+1 Works fine under FF.
http://worldsbiggestpacman.com/
Over two YEARS worth of levels all rolled into one giant board. The escape tunnels link the different levels together. Apparently this is namco approved as well so it's "official" pacman.
I didn't understand what you meant until I played the game. It didn't even dawn on me what I was looking at. Jesus, these levels suck! Here's the first two I played:
http://worldsbiggestpacman.com/play/#2,0
http://worldsbiggestpacman.com/play/#2,1
Holy crap. This is sanctioned? Probably just for PR. Jesus. I remember Lode Runner on the XEGS lets you create your own levels. I never had the floppy so when I created the "better" levels, I would painstakingly draw them onto graph paper. I found the folder I kept my levels in and they are absolutely hideous. Of course, I was only 8 at the time so I could be forgiven and my tastes have changed as an adult.
But to create these levels someone needed to log in to Facebook. If we assume everyone is honest 
that means these are maps that are create by 18+ year olds. WTF? I was creating better maps as an 8 year than most of Facebook.
Really, honestly, truth be told, I can't stand the thought of wasting my time playing this. Let me know if there are any decent maps that don't involve gobbling a bazillion dots or going around and around and around and... you get the idea.
Great concept, brilliant execution, crap designers.
There are good ones in there, but because it is so huge, you just have to hunt for them. That's part of the fun! Don't concern yourself with completing the levels, concentrate on exploration, and when you run across a good level finish it.
You should be easy on the user-created stuff though. Remember WE understand how a pacman level is supposed to work... average joe does not.
I wanted to post a little mini-review now that I've been playing a few days, so I might as well do it here.
This game started as a tech demo for ie9 and was never supposed to be released to the public, but it was such a hit that they decided to release it anyway. Why they linked it with (BLAH!) facebook is a mystery though. Back to the tech demo part..... IE9, is the first browser, to my knowledge, that uses hardware acceleration to render html5, flash, javascript and other languages. That means that full-fledged video games can be made in flash and javascript without worries of vsync tearing and lagginess. Pacman doesn't really tax a machine anyway, but they intentionally made the game window a little to small to show off ie9's new hardware accelerated zoom. Putting the zoom at around 145% (for me anyway) blew the gameplay area up to full screen.
Anyway, on to the gameplay! The game uses the strict pacman rules for controlling the ghost's ai and pacman's movements. I believe it is based on last year's google doodle. So in that respect, it is pretty much pixel perfect pacman. All kinds of user-created levels are linked together via the escape tunnels to create one uber level. You'll start on the board of your choosing and when you go through an escape tunnel the screen will scroll EXACTLY like the original legend of zelda and you'll be on a new board. Ghosts can't follow you and each board has a seperate set of ghosts. When exiting a level, the dots you have eaten are saved in memory so you can go back and finish it later, but unfortunately so are the ghost positions. So if you exited the level to avoid a ghost don't plan on going back in the way you came out because the ghosts will be right where you left them. Other than that though the gameplay is pretty fun.
You can also create your own level on a blank portion of the ubermap, and there lies the game's flaw. Users, especially (BLAH) facebook users aren't very good at making pacman levels. The levels don't seem to have any error checking either, aside from a "report maze" button to the left. This also hurts the exploration aspect of the game because the user isn't required to make escape tunnels to all the ajoining mazes. If it were not for this I think this might be the best pacman game ever, but it is a big issue. I'm wondering how hard it would be to tranfer this site offline, as I think a community like ours would be far bettter at making pacman levels.
There are one or two technical flaws to deal with as well. Most are too minor to mention, but the main one is after your three lives are up it can take forever and a day for the "gameover" menu to appear. I think this is because your personal stats are uploaded to the database after you die, and the db is constantly over-crowded with players. Ditto for the initial loading time. I suppose it's a victim of it's own success though.
Anyway, give it a try, as despite it's flaws it is quite fun. Also you can swap direct urls to specific levels, so we could create our own personal section with non-crap levels.
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Topic: IE9 Powered..... Worlds Biggest Pacman! (Read 3832 times)
