ROM Hack Has anyone looked at modding Commander Keen?

Nazosan · Feb 8, 2019

So I was a bit shocked to see Commander Keen make it to the Switch. Then baffled that of all the possible choices they chose Keen Dreams. Naturally I'm wondering: might it not be realistic to possibly replace the game files with those of another game. Specifically CK4 is supposed to be the same engine and all anyway and that's assuming that whatever engine reimplementation they're using doesn't support other games in the series (perhaps all?) I extracted the NCA and certainly the file structure looks promising. A bunch of files do indeed seem to have the same structure as the PC versions and etc. But there are differences. Also the obvious: the Switch lacks FM synthesis and even a PC speaker. They have converted the sound effects to 22KHz WAV files and added in music converted to OGG Vorbis rather than implement some sort of emulation. (But then since Keen Dreams never really had music in it this mostly means they've added on. I'm not sure what the sources are for most of the music. You've Got to Eat Your Vegetables was put in though and that one is actually a "conversion" or recording or whatever. The rest are not, but all are OGG Vorbis so the engine doesn't have to emulate an Adlib or whatever.) So obviously to actually bring CK4 into it would require actually extracting its files and converting them. The music isn't so hard -- someone has already done the work and even gotten hold of MIDI files that are supposed to be how the game was originally meant to sound by the composer before going down to FM synthesis: http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=Commander_Keen_IV:_Secret_of_the_Oracle_(DOS)#Game_Rip (Played through a good synthesizer -- I'm personally partial to Yamaha XG -- it makes for an interesting change on those few tracks.) But I'm not even sure exactly how one would make it accept them (presumably it would require editing whatever points to the current filenames.)

Honestly I mostly don't know enough about the game's files to really try this myself, but I'm wondering if someone else might. I'd really particularly like to have CK4 on there much more than Dreams as CK4 was always one of my favorites anyway.

RHOPKINS13 · Feb 8, 2019

I doubt anybody has really looked at it given the short amount of time it's been out. But I'm sure you could play Commander Keen 4 using Retroarch's DOSBOX core just fine if you wanted to.

smf · Feb 8, 2019

Nazosan said:
Then baffled that of all the possible choices they chose Keen Dreams.

I'm not sure it was a choice, as it may have been the only one they could license. Or maybe it was cheaper & if this sells well then the other episodes might show up.

https://www.pcgamer.com/tom-hall-would-love-to-make-a-new-commander-keen-game/

"And as an aside, Commander Keen in Keen Dreams is a bit of an anomaly for the series: it's not currently owned by id / Zenimax,"

Nazosan · Feb 8, 2019

Honestly, even with the licensing issues you'd think someone actually producing an actual port for a major current platform might have been able to finally get through to the right people. I can sort of understand them ignoring an Android port (seriously, ugh) though I don't really get why they didn't take PC more seriously in the past, but the Nintendo Switch is actually a really great platform for this game series -- especially with enhancements to music and graphics (even just a resize shader would go a long way) to bring in a more modern audience (naturally with controls to switch that off.) Worth noting that such enhancements can go both ways (for instance, I see a lot of retro-style games with CRT shaders implementing scanlines and NTSC color variances.)

RHOPKINS13 said:
I doubt anybody has really looked at it given the short amount of time it's been out. But I'm sure you could play Commander Keen 4 using Retroarch's DOSBOX core just fine if you wanted to.

DOSBox is a huge PITA to deal with on consoles. I'm not exactly enjoying the mess it has become on PC. Right now it just crashes and I have no idea why. DOSBox is a great thing, but it needs a lot more development in a lot of aspects and, the worst thing of all is that I don't think it's going to get it because it really is starting to feel like it's dying to me. And there are so many basics it really should have already implemented years ago like a better (multi-platform friendly) MIDI synthesizer (not just soundfonts, but something that can emulate other types of devices. Heck, even just a VST synthesizer would be a start.) And it's ridiculous that even along those lines third party modifications must be patched in by third parties because the mainline will never integrate anything that isn't just barebones just sort of get a sort of PC going thing. (Which, unfortunately, also translates to its ports lacking most of these features as well.) Meanwhile, most actual development seems to have been completely abandoned and forgotten and even forks like DOSBox-X aren't showing a lot of promise in respect to those very things I just mentioned.

smf · Feb 8, 2019

Nazosan said:
but the Nintendo Switch is actually a really great platform for this game series -- especially with enhancements to music and graphics (even just a resize shader would go a long way) to bring in a more modern audience (naturally with controls to switch that off.)

I suspect they are holding tight to see what happens. If they do it themselves then they risk spending a lot of development money that is never recovered. If they license it to someone else they risk not asking for enough money and seeing someone else profit from it.

With retro games it's really hard to judge whether they'll sell loads or whether people will just download it and play it in an emulator.

The nes classic sold like hot cakes and people were buying them at inflated prices, the playstation classic on the other hand ended up 40% discounted after christmas.

Nazosan · Feb 8, 2019

I think on the Switch there's not so much room for doubt. Nintendo has intentionally placed it as a very port friendly platform -- made a point of it even. There have been a lot and they've done fairly well. And it's better to not ask for enough and still get a lot than to completely close down and get zilch. Thing is, there have been people contacting them all this time and they haven't even responded directly, just with standard form letters as the above post points out. Even if they weren't sure they could actually answer...

This is all wandering too far from the point though. The point is: how moddable is this existing port?

landysmods · Feb 8, 2019

Considering it was an early Carmack/romero game you'd think there would be more interest in porting the others. There's a port of it on android called 'Commander Genius' that you can apparently use the other games by swapping the files over.

Nazosan · Feb 9, 2019

Commander Genius is an unlicensed fan-made complete remake of the engine from scratch. Using it in a commercial product is tricky since it's open source.

Would be nice if it got ported to RetroArch so one wouldn't have to jump through all the hoops to set it up via DOSBox I guess. (Plus it's orders of magnitude more efficient to simply reimplement the engine in a portable manner than to actually emulate a x86 DOS game machine down to the chipset level.)

Regardless though, I just added an edit to the previous post, but I'll put it here too: this all digresses too much. The question is: how moddable is this specific port?

landysmods · Feb 9, 2019

Would it be possible to make a modded nsp that launches certain dosbox games with their optimal settings (controller, soundcard etc..), kind of like a batch file in the old dos days? But skips the dos prompt and launches the game?

Nazosan · Feb 9, 2019

Guess you didn't see my edit. Ah, whatever. Anyway, as far as skipping the prompt goes, it's possible with DOSBox to execute the games directly. My favorite method has generally been just to put in an [autoexec] section in the DOSBox configuration (assuming the RetroArch implementation includes this?) This may be easiest with the RetroArch implementation since it does a per-game configuration essentially anyway. However, in the original standard version of DOSBox you can specify a command for it to run (which can of course be a batch file.) RetroArch may or may not implement some means of doing this. Theoretically a NSP frontend would be possible for such a thing, though I have no clue on how to do all this.

Biggest problem is this is all a heck of a lot of work to implement and seriously inefficient (frameskips, significant battery usage, and etc being a possibility even though this is a game that once could run fine on a 286 CPU depending on how efficiently the code is implemented here. Luckily a lot can be turned off for these games. Though, again, a fair bit of work to fully optimize its setup.)

landysmods · Feb 9, 2019

Nazosan said:
Guess you didn't see my edit. Ah, whatever. Anyway, as far as skipping the prompt goes, it's possible with DOSBox to execute the games directly. My favorite method has generally been just to put in an [autoexec] section in the DOSBox configuration (assuming the RetroArch implementation includes this?) This may be easiest with the RetroArch implementation since it does a per-game configuration essentially anyway. However, in the original standard version of DOSBox you can specify a command for it to run (which can of course be a batch file.) RetroArch may or may not implement some means of doing this. Theoretically a NSP frontend would be possible for such a thing, though I have no clue on how to do all this.

Biggest problem is this is all a heck of a lot of work to implement and seriously inefficient (frameskips, significant battery usage, and etc being a possibility even though this is a game that once could run fine on a 286 CPU depending on how efficiently the code is implemented here. Luckily a lot can be turned off for these games. Though, again, a fair bit of work to fully optimize its setup.)

Cheers for the advice. I've installed dosbox on just about any hackable console over the years, and just could never get into it without a keyboard and mouse, but maybe it's time for me to give it a go with retroarch.

Nazosan · Feb 9, 2019

If you do, dig into the setup. There's a lot of stuff that's likely to be on by default in a default configuration you won't need. For instance, no SVGA needed for Commander Keen. No MPU401 (sadly) so no advanced MIDI synthesis. Probably not even SoundBlaster really (AdLib is probably basically all the game really does anyway.) I think the last ones could actually use MCGA/VGA, but most are EGA or plain CGA even. I wish it could do advanced shaders (I've always been terribly partial to 2xSaI as striking a great balance between a resize that interpolates nicely while not being too sharp) but you may have to keep it to a super simple bilinear (which may or may not be hardware accelerated, so it may cost performance even to do that.) Basically we're talking about a fairly minimal setup here really as the games just weren't that complex (on purpose.)

landysmods · Feb 9, 2019

Nazosan said:
If you do, dig into the setup. There's a lot of stuff that's likely to be on by default in a default configuration you won't need. For instance, no SVGA needed for Commander Keen. No MPU401 (sadly) so no advanced MIDI synthesis. Probably not even SoundBlaster really (AdLib is probably basically all the game really does anyway.) I think the last ones could actually use MCGA/VGA, but most are EGA or plain CGA even. I wish it could do advanced shaders (I've always been terribly partial to 2xSaI as striking a great balance between a resize that interpolates nicely while not being too sharp) but you may have to keep it to a super simple bilinear (which may or may not be hardware accelerated, so it may cost performance even to do that.) Basically we're talking about a fairly minimal setup here really as the games just weren't that complex (on purpose.)

Cool, thanks, I'll look into it. How does the switch version go with slightly more grunty games like xwing, alone in the dark etc..? or am I too ambitious at this stage?

Nazosan · Feb 9, 2019

I can't answer that personally, but I can say the 3DS could only go as high as very early 386 games -- mostly 286 stuff. The Switch is, of course, significantly more powerful even in portable mode. Of course it is significantly underclocked for portable mode so even if it can pull those off it may have to be docked to do so. I think maybe it would likely fall just a little bit short of some of those higher end games but will probably do most 386 stuff ok. (Emulation is always tricky. For starters, when emulating something else -- especially something x86 -- it becomes more a matter of raw power and less a matter of being able to split things off. That is to say it's going to be using mostly just one core and unable to really take advantage of the multi-core nature of the Switch.)

MyconMama · Feb 9, 2019

Just wanted to say, I'm super interested in helping you with this-- was just thinking a couple weeks back I'd love to see Apogee games on the Switch, and then BAM! this gets released. I'll get myself a copy and then have a look inside. Any additional insights you've gotten so far and want to share would be swell.

Nazosan · Feb 10, 2019

Sadly, I don't think I really have the knowhow to directly do it myself. Ideally really someone more familiar with these specific games would be the best one to look into it. My guess is they need to pull apart the game's main files and look for hardcoded references to external files in particular. Actually, I didn't know about Commander Genius before yesterday when I was googling about all this and what I'm seeing does kind of remind me of it, so maybe someone more familiar with how it works might recognize something. (It really wouldn't shock me if they used the same code or something even... It looks awfully similar.)

For what it's worth, I was messing around with a RetroPie setup and I found out that there is actually a Commander Genius in the works for RetroArch. Right now there are no ARM binaries being distributed and an automatic build failed (later I'll see if I can tell if it's just a missing dependency or what, but I'm no coder so likely there's nothing I can do) but presumably that means this could eventually make it to RetroArch ports as a whole. While running a game like this through DOSBox is a royal PITA, if all else fails a RetroArch port of an actual engine reimplementation likely would actually work out pretty well. But who knows if it would even make it to the Switch at all, much less when if it did.

BTW, I forgot, but there was actually a DOS emulator for RetroArch more specifically optimized towards the likes of the RPi, rpix86 which is, in turn, based on DSx86. The SoC the RPi uses is significantly less advanced (this is basically intentional due to keeping costs down and keeping it as open as possible so it would likely be missing a lot of potential optimizations for the more advanced one the Switch uses) but this is still likely far more optimized than the DOSBox port. Likely it's nowhere near as good (for instance, I'd bet it doesn't emulate the Gravis Ultrasound just as a random off-the-top-of-my-head example) but for these games it likely implements every single thing they need with room to spare and is probably more efficient. Is there a build of that one for the Switch port of RetroArch? I don't know the full extent of what it has available. This is still a pain to setup -- in most ways pretty much exactly the same -- but at least it's probably lighter and more efficient in comparison and it probably has a lot more ARM optimizations overall. This one might be efficient enough for those "grunty" games if it is ported to the Switch with its faster and more advanced CPU, though its emulation is not 100% accurate or perfect and it may or may not have problems with some things (Tyrian2000 is mentioned as one game it crashes on, but ironically there is an OpenTyrian engine for RetroArch making it unnecessary for that.) Though it would lose out on more advanced MIDI emulation no doubt (and stuff like AID would surely have to be the floppy version, not the CD version, so that's a bit of a loss there without a "wavetable" style synthesizer.)

MyconMama · Feb 10, 2019

You were discussing the file structure and the way they'd handled music and sfx in your op-- did you extract the NSP to garner that info? If they have assets from the original DOS game in there I would think it'd be pretty easy to substitute data from the other games and run it on the same engine they're using for 'Dreams

Kwyjor · Feb 10, 2019

Nazosan said:
Naturally I'm wondering: might it not be realistic to possibly replace the game files with those of another game. Specifically CK4 is supposed to be the same engine and all anyway and that's assuming that whatever engine reimplementation they're using doesn't support other games in the series (perhaps all?) I extracted the NCA and certainly the file structure looks promising.

Everything I've read suggests that Keen Dreams has its own unique engine, and the various versions currently available are all derived from the original source code. I'm not completely sure of the history – I know Super Fighter Team was the first to get the rights to release their Android port, and I think someone else bought the rest of the rights sometime afterwards? Anyway, the Steam version was just removed from the store again, possibly because the developer was Behaving Badly.

I really doubt you could get CK4 running just by replacing a few files.

Nazosan said:
DOSBox is a great thing, but it needs a lot more development in a lot of aspects and, the worst thing of all is that I don't think it's going to get it because it really is starting to feel like it's dying to me.

I will agree that I would have expected an official "0.75" by now, but commits are still being made to the SVN. For whatever reason it seems fairly normal for open-source projects to have an official version that lags far, far behind the official sources.

Besides, I reckon 0.74 works fine for 95% of cases. Sure, one could conceivably add different synthesizers that make things sound completely different – but then, isn't the point that it allows for games to be played as they sounded on original hardware?

Nazosan · Feb 10, 2019

Kwyjor said:
Everything I've read suggests that Keen Dreams has its own unique engine

In comparison, everything I've read suggests that Keen Dreams uses the same engine as CK4. Which rather makes sense given that its history seems to basically be that it was written as sort of a test before continuing on into the new series -- why would they just throw away that code and start over from scratch given its improvements from its predecessors?

and the various versions currently available are all derived from the original source code.

All I was saying is there are similarities. It's worth noting that the engine.cfg file clearly shows that this is definitely a major reimplementation, not just a minor port of the original and the configuration details are kind of similar. (Well, obviously the original engine couldn't run on ARM hardware, so a significant rewrite is necessary.) I'm not saying they are the same, just that someone more familiar with how that one works might want to take a look and see. But they probably are different and I never meant to say they weren't. To be clear, part of what I'm getting to with this is merely speculating about the hypothetical possibility that whatever engine reimplementation they're using maybe, just maybe, isn't one single engine specific. Eg if it could handle other games in the series outside of just the one specific one. Mostly just speculating aloud.

MyconMama said:
You were discussing the file structure and the way they'd handled music and sfx in your op-- did you extract the NSP to garner that info? If they have assets from the original DOS game in there I would think it'd be pretty easy to substitute data from the other games and run it on the same engine they're using for 'Dreams

ls -lAhR output:

Code:

.:
total 548K
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group  285 May  7  2010 BKGND.SHL
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group   81 May  7  2010 CHKLIST.CPS
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group   34 May  7  2010 HELP.BAT
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group 1.1K May  7  2010 HELPINFO.TXT
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group 2.7K May  7  2010 INSTRUCT.SHL
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group 3.5K May  7  2010 KDREAMS.AUD
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group  656 Jul  8  2017 KDREAMS.CFG
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group  14K May  7  2010 KDREAMS.CMP
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group 209K May  7  2010 KDREAMS.EGA
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group  80K May  7  2010 KDREAMS.EXE
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group  65K May  7  2010 KDREAMS.MAP
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group 1.6K May  7  2010 LAST.SHL
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group 8.0K May  7  2010 LICENSE.DOC
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group 9.8K May  7  2010 LOADSCN.EXE
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group  447 May  7  2010 MENU.SHL
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group 1.4K May  7  2010 ORDER.SHL
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group 4.6K May  7  2010 PRODUCTS.SHL
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group 3.1K May  7  2010 QUICK.SHL
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group 1.7K May  7  2010 README.TXT
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group  18K May  7  2010 START.EXE
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group   32 May  7  2010 VENDOR.BAT
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group  11K May  7  2010 VENDOR.DOC
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group  810 May  7  2010 VENDOR.TXT
-

Code:

.:
total 2.0M
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 1.1K Feb  8 16:07 CONTEXT.KDR
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 1.0K Feb  8 16:07 EGADICT.CGA
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 1.0K Feb  8 16:07 EGADICT.KDR
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  12K Feb  8 16:07 EGAHEAD.CGA
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  12K Feb  8 16:07 EGAHEAD.KDR
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 2.5K Feb  8 16:07 GAMETEXT.KDR
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 176K Feb  8 16:07 KDREAMS.CGA
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  52K Feb  8 16:07 KDREAMS.CMP
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 209K Feb  8 16:07 KDREAMS.EGA
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  65K Feb  8 16:07 KDREAMS.MAP
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 1.4M Feb  8 16:07 KDREAMS.SND
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 1020 Feb  8 16:07 MAPDICT.KDR
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  12K Feb  8 16:07 MAPHEAD.KDR
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 6.6K Feb  8 16:07 SAVEGM0.KDR
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 1.0K Feb  8 16:07 SOUNDDCT.KDR
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  228 Feb  8 16:07 SOUNDHHD.KDR
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 2.5K Feb  8 16:07 STORY.KDR
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  471 Feb  8 16:07 credits.txt
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  207 Feb  8 16:07 engine.cfg
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 9.8K Feb  8 16:07 export.cfg
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  11K Feb  8 16:07 keen.tscn
drwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None    0 Feb  8 16:07 music
drwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None    0 Feb  8 16:07 sfx
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 3.6K Feb  8 16:07 sprite.gd
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 1.2K Feb  8 16:07 sprite.tscn

./music:
total 8.4M
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 424K Feb  8 16:07 00_Keen_Dreams_Menu.ogg
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 876K Feb  8 16:07 00_Youve_Got_to_Eat_Your_Vegetables.ogg
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 749K Feb  8 16:07 01_Land_Of_Tuberia.ogg
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 788K Feb  8 16:07 02_keen_dreams_funkyquest.ogg
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 983K Feb  8 16:07 02b_Horseradish_Hill.ogg
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 861K Feb  8 16:07 03_keen_dream_caverns.ogg
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 742K Feb  8 16:07 04_keen_dream_jazzy_plains.ogg
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 998K Feb  8 16:07 05_ParsnipPass.ogg
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 902K Feb  8 16:07 06_keen_dreams_boss_prelude.ogg
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 825K Feb  8 16:07 07_keen_dreams_boss_fight.ogg
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 354K Feb  8 16:07 08_keen_dreams_fanfare.ogg

./sfx:
total 73K
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 70K Feb  8 16:07 jump.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 634 Feb  8 16:07 sfx.gd
drwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None   0 Feb  8 16:07 sfx_classic
drwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None   0 Feb  8 16:07 sfx_remaster

./sfx/sfx_classic:
total 908K
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  19K Feb  8 16:07 0_keenwalk_1.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  20K Feb  8 16:07 10_unflowerpower.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  78K Feb  8 16:07 11_enterlevel.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  41K Feb  8 16:07 12_wakeup.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  77K Feb  8 16:07 13_leveldone.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  18K Feb  8 16:07 14_noway.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 7.5K Feb  8 16:07 15_hithead.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  11K Feb  8 16:07 16_taterswing.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 8.2K Feb  8 16:07 17_bounce.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  48K Feb  8 16:07 18_extrakeen.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  24K Feb  8 16:07 19_opendoor.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 7.5K Feb  8 16:07 1_keenwalk_2.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  28K Feb  8 16:07 20_throwbomb.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  57K Feb  8 16:07 21_bombboom.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  96K Feb  8 16:07 22_boobusgone.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  24K Feb  8 16:07 23_getkey.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  16K Feb  8 16:07 24_grapesream.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  21K Feb  8 16:07 25_plummet.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  22K Feb  8 16:07 26_click.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  21K Feb  8 16:07 27_tick.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  55K Feb  8 16:07 2_jump.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  12K Feb  8 16:07 3_land.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  13K Feb  8 16:07 4_throw.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  15K Feb  8 16:07 5_dive.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  33K Feb  8 16:07 6_getpower.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  24K Feb  8 16:07 7_getpoints.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  45K Feb  8 16:07 8_getbomb.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  25K Feb  8 16:07 9_flowerpower.wav

./sfx/sfx_remaster:
total 2.1M
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  55K Feb  8 16:07 10_unflowerpower.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  75K Feb  8 16:07 11_enterlevel.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 115K Feb  8 16:07 12_wakeup.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 108K Feb  8 16:07 13_leveldone.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  40K Feb  8 16:07 14_noway.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  36K Feb  8 16:07 15_hithead.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  20K Feb  8 16:07 16_taterswing.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  18K Feb  8 16:07 17_bounce.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 123K Feb  8 16:07 18_extrakeen.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  87K Feb  8 16:07 19_opendoor.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  31K Feb  8 16:07 20_throwbomb.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  87K Feb  8 16:07 21_bombboom.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 123K Feb  8 16:07 22_bobusgone.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 123K Feb  8 16:07 22_boobusgone.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 216K Feb  8 16:07 23_getkey.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 109K Feb  8 16:07 24_grapescream.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  95K Feb  8 16:07 25_plummet.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  22K Feb  8 16:07 26_click.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  64K Feb  8 16:07 27_tick.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  21K Feb  8 16:07 2_jump.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  24K Feb  8 16:07 3_land.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  20K Feb  8 16:07 4_throw.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  99K Feb  8 16:07 5_dive.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  41K Feb  8 16:07 6_getpower.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None  83K Feb  8 16:07 7_getpoints.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 147K Feb  8 16:07 8_getbomb.wav
-rwxrwx---+ 1 Nazo None 105K Feb  8 16:07 9_flowerpower.wav

For comparison, CK4:

Code:

total 979K
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group  33K May  7  2010 AUDIO.CK4
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group  24K May  7  2010 CATALOG.EXE
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group  543 Jul  8  2017 CONFIG.CK4
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group 476K May  7  2010 EGAGRAPH.CK4
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group  97K May  7  2010 GAMEMAPS.CK4
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group    8 May  7  2010 GO.BAT
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group   17 May  7  2010 GO1.BAT
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group 100K May  7  2010 KEEN4.EXE
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group  24K May  7  2010 LIST.COM
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group 2.3K May  7  2010 ORDER.FRM
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group   16 May  7  2010 README.BAT
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group 1.6K May  7  2010 README.DOC
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group  370 May  7  2010 READTHE.DOC
----rwx---+ 1 Unknown+User Unknown+Group  152 May  7  2010 START.DOC

As you can see there are extreme similarities, but also some differences. Looks like the .tscn and .gd files are some sort of scripts with variables and such in plain text. The .tscn files seem to be the ones telling it which external files to use, though I'm not clear on how one would modify it to fit CK4 (different levels with different music, different sound effects in different places, etc.) Interestingly, despite the external files, the extra file KDREAMS.SND is the one that appears to be biggest and most different from its PC original counterpart. Engine.cfg and export.cfg appear to be configurations for certain details of how the engine should handle things like frameskipping and internal game resolution (not sure why you'd want to change that, though I think I recall EGA did support a higher resolution mode that most things didn't use -- this game included as far as I know.) Some of the other files like the .KDR files in the NSP seem suspiciously like they may be processed versions of the original data in some form (and they just didn't bother to remove the original files) but I really can't tell (yet again I would defer to experts!)

Comparing the CKD and CK4 files I don't know enough to tell if they may be completely different or not. They look similar in headers and such, but I can't tell much. As I said, this is why my question was directed at people who had actually used tools to extract and/or modify the games' respective resources.

ROM Hack Has anyone looked at modding Commander Keen?

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