Glider+ 3.0 (® 1990 by John Calhoun) Documentation •Hi This is the documentation for Glider+ version 3.0. It has many improvements over version 1.0, 2.0 and 2.02. As with versios 2.0 and 2.02, THIS VERSION WORKS ONLY ON A MAC PLUS OR MORE RECENT! The oldest version (1.0) I believe works on the older ROM's. From 2.0 on though, I have used a routine called CopyMask which is only available since the Mac Plus. •Objective This is a simple arcade-style game where the objective is merely to avoid the obstacles in rooms and make it through all 15 of them. It's as if you're sort of in this ridiculously long hallway and want to traverse it and escape. •Objects in the Rooms Below are some of the objects that your glider interacts with in the rooms... The first two simply show your glider when it is travelling forward across the screen and backward. The next object is a clock that, if you can touch it, will give you a bonus to your score by resetting the time it has taken you in the room (score is based in part on the time it takes you). The folded piece of paper will get you an extra glider if you can manage to touch it and then safely get out of the room (only one extra glider per piece of paper though). The floor vent is where you get your lift. By "wiggling" your glider back and forth over the floor vents, often you can get as high as the ceiling. The ceiling blower works in the opposite fashion - it blows down upon your glider trying to force it to the floor more quickly than gravity. The wall socket is dangerous to pass in front of. I know it doesn't make sense realistically, but in fact in this game it will cost you a glider. The ceiling duct will suck up your glider and wisk you back to a previous room - stay away from them! The candle can either give you lift like a floor vent or burn you to a crisp. As you might guess, this depends on how close you pass over it. Just as landing on the floor will end your glider's flight, so will landing on either a table or a shelf. Despite the table stand and shelf brackets, you can fly below these two objects without danger of collision. The last one is the mystery category. Although many of the things you see in the rooms are merely part of the background, there are a few objects I haven't listed that you can (and must occasionally) interact with. I leave these for your discovery. •Menus The Apple menu contains an About Glider 2.0... that presents a brief summary of these rules (Help) and information about registration and source code (More). The Game menu has the Start command that simply starts the game. The Start In Room... command allows you to select one of the first 9 rooms to begin in and then begins the game as per Start. The Pause command pauses the game until you Continue, and the End command ends a game but does not quit the program. Version 3.0 also includes a Demo mode under the Game menu. In demo mode the glider will traverse, on it's own, through the first five or so rooms. It will show you how to "wiggle" the glider, etc.... It will not show all! One note though. The Demo mode is supposed to work in both Fastest and Slower mode, but the glider only seems to get the Clock in Fastest mode. Under Options you can select either the Glider or the Dart. In version 3.0 they now appear differently. The Dart appears like the "classic" paper airplane. The Glider has a 2:1 glide ratio (2 pixels forward for every 1 pixel descent) both forward and backward, while the Dart has a 4:1 forward and a 1:1 backward. In short, the Glider is more universally maneuverable, while the Dart moves forward very quickly but backs up incredibly slowly. All the rooms were designed with the Glider in mind, but I put the Dart option in just for amusement. The speed of the game can be set either to Fastest or Slower. I put this in because people complained that Glider 1.0 was simply too darned fast on a Mac II. I tried it on a IIcx and couldn't control it. So, for those of you with a Plus like me, Fastest is pretty nice, but for those of you with a faster Mac, Slower is not cheating (note- Slower actually gives you smoother animation, I don't put a delay in the program, I simply move the glider in smaller increments - also, the scoring is the same as I don't base it on the system clock, but rather the number of passes through the game loop, and again, I take into account what speed your playing at). The Sound command simply does nothing currently. You may also choose how many gliders to begin with (Number of Gliders...) and, finally, what keys control your glider's forward and backward movement (Controls...). In this current release (as with the past), you can only use ASCII defined keys for legitimate controls. The RETURN key, SHIFT key, etc will not be accepted as controls. •Tips The "wiggling" I spoke of before is an important technique to employ. If you can wiggle very fast so as to neither move forward nor backward, you can ride a column of air over a floor vent all the way up, or wiggle over the bare carpet in order to descend within a narrow space. Always there is at least one way to get through a room. Of course the way is not always the most direct way. Occasionally, some rooms may have several ways to get through them. For some of these rooms, alternate ways across (the more difficult routes) can bring you near extra gliders (the folded pieces of paper) or a higher score (the clocks). Finally, room 11 is not the result of a programming bug. There is a way to get through! I've made it through all 15 rooms many many times. Besides room 11, other "special" rooms (as will be obvious) are rooms 13, 14 and, of course, 15. But play and find out for yourself! •Source code etc The original Glider I wrote with Borland's Turbo Pascal, but I have since discovered both the joys of Prototyper and THINK's Lightspeed Pascal. If programming the Macintosh interface is driving you crazy, I seriously recommend you check out Prototyper. It allows you to design all the menus, windows, etc and then dumps the entire code for you to disk. It really can save you days and days of seemingly non-productive hacking. The current release of Glider was created with Lightspeed Pascal. It really takes a lot of the work out of programming. I hate to say this, but Turbo Pascal is looking more and more like a mere text-editor after using Lightspeed. But, hey, I learned quite a bit with my Turbo. If you think you would be interested in the source code for this game, I'll send you all the pieces on disk for $15. I don't claim that it's the most orginal code, nor is it the most efficient, but it gets the job done. You ought to be able to figure out how to use bit maps, off-screen bitmapping and how to incorporate PICT resources into your programs (I explain all the steps). Other than for the source code, if you want to just register as a shareware user, send me $8 and I'll make sure you get the most recent version of the game as well as all future releases. All future releases, by the way, will contain a screen that lists all shareware contributers (oh boy, you could have your name in a program!). Well, I don't want to intimidate you with payments and all that, so, if you would like to send me a comment, but don't have $8 to toss away, go ahead and feel free to just send me a letter. I won't hunt you down or call you names. I would appreciate comments even more than the $8. (The $8 is what legitimizes me as a "real" programmer in everyone elses mind - my mom, girlfriend, you know everyone that I spend so little time with since I'm at the keyboard all day). Well, have fun. John Calhoun (A.K.A. Soft Dorothy - The wizard of Oz?) 1201 Oread #4 Lawrence, KS 66044 Version history: Glider 1.0 - released Dec 88 The original release, written with Borland's Turbo Pascal- Glider+ 2.0 - released Nov 89 A hurried update with the whole code revamped in Lightspeed Pascal with an interface constructed with Prototyper. I had semi-figured out how to incorporate PICT's into the game and had figured out offscreen bitmapping as well. Thus the flicker was gone and the backgrounds were not merely white. A Mac Plus or newer was now required to play. Glider+ 2.02 - released Dec 89 I finally tried 2.0 on a MacII and incorporated the slower/fastest mode into the game to allow MacII users a fair chance of playing it. The "dark room" was added. Glider+ 3.0 - released Mar 13 90 Interest in the source code for Glider caused me some embarrassment, so I rewrote it to include more recently honed skills. All graphics are handled with PICT's now, helicopters were added, the "dripping ceiling room", the "cat room", and the "hoopla screen" were added. A high scores sequence that saves to disk, glider-with-banner and Demo-mode were added. The Dart is now displayed differently and graphics for a burning and crushed glider were added. The keyboard controls you use are saved as is the speed of the game you select. Also, I added digitized sounds (if you have System version 6.02 or more recent) and the program now checks to see if you have a Mac Plus or more recent and will automatically disable the sound if the Sytem isn't version 6.02 or more recent. Also, the bug that wouldn't allow you to change the number of gliders to begin with is corrected. Finally, someone wrote and complained that Glider was too easy. They're so good at the game that they would loop through the ceiling ducts back to previous rooms just to improve their score. Well, in the earlier releases when there weren't high scores saved, this is not a big deal. But now... Now your points reset to the value they were at when you first entered the room you have been transported to.