I was wondering if it is possible to somehow access the Alpha Cartridges and start learning the editor via swap modding and improving those games, specifically the Arena 2P. (To start, I would like to make it a co-op shooter rather than a competitive shooter, by first adding a combined score display in between the two individual scores currently displayed. After that, whatever becomes possible.)

So, can we access the Alpha Cartridges, or only the BBS Cartridges?

If not, would you (Zep) consider Up-ing your Alpha Cartridges to BBS so that we could all download and mod them (and in doing so, learn the engine)?

Cheers! (Woke up in the middle of the night thinking about this game and couldn't get back to sleep).

haha
the alpha cartridges can't really be acessed as far as I know, but zep did posted the robot vs dragon cratridge here somewhere (though its really outdated now) and some others of the alpha cartidges are also here somewhere (like the boat file or the door test) maybe he'll post the others too!

as for learning the engine, you can do that by using the demo cartridges zep posts on the bbs or the amazing manual!]

there are also some tutorials scattered around.

these are the times when I think that having sticky posts and some sort of index would help.

as for the 2p thing, I'm sure zep will post a demo on the bbs for use with the explanation of the thingy, just wait for him to post the 0.3.0 blog!

Hi 3Suns

Welcome to the world of cart designing! There are still some limitations to what the Designer can do until lua scripting arrives (not super-far away), and unfortunately doing things like coop scoring is currently one of them. But after I'm free of 0.3 release stuff, I'll be posting a series of small 'how-to' example levels to show new features of the engine, as well as doing introductory tasks (making new monster animations etc.).

Kling -- yeah, the learning materials really need more organisation (and visibility and completeness!). I'm making a separate page for the Designer that will have an index of tutorials, and a copy of the manual at least.

Understood. Thank you both for the info and for the link to the manual. I look forward to digging into it with my son.

And to the accessibility of Lua in the future.