I was thinking to myself it would be really really fun to have the Commander Keen games on my 3DS and googled to find this. Neat that you made this right around the same sort of timeframe I randomly decide to search it.
Anyway, so far it looks like the normal Commander Keen 6 doesn't work due to copy protection. I don't know about those specific versions -- maybe they're basically cracked to remove the copy protection, but my own copy of the game requires me to enter the name of a monster from the manual to start a new game. This doesn't pop up a keyboard so I can't actually put in the text and pressing anything makes it say that it was incorrect and throws me to the scoreboard. Attempting to start a new game again from there causes a full system crash and starting CK6 again after this also causes a system crash. If I delete the 3ds/OmniSpeak/user folder it allows me to run the game again -- until I try to start a new game -- but there are no actual files in the user folder. Strangely if I just quit without trying again it can start a second time without crashing (though of course I still can't start a new game.) I don't have the cash to shell out for the GoG or Steam versions to test them, but I'm wondering the result may be the same because I think it's the EXE that makes the difference in regards to a protection removal "crack"? 3DRealms (Apogee) officially released legacy game manuals (including CK6) so I think it wouldn't even be considered a copy protection bypass to simply skip the check since
anyone can freely and legally download the manual anyway.
The specific crash:
View attachment 383320
BTW, it seems we're supposed to grab the data files from the OmniSpeak main branch to put in with this? Given that they are freely distributed as part of the project itself, shouldn't they just be included with this? Does it matter which ones we use? I grabbed the DOS version for now since that would be closest to the original game (though I suppose there shouldn't be any actual code in there, right?) Also do the data files go in the OmniSpeak folder or do you just put the entire data folder itself in there? I went ahead and did both, but that's obviously a lot messier with the duplicates.
I did run Keen 4 for testing (I'll have to track down my backup of 5 -- I don't have the floppies or a floppy drive for that matter anymore, so I'll have to look for a backup I made way way back whenever.) I'll provide feedback that I hope is constructive for 4 anyway. My first impression is the background jerkiness seems pretty bad on the default setup. I messed around a bit and found that the fix jerky motion option seems to maybe be better, but seems to tank the framerate. Actually, what really made the biggest difference was setting the CPU to 804MHz (this is a N3DS) at which point it seemed to be at least a little bit better (and interestingly the fix jerky motion option didn't seem to make much difference one way or the other on this once I raised the CPU clock.) It seems like the program itself forces it back down to the O3DS 268MHz speed whenever I run it because I saved the 804MHz as the default for the system and found it back on 268 when I ran it again. Given the huge difference it makes, maybe it should automatically set 804 on the N3DS if this is possible.
I see a few things like vsync that don't seem like they even need to be on, though I didn't see much difference turning that off either. I'd swear turning on svga compatibility made a tiny positive difference somehow, but couldn't pin down exactly how even if it did (it really shouldn't, so it may just be my imagination.) Turning off the overscan border caused an immediate system crash though. Turning off fullscreen also crashed. The "correct aspect ratio" option is turned on, but is being ignored (the game stretches to the full screen even though it should be 4:3) and attempting to turn it off just to see what would happen
also causes a crash. I do wonder if it might run any better with the 4:3 aspect ratio since it would technically be drawing less on the screen, but if it's just stretched via hardware, then I guess it wouldn't make any difference (and I admit that lowering it to 4:3 won't reduce the number of drawn pixels by very much when stretched anyway.) I do think 4:3 should be fixed though for those who would rather play the game in its original aspect ratio even if the difference isn't huge. I noticed integer scaling also crashed. Given how close the 3DS top screen is to the game's original resolution (320x200) having a fullscreen disable or integer scaling (should result in basically the same thing) might actually not be too bad, though understandably anything that makes things smaller could be troublesome for some people. Might be useful to have it as an option at least to make it 1:1 but definitely best to keep it resized by default.
Finally, suspending it by shutting the lid while in the game itself causes both screens to stay black when you wake it up and as far as I can tell the entire system is completely locked up (nothing responded in any way and I finally had to hold the power button until it shut off) but may not in the menu (or it may be random whether it messes up or not. I did not want to test this much.)
I'll try to play it a bit more (though I was mostly counting on 6 to be honest with you) and see if I can provide any useful feedback otherwise, but not sure how much time I have to really go through things like what I'm sure would be most useful.
