In my case, I had to work around a limitation of the OpenBOR engine: it does not support arrays in scripts. So for the 10×20 playfield, I used individual global variables for each cell:
Oh no, friend, you should have asked first. OpenBOR very much does support arrays. It has indexed arrays, and literal key arrays, the later with a native cursor for traversal.
Both types support nesting for building multi-dimensional arrays. You can even nest different array types into each other.
Your workaround, while commendable, is specifically one of the things we try to warn creators to never do.
Here's a tutorial I wrote if you're interested. There's a copy here in the forum too, but this one is newer.
Using OpenBOR Arrays
OpenBOR natively supports arrays and double linked lists. Learn how they work and how to use them.
www.caskeys.com
Next time throw us a line if you're unsure about something. Any time you have decided there's a limit to the engine, I can almost guarantee you it has a solution specifically tailored to handle your problem.
DC