March 25, 2006: DOSShell - A DOSBox frontend.
Loonies Software have created a DOSBox frontend called DOSShell which is sure to make DOSBox a whole lot easier to use for the folks out there who are confused by the Command Line Interface aspect of DOSBox.

DOSShell replaces the CLI with a Windows standard GUI, eliminating the need for users to type in a string of commands to launch a game. This program is highly useful for users who find DOSBox complicated and just want to play their games and not worry about the more advanced configurations.

DOSShell is available for download from the Downloads page.




March 4, 2006: Crystal Caves Beta Image
3D Realm's Joe Siegler recently posted an image from a beta version of Crystal Caves, which can be seen below. I was planning to go in-depth about the differences between this image and the final product, but due to a lack of time at the moment, I'll just leave you with the the below now and go fanboy on the image later.

Read the 3D Realms thread this image was posted in (using Frenkel's link). Thanks to Frenkel and KeenRush for linking me to this little piece of history and to Joe Siegler for posting this image in the first place (and clearing up whether I could re-post it here).

8th February, 2006: 3D Realms interviews Frank Maddin
Frank Maddin, author of Crystal Caves, has been interviewed by Joe Siegler of 3D Realms as a part of their Apogee Legacy series of interviews. Go read the interview to see what Frank has to say about his time working with Apogee and his opinions on games of today. There's also a few photos of Frank posted throughout the interview so you can get put a face to the man behind Crystal Caves.

For more of Frank Maddin's thoughts, (mostly on the subject of Crystal Caves) read PCCW's interview with Frank.




January 21, 2006: I'm getting a bit sick of this... (a.k.a PCCW's first rant)
I just opened my inbox and found 8 new emails from people asking me to send them the complete, registered version of Crystal Caves. Version 1.0a was requested by some of these people. Over the past few months I've been getting quite a few emails from people asking me to send them the registered version of Crystal Caves. I would like to point something out to those people, and anyone thinking of asking me in the future:

I am not an warez peddler. I do not distribute registered, commercial games to people who claim they used to own the game, but accidentally left the disks in their microwave oven while cooking baked beans in there, or their mother threw the disks out because she thought nobody used floppy disks anymore. I do not care what your reasoning for asking me is - nobody will ever recieve a copy of the game from me.

And if you're still going to ask me, at least be polite. Several of the emails I've read through today not only demand that I send them a copy, but are actually quite blunt and rude about it. The game's only $10 from 3D Realms' store! You really can't call me cheap when you're not willing to spend $10 on a very worthy game, regardless of whether you really did own it previously.




January 20, 2006: Jim Norwood is interviewed by 3D Realms.
Jim Norwood was the first of the Apogee Legacy interviews conducted by Joe Siegler at 3D Realms. Jim was credited in Crystal Caves for the Full-Screen Artwork (such as the title screen and ending screens' artwork). There wasn't a mention of Crystal Caves in the interview, but it's quite the interesting read, nevertheless. Check the Apogee Legacy webpage each monday for new interviews.

Another thing I'd like to point out is that, according to the old updates page, next Wednesday (25th of January) will by PCCW's 1-year birthday. It'd be a fine day to launch the website's new design, if I'd only started it. Which I haven't. Creating the new -better coded- layout will be this year's project, after my other website, the Xargon Vault, is fixed and the Jazz Jackrabbit website I'm currently building is finished.




09 January, 2006: 3D Realms to interview Frank Maddin, Jim Norwood and Peder Jungck.
This year 3D Realms will be conducting interviews with three people involved with Crystal Caves. As listed above, those three are Frank Maddin (the author of Crystal Caves - also interviewed by PCCW), Jim Norwood (author of the the full-screen artwork used in Crystal Caves) and Peder Jungck (credited for graphics routines in Crystal Caves). Other people to be interviewed are Tom Hall (creator of Commander Keen) and John Romero.

Also, not that's it's interesting, but I've moved some trivia entries around a bit. Some entries could apply for more than one episode, so instead of just listing those ones for the episodes that don't have many entires, I've decided to list them for the episode they first appear in.




30 October 2005 - Guestbook now working!
A big thanks to Grafix for getting the guestbook working. Go post there and tell me what you think of the website and Crystal Caves.




29 October 2005 - 3DRealms releases Crystal Caves 1.0a and 1.0 - 1.0a patch!
A few months ago it was discovered that on some computers using Windows XP, Crystal Caves causes the system clock to be set back 100 years. Since then, Crystal Caves (and Secret Agent, which I assume uses the same engine as CC) was not available to download at 3DRealms while they attempted to correct the problem.

It seems that earlier this week they've had sucsess. Joe Siegler pointed me in the direction of this 3DR news update. Assuming they'd want this patch spread around to everyone with copies of Crystal Caves, I have uploaded a copy of it and Crystal Caves 1.0a - Shareware. You can get them from the downloads page.




24 October 2005 - Happy Birthday, Crystal Caves!
Yesterday, 14 years ago, Crystal Caves was released. I forgot this date until good ol' Frenkel posted it at the Keen Forums. You shall play Crystal Caves for 1 hour today to make up for yesterday which I forgot. Now go. Play! And wish Crystal Caves a Happy Birthday.




2nd October, 2005: Running Crystal Caves in Windows XP? / Can't finish levels in CC2 and CC3?
If you are indeed running Crystal Caves - without emulation - in Windows XP, you should be aware of a bug in the coding of the game that has recently come to light in this thread at the 3D Realms forums. The bug causes your system clock to be set back 100 years, obviously, to the year 1905. 3D Realms has taken Crystal Caves and Secret Agent off the downloads section until they can find a solution to this problem.

Joe Siegler, of 3D Realms, said, "If we can't fix it, the game will probably be discontinued". Maybe they'll release it as freeware like several of their other DOS titles. Or maybe it'll end up like Bio Menace - not freeware, but no way to legally purchase it. I've kept the copy of Crystal Caves up for download here, but provided a warning of what using it in Windows XP will result in. If 3DR are able to fix it, maybe we'll end up with a Crystal Caves v1.1 (which is only exciting to geeks like me...)!

In the past few weeks I've recieved several emails regarding the inability to complete a level in CC2 and in CC3. The levels are E2L05 and E3L07. The people who emailed me reported that even once they'd collected all the crystals in either level, nothing would happen, thus keeping them trapped in the level. I had a look into the problem myself and couldn't find an answer, and I also asked Frenkel if he had any ideas, and after taking a more extensive look, he couldn't find anything wrong either.

If there was just one person emailing me about this, I'd be inclined to believe they had just missed a crystal, but the fact that more than one person has emailed with the same problem in the same levels suggests something is going on... If you've also had this problem with your copy of Crystal Caves, (copies which have been downloaded - not purchased from 3DR) let me know.




08th August, 2005: Frank Maddin Interview, Guestbook working, PCCW is php...
A few things to report. The most important one being that Frank Maddin has been kind enough to answer some questions about Crystal Caves which many Crystal Caves fans and I have put together. Check out the Frank Maddin interview to see what he has to say!

Since the start of PCCW's life a Toxicsheep.com, the guestbook link has been quite dead. I've finally got around to setting up a new guestbook, so click over there and leave comments, hate messages and whatever else you'd like to say about Crystal Caves and this website.

The last thing to report is the re-writing of PCCW to php (well, somewhat. It's not fully php yet...). Having the website in php mostly allows me to make updates to the website with a lot more ease than I could before. It may/ may not reduce the loading time of the pages, too...




17th July, 2005: Crystal Caves Remake: Volume One
Whilst scouring the internet to find some more Crystal Caves content, I came across a most interesting find, which seems to have pretty much disappeared from existence - A person(?) going by the name of Rowan Games has created a 'remake' of Crystal Caves, using Game Maker.

The only episode I could find is titled Episode One: Mylo's Adventure. The physics of the sprites are almost (if not perfectly) replicated from the original Crystal Caves. A new feature is Mylo's ability to 'double jump' to gain even more height when jumping, which is a nice addition.

You can download Crystal Caves Remake, Volume One: Mylo's Adventure at the downloads page.

Also, thanks to LevelLord for some new Crystal Caves trivia, some of which Flavouredspine had mentioned to me as well, but I forgot to add here.




4th June, 2005: SpikeNexus lacks own ideas...
Frenkel, of S&F Prod., has released all of maps from Secret Agent, an Apogee game which uses the same game engine as Crystal Caves, in three ZIP archives. With nothing much else to do, I thought I'd copy him and do that same for Crystal Caves, despite being able to view them from the menu to the left of this text. You can get the Crystal Caves maps at the Downloads page.




27th May, 2005: ...It's about time...
Finally... after Shortcutman.net going down and my hard drive crashing multiple times, I've got around to fixing PCCW, and an now hosted by the wonderful Grafix, webmaster of www.toxicsheep.com. Many thanks to him for this webspace. Anyway, all seems to be up now, bar the Guestbook. I'll do that tomorrow... or something... damn I tired - worked 4 hours straight on getting this site up and running again...




20th March, 2005: We're back!
For some reason, shortcutman.net's been down for a few weeks. This possibly has something to do with the work going on at oktagone.com due to their transitions for their US customers.

Nothing much new to report on the Crystal Caves front, except that Frenkel has plans to make a new CC tool allowing the modification of the in-game stats bar. There's still no news on a CC Level Editor yet, though.




25th January, 2005: Some updates
After PCCW's initial release, some members of the PCKF donated some trivia for Mylo versus The Supernove. My thanks go out to them. There's also been some spelling fixes, as well as a correction on Yorps in the cameos page (used to state that they were a specie of Vorticon - they're actually not...).

It appears that somebody has already submitted a link to PCCW to MobyGames.com. Thanks to whoever it was (although I have got a hunch I know who it was).




23rd January, 2005: Only eight months late!
After much trouble, PCCW is finally up! In case you don't know, PCCW was in the midst of being created during April/May last year when the computer it was stored on decided it no longer desired to live. This resulted in pretty much everything to do with PCCW being lost. The only thing to survive was the site banner (located at the top of every page), only because it was on the teaser page advertising PCCW's May 2004 release. There are still a few things yet to be added to the site yet, so don't forget to return - not only will you get more CC content, I'll get more site hits! You'll also notice something of a rarity these days - this site is (mostly) written in plain HTML.

Currently, the only area of the site in anything more than HTML is the Guestbook, which is written by Marc Stein; not me. One of the things I plan to implement later on is a forum section, but for now, go to the Public Commander Keen Forum's 'The Classics' section if you want to talk about CC, or any other classic game, for that matter! You can also talk about Crystal Caves at 3DRealms' Apogee Games forum.