Arena: Maze of Death (Game Gear)

Maxim · May 16, 2011, 03:24:41 AM

I'm just making some notes-to-self in here - things I need to go back to do as I change the "standard" as I go along...

Stage 1:
- Change the switch to a letter label like later stages

Stage 4:
- Change letter label borders to be non-square, as in Stage 5

Stage 5:
- The intro screen needs moving
- Switch G has no corresponding door label - it's the one near the exit

I already added intros and exit labels to my local versions...

Maxim · May 19, 2011, 12:32:38 PM

Stage 6 done - the first underground stage. Not many physical impossibilities and those that do occur aren't too obnoxious... but there is rather annoyingly a switch there that seems to have no effect? It's already pressed (and can't be un-pressed) when you get there and there doesn't seem to be anything it might control.

Note to interested observers: the last stage of this game is an office building with elevators. I'm dreading that a bit...

Maxim · May 21, 2011, 02:56:37 AM

Stage 7. There are 20 in total...

Maxim · May 22, 2011, 01:33:38 PM

Stage 8. A few blatant physical impossibilities here...

Maxim · May 31, 2011, 12:28:20 PM

Stage 9 brings a new graphics set (chemical plant) and our first multi-level design - pits with elevators linking the upper and lower sections, with some overlapping. It also heavily uses long corridors with fast-moving enemies that "see" you from any distance, making it very hard work to map their starting positions.

I went with some layering of the down arrows and Z-ordering as a depth cue, meaning sometimes there's an arrow in front of a map. Avoiding overlap means some of the down arrows are ridiculously long. I may have to review this scheme if later levels get more extreme.

Maxim · May 18, 2013, 03:20:14 PM

I think this project is abandoned now. The stages are getting really complicated to lay out, and there are some enemies that are very hard to capture in their initial positions. I have a work in progress level 10 that I could post, but I don't see me getting any more done in the next few years.

Maxim · July 02, 2019, 02:55:39 PM

Hey, all my attachments disappeared... Did I miss some announcement when that happened?

JonLeung · July 03, 2019, 08:09:47 AM

Hmmm, it's news to me too. I don't know if I've really used attachments myself so that's why I didn't notice.

I can try to restore the attachments from a backup if it's as simple as copying any missing files back to the "attachments" folder. If it's more technical than that I'll have to ask bustin98 when he has a chance to look into it.

Grizzly · July 03, 2019, 12:15:02 PM

My uploaded avatar image also disappeared. I think I still have stored it somewhere but a restore from backup would be easier.

JonLeung · July 11, 2019, 10:14:28 AM

I uploaded the folder that I have but also noticed that all the files had slightly different sizes. I don't recall at the moment if they gained a few bytes or lost a few bytes. Perhaps some kind of header/footer was added or truncated upon a forum update or something? But then they weren't working anyway...

Uploading my copy of the forums folder didn't help at all, did it?