it was significant beyond "it was made by the guy who did doom!")

 

[Self_Destructive]

So are the guys who made the more technically impressive games at the same time more legendary?

It isn't technically more impressive. What is more technically impressive is getting something that theoretically shouldn't be possible on the hardware, to work.

 

[Sorcerer]

Was Keen one of those Shareware games? That could explain it. It got into a lot of people's hands because of the distribution method, and because of that and ID's subsquent rise with Doom, people give it a lot of respect because of the association.

 

[64bitmodels]

sharewares were the original demos before demos came along and did the exact same thing but a lot worse.

RE4 Remake's Demo ends after the village fight. if RE4 Remake were shareware, it'd end the moment you get to the castle

 

[drganon]

Between this thread and the sales thread, guess the mods got sick of him making shit up. Rest in piss Henry.

 

[Ozzie666]

I was thinking it was just Eddie G. under another name, I think each thread confirmed it.

 

[64bitmodels]

Never played Keen, but PC at the time did not have chips to support any of the 2D trickery the C64 or Amiga enjoyed. So they had to do everything with code and throw CPU at it.
Same thing happened on the Spectrum and there it's honestly more impressive, with games like Cobra, which features 2 channel audio, sprites and smooth scrolling. Not bad for a machine with a beeper for sound, no dedicated video chip and only 48k of RAM. But it had a toasty 3.5MHz Z80 and if you have enough CPU, you can brute force anything.

youre gonna hate me for this but the ZX spectrum honestly seems like a torture machine.... the colors, sound, everything feels more primitive than even the C64. I can't imagine having used that machine as a primary gaming device back then, the 16 bit computers in the mid 80s were so much better

 

[Corndog]

Commander Keen is seen as a legendary franchise that 'proved' computers could have colorful scrolling platformers and is considered the series that launched ID Soft into celebrity status, leading to their work on Wolfenstein and Doom.

It's often considered one of the biggest technical achievements in gaming and an important milestone.

My question is: why?

Were there some DOS users who locked themselves from the outside world? Have these last few decades of poor journalism allowed this story to go unchallenged so long it stuck?

Let me show you why this shocks me in an extreme way.

Here is Commander Keen:

Here is an Amiga game from the same time:

What exactly are people saying that Carmack accomplished with Commender Keen?

I just saw a history video on a big game site that talked about how important Commander Keens impact was on the industry, and how Carmack used his magic fingers to produce something that no one else was able to do. It's a very common tale that's been around for decades.

But how do you look at Commander Keen next to a contemporary and still honestly believe that?

I don't see a single advantage Keen has over Spellfire. Keen looks like something a college kid threw together in his bedroom overnight for a college project. Due the next morning.

Probably because it allowed higher resolution with 256 colors. My mind is fuzzy on it so I could be wrong

I think you had to choose higher res with 16 colors or lower with 256. They did some weird interpolation of the (4?) memory pages to allow it to use more resolution. Someone correct me if my memory is wrong. And for nostalgia. What is A000h?

Edit: after checking not sure if commander keen had 256 colors. If might of just been fancier scrolling on pc.
The graphics mode I was thinking of is called mode x.

Edit2:
Here is a wiki on the scrolling.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_tile_refresh

 

[lmimmfn]

It was the US discovering what was done on the Spectrum years beforehand so yeah there's that.

Not to take away from Carmacks achievements later with Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake etc. but the scrolling in Commander Keen I don't feel was anything to write home about.

 

[Drizzlehell]

Damn, did John Carmack take a shit on OP's doormat or something? Why was he so aggressively ignorant on this topic and bitter towards Carmack?

Anyway, rest in piss.

 

[Corndog]

youre gonna hate me for this but the ZX spectrum honestly seems like a torture machine.... the colors, sound, everything feels more primitive than even the C64. I can't imagine having used that machine as a primary gaming device back then, the 16 bit computers in the mid 80s were so much better

It’s not that hard on pc, just slow. In 94 I made a simple graphics engine in c and assembly. It just had sprites, background bitmaps and page swapping. I also made a simple screen maker. I didn’t have screen scrolling but if I was more ambitious I could have done it. I did have image scaling based on brezenham line drawing algorithm.

 

[U.S.E. CD]

I do believe theres an argument id helped RPGs and racing games become the leading genre in advancing PC graphics forward by having W3D and DOOM go the 2D raycasting method. After W3D was inspired by an action RPG with dynamic npcs with texture mapped 3D.

Never made sense to me.

But Command Keen is inconsequential. It was considered another Apogee platformer back then that most never really played or cared about, so the poster saying it's regarded as a legendary franchise is wild imo.

Most people don't even remember Apogee platformers. Duke Nukem didn't get popular until he was in an fps.

 

[ZehDon]

I do believe theres an argument id helped RPGs and racing games become the leading genre in advancing PC graphics forward by having W3D and DOOM go the 2D raycasting method. After W3D was inspired by an action RPG with dynamic npcs with texture mapped 3D...

No, Doom (1993) isn't a 2D ray caster like Wolfenstein 3D, which could only operate in 90 degree walls. Doom renders 3D geometry at abitrary angles, shapes and objects have three co-ords, and it uses binary space partitioning to break up its (for the time) insanely complex 3D worlds. At the time, sim games - like Flight Simulator - were pushing general purpose 3D well ahead of anything id did, but no hardware could do that stuff fast enough for the types of mainstream arcade-style games id wanted to make. Hence all the techniques Carmack had to come up with. And Carmack's binary space partitioning implementation? That's still around today, and was actually the defacto method for PVS determination for a long, long time. FPS titles, especially those created by id, became the standard bearer for PC graphics, not just because of their fidelity, but because of their speed. Wing Commander technically looked better than Doom - but Doom was a whole heck of a lot faster. If you wanted to impress people, 15 FPS Wing Commander was nothing compared to 35 FPS Doom.

... But Command Keen is inconsequential. It was considered another Apogee platformer back then that most never really played or cared about, so the poster saying it's regarded as a legendary franchise is wild imo...

Commander Keen was one of the most successful shareware titles ever at the time of its release. For its time, it exploded on PC: PCs finally had titles that could match what the big console titles - such as Mario - were doing. Its numbers are miniscule by today's standards, but back then, Commander Keen was a pretty big hit.

Most people don't even remember Apogee platformers...

And yet, here we are, still talking about them.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

Carmack has done very little to move graphics forward...

I vote this post as winner and title holder in the hall of fame for stupid GAF posts. Truly an ill-informed post. My word that is something special right there.

 

[MarkMe2525]

I also find it funny Carmack the genius didn't realize SMB3 can't play on a standard NES and works because of hardware enhancement by the ROM.

What would make you believe he wasn't aware of this? Is this your attempt at a strawman?