Yorphius II

Modded episode	Keen 1
Protagonist	Commander Keen
Author(s)	KeenRush
Status	Complete
Release date	2002-04-24
Latest update	2014-03-14
Discussion(s)	PCKF: full, deluxe
Number of levels	16
Secret levels	2
New gameplay?	No
New graphics?	Yes
New levels?	Yes
New sounds?	No
New music?	No
Download	newest ; deluxe version
Vote	4.00 (4 votes)

Yorphius II is a Keen 1 mod created by KeenRush, and the first Keen mod ever created, according to an old Commander Keen newsletter issue, section 2.1:

"This was the first MOD every released, and it has set a good standard by which others will be judged. It's true that soon afterwards Xky Rauh, released his MOD, and many people declared it as good as Keen1 or better; but this MOD in my (Forge315) opinion is still the standard for MODs, whereas Xky Rauh's MOD is the standard for great MODs."

Plot

The plot in this mod involves Keen rescuing his pet Yorp from the planet Yorphius II. Unfortunately the story text included with the mod is very short and does not explain several details.

Further details

This mod, despite being before the time of many utilities and patches, has a stamp of great quality and is one of the most well-respected mods. A multi-page thread on Keen: Modding started in May 2006 was active for multiple months, discussing the level design of the mod. The levels are typically concise, well-planned scenarios and puzzles. KeenRush's style changed somewhat between this mod and Episode Smile. It is one of the small handful of mods to have a boss battle at the end.

Sound confusion

If the mod is played 'as-is' from its download the player will hear garbled 'nonsense sounds' when playing the game. This is because the mod does not come with a SOUNDS.CK1 file by default. This causes the game to try and read random garbage from the memory where the sound file should be loaded as real sounds. This won't crash the game, since the sound playing code lacks any way to crash and its memory is tightly controlled, but it can be quite jarring and confusing.

This situation arises because the mod was intended to be copied into an existing Keen 1 folder, overwriting the relevant files there. If this is done no problems will be encountered and this is in fact what the game's README.TXT file asks. However if players are known for anything it's not paying attention to what the modder wants, which is why modern mods are set up to be as difficult as possible to install wrong.

Legality

The original version of Yorphius II contained a modified executable, and is thus illegal. When the game was first made, CK1PATCH had just been released. Many people did not understand how to work the program at the time, and as a result the creator directly modified the executable, something that could be considered illegal by the original game authors/publishers. This is not considered much of a crime, as Keen 1 is a shareware game and free to distribute and obtain legally, but is still a concern to some people.

Some time later, Stealthy71088 and Levellass worked together to identify all the modifications made to the executable; they then used CK1PATCH to patch an unmodified copy of KEEN1.EXE and released a legal copy of the mod. Links to the legal copy are included below.

It should be noted, however, that this version adds a patch to modify Mortimer's shot height to match the sprite graphics. This has the side effect of making the boss battle much easier than in the original version, as the shots merely fly over Keen. This was carried over to the Deluxe Version (see below).