Lost in Maze! Episode 49: Robby vs. The Conehead Bots. Featuring The Evil Master's Space Robots

… or so goes the story.
Help Robby the robot clearing the mazes – but beware of the conehead bots! As Robby grabs one of the power pellets he becomes invincible for a short time while the conehead bots turn blue.
Good news: You will collect an extra live for every 10000 points (but you may not have more than five lives in stock). Additional bonus points are scored for any collected batteries (size "D").

"Lost in Maze!" is a variant of "JavaScript-PacMan 3D" (using slightly different configurations), which is one of the famous family of "JavaScript-PacMan" games. "Lost in Maze!" comes with a total of 25 levels in 5 sets and an extra shuffle play mode. The game is written in pure JavaScript and doesn't require any plug-ins or other extensions. If Flash-Player 9.0 or higher is detected, an additional Flash-movie is used to provide the sounds.

The use of sound may affect the animation speed of the game.
Set the sound slider to zero to optimize the game for slower machines.

About "JavaScript-PacMan":
"JavaScript-PacMan" is around for some time and has now evolved to a bunch of games with different features. All games share a common code base that has continously evolved from the very beginning. (Yes, there are some lines of the original code living on in this game!) The first version was designed as a demo-page for then advanced JavaScript-animation techniques (for Netscape Navigator 3.0) and was published in late 1996/Jan.1997. It might well have been the first arcade style game on the web implemented in JavaScript only!

The Collector's Edition features realistic models of some famous tin robots:
The "Pug Robby" and the " "Conehead" robot.
Interested in the robots? – Have a look at the robots' family portrait.

Moving / Controls

Use the cursor keys or the numeric keypad to guide Robby through the maze.

You may also use the following keys:

W (up) (left) A S D (right) (down)

or

I (up) (left) J K L (right) (down)

Other controls:

	N	....	New game
	P or ESC	....	Pause / resume

Touch Screens / Mouse Control

Control the Robby by strokes (mouse gestures) at the maze:

• Click (tap) anywhere in the maze and drag the pointer in the desired direction.
  (You may steer in advance, not only when Robby is just encountering a crossing.)
• Double-click (tap rapidly twice) to pause/resume the game.
• Use the "New Game" button to start a new game.
• Special Moves:
  You may even use compound gestures (e.g.: left and up in a single movement): Steer in the first direction, keep the mouse down and steer in the next direction just after the turn.
  This may be especially useful to navigate through winding passages as you haven't to click again for every turn.

Levels and Layouts

You may select any of these sets of maze-layouts from the "Mazes" pop-up menu:

• Continuous: Travel trough all 25 levels available at once.
• Shuffle Play: Pick a random mix from all levels available.
• Space Levels: Five levels dedicated to the outer space theme. (© mass:werk)
• Altair Levels: Another five outer space levels dedicated to this game. (© mass:werk)
• Nomura Levels: Yet another five levels dedicated to the outer space theme. (© mass:werk)*
• Alternate Levels: A set of another 5 levels. (A set from JavaScript-PacMan 3D, © mass:werk)
• Pac Levels: Sweet memories of Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man (5 levels).
• Start From #: Select a level to start from. Displays a visual index of all levels available.

*) The "Nomura Levels" originally came with "Lost In Maze! Part 2" where they were known as "B-9 Levels". The "Space Levels" are common to all parts of the "Lost In Maze!" series.

Sound Integration

A tiny Adobe Flash movie (swf-file) is used as a simple sound player in case that Flash Player 9.0 or higher is detected. This provides a robust cross-browser sound integration in absence of any real world standard for sound integration and scripted sound control. Flash is not used for any other purpose – the game works just the same without the Flash plug-in. (Even the volume control is implemented in DHTML, just for the fun of it.)

A Word on Internet Explorer (v. 5 – 8)

The "JavaScript-PacMan"-series has been demonstrating complex interactive JavaScript animations for about 14 years by now (2010). Has the challenge been then to implement an interactive game at all with the humble resources of slow browsers of the Netscape 3 era, possibilities have increased dramatically since. The evolution of the "JavaScript-PacMan"-series mirrors the progression of capabilities of standard browsers over the years, now featuring smooth semi-transparent graphics and pseudo-3D display.
Unfortunately Microsoft's Internet Explorer (up to and including version 8) has not kept the pace of this evolution. Although the game is fully compatible to MS Internet Explorer (versions up to 8, thanks to an investment in vendor specific extra APIs) and will run as supposed, the performance of the JavaScript and layout engines is usually just to slow. This is mainly due to the extensive z-sorting of the display layer required for any pseudo 3D rendering. In case you have no web-standards compliant browser at hand, consider to resort to Google Chrome Frame. "Google Chrome Frame" is an extension to the MS Internet Explorer and will dramatically enhance the speed and compatibility of your browser with web pages specially marked up to use this extension.
This should not be an issue with Internet Explorer version 9 and higher.

Version History

»Lost in Maze! – Robby vs. The Conhead Bots« – released in September 2009 (published July 2010).

July 2010: Final polish; added permanent settings and high-score (Cookie required).
Sept 2009: Added support for Google Chrome Frame.

Previous versions of JavaScript-PacMan:

• 2008: JavaScript-PacMan 3D – the new 3D-version of JavaScript-PacMan
• 2007: JavaScript-PacMan 2 – new design & enhanced features
• 2004: unified cross browser version and DOM compatibility, random maze generator
• Aug. 1997: bigger maze for bigger screens, smooth animations (for NS 4.0 layers, MSIE 4.0 css)
• Dec. 1996 / Jan. 1997: first release (for Netscape 3.0 and 12" screens)

see also:

• Lost in Maze! – Robby vs the Tin Toy Bots (original version)
• Lost in Maze! – Part 2: Robby vs the B9-Robots
• JavaScript-PacMan 3D
• JavaScript-MsPacMan 3D   play Ms. Pac-Man with traditional colors.
• JavaScript-Pac-Gal 3D   classic color mod of Ms. pac-Man.
• JavaScript-PacMan 2   (2D version)
• JavaScript-PacMan 2 mini   (2D version for small screens)
• mass:werk FlashPac   (2D Flash version)
• mass:werk games   (other JavaScript-games by mass:werk)
• mass:werk legacy games   (legacy versions for old browsers and small screens)