Omnispeak — A Commander Keen Reimplementation

Omnispeak is an open-source reimplementation of Commander Keen episodes 4, 5, and 6. It aims to be a pixel-perfect, bug-for-bug clone of the original games, and is compatible with savegames from the DOS version.

It's written in modern C99/C++ and is compatible with both Windows and Linux.

Omnispeak requires a computer with OpenGL 2.0 support

You can download binaries for linux here or for windows here. These downloads include Keen 4 already set up for you.

You can also check out the source code on github: https://github.com/sulix/omnispeak.

Installation

To play, you'll need to include files from the original game.

Omnispeak supports:

• Keen 4 v1.4 EGA
• Keen 5 v1.4 EGA
• Keen 6 v1.4 EGA
• Keen 6 v1.5 EGA

These should be the easiest versions to get. For example, the Steam version and the 3DRealms version are both version 1.4. Keen 6 is not easily available, but you should be able to find patches which convert one version of the game to another. Keen 6 v1.5 fixes a few bugs, so it's probably best to use it if you can.

You'll need to take the following files from your version of Keen, and place them in the same directory as the 'omnispeak' binary:

• GAMEMAPS.CK?
• EGAGRAPH.CK?
• AUDIO.CK?

You'll also need the files from the 'data' directory corresponding to your version of Keen.

To run the game, simply switch to the directory with the data files, and run:

	./omnispeak

You can provide Omnispeak the following command-line arguments:

/EPISODE <4,5,6,6v14,6v15>

Runs the given episode/version of Commander Keen

/FULLSCREEN

Starts the game in fullscreen mode

/FILLED

Starts the game with aspect-ratio correction off.

/NOBORDER

Starts the game with EGA overscan border emulation off.

/NOJOYS

Disables Joystick detection.

/DEMOFILE <filename>

Plays the demo recorded with Keen's F10+D cheat in filename.

Known Issues

• Modding support is not implemented.
• Mouse / Gamepad support is not implemented.
• Joystick support is new and very buggy.
• Some debug cheats (notably demo recording) are not supported.
• New settings ("Fullscreen", "Aspect Ratio", "Overscan border" are not saved.
• The game always redraws everything every frame.
• Some chunks are not cached properly at load time (doors, especially)
• No fallbacks for systems without GLSL and non-power-of-two texture support.

Links and Thanks

Omnispeak is brought to you by David Gow, NY00123, and lemm.

More thanks go to adurdin, John Hodge and the entire Commander Keen fan community, who are keeping Keen alive. And, of course, none of this would be possible without Keen's original creators, thank you!