
Commander Keen Level Maps - helb
http://www.commander-keen.com/level-maps.php
======
coroxout
I spent so many hours playing the first game as a kid, decoding the alphabet
(which I would later discover it tells you how to read in episode 2 or 3
anyway), trying to get every last item, etc.

My favourite bit was the dark, fiery secret tunnel underneath one of the
larger levels ([http://www.commander-
keen.com/levelmaps/1/013.gif](http://www.commander-
keen.com/levelmaps/1/013.gif)), which teleports you to the city on the right-
hand side of the world map at the bottom of the level maps page, not really
visible from the map screen when going between the main cities... but I no
longer remember which of these maps is that city, alas

(or maybe not alas: I hope I've put some more currently useful information in
that part of my brain instead. Thanks for the nostalgia!)

~~~
korethr
Yep, I remember that level. My sister and I called it the Pepsi Maze, because
of its maze-like layout and the fact there were Pepsis everywhere.

I _believe_ this is the secret level: [https://www.commander-keen.com/level-
maps-1.php](https://www.commander-keen.com/level-maps-1.php)

We called it the Teddy Bear Maze, for its higher occurrence of teddy bears
than other levels. Though looking at the layout now, I don't think it quite
deserves the 'maze' designation as much as the Pepsi Maze does. But all those
teddy bears...you could rack up a few extra lives if you managed to snag them
all.

Looking at the levels, this one raises my curiosity: [https://www.commander-
keen.com/levelmaps/1/015.gif](https://www.commander-
keen.com/levelmaps/1/015.gif) Note that there is a yellow keycard, but not a
yellow door. I'm thinking either the level was never quite completed, or
whoever took the screenshots to make these images took one after opening the
yellow door. Reflecting on it now, I think perhaps the latter was the case,
though I don't remember where the yellow door was. Either by one of the
robots, or right before the drop out of the colored area.

~~~
coroxout
Yes,
[http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/Keen_1_Levels](http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/Keen_1_Levels)
says the "teddy bear maze" is the secret level and that the yellow door never
existed.

Not sure if a mistake or red herring; probably the former but in a more
tortuous level layout it would be kind of funny/cruel to make people work to
get the green key to get the yellow key to get nowhere extra at all...

Thanks to khedoros1 for linking to the wiki, which has lots of good stuff on
(and also lets you look at the level maps while the originally linked site is
down):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14656926](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14656926)

------
rvanmil
Google cache:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.commander-
keen.com/level-maps.php)

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.commander-
keen.com/level-maps-1.php)

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.commander-
keen.com/level-maps-2.php)

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.commander-
keen.com/level-maps-3.php)

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.commander-
keen.com/level-maps-4.php)

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.commander-
keen.com/level-maps-5.php)

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.commander-
keen.com/level-maps-6.php)

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.commander-
keen.com/level-maps-7.php)

------
mrob
The entire top half of Keen 3 map 8 is inaccessible because of incorrectly
placed blocks:

[http://www.commander-keen.com/levelmaps/3/008.gif](http://www.commander-
keen.com/levelmaps/3/008.gif)

It's not necessary to complete the level, and it's harder to notice when your
screen doesn't have the resolution to see the whole thing at once, but it's
interesting that it was released like this.

~~~
tibbon
Some of those inaccessible parts of older game maps drove me up a wall as a
kid. I'd see a hint of them, and then... how?!?!?

------
samueloph
A few years ago Tom Hall almost accomplished to release the source code of 4-6
online, i still can't believe we lost it on the final step. So close yet so
far :(

I've created a twitter account just to ask Tom about the progress.

I still have hopes of seeing commander keen released as software libre.

Here's the discussion on twitter
[https://twitter.com/0samueloph/status/668911938844401664](https://twitter.com/0samueloph/status/668911938844401664)

------
mrspeaker
I remember having Commander Keen on my 486 and it was the first game where I
realized the levels were stored in plain ascii. Changing the ascii values
would directly change the level... I lost so many hours of my life to that!

~~~
lkbm
They are?! I would've had so much fun with that as a kid. Is this true of all
Keens? 4 was my first and favorite.

~~~
khedoros1
Doesn't seem like it:
[http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/Commander_Keen_1-3_Level_...](http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/Commander_Keen_1-3_Level_format)

[http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/RLEW_compression](http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/RLEW_compression)

Looking at a hexdump of the Keen1 file matches those specs. Keen 4 uses
another, more complicated kind of compression, too:
[http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/Carmack_compression](http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/Carmack_compression)

They might be thinking of earlier Id software games. Some of those weren't
compressed, and you could at least edit them with a hex editor pretty easily.

~~~
coroxout
That wiki is brilliant, thanks!

------
joshmn
Man oh man. I was born in '91; Keen has a special place in my heart.

I remember when my father — a field-service engineer for then Digital (more
server hardware than anything software) — brought home an early release of
Windows 95 from a MSFT buddy. It was around this time of year, 1995.

I managed to install it on whatever hardware we had laying around the house.
Cool beans.

Then I installed Keen. But the sound didn't work.

I asked father dearest. He fuddled around and couldn't figure it out. I tried
a different pair of Soundblaster Speakers (looked like these
[https://iak.olx.ph/images_olxph/834942014_1_1000x700.jpg?buc...](https://iak.olx.ph/images_olxph/834942014_1_1000x700.jpg?bucket=05)),
but no dice.

Then I realized that it wasn't the speakers but the game, because the sound
worked otherwise!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miZHa7ZC6Z0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miZHa7ZC6Z0)

I took my father's pager and scrolled through, looking for the MSFT guy. I
called him at 9am the next day. "Hi msft guy my name is joshmn I am guy-from-
digital's son; I have a question about the operating system I have on this
disk. Do you have a moment?"

I remember my mom standing in the kitchen saying "what are you doing joshmn?"
"Mom please one moment I am talking to the msft guy"

She almost died laughing.

I explained my issue with Keen and sound. I can only imagine he was amused.

Luckily for me, his son had the same issue! It required a simple change in a
text file somewhere, I can't remember where, but after an hour I finally
figured it out.

Same guy traded a SEGA Genesis for a whopping 23" CRT a few years later.

My mom says I was a smart kid. Sure, maybe, but little does she know about how
I couldn't find the second DOOM floppy for the installer. To replace it, I
took a Windows 95 floppy, put a different sticker over it, and tried my
hardest to write (physically, on the label) the same exact
design/letters/words of the other DOOM floppy, changing the 1/x for 2/x.

------
kronos29296
I remember playing Commander Keen 4 demo a lot (I finished all the demo
levels) then searching for a free version full download in google. (I used to
do that a lot when I was younger.) somehow they never yielded any free
versions or downloads.

The game was a blast. Then I played and completed Keen 1 when it was released
as freeware. They felt like completely different games (Keen 4 is a lot bigger
game than Keen 1 which is like Duke 1 compared to Nukem 2).

I still have all 6 of them (Older me now knows how to get full versions
without the stupid google search terms) but I no longer play them though they
still as good as they used to be.

~~~
khedoros1
I played most of the way through the 1st one recently, and some of the 4th. In
the mid-90s, my friend gave me a pirated copy of one of them. Maybe Keen 5? Or
Keen Dreams? It had one of the piracy-protection things where you have to name
the enemy to get past, and I only knew the names of 2 enemies. I'd keep
exiting and re-starting the game until I found one that I knew.

Captain Comic and Commander Keen were my Super Marios until about 1995,
because we had a PC but no game consoles.

------
speps
For those who don't know, it's made by id Software :
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Software#Commander_Keen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Software#Commander_Keen)

~~~
jameskegel
I got it for free, along with Jill of the Jungle, and Wolfenstein 3D, with a
Gravis PC Gamepad back in the day. They all came on two floppies, I was amazed
that so much content could go on two discs that I could carry with me.

Revelation: Today, it's amazing to me to have a 128GB ssd on my keychain.

~~~
lanaius
Commander Keen 4 and Duke Nukem 2 with a Gravis joystick of some description.

~~~
UweSchmidt
This one maybe?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravis_PC_GamePad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravis_PC_GamePad)

~~~
jff
We got Keen 4 bundled with this Gravis joystick:
[http://mocagh.org/forsale/gravis-back.jpg](http://mocagh.org/forsale/gravis-
back.jpg)

I played Keen exclusively with a joystick for years and was pretty good at it.
If you sat me down with the exact same joystick I could probably still play
pretty well, but the much looser feel of a modern joystick would screw me up.
When my brother and I would play Keen, we'd make the plastic on the joystick
case creak from the frantic maneuvering!

------
deepnet
Jason Scott has archived Commander Keen, playable in Browser via DosBox

[https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_1_-_Maroone...](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_1_-_Marooned_on_Mars_1990)

[https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_2_-_The_Ear...](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_2_-_The_Earth_Explodes_1990)

[https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_4_-_Secret_...](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_4_-_Secret_of_the_Oracle_1991)

[https://archive.org/details/msdos__K6DEMO__shareware](https://archive.org/details/msdos__K6DEMO__shareware)

[https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_-
_Keen_Drea...](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Commander_Keen_-
_Keen_Dreams_1993)

Commander Keen created iD software.

Also noteworthy for the use of John Carmack's adaptive tile refresh to smooth
scroll on early 90s PCs.

------
sharpercoder
I very much enjoyed the speedruns of this game done by CapnClever on twitch.
He has records on most official games and also has run some of the unofficial
games.

It great to see someone running through levels I sweated blood and tears on as
a kid.

[https://m.twitch.tv/capnclever/profile](https://m.twitch.tv/capnclever/profile)

------
thinkMOAR
Commander Keen and Captain Comic, i do not think i spend more time on anything
else at that age.

~~~
ovulator
Captain Comic 2 seems to be almost impossible to find a working copy of. It
seems it had some sort of copy protection that when the files were copied it
locked you out of a majority of the game.

It seems this would be trivial to get around, but there doesn't seem to be
enough interest in the game to find any information on it.

~~~
khedoros1
Any info on how it locks you out (text it shows? behavior of the lock?), how
soon into the game, etc?

The binary itself seems either packed, compressed, or obfuscated, and that's
probably part of why you haven't found a fixed version.

~~~
ovulator
It has been a while since I tried. These are the only two sites I could find
that mention it:

[http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/captain-comic-ii-
fractured...](http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/captain-comic-ii-fractured-
reality)

[https://raisedonvideogames.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/captain-...](https://raisedonvideogames.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/captain-
comic-ii-copy-protection/)

~~~
khedoros1
Interesting, thanks. By this point, I'll bet there's a page somewhere with the
codes...in fact, the copy that I downloaded has a file "PROTCODE.TXT" with the
codes to look up.

They look like they're just 16-bit values. It tells you to look up things like
"A, 5". In the table, there are 16 letters (columns) and 128 numbers (rows).
I'll bet it's just checked against some algorithm in the game code.

It's tough to see where some of the code comes from, though. The game copies
chunks of the binary around within itself, and constructs function calls "by
hand" (pushing a memory address byte-by-byte, then "returning" to it). It's
not horrendous to trace, but more than a half-hour job for me.

------
eridal
aand we broke it.

Web archive to the rescue:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20170628072214/www.commander-
kee...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170628072214/www.commander-
keen.com/level-maps.php)

------
wyldfire
Related: Video from WeAreDevelopers Conference 2017, "The Early Days of Id
Software - John Romero" [1]. Great nostalgia.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFziBfvAFnM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFziBfvAFnM)

------
metakermit
Ah, such fond memories looking at these levels… This is where I learned my
first command prompt skills – cd-ing through directories, dir /p-ing and
running the various keen.exe programs :)

------
Waterluvian
Some of those would make great posters.

I wish I could see the same for Jazz Jackrabbit.

------
Markoff
related link, Commander Keen 4 play in your browser

[https://classicreload.com/commander-keen-4-secret-of-the-
ora...](https://classicreload.com/commander-keen-4-secret-of-the-oracle.html)

though personally I prefer Crystal caves, have fond memories of playing it on
computer in father's work [https://classicreload.com/crystal-
caves.html](https://classicreload.com/crystal-caves.html)

------
moovacha
Very fond memories indeed of playing this DOS game on old Celeron and Pentium
II.

The game is honestly much better than the Marios and Sonics that it was trying
to mimic (at least part 5 and 6 were IMO)

~~~
Narishma
If those CPUs are old, what does that make the 286s the game was made for.

~~~
dlevine
I originally ran Commander Keen 4 on a 286 using a 5.25" floppy I got from
some kiosk that was selling shareware disks.

------
vatotemking
OMG I didnt know about Keen 1, 3, 5 and 6! Will have something to do in the
weekend. I first played Keen 4 on floppy disks installed on Win 98.

~~~
khedoros1
I played Keen 1 first, and Keen 4 a couple of years later. We might've had at
least the first one before we even had Windows 3.1. I remember the clamshell
package that shareware kinds of games used to be sold in, because after
installing Keen4, that package sat on the hutch above the computer desk for a
long time, and I touched it every time I reached up to turn on the speakers.

I knew about Keen Dreams at some point in my childhood. 2, 3, 5, and 6 were
unknown to me for a _long_ time (might've been in college in the early 2000s
before I knew of them?)

------
Dowwie
I discovered Commander Keen through a "software of the month club" 3.5" floppy
disk delivered by mail

------
cdubzzz
See also: [http://nesmaps.com/](http://nesmaps.com/)

~~~
lubujackson
Might as well go to the mother lode: [http://vgmaps.com/](http://vgmaps.com/)

------
georgehdd
What's up with the swastika in Keen 5 Level 4 (lower right corner)?

~~~
puddintane
As thekaleb mentioned the creator seems to reference this symbol a lot in his
games. Here is more of a back story (after some google-fu of course as I'm not
very familiar with the games)

Seems like Keen 5 has it as an easter egg to reference Wolfenstein [1].

And Wolfenstein uses it since the game has a "Nazi Party" within it (if you
fight them or fight with them I'm not aware of) [2].

Interesting quote from [2] "The inclusion of the swastika led to the banning
of the conventional game in Germany, as cultural stigma against the swastika
is high there."

[1]
[http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/Keen_5_Easter_eggs#Swastika](http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/Keen_5_Easter_eggs#Swastika)

[2]
[http://wolfenstein.wikia.com/wiki/Swastika](http://wolfenstein.wikia.com/wiki/Swastika)

~~~
chungy
While probably a mistake on John Romero's part, Keen uses 卍 in its easter egg
while the nazis used 卐 instead.

~~~
bananabill
True but regardless of which one is technically correct, both pretty much
share the same negative connotations now. I used to always hear people talking
about how the swastika is really a sign of peace, but regardless of what it
originally meant, it doesn't mean that anymore.

~~~
lotsofpulp
It doesn't have anything to do with Nazis to at least a billion people in
India. I'd even bet that the majority of people around the world associate
swastikas with non-Nazi stuff.

------
bluedino
Is the tool available that made these maps?

~~~
coldpie
I dunno about for these Keen maps, but I wrote a level dumper for the classic
NES game M.C. Kids if you want to see what that looks like:

[https://gitlab.com/mcmapper/mcmapper/blob/master/main.c](https://gitlab.com/mcmapper/mcmapper/blob/master/main.c)

Output:

[https://tcrf.net/Proto:M.C._Kids](https://tcrf.net/Proto:M.C._Kids)

I'm contemplating turning it into a full level editor for the ROM hacking
community, but I don't know how much use it would actually get.

