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Commander Keen 4 is behaving badly

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First post, by radivx

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Hi,
I've got some trouble with Commander Keen on my K5-PR133, 64 MB Ram, DOS 6.22 setup.
Most other games runs fine, but Commander Keen is a real bitch during startup.

The game uses a really long time to load on the initializing screen.
This happens only during the first launch after a boot/reboot, if you quit and then restart the program, everything is ready in 0 seconds.
It does usually not show the "Ready - Press a key" message so you have to poke the keyboard at random to get past the loading screen.

The game detects around 366 kbytes of memory and no XMS memory (even though the mem /c command is suggesting around 600k free).
Wolf 3D detects XMS properly and all the CD-ROM games i've tested with DOS-4GW is working properly.
The game also completely disregards Ctrl+Alt+Del as a keyboard command... 😖

Any input would be greatly appreaciated 😀

Reply 1 of 4, by keenmaster486

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I wouldn't worry about the memory thing, Keen usually takes as much memory as it needs whether or nor more is available.

I have a few suggestions:

1. See if Keen Dreams fails.
2. Try Catacomb 3D and see what it does; it uses pretty much the same memory manager iirc.
3. Try Commander Keen in Atroxian Realm (a fangame). It's a mishmash of code from Keen, Cat3D, and Wolf3D. (download link: Here)
4. Try asking this question over at the Public Commander Keen Forum; there are some people over there who have pretty much memorized the source code and would be a lot more help to you.

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 2 of 4, by Jo22

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I usually don't run Keen4 on such a setup, but perhaps it's related to Adlib sound ?
Maybe it can't properly detect the card because of timing issues. When Keen4 came out, people were still using 286 boxes (or lower).
Or maybe it is related to your graphics card ? It's engine was made for EGA, but contained several SVGA fixes. Perhaps some registers are in a wrong state ?
Anyway, I'm just guessing here. Perhaps it's something completely different. Maybe it tries to detect EMS, for example ?
But as keenmaster486 said, memory isn't an issue. Normaly it doesn't need EMS, Keen also runs fine if it can get enough memory elswhere.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 3 of 4, by mattlacey

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I was futzing about with emm386 the other day to try and get TIE fighter working, and I noticed that if I used it to enable EMS then Keen 4 would fail to load — I'd get the detected settings screen all shifted/garbled and then the machine would reboot when I hit the space bar! Using "emm386 /noems" seems make it work fine.

Reply 4 of 4, by Jo22

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mattlacey wrote:

I was futzing about with emm386 the other day to try and get TIE fighter working, and I noticed that if I used it to enable EMS then Keen 4 would fail to load — I'd get the detected settings screen all shifted/garbled and then the machine would reboot when I hit the space bar! Using "emm386 /noems" seems make it work fine.

Yeah, Keen4 is a bit strange at this. I think it's not really using EMS itself, just its page frame (~ 64KB).
I recommend to let CheckIt! perform a memory test. Perhaps something is getting in the way (network card ?).

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

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