• Do you have ResEdit? If the answer is no, go out and get it! It's a great program, fun
for the novice user, and essential for the experienced one. It basically lets you go in
and peek at application data, and make changes.
• QuickTime MooV files are used for music. They are referenced by filename in the
puzzle's STR# resource with resID = 128. You can convert midi files to MooV files
using any of several publically available utilities, including QuickMooV.
• Backgrounds may either be ppats or PICT files. They are referenced in the puzzle's
STR# resource with resID = 129. PICTs should be 608x400 pixels, and are
referenced by filename. ppats are referenced by resource name, and may be in
either the puzzle or application file. All Macintosh paint programs I know of are
capable of exporting images as PICTs.
• The supplied background PICTs, "Island," "Grassland," and "Winter" may look
somewhat washed out under 8-bit color. This is because they have thousands of
colors, and compressed with Quicktime. Hexx actually does try to use Quickdraw to
dither backdrops, but current versions of the System choke when trying to
both uncompress and dither a PICT at once. If you replace the PICT files with raw,
uncompressed equivalents (which take up substantially more space on disk - about
500-700K instead of 60K, unfortunately), they'll look spiffy under both 8-bit and
16 bit color.
• Background graphics and music change every three stages, so the first specified
item will be active for stages 1,2, and 3, and the 2nd stages 4,5, and 6, and so on.
• By default, no music is played, and the main screen's ppat is used as a backdrop.
Obviously, I don't want to include any copywrited music or graphics with this package, not to mention that I want to keep the size of the Hexx II archive small, to encourage downloading. However, there is no harm in acquiring midi files and GIFs/JPEGs from the internet, and using them to modify the game to your tastes, so long as you don't redistribute a non-official copy of the game. I will, however, gladly accept contributed puzzle sets (which registered users can make with the Edit Puzzle feature), and publish them on the Hexx homepage.
It's fun to build puzzle sets around themes, whether classical art, nature scenes, or even cute anime characters.
Whether you register or not, I sincerely hope you have fun with Hexx II. Enjoy!
