Netkeen

I’d never heard about this before, but a group reverse engineered Commander Keen, and re-built it as a network playable game!

Check it out at their site.

To build the source, you’ll need Borland C++ 5.0.2 and TASM 5.  Earlier versions may work but I haven’t tested.  The interesting thing with the networking is that they use the same code out of DOOM.

NetKeen

NetKeen

10 thoughts on “Netkeen

  1. A little bit off topic here: NeoZeed, have you ever used allegro for DOS?
    How about AllegroGL (w/3dfx suppot!) for DOS?

    I was wondering if Netkeen could be easily ported to Allegro.
    Or maybe having something like DosQuakeGL 😉

  2. I’d the idea to compile netkeen for myself, downloaded the source (and binary) archive and then I got only problems.
    Borland C++ 5.02 is a kind of “hybrid” (16 and 32bit) development tool.
    That does not just mean it can produce 16 and 32 bit binaries. The command line tools itself are a mixture between 16 and 32 bit programs. Now imagine what happen if you start BCC 5.02 on a modern 64bit Windows OS…. the IDE itself loads, but TASM 5.0 (which is needed also to compile netkeen) is primarily a 16 bit tool and so has to be installed using DOS, not Windows.
    Also, the tlink.exe application which is needed mandatory is a 16 bit app.
    So even if you rename TASM32.EXE to TASM.EXE it stops when trying to use TLINK.EXE – on a modern PC it seems to be an impossible mission.
    Have to try it with an older PC with Windows XP (32bit), may be even the DOS apps will run then. But it’s not easy to “make” the netkeen binary.

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