The problem with Keen Replacements

[BlueFireZ88]

I'll be honest, I'm one of those people here in the Doom Community who isn't entirely ok with killing good ol' Commander Keen in Doom 2. I know it's both a reference to the Keen games as well as Adrian Carmack's revenge against doing the art for the Keen games, but it still doesn't feel right to me. It may have been a cute Easter egg back then, but it just feels off now since Keen's been off the radar for so long. But that's just my personal thoughts, and you may or may not share my feelings.

Anyway, I could just replace Keen with another hang-able character, right? Not really. While there are a few decent replacements out there (Jazz Jackrabbit, DN 1 Duke, and even Justin Bieber), but let's face it, that's not very much to work with. You think that people would have made more Keen replacements over the years, but that doesn't appear to be the case. So where are the Keen replacements? Where's a hanging Wolf 3D Hitler? Or how about hanging marines for sick, yet dramatic irony?

Although, I did get the idea to replace the Keen actor with a monster instead. In this case, I picked the D3 Wraith off Realm667 (I wanted to pick something that had some part of Doom's Legacy, and the Forgotten Ones were too similar to Lost Souls to be practical, and Trites are too weak to be useful in this regard). Problem is, even if you kill the four Wraiths that replace Keen, the final exit in Grosse won't open and I'm uncertain how to fix this.

[Ravick]

Problably there isa better way to do that, but you could use a random spawner: http://zdoom.org/wiki/Classes:RandomSpawner that always drops the monster you want.

BTW, I'd use a hanging monster, like the R667's hanging man, hehe.

[ChronoSeth]

Problem is, even if you kill the four Wraiths that replace Keen, the final exit in Grosse won't open and I'm uncertain how to fix this.

They need to have A_KeenDie in their death sequence.

[Rangaisia]

Or how about hanging marines for sick, yet dramatic irony?

Obituary does exactly that. Check this thread for more information.

[BlueFireZ88]

They need to have A_KeenDie in their death sequence.

Oh. Right. I'm an idiot. Anyway, it seems to work, and work surprisingly well as the Wraiths can pursue me even off the platform thanks to the teleport ability.

Obituary does exactly that. Check this thread for more information.

Looked at Obituary and I must say that this wad is such a friggin mess. I did find the marine in there, but it really wasn't as good as it should be, and the sprites don't even work with proper DECORATE editing (Renamed the sprites and defined them in the Keen code, and wasn't recognized in game at all, WTH?).
It was nice to know that this existed, but ultimately, it probably could of been done better, the hanging marine and Obituary. Seriously, that wad needs to be fixed.

It's nice to know some efforts have been made for Keen Replacements, but it still seems very shallow overall.

[Blue Shadow]

There is this in Realm667's repository.

[Vaecrius]

How about a festive, randomized piñata?

[XutaWoo]

blah blah blah obituary

...It was made in 1995.

For Vanilla DOOM.

In entirely non-extended DeHackEd.

[BlueFireZ88]

...It was made in 1995. For Vanilla DOOM. In entirely non-extended DeHackEd.

I can understand that, and it seems silly that no one has been able to fix it because of the no edit clause in the text file, even though it's support was dropped well over a decade ago. And yes, and I can also understand to respect not editing it, if we didn't, people can claim the stuff as their own, even though they didn't make it.

[DaMan]

How about replace him with spray tan GBC Keen. Who knows what diseases he picked up after visiting the Jersey Shore?

[BlueFireZ88]

As amusing as that is, I've ultimately settled on using the D3 Wraith as a replacement.