The Mystery of Isis II
| Author(s) | Geoff et al. |
|---|---|
| Status | Beta |
| Genre | Platform |
| Created with | PyGame |
| OS | Windows, DOS |
| Release date | 1999-06-18 |
| Latest update | 2012-01-16 |
| Homepage | Old Isis II website (Oct. 2000) |
| Discussion(s) | release of Isis IIa v1.0a/v1.1a (PCKF) development of Isis IIa (PCKF) source code (2007) (PCKF) source code (2003) (PCKF) |
| Number of levels | 9 |
| Secret levels | 0 |
| Download | newest (remake alpha v1.1a) demos 2, 3 & 4 demo 1 (Infinity) source code (2003) editor for .map files |
| Vote |  |
The Mystery of Isis II is a Keen fangame made by the Isis II team, started in 1998. The first public demo was released in June 1999[1], when the game was known by the working title Commander Keen: Infinity. It was followed by three more demos. The last (old) demo contains material from August 2002, but was not made available to the public until February 2003. The project was officially stopped and abandoned the same year. The source code, however, was released, but nobody took up the challenge of continuing work on it.
In November of 2010 Geoff, the original lead of the Isis II team, revealed that he has rewritten the original engine code and intends to make the game completely playable in the manner which the Isis II team had intended under the name Mystery of Isis IIa. As of now, a new demo has been released and several former members of the Isis II team have resurfaced to work on the project.
Technical Info
The original Isis II game features a 256-color, smooth-scrolling engine written in C, which used the Allegro library. Originally designed for building in DJGPP environment, and running in Protected 32-bit Mode DOS (DPMI), its source code was released soon after the project was stopped. The Isis II engine was originally by David Layne, AKA DML1001, with later modifications by Charles Byrd.
Isis-IIa is the next generation Isis-II game engine in development. It is written in PyGame, a set of modules allowing the use of Python scripting as an interface to the cross-platform SDL library. It is inspired by the original Worminator/Isis-II engine, but has been completely re-written from scratch.
Story
In this fangame, Keen has already turned 9 years old, the Universe has been finally saved from Mortimer McMire, but it is not stated what happened, probably not to interfere with the unknown The Universe Is Toast storyline, in the hope that id Software will someday make and release the game.
The story involves Commander Keen learning of a plot by the mysterious Isonians to conquer Earth and eliminate Commander Keen if he tries to stop them. Keen then travels to the planet Isis II in order to stop the Isonians before they can make their war on Earth.
Creators
This is a list of people who worked on the game:[2]
- David Layne (AKA DML1001)
- Geoff Sims (AKA ckGeoff)
- pLeitorian
- Vertigo
- Ben Cruz (AKA eK)- main artist
- A.A./MRC Marky
- Chris Hendricks (AKA Ilsoap)
- Corey
- Tony Gies
- Volte-Face
- Snaily
Other known members include John Eubank and Charles Byrd.