Sonar Maps

X11 Version

Final Version

There are notable differences in the rock/vortex architecture, most of them below the line where the ocean floor gives way to the Vortex machine. Note especially how one walled-in area was oddly hollowed out more for the final version, and a glyph put inside it. Also note how the rock island you have to jump over at the surface appears too tall in the X11 version, but it’s actually not fully solid, so you can jump right through it. There’s also only one Vortex drone in the machine, not a whole crapton like the final version, and many other objects are conspicuously missing or lack icons on the map. Also note that dolphins show up on the map. In the final version, they won’t.

Go Back to X11 Prototype Index

You start a significant distance to the left of where you would in the final version. (Fun Fact: if you enter this stage from the ATTACK sequence after completing the Asterite, you appear in the correct place.) Swim to the right to join the invasion of the hive, already in progress.

If you activate your sonar map and then swim to the upper-left corner of the stage, you will see loads of Drone-Dolphin pairs appear, causing serious graphical corruption.

You can also invoke a similar bug by swimming to the right of a dolphin-drone pair, so half the drone’s head is scrolled offscreen and the dolphin scrolled entirely off. Swim back to the left, and the pair will have been duplicated. Repeat, and the process will continue, causing corruption. This is likely related to the bug experienced in the final version, where using sonar heavily around drones will cause tiles of the stage architecture to be corrupted. This is believed to be caused by the excessive sprites in play corrupting memory.

Regular dolphin sonar clearly doesn’t do much damage to Vortex drones, so this dolphin is really just helping the drone scratch an itch. Thanks for pulling your weight, pal. Your charge-sonar will destroy these drones, but they’ll come right back.

There’s some “deep water” drones with heavier armor and no visible eyes here, too.

Sky’s looking nice. This rock wall seems too high to jump over, but only the bottom part is solid, so you can jump right through. The moon shines through a lot of the tiles. Very weird.

Lots more drones over here in the deep end. More dolphins attacking them too. An odd observance about these drones– they appear slightly after they should, as they scroll onto the screen. So, they seem to just pop into existance quite often. It seems they need to be loaded into memory right as they appear, when they should be loaded before the fact.

In the final version, the entrance is blocked off by spiky spheres that can only be removed with a barrier-eating glyph off to the left. There’s no barrier, and no glyph here. So you can swim right in. Once you do, forced scrolling starts immediately. In the final version, it doesn’t start til past next room, after you open another spiky barrier.

Note that these dark rocks are solid, making these corridors much more narrow than in the final version.

This is one of two larger, Ecco I-style Vortex drones in “Vortex Entrance”. Like on Vortex, they’re green– but a little darker and with less contrast so it’s harder to make out the details of their sprites. In the final version, these drones are white/light-blue. Also, in the final version there’d be a Vortex eel over here, not a drone. There’d also be a passage you could enter to get an invincibility glyph.

The screen turns back around and pushes you to the right this time.

There’s another big drone over here. Note that when these drones die, they explode into big spiky spheres– the ones that are blocking off the entrances to the Machine in the final version! In the final, these drones explode into the smaller spheres that look like wadded up paper (also the ones that the holes in the machines spit at you.)

You don’t have the opportunity to get a glyph that emits sparkles to guide the way, so you’ll have to fend for yourself. Head down this odd long tunnel (not present in the final), past this little tile of garbage sitting there, and into the Machine proper.

You cannot die by being crushed. The screen turns red and you clip through walls until the game decides to spit you out somewhere. This happens even if you don’t have “Unlimited Life” turned on in the Debug Menu.

In the final version, this area would pit you against some tougher Vortex eels. But they aren’t present in this build.

Instead, you can just swim out the exit into Stage 38 (AutoVortex).