Cary Walkin on the Internet

Arena.Xlsm version 1.3 is coming along nicely. Here are some of the main things to look forward to!

New Tiles: Movable Walls and Pressure Switches – Movable walls are heavy walls that you can push around the arena. Push a movable wall onto a pressure switch to detonate the dynamite attached to that switch.  Dynamite can be attached to walls to access new areas of the map. Dynamite may also be attached to cracked terrain, explode the terrain under an enemy to cause the enemy to fall down a bottomless pit! Note that walls with dynamite attached can only be exploded via pressure switch. Be careful, if you push the movable wall onto cracked terrain or a bottomless pit, it will fall down and make the pressure switch unusable!

New Feature: Keyboard Controls – You can now control every action in the game with the keyboard in addition to the mouse. This dramatically increases the speed of gameplay!

New Feature: Statistics and “Boss Key” – The game now tracks your statistics across play-throughs. A lot of people have been requesting that I implement a “boss key”, which is a spreadsheet that can be pulled up quickly to mask the fact that you’re playing a video game. The Statistics spreadsheet can be pulled up quickly by pressing the F key while playing the game. The Statistics page is an unlocked and unprotected spreadsheet if you need it for this purpose you can customize it with work. NOTE: If you feel the need to use a “boss key” you probably should not be playing this at work. I will not be held liable if you get yourself fired for playing a video game at work.

If you want to volunteer as a tester and receive version 1.3 prior to the general public, please feel free to send me an e-mail with the version of excel you are using and I’ll add you to the volunteer tester group.

Please continue to follow me on Facebook and Twitter and Reddit for Arena.Xlsm updates and discussion. Thanks very much for your interest in Arena.Xlsm!

Thanks for your patience regarding the version 1.2 update. Final exams and assignments have been dominating most of my time. However, I’ve been making significant progress on version 1.2. Have a look at the few remaining items still on my to-do list for version 1.2:

• New Enemy Ability: Chance to Knockback. This will make it more challenging to avoid fire and the new bottomless pits!
• The Ultimate Evil Boss Encounter: I’m redesigning this boss fight to give it a more “epic” feel. This requires some heavy scripting on my part but I think it’ll be worth it. Without spoiling the redesign, there will be multiple targets and you will need to make a strategic decision which target to hit at any time. This will be in addition to some new counterattacks that have been added to The Ultimate Evil to deal with some of the simpler strategies from earlier versions. I’m trying to get the balance on this just right so it’s not too hard but not too easy while still being a challenge.

In regards to the specific time for release, please continue to follow me on Facebook and Twitter and Reddit for updates and discussion. I hope to get the new version to the volunteer tester group sometime next week. Speaking of which, if you want to be a volunteer tester, please e-mail me with your Excel version(s) and I’ll add you to the list. You’ll be able to try out version 1.2 before everyone else!

In addition to the version 1.2 preview that I posted earlier, please enjoy some screenshots from the upcoming update below:

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