Prigodi Pìonerki Ksenì
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| Пригоди Піонерки Ксені |
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Also known as: Prigodi Pìonerki Ksenì
 This game has a notes page This game has a bugs page |
Пригоди Піонерки Ксені (The Adventures of Pioneer Ksenia) is an unauthorized total conversion of The Adventures of Captain Comic (Revision 1). It uses the original game engine but has modified graphics, maps, and sound. It was the product of a reverse-engineering effort by a team including Yury Lesiuk, Serg Samoilenco, and Vlad Colomiesc.
You can play the game in a browser at the Internet Archive.
Contents
Sub-Pages
| Notes |
| Bugs |
Revisional Differences
These are the changes relative to Captain Comic, Revision 1.
Maps
Some maps have completely new graphics and layout; some have only minor layout changes; and some are completely unmodified.
Some of the layout changes appear to be unintentional (solid tiles that should not be solid). Tile solidity in Captain Comic works by storing a tile ID threshold with the tile data. Tile IDs below the threshold are non-solid, and tile IDs above the threshold are solid. The Adventures of Pioneer Ksenia rearranges some tile IDs without adjusting the solidity threshold to match, causing some tiles to become solid when they were not before.
| LAKE | New graphics and layout. |
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| FOREST | New graphics and layout. |
| SPACE | Minor graphics and layout changes (intentional and unintentional). |
| BASE | Same graphics, minor layout changes (unintentional). |
| CAVE | Unmodified. |
| SHED | Unmodified. |
| CASTLE | Unmodified. |
| COMP | New graphics and layout. |
■ The Adventures of Captain Comic
■ Пригоди Піонерки Ксені
| LAKE0 |
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| LAKE1 |
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| LAKE2 |
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LAKE0 takes place in a Kazakh desert, including a maze of indistinguishable solid and non-solid tiles. The placards at the start read КПП (контрольно-пропускной пункт, "checkpoint") and ЮЖНЕЕ СЕМИПАЛАТИНСКА ("south to Semipalatinsk"). LAKE1 stays at the lake but changes the graphics, including a most excellent pixel-art submarine in the background. The connection between LAKE0 and LAKE1 is now a door, rather than a map edge transition. LAKE2 has Ksenia entering the Buran (Буран) spaceplane.
| FOREST0 |
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| FOREST1 |
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| FOREST2 |
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Ksenia starts the game in FOREST0 standing before Spasskaya Tower,
and immediately has to deal with a brutal series of jumps over one-tile platforms.
In FOREST1 Ksenia encounters a group of fellow Young Pioneers in front of the Grand Kremlin Palace. The door that leads to COMP2 and the Door Key item are moved here from FOREST2, with the Door Key represented as a coin. The signboard explains the conceit behind a coin working as a key:
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FOREST1 has a topological difference relative to its counterpart in Captain Comic: it cannot be traversed in a right-to-left direction without the Boots.
The door at the far right of FOREST2 leads to LAKE0, just as in Captain Comic. But when the modders moved the door that leads to COMP2 from FOREST2 to FOREST1, they forgot to remove it from FOREST2. There remains in FOREST2 an invisible door linking to COMP2 just after the big gap, at the same coordinates it had in Captain Comic. Because there is no door in COMP2 that links back to FOREST2, going through the door crashes the game.
| SPACE0 |
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| SPACE1 |
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| SPACE2 |
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In SPACE0, the color of the door on the rocket was changed from red to black, but the change is not only visual. The door tiles are now considered solid, likely a side effect of tile ID rearrangement. On entering the level, Ksenia cannot walk left or right but must jump out of the solid tiles, and then cannot get back to the door.
SPACE1 is completely unmodified. Technically, the map's underlying tile IDs have been rearranged, but not in any way that affects appearance or layout.
SPACE2 puts the entrance to BASE0 in a flying saucer, with original graphics.
| BASE2 |
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BASE0 and BASE1 are unchanged relative to Captain Comic. The sign in BASE1 reads "EARTH", as it did in Captain Comic Revision 1.
BASE2 is visually identical, but certain background tiles that were non-solid in Captain Comic are solid in Pioneer Ksenia, making possible a slight sequence break to get to the Boots without traversing a series of doors.
| COMP0 |
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| COMP1 |
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| COMP2 |
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The COMP stages have been changed into a big freezer and mausoleum where political leaders are kept on ice. The graphics are all new and the layouts are tweaked. COMP2 adds a floor below the platform holding the Lantern (now represented by a lighter), making possible the sequence break of teleporting up to the item, similar to what was possible in Revision 2 of Captain Comic. The sign above the sarcophagi reads:
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Map Tiles
All the tile graphics files (.TT2 files) contain 128 tiles, unlike in Captain Comic where the number of tiles varies per level. To fill all 128 slots, the graphics files are padded out with blank tiles, though strangely tile 7f is always a copy of tile 0a.
Except for the extra padding, CAVE.TT2, SHED.TT2, and CASTLE.TT2 are unmodified. All other levels' tiles are changed or reordered.
A few of the new tiles go unused.
| LAKE.TT2 | ||
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| The Adventures of Captain Comic | Пригоди Піонерки Ксені | Comments |
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Much art is added or redrawn. The background hills are recolored from gray to black. |
| FOREST.TT2 | ||
| The Adventures of Captain Comic | Пригоди Піонерки Ксені | Comments |
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Every tile is redrawn, except for the blank 45 which is a copy of 00 in Captain Comic. There appears to be an error in tiles 01, 02, and 03: they are shifted vertically by one pixel, with a row of pinkish pixels at the bottom, leading to visible at the tops of towers in FOREST0 and FOREST1. |
| SPACE.TT2 | ||
| The Adventures of Captain Comic | Пригоди Піонерки Ксені | Comments |
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| BASE.TT2 | ||
| The Adventures of Captain Comic | Пригоди Піонерки Ксені | Comments |
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The tiles are the same, just reordered. |
| CAVE.TT2 | ||
| The Adventures of Captain Comic | Пригоди Піонерки Ксені | Comments |
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Unmodified. |
| SHED.TT2 | ||
| The Adventures of Captain Comic | Пригоди Піонерки Ксені | Comments |
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Unmodified. |
| CASTLE.TT2 | ||
| The Adventures of Captain Comic | Пригоди Піонерки Ксені | Comments |
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Unmodified. |
| COMP.TT2 | ||
| The Adventures of Captain Comic | Пригоди Піонерки Ксені | Comments |
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Tiles 04–07 are copied from Captain Comic but are slightly corrupted, being shifted upward by one row of pixels or with the bottom row changed in color. |
Enemies
7 of Captain Comic's 14 enemies are changed.
BUG.SHP (now a scorpion) gains distinct left- and right-facing animations. The right-facing animation is seen only in LAKE0, where the enemy acts like a Fire Ball, bouncing off the boundaries of the screen. Everywhere else the enemy appears (LAKE1, LAKE2, BASE0, BASE1, BASE2), it has the "leaping" behavior that always uses left-facing graphics.
BIRD.SHP, BIRD2.SHP, BUG.SHP, and ROCK.SHP each have an unused frame at the end of the file. In BIRD.SHP, BIRD2.SHP, and BUG.SHP, it is a solid white square. In ROCK.SHP, it is a fifth expression for the face. The letters ГК on BIRD.SHP enemy potentially stand for государственная корпорация ("state corporation"), while ЧП means either частное предприятие ("private company") or чрезвычайное положение ("state of emergency").
| Filename | Captain Comic name | Captain Comic | Піонерка Ксеня | Unused frame |
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| BALL.SHP | Beach Ball | 
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| BEE.SHP | Killer Bee |  
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| BIRD.SHP | Brave Bird |  
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| BIRD2.SHP | Shy Bird |  
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| BUG.SHP | Bug-eyes | 
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| CUBE.SHP | Spinner | 
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| FB.SHP | Fire Ball | 
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| FROG.SHP | Blind Toad | 
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| GLOBE.SHP | Glow Globe | 
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| ROCK.SHP | Space Pollen | 
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| SAUCER.SHP | Saucer | 
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| STAR1.SHP | Spark | 
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| STAR2.SHP | Atom | 
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| STAR3.SHP | F. W. Bros. | 
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Graphics
The Captain Comic player avatar is changed to Ksenia, wearing the distinctive red scarf of the Pioneers.
| The Adventures of Captain Comic | Пригоди Піонерки Ксені |
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| The Adventures of Captain Comic | Пригоди Піонерки Ксені |
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| The Adventures of Captain Comic | Пригоди Піонерки Ксені |
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As in Captain Comic, the life icons have unused transparency masks. The semi-transparent images are here shown on top of a black background, as they appear in the game.
| The Adventures of Captain Comic | Пригоди Піонерки Ксені |
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All the items have changed graphics.
| Captain Comic name | Captain Comic | Піонерка Ксеня | Notes |
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| Corkscrew | 
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A rifle cartridge? A tube of lipstick? |
| Door Key | 
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A coin with a dollar sign on it, the СКВ demanded to enter the mausoleum. |
| Boots | 
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Looks like a high heel. |
| Lantern | 
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Possibly a lighter. |
| Teleport Wand | 
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A purse? |
| Gems | 
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The Gems have become a ring, with the emerald remaining in place. |
| Crown | 
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A waving flag of Ukraine. |
| Gold | 
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The тризуб or trident is a symbol of Ukraine. |
| Blastola Cola | 
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The can of Blastola Cola now looks more like a glass mug. |
| Shield | 
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The health-restoring Shield has become a Pioneers pin. |
Fullscreen Graphics
| SYS000.EGA | |
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| The Adventures of Captain Comic | Пригоди Піонерки Ксені |
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| SYS001.EGA | |
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| The Adventures of Captain Comic | Пригоди Піонерки Ксені |
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The graphic that displays when you win the game, SYS002.EGA, is unaltered and still describes the ending of Captain Comic, in English:
| SYS002.EGA | |
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| The Adventures of Captain Comic | Пригоди Піонерки Ксені |
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| SYS003.EGA | |
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| The Adventures of Captain Comic | Пригоди Піонерки Ксені |
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| SYS004.EGA | |
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| The Adventures of Captain Comic | Пригоди Піонерки Ксені |
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The text prompt at the high score screen has been translated. The background of the high score screen in Captain Comic Revision 1 is stored as 32,000 bytes of static data within the EXE file, following about 64 K of other code and data. Pioneer Ksenia's executable is not an EXE file but a COM file, which has a maximum size of 64 K, leaving no room for the high score graphic. So when the code tries to read the graphic from memory, it finds 32,000 bytes of uninitalized data. In both cases, the text prompt is overlaid and not stored as graphic data:
| High Score | |
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| The Adventures of Captain Comic | Пригоди Піонерки Ксені |
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Sound
The title music was modified to Взвейтесь кострами, синие ночи ("Bonfires, soar in the Blue Nights"). All other sounds in the game are unchanged.
| The Adventures of Captain Comic | Пригоди Піонерки Ксені | |
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| Title |
Unused Map Tiles
Some tiles that are inherited from Captain Comic are unused, and some newly drawn tiles are unused. This listing excludes blank padding tiles, as well as tile 7f which is always an unused copy of 0a.
| LAKE.TT2 | ||
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| Old | New | Comments |
          
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Metal platforms are never found below the horizon in LAKE1. One unused tile's color matches the rocket and has writing that looks like "ЗДМ.". The unused gray square tile 79 is a duplicate of the used 27 and 67. |
| FOREST.TT2 | ||
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Four new tiles are unused. | |
| SPACE.TT2 | ||
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No new unused tiles. | |
| BASE.TT2 | ||
| Old | New | Comments |
 
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No new unused tiles. | |
| CAVE.TT2 | ||
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No new unused tiles. | |
| SHED.TT2 | ||
| Old | New | Comments |
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No new unused tiles. | |
| CASTLE.TT2 | ||
| Old | New | Comments |
 
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No new unused tiles. | |
| COMP.TT2 | ||
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Tiles 02–05 (the door with the number "1" on it) are not used in the map data, but they are (mistakenly) used for the door opening/closing animation, which should instead use 20–21 to match the map graphics. Tiles 04–07 are not perfect duplicates of their counterparts in Captain Comic: they are shifted upward by one row of pixels or have their bottom row of pixels colored differently. Among the other unused tiles are a spiral-textured platform and an alternate sarcophagus. |
Cleanup > Pages missing date references
Cleanup > Pages missing developer references
Cleanup > Pages missing publisher info
Games > Games by content > Games with revisional differences
Games > Games by content > Games with unused graphics
Games > Games by developer > Games developed by Insight Corp.
Games > Games by platform > DOS games
Games > Games by release date > Games released in 1990
