what the?
everytime I try to click on the website to get it, its says, "Can not find server."

Well, warp pipes to take you back and forth through the level would certainly imho be a good thing, though I could see random warp zones being quite an annoyence. In fact, personally, I'm against the idea of putting any random elements into a mario game, sinse it was always a very basic tennit of the series that enough practice and learning would be able to get you through, sinse all the enemies and items and such would be in the same places each time you played, and enough discovery and trial error would get you through rather than luck.

I like the blocks above idea though. Traditionally, small mario couldn't smash blocks.

as for the vertical stuff, I don't think stairs would be too much of a problem, given a walking into wall sound and a "Ledge withing jumping distance" sound.

so your on the first step, you try to walk forward, hit a wall but hear you can jump up to the right, you try to walk forward, hit a wall but here you can jump up again etc.

Enemies on different vertical levels to you might be a bit tricky to represent, especially sinse some enemies in the mario games would walk off whatever ledge they started ontop of. Probably the easiest thing to do would be to simply have enemies not attack you until you jump across, or up or down to whatever ledge they're on.

as for lifts, well vertical lifts would be relatively easy, sinse a vertical lift doesn't move it's horizontal position, and all you'd have to do is jump ontop of it and start going up and down. a ledge indicater sound could indicate at what point you were supposed to jump off the lift, though obviously jumping off too soon or late wouldn't be a good thing. this might however be more of a pain to program I'm guessing sinse what position you ended up at would depend upon when you jumped off the lift.

Horizontally moving lifts might be more of a pest to represent I think, but you could make a game quite successfully without them.

As for the level editer, well more vertical elements would probably mean harder editing as well. perhaps you could considder the full vertical stuff for a future project or major upgrade?

Hey everyone, the password to andy's ftp is: ****!
Just kidding, but andy, thanks for the offer, but I think I may have a few other hosts lined up. But if it's okay, I could contact you if I need extra help.
I just programmed a version with step sounds(from the original dk game). They work fine accept for when you're fighting bowser, so I just took them out of there.

sounds good, I think hidden items and warp pipes could make quite a difference to the game.

If you want to stick close to original Mario, the smashing blocks out of your path business isn't exactly accurate, but I think your right that you need at least some sort of extra obstacle to get in your way which you can't just walk past.

stairs and lifts might be fun, even if your not going for the full vertical business at the moment. i could see stairs beeing interesting sinse you could have the player attacked by a monster the instant he/she jumps up the stairs, making for some very fast reaction times required.

Personally Lile, I could never get on with mario kart, but then again, the only racing game I've ever had any remote success in has been rail racer, and even in that I need to practice hard to be able to get passed some of the obstacles.

Perhaps Sk8, having vertical elements added to the game slowly over time is a good way of getting people used to this style of game, so that when yourself (or somebody else), attempts something really complex in 2D such as audio metroid or Mega man it won't be quite as much of a shock.

I suppose I could do separate versions.
Okay, the step version takes a bit of getting used to, just don't get too destracted with them and it's the same.
Lyle, I put my voice in the menu by making that a wavefile and the music is a midifile. You can  play a midi and a wavefile at the same time.
I'm thinking since we're not going full vertical there'll be less blocks, and more of a risk. I figure this because in vertical, there's more searching and the original version had the running out of tiem version which I am not including as of yet.
I think slowly including vertical elements is good. I will start adding stairs and lifts in world three, how about it?

Okay, blah so I had to remove the steps, too sluggish, but besides that, things are going great! I've started adding blocks that you can hit if you're not small mario with items that include fireflowers, poison mushrooms, coins, and some bricks are just empty. I also may make enemies come out of blocks in a future world. I am forseeing more worlds(at least 2 more).
If gamers don't mind not having running out of time feature, I don't care if I don't add it; annoying thing anyway.
And I've added a few warp zones with blocks. I'll add more warp zones and maybe some hidden warp pipes to different worlds. Hmmm, maybe fake glitches so that you jump in a certain place, you get warped with no audio indication of the area to jump. There's a few things like that in smb.
And woo! I think I figured out a simple coding way to go about going fully vertical! So super audio mario extreme will be an interesting project with ledges, platform gaps, drops, bricks to smash, stairs, lifts(?), and more!

Glad things are working. both having monsters come out of bashable blocks, and hidden secrets with no indication were part of the mario games, so that side of things is even sticking close to the original. I'm sorry the stepping sound slows things up, hopefully you can find a way around this as well.

About the random warps, I like the idea, however, but I think there would have to be a sound to indicate that you have actually warped, and maybe a vocal indication of where you've warped to, otherwise things might get slightly confusing,

So, your walking along as normal, jump randomly in a certain spot and suddenly here yourself falling down a warp zone. After the warping sound follows the message "world 2 level 1" and thus you know where you've gone.

I'm glad the vertical stuff is coming together coding wise. Imho it will be a major change in audio games when it's done.

As for time, well I'm being slightly hippocrytical here, sinse I'm the one who's been recommending sticking fairly close to some of the original mario concepts, but if nobody else likes the idea of including time limits I'm most deffinately happy with leaving them out sinse, as I said, they annoyed me. lol!

Well, I don't really think there will be too much trouble with releasing two audio mario games, particularly sinse the vertical elements might change things around quite a bit. Even Originally the Lost levels was released as Mario 2 in Japan (though not released outside Japan until the Snes came out), and that was almost exactly the same game as original mario, accept with more difficult level design.

Also, if audio mario it getting a level editer, and vertical mario isn't, that will be a difference.

You might add some different mario series enemies to the game to change things around, such as bullit bills, bobombs or shy guys, and perhaps include different mario musics, but I think the vertical elements will be enough to distinguish the 2nd game.

as an alternativve though, you could always either bill the vertical game as a different platformer converted into audio, or go completely creative and do your own thing, ------ even if you borrowed concepts like stomping on enemies to kill them (there were many games that worked like this I believe).

If you wanted to try audiofying a different platformer to Mario, you might considder Jet set willy, a simple, addictive, very famous old collection style platformer for computers like the Zx spectrum (you can even get the music in Midi format).

for more info see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_Set_Willy

Despite being quite a large game in terms of the size of the levels, you do have fewer objects to considder in the program, sinse the game was entirely based upon avoiding and not killing the enemies  and collecting a certain amount of items. Also, it might be a good introduction for vertical elements because it is such a simple game. In fact, reading your block idea in the Metroid topic, I think it'd probably work very well, assuming your could fix the enemy's movement.

Of course, this is only one game suggestion, and there are probably quite a few others, but as your programming the thing it's all up to you (though if you wanted some voice acting or maybe some music I might be able to help).

Well you'd certainly have a lot of elements to play with given the diversity of game genres the Mario crew have appeared in over the years, ---- 2D and 3D platformers, sports games, racing, rpg, party style minigames, and even a couple of pretty horrible edutainment games on the snes. , but as you say, running into nintendo over copywrite issues could be a problem.

My only slight concern with mixed genre titles though, is that they end up falling into the same trap as Tarzan Jr, which imho would've been much better if philip had just created a streight 2D platform game and missed out the other level types.

as to the lifts, one idea might be to have them as oppertunities to choose your route through the level. Even if your not going for the full vertical experience, you could stil have several "jump off" indicater as the lift goes up, leading to different paths with different items and hazards on them, ----- obviously if you were going full vertical, jumping off at the top would lead you to a top ledge above the bottom, and you might be able to fall down to the ground.

If on the other hand your going semi-vertical, getting off at the top could just be another path, with it's own pits and such.

Depending upon how cruel you were feeling, you might also considder making some lifts drop and kill the player when they reach the top (though not in original Mario, Super Mario world had some ledges like this).

this would mean that getting on a lift was a bit like a game of chicken, where the player can choose to jump off atthe first route indicater, or stay on to see if there's another route, though at a risk of dying if there isn't one.this might also be a nice way to hide items, by having two or three routes off some lifts which only players willing to risk losing lives would be able to find.

Well there are certainly a lot of characters to play with for a mario plot, and alternaeate routes through the levels etc could allow you to discover more.

As to the lifts thing, if some will lead to different routes and others to death, there won't be too much uniformity, even if you made them all the same size in steps. With lifts like this and the warps and hidden blocks, there's going to be a hole load of hidden stuff, which imho is an extremely! good thing.

and of course, a level editer will make things even more fun.

Btw reguarding the editer, perhaps you could considder allowing level creaters to add their own background music, ---- either in midi or better stil in mp3. that way people could create not only levels with lots of different items and paths through them, but levels wth different themes and atmospheres.

I could host the game, well the server is down under the downloads section, or something. I would put it under other...

I must admit I was invisioning 3 choice lifts, but then again, even if the lifts are only two choice, you could stil create levels with lots of sub paths and possible deaths by using many of them, so it'll work out alright.

Btw Sk8, appologies for joining the mob, but sinse I'm now back at my flat and my desktop, I'm also waiting for a download of the game to be available, sinse it's currently only on my laptop which I left with my parents.