espire8

Hi Steve. I'll give v.17 some playtime tonight and report back. Update: played through level 1 - no problems found yet. will try level 2 & 3 next. Update #2: haven't quite finished level 2, but no bugs yet.

Actually, it is geared toward emulation. Don't know why I called it stella in the first post (just corrected that). I down loaded prosystem just to play these protos. I hear they're playable on Cuttle cart 2 but I'm stuck with emu for now.

Got a sirius high score to post? Follow this thread.

It's refreashing to play a good 7800 space shooter and although alot of players feel sirius is far too hard to be playable, I think it's still better than being too easy. Here's how to select the easy mode: (using the pro system emulator) Selecting between HARD and EASY is momentary and won't "toggle" at all. I found that you must hold down [F5], then push [F2] to start a game on easy mode -otherwise you'll go back to hard mode. You'll know it's on easy when the first enemies are taken down with a single shot instead of requiring multiple hits. I also found that you can interupt a game in progress at any time using the same proceedure to reset the game in easy mode, so this may help make the game more enjoyable to non-shooter veterans. My best score on easy is 071,550 pts. EDIT: Make that 076,250. I got to all the stages on easy but still havn't got pass the 2nd stage on hard level. The high scores are recorded in the same table regardless of difficulty setting so there's no way to tell if any score was achieved in either setting, therefore any hi score posted I think is safe to assume it were set to easy (which is hard enough for most!)

Here's a simple overhead shooter. Hybrid Assault Basicaly you're an escaped hybrid eagle fused with weapons, a bionic bird so to speak. Experimental hybrid animals of all sorts has got lose from a secret lab and are rampaging. Blast away the seek and destroy hybrids before they do you in first. Flying depletes your strengh. Eating food restores life. Land on the ground to pick up power up items and fight ground enemies to get food. Build strengh to defeat area boss and advance to next stage until you find a human who will free you from the life eating weapon on your back.

I like that approch, makes for many different team player combinations. Interesting. Like a game of hot potato. Maybe a good idea to have one of the fireballs with a different shape and color that can act like an egg timebomb and will bounce around the playfield harmlessly (not taking any bricks away) behaving as the other fireballs, and which ever corner shield it touches twice the first time (all shields can deflect or catch it only once) therefore will cause it to detnoate and damage the player's wall via the "flare up" damage at maximum extention for a brief period. My theory - your ideas are at least good enough that everyone's already decided they are a final game design document. That's how much respect you command. Thanks A sprite, but I don't mind if anyone like to suggest an idea that can improve on or even replace any of my own ideas. I'm as much a fan of the first MM as anyone else would be; only difference is I helped with the graphics --but Darrell did most of the hard work progamming it. My efforts are all in vain without him. That's how much respect he commands. Basicaly, I'm in the same end-user boat as all of you are, just a little more involved is all. However, if any game, in this case a sequel, is worth the time to program depends heavily if there's a large enough base audience to justify the effort and very encouraging to hear from. 1. How about a penalty if you hold the ball for too long, perhaps temporarily blowing up the player's defender? The fireball "flare ups" destroys some of the brick if you hold it too long. Maybe a second level penalty for allowing the flare up to maximize it's spinning diameter that it makes the shield temporarily blow up or just freeze in place for a few moments? 2. Single player easter egg scoring mode - time attack and golf score. Win in the fastest possible time, or in the fewest possible turns. Or both. I think the End of Game Ranking would serve that up even in muli-player mode. 3. A victory screen for Scarlet, where she eats all the player characters (or simply chases them if we're sensitive to the plight of tiny pixel people), one by one, while a happy jingle celebrates her accomplishment...? lol ..now sounds different from the first version. Maybe just put the crown on her own head during the procession. 4. Find a decent writer to include all kinds of fun stories and trivia in the instruction manual - maybe even create a comic book. This has absolutely nothing to do with the game itself, but neither did half of anything that the people programming classic games did to entertain themselves ...and just as often, the player. Here's a trivia for you - Did you know that a comic book style manual with a storyline to match the game was in progress for the first MM but never completed in time before the xmas deadline? I think you just figured out my intention for a sequel. Pretty please? Great idea To make Scarlet controlable in MM2? not sure that will work in the main gameplay. Maybe in the easter egg? You know, the more I think about it, the more that seem an excellent idea. To have the characters actualy trying to build back the wall at the risk of getting hit. Thanks for the input lost child. Although the mock up you have is not doable, here's how I think your idea can work with the layout I have: Pushing the button will cause the character to panic and rebuild holes by running to tag one side of the screen where one brick is picked up and then races back to tag his own corner to drop it where it randomly fills a gap in the wall and the character keeps this up until the button is pressed again where he will stop and follow your shield again. I was thinking earlier that the kings would have the ability to deflect a fireball on it's own for one hit and be vulnerably stunned for a second before recovering, but if another hit is made while stunned, he'd be eliminated. A rule could be applied that any king carring a brick back to his corner can be eliminated with a single fireball hit. Another rule for the fireball is that once it breaches a wall, every time it hits the very top or bottom of the screen, the fireball will become "non-detructive" for a single brick hit and will "swap" the next brick it hits to randomly fill the wall in the opposite side and then returns to destructive mode again. It's possible that multiple "brick swapping" can occur if the ball repeatedly hits the same far end of the screen and the breached wall until it rebounds out from where it entered. This is sort of like doing an automatic combo of wall damage to a player if you can get your fireball pass inside your opponant's wall. Who's ever shield was the last to hit the "swaping" fireball, their's is the wall that gets rebuilt for every brick the opposite side loses. I think Darrell's rebuild option can be used as a separate feature here (can't combine it with the catch feature) as an alternative gameplay selection since we only got one button per controller.

I think I can try the player and enemy ship sprite and a starfield tile, I never did anything graphic wise for the 7800 before. Are mock ups good enough for a start?

Started playing Sirius tonight. So far I made 2nd place at 035,450pts on the preset hi-score table at stage 2. sorry that the score is so tiny in the screen shot. I think the sound fx is fabulous. In fact, I perfer no background music at all as the sound of rapidfire photons and explosion when I'm hit gives me enough audio clues to what's happening. I just tried playing one of Mars Laser's albums while playing Sirius and that worked for me. Fire up your ipod while you're playing, that's the next best thing. Sirius would have been considered hard even 10 years ago. It's just a mean game from start to finish. Oddly I think the first level is probably one of the harder ones due to those little asteroids. Tempest Both Sirius and Plutos are excellent 7800 games; I like Sirius more though. Once you know the tight spots and enemy patterns, it's a walk in the park. I'm pretty good with the first stage now, -what mess me up alot is when I get greedy for points and try to blow up everything in sight when I'm fully powered up. Heh, I'm a typical shooter type gamer and I like the challenge as it is. I don't know why almost everyone say sirius is too hard, I've played worse shooting games, like neo-geo's "Last Resort" that don't let you pass a certain stage and continuing is futile without a second player to assist you. Sirius is hard when you first start to play as it is naturally with most shooters. I think the difficulty is spot on. At least it don't set you back to the begining of the stage every time you lose a ship as with games like R-TYPE. In Sirius, the bonus points in the end of the first stage earns you a couple of free ships and you don't lose all your power ups after getting hit the first time which gives you a fighting chance. It ain't that bad. Very impressive for a vintage system, though there are other wonderful 8bit shooters like konami's Lifeforce for the NES which if compared still has much better colors. Anyway, with Sirus, you can expect to lose alot while learning the game's attack patterns and playing becomes more satisfying once you master it. The hard level is there to keep the game challenging for veterians like myself. Though shooters are not for everyone, knowing how to beat them have become a dying art.

That's a very interesting thought - "the position of the king affecting the trajectory of balls hit by the paddle" - I think that's a great feature that can be used even in solo play. I don't know if you're suggesting that the king character be a separately controlled sprite ie: P1=top paddle shield; P2=top king character; P3=bottom paddle shield; P4=bottom warlord character. An interesting muli-player twist I'll investigate utilizing in some game variations, the trajectory kings idea, that's neat! Hmm.. that got me thinking. Perhaps in addition to the "no catch" idea and fireball "flare up" (destroying some of your own castle walls) maybe by catching a fireball a player can control it's propulsion in relation to how long it's held, ie: catching and releasing the ball within 1 sec will launch the ball in full-insane speed (ball becomes white and a little larger in size when launched in insane speed?) and immediately returns to normal speed setting upon first colliding with a king or being caught by another shield. The longer the ball is held, (say, every second?) the slower the ball's speed when finally launched (From Insane speed, Fast, Medium, to Slow) 4 seconds elapse to launch at the slowest speed it looks like. This feature can be included in the Catch option listed as Turbo along with Yes, No, and Limited.

Sorry gambler, there's no playable bin demo at this time and most likely won't happen, unless a seasoned programmer does decide to pick this up, because I can't code. I'm just dealing with the "designing" stages as a visual springboard referance so programmers and others can get a glimps of what the finished game can look like. Think of this as the "story boarding" process for a possible "motion picture" release. Hopefully this presentation I'm putting together -for what it's worth- will convince someone whose up to the challenge of bringing this game to realization. I do appreciate your enthusiasm though! Okay, here's what I concider to be a finished revised first level design: some minor changes to the maze so the walls have the illusion of showing up on both sides of the screen when entering and exiting from either sides. Also added some different and additional sprites for the occasion. note the chest and tombstones. Next up -- Map level 2.

There's an easter egg idea. I'm not certain about sude goals so how about the characters engaged in a game of "handball" as players try not to miss their serve using the fireball against the AI dragon. Don't know if it's a far fetched idea but I did a mock up anyway. You can play it on the stella emulator. The MM bin is available for download in the development thread. Your idea remind me of a very rare bug I discovered in MM when playing without the castle walls ("No Man's Land" easter egg); where if three of the players got knocked out by fireballs before the dragon made it's exit, she would come back in the screen and fire 2 or 3 superfast fireballs that ricochade all over the place for several seconds until the dragon exited the side again. If the remaining player protected his king until the dragon disappeared, the round would end and continue the next match as normal. But if the last king got hit, ALL the players would be eliminated for that match and no score was awarded to anyone for the round! That was one of the coolest bugs I ever witness and the closest to what you described as a boss fight, which I think can be a good difficulty switch option that can be triggered if any single player makes 2 or 3 consecutive wins. Well, this thread is suppose to encourage possible development for MM2 and to get some outside input for a starting point as I don't want to come across as if my ideas are the best, I'd rather to see what others think of them first, but so far only 2 replies, which I'm sure will help in some way, but if that's all I get, then ..is everyone okay with the proposed ideas so far?

He's around somewhere. I pm'ed him so I think he'll show up here soon.

That sound cool. I like to play games with VCS flavor! What kind of gender you have in mind? Shooter? Puzzle? RPG? Sport? How bout' doing a game that everybody likes and is easy to get into? like a simple puzzle game in the vain of "Bust-A-Move"? I would'nt mind that on a pc!

The map for level 1 is completed, both intv and vcs versions to compare, but the vcs still needs a little more refining. INTELLEVISION The intv is a 6 x 7 grid of 42 screens. ATARI 2600 The vcs is a 3 x 5 grid of 15 screens. (same proportions at 60% less resolution) Though the maps are almost identical the number of vertical columns used are drasticaly different between the two. Intv use 19 vertical columns and 11 horizonal while the vcs has 40 vertical and 13 horizonal, more than twice the intv on the vertical resulting in a single screen that's more than double the width. Because the vcs is not a "free scrolling" maze as the intv, it must be decided how to divide up the map and make some alterations so the walls are not directly at the edge of the screen which will be a problem if a player were trying to cross where the "off screen" wall is not seen. Next update, -so there's less clutter on the vcs screen, I'll try to keep as much of the original maze pattern and will "eliminate" some of the walls in map 1 instead of moving them around.

The trailer looks riged and laughable the way they try to push it as if it were an xbox title or something; not much to write home about really. Nice prank if that's what it is...Today is April fool's you know. The big animated balls of fire seem to be the only nicely rendered graphics in the game, if they're really in there that is. The maze looks pretty good and expansive and the heroes being reduced to colored dots is livable but the creatures to fight look so blocky and undefined as compared to the hand drawn artwork and they dont animate (yet?). Even the choice of color is poor. The visuals look very prelimnary and i'm not impressed if this is the final look for the sprites. I think they feel the game play will overrule those quibbles but I try to see everything as a total package and I feel the game's graphical look is a poor presentation. Blizzard says they're hiring, maybe they desparately need sprite artists who can do wonders on the 2600.

It sure does! Thanks Philsan, remo! This will surely make the mapping progress of all levels alot easier and fun! Well obviously, I have to beat the game first. Hope I don't take too long.

Can Medieval Mayhem, Darrell Spice's first successful 2600 homebrew, be done justice with a sequel? This thread is to start discussion for a possible follow up as was suggested by Darrell to myself some time ago. I want to find out if the community would be interested in playing MM2 with some new game play mechanics that I'd like to share, and to hear other possible ideas via this thread so all comments are welcomed and appreicated. Screen mock ups for Medieval Mayhem 2 Hmm - the kernel for MM2 looks like it would be much simpler to do than the one for MM. What would the game play be like? Probably the same as MM1 including all the original options if that were possible along with new additions like moving king targets that the players can control, a breakout style wall design, new muli-player set ups and end of game ranking. Well that's the quick and dirty of it, of course there will be new and different animations that I plan to work on and hopefully will have a bit of interaction too. Sound good so far? I listed below in more detail most of the additions I have in mind but nothing set in stone yet without Darrell's approval should he decide to pick this project up. 1. New Game play variations - a varaity of 1, 2, 3, and 4 player game set ups for solo, team, two player versus, two player team against a solo player or "every knight for himself" with human and/or computer controlled opponants -including doubles! 2. Updated Menu - with new options, new title screen font (w/ matching menu fonts a possibility) and hopefully a new remix version of the original "Druid Chip" music score if Eric is willing to have at it again. 3. New Control Scheme with no "Sitting Ducks" - The helmets and crowns that where stationed at the corners in the first game are now replaced with cartoon characters inspired by the original label design and can run left and right across the screen trying to remain behind the player's shield to avoid the fireballs. These now living "moving targets" can be interactively controlled by the movements and position of the player's shield to have their character follow it around and they can even be toggled between following you or standing still by consecutively pressing the paddle's button. This new gameplay element adds a whole new realm of strategy with that classic "dodge ball" style play. 4. All New Graphics and Animation - Scarlet the Dragon returns, sporting a "new look" for this sequel. There's alot more for the eye to feast on as players get to enjoy the in-game comical antics of the characters as they interact with "shoving" each other back onto their own territory whenever they cross paths. And every victory march (except for last one) will have the ability to be manualy interupted to quickly start the next match by pressing any paddle button to have the dragon crash the procession and "sic" the marching knight away if you get tired of watching it, especially if it's not in your honor! The dragon also would now be susceptable to getting hit by a captured fireball aimed at her before making her exit after a launch --if you want to get back at her for chasing you off earlier! I think it's more fun when players can control some of the character's antics. 5. Warrior's End of Game Rankings - This is the feature that I would love to see happen here and will definately set a new goal for the winning player's performance besides just being the last surviver. -Will be great for tournaments too! The rank system may be the same as is found in the manual of the first game and would be displayed I imagine in place of the word "DEMO" during the demo play mode. Hope this all sound enticing to you as it is to me! Although I covered alot of ground here, this is just for discussion to get some reaction to the proposed ideas above. Any other ideas or suggestions that can be added or to improve others that are already mentioned? EDIT: I forgot to mention that some features I came up with for the sequel were inspired by the easter eggs in MM1 (the way the player can move the dragon in the credit screen). Also from some of the posted comments i've read scattered around in some obscure threads (wish i can find it again) where one had mentioned that pushing the button during the marching sequence in MM to skip ahead to the next match quickly would have been neat, which I felt was a valid point to concider for the second game (hence, the ability to 'sic' the knight). So, if you've played or own MM, -what are your impressions or other options for a follow up? Anything that you felt could have been useful in the first game? Anything you liked or not liked? Any certain things you'd like to see remain as the original? such as: -> Should the main menu keep the original font? -> Should the reverse paddle control option on the difficulty switchs remain as is? or be changed out for something else like allowing the shield movement to cover the entire screen width or restrict it to only their corner of the playfield and not allow crossing over the middle? -> Add some missing variation from the first like computer controlled "doubles" for solo play? These little details are important to address and there may be others I'm not aware of, so if there are, you can post em' here.

Nice work grafixbmp! last year I did a several F1 sprites for "Grandma's Revenge" in the Stella's Stocking holiday cart. i thought i'd share it here out of interest. Your take of the F1 look alot more closer to the real thing than mine i'd say.

Well at least i'm not alone. Okay, guess I'll just take pictures off the tv screen with my camera while running the game on real hardware. Sure glad I picked up a used S&S cart earlier -but thanks for sharing the rom; i may try to figure out that emu "later" .

Thank remo! though I still can't seem to run this rom on the intv Bliss emulator I just installed on my win xp tonight. maybe not xp compatible I suppose? unless Hmm.. my stella emu works fine. am i miss something?

Thanks. btw, If at all possible, do anyone know where I can obtain the rom image of S&S for an intv emulator? I searched the web to no avail and I need this to generate screen shots to help me map out the other 3 levels of the game.

Sorry if I sounded rather harsh in some of my last posts in this old thread. I'm not trying to knock any other hackers out there, I guess I was just disappointed at the time that my efforts to create "full spread" new maze didn't generate any entusiasm for a truely complete 2600 berzerk with voice, diagonal shots, and not just different maze designs but adding additional rooms to explore besides the 4 already there. At least to 8 rooms for better varity. My gripe with other berzerk hacks is that the wall changes are designed for their particular hack and are not truely designed as rooms that you would normaly find in a berzerk game. What I meant by unique was the walls being changed throughout the entire playfield and not just "parts" of it. This is what I meant about caring enough to figure that out. It wasn't easy for myself. I thought would revive something when the forums finally see for the first time completely new berzerk style mazes. But even my efforts was greeted with low responce and not enough to warrant a coder's interest. It seemed to me like "Where are all the berzerk fans?" ..though I still love the game, I forgot it and moved on. A complete and accurate 2600 berzerk is still what I want but looks not to happen because not enough people are wanting to speak out. There's just no demand.

- I found and pasted this interveiw with artist Michael Becker following the next paragraph, which is very interesting. -It's a good read. I think this is the begining of when the game graphics on the 2600 finally was given special attention by game creators as an important role in game developement. Amazing how imagic recognized that the 2600 is worthy of having fantastic looking in-game graphics if done by professional artists! This tells me that the old vcs always did had the potential to produce games with the kind of graphics that can even rival the later introduced intellevision by teaming up professional artists with the programmers. Imagic was truely ahead of it's time with that kind insight! The atari back then could have prevented the crash if they had followed that criteria from the start. Just imagine how all those old early atari 2600 titles would have looked and played if that were so? Adventure's ducky looking dragons would have just been an alternate reality. Perhaps many of the much better looking games could of been seen alot sooner if the standards were earlier raised by the same company who killed the industry back then? Inventing the graphic artist - With nearly thirty years of experience in electronic and traditional entertainment, Michael Becker worked with designers, artists, writers, software teams and production houses worldwide. In 1982 Michael created one of the first ever group of artists to work with programmers: a privileged witness in the rise and fall of the Imagic legend. Michael Becker today Model for Atlantis game Building the model for Beauty and the Beast box Microsurgeon original art Dragonfire was converted for almost every platform of the eighties Box art for Solar Storm game Interview by Valter Prette Mr. Becker, when did you start working for Imagic? I applied for a job there in 1982. I had been working as a creative director for a small ad agency in the Bay Area and read a Time magazine article about how videogames (coin op games at that time) were going to be a big industry. I was sick and tired of the noise of printing presses and promised to look for a new job as my New Year's Resolution. I saw an ad in the paper and was one of 350 people who applied as Imagic's Art Director. I stayed with them through their entire lifespan, including working on contract projects with Parker Brothers and Bantam Electronic Publishing, and even helped do an unpublished Sherlock Holmes game with Mark Klein after they had closed their doors and put everything into a shoe box. Was that the first time you got involved in the videogame industry? I had been involved in designing, writing and illustrating a few board games before that - a fantasy game about Eastern Middle Earth named Sword Lords and a sci-fi roleplaying game called Star Rovers. I worked on these because my hobby was quickly becoming fantasy wargaming and I was lucky I did those projects! Imagic held onto these games for a week, showed them to president Bill Grubb, and before I knew it I had been hired. They also mentioned that the programmers didn't do very good game art, so would I mind helping with that, too? I said yes, how hard could it be? Well, before long Wilfredo Aguilar joined me there (I had worked with him formerly), and we created the first videogame art department. We could usually do all the graphics for a game on a weekend or so, using an Atari 800 with a joystick, driving software that Bob Smith and Rob Fulop wrote for us. How you remember the industry of the 80ties? Was that a romantic approach compared to today? It was real small compared to today. I walked in to interview a couple days after Demon Attack had appeared at their first CES, and the phones were ringing like crazy. We grew really fast and before we knew it we were working on all the platforms of the time, primarily 2600 and Intellivision and then porting to Coleco and Vic-20. I did a couple Odyssey games, using characters instead of graphics (demons were the letter 'V' and the cannon was the letter 'A'. Shots were an I). It was real exciting, helping design our first trade shows, multimedia presentations, and even helping build the booths. But it crashed so fast that the romance ended rather quickly and seeing all my friends being laid off really soured the game industry for me for a while, so I joined up with Rob and we started doing multimedia projects for Apple and other very cutting-edge stuff as a contract design firm (first called Interactive Productions and later pfmagic). By then it was the late 80s and we did some CD titles for Philips but I realized these projects were getting huge and that they required big budgets and teams, so I went to EA in 1992. Why Imagic decided to use such a different approach from other companies? The 2600 games were designed to look cool on black backgrounds. That was what everybody thought looked great, so that became a signature look for those screens. For Intellivision, Brian and his guys had created a slick toolset to build those games, so they got a lot of UC programmers and we created tons of Intellivision games relatively easily. Those had a more colorful display and we used it. I was particularly pleased at how my 'searchlight' design for Atlantis on the Intellivision worked out. The big dragon in Swords & Serpents was pretty cool, too. Brian didn't want to keep it because it was so memory intensive, but I made him do it. How did you choose the subjects of the boxes? Did you test the games still under development to understand the plot of the story? The boxes just sort of evolved. At first Jim Goldberg's marketing group (one of the two groups I managed art for; the other was engineering) tested a bunch of box designs and one kid took a foil box and hid it on his lap he wanted it so much. They decided 'That's the box we want!'. It was real expensive to print on it because you had to print white ink first, let it dry, and then print color on top of it. But it really gave Imagic a unique graphic look. As for the images, Willy and I looked at the first models (such as the rubber demons with the rockets stuck up their behinds) and said 'We can do better than that! And cheaper, too.' So we built the models in the evenings and on the weekends and had them professionally photographed. As for the stories, we just sort of made them up. I remember talking with Bob Smith. He wanted to do a game that used a play mechanic like jacks, where you used the joystick to sweep up things, and we both loved the Hobbit, so we somehow came up with the idea of Dragonfire. I put a lot of sprites together to make an animated dragon and Bob did all the hard work. Were other people involved in the process? Always. We had one other game artist, Karen Eliot and quite a few people in the art department, designing beautiful things. Wendy Zeto was the art director for most of the print material, as I quickly moved to become Creative Director since I knew that making the games was where the action was, but I still managed the Art Department. Who made the models that you use for making the pictures? All of them, except for the demons of Demon Attack and the model for Star Voyager, were made either by me or by me working with Wilfredo Aguilar. I still have a few of them in the attic. What was the technique used to realize the pictures? We worked with an optical house, Full Spectrum, who did multimedia shows (slide shows in those days). They shot the models on black and used a lot of the same compositing and lighting tricks that were being used by the first Star Wars films, but only on single 4x5 images. I think it cost about $2000 to make a final image. We know Demon Attack box art was suddenly changed after the launch of the game, making the original version of the box a precious item for collectors. Are you able to finally reveal the truth about this choice made by Imagic? We didn't think much about it. We were working with a very talented painter and he did a great painting of demons over a moon, so we used that when it was finished. Nobody particularly loved the first box art at that time; I guess it's something that had to grow on you ;o) I kept the last rubber demon and gave it back to Rob several years later. We put it up on the pfmagic Christmas tree for a while. A couple years ago I 'returned' the Star Voyager model to Bob Smith at the Classic Gaming Expo, after a long orbit of the solar system. He donated it to their museum. Read the extended interview in the Official Intellivision Collector's Guide 2008!

Thanks for those suggestions, I'll just place the valor points and treasure counter in the middle and the lives counter on the left. So far I think the first level is going to be larger than I realize. It's nearly 18 screens in total. The pink squares are where the teleportation scrolls are located and the X is the exit to the next dungeon. The maze pic is very close to the original but I might try some memory saving variations that will reuse certain parts of the same mazes by flipping them and piecing them together in various patterns. As it looks right now, l think alot of space will be needed if there's gonna be all 4 levels. Guess some maze redesigning is in order..

Do you think that with proper level design the game could still work, if a level would be just one giant vertically scrolling stripe? Anyway, this is an amazing project, I wish I wasn't busy with Jumpman right now, else I might give it a try Thanks Cyborgoth, A single vertical scrolling playfield is an idea -though the level should wrap around from top to bottom, I'll investigate that possibility, sounds like a good one. Sure wish you had time to do the honors but your comments are welcome, as is everyone else's. SeaGTGruff, the keypad in the original game was mostly used by the wizard and for checking the status screen. But I figure having the status available in the main game screen is a good solution to not having a keypad. I tried to incorporate as much as I can from the original status into the menu using the maximum six characters per line normaly used for the 6-digit score keeping. I refinded the mock with some new wall texture and added more color and detail to the dragon, I didn't like the way the bottom wing looked separate from it's body so I opted for a 3/4 view instead of the overhead which I think this time came out far better than the last version posted. I pretty much found room for how all the spells attained can be displayed using icons. There's currently a "fireball" spell in the menu and the key below just represents how far you have access to the deeper levels according to the # of keys collected one per level. There's only 3 keys to 4 levels (since you already start on level 1). This is possibly as close to a real screen shot as I can get with this mock up as this binary hack demonstrates S_S_playfield___Asymmetrical.bin The colors are monochrome but this would make for many interesting experiments if there were a playfield color table in the code so I can perform some training in coloring exercises too. Next I'll try to mock parts of the first level dungeon.