| Glider Pro |
Article Index for Glider |
Website Links For Pro |
Information AboutGlider Pro |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT GLIDER PRO | |
| 1991 video games | |
| mac os-only games | |
| mac os x games | |
|
When Casady & Greene went bankrupt, the rights to the series reverted to the author, John Calhoun , who opted to give a few versions of the game away for free on his website . THE GAME Game basics In the game, you fly a Paper Airplane around a house trying to get all the stars in the game. To play, you have to float on air currents or slide on greased surfaces. There are obstacles, like furniture, flying paper darts, balloons and paper shredders and the like. There are also prizes you can get in increase your score, which are all clocks, or to help win the game, like rubber bands to shoot at enemies, aluminum foil and helium. Houses The game comes with one real house called #Slumberland , and one demonstration house. Beyond this, a sizable number of houses are available for download on fan sites. VERSIONS OF THE GAME Differences between OS X/Carbon and System 7-OS 9/Classic versions Glider PRO was initially released for System 7 and was continuously updated through a Mac OS 9 version, the final release on the "Classic" Mac OSes. It was later ported to Mac OS X as a native Carbon application, and while this version has reworked graphics and a more muted color scheme it lacks a variety of preferences and the Built-in House Editor present in the Mac OS 9 version. Mac OS X users can still run the Mac OS 9 version of Glider in the Classic Environment , giving them access to the multitude of additional preferences and the house editor. Glider PRO ("Classic") CD This was an update that included Glider PRO, new houses, and a few utilities. Houses: Art Museum, In the Mirror, Davis Station, Castle o' the Air, Teddy World, Land of Illusion, Imaginehouse PRO II, The Asylum PRO, Nemo's Market, Titanic, SpacePods, Rainbow's End, Leviathan, Grand Prix, Metropolis, and obviously Slumberland, Empty House and Demo House. In addition, the utilities Moving Van - A utility for moving graphics and sound between houses and libraries (and any combination of the two), and Foundation Mover - A utility for sliding an entire house over (in terms of on the map, if you ran out of room) and CD-ROM special instructions and some graphics libraries were included. HOUSE BUILDING Houses are created using the built-in house editor in the "Classic" version and allow for custom images and sounds via embedding of ' PICT' and 'snd' resources in the house's Resource Fork .Mermaid files A Debugging feature in the Mac OS 9 version of Glider PRO allows all of the graphics and sounds in the game (including the ones that cannot be directly replaced by a house's Resource Fork ) to be overridden by alternative graphics. This is done by placing a file named "Mermaid", containing all of the replacement graphics and sounds, in the same directory as the Glider PRO application. This feature was forgotten about by the time Glider PRO was released, but John Calhoun later rediscovered it in April 2004. As of today, at least three houses exist that exploit this feature. The word "Mermaid" was used as a reference to three lines from the poem The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock : ::We have lingered in the chambers of the sea ::By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown ::Till human voices wake us, and we drown. The first of these lines also appears in the About Box of Glider PRO. Objects in the game Note that other objects may appear in houses - these are custom images combined with built-in objects in order to create a special effect. Blowers
Lighting
Prizes
Transport
Switches
Furniture
Appliances, etc.
Enemies
Clutter
COMMUNITY AND FUTURE OF GLIDER SERIES Probably due to its House-creating ability, Glider PRO has enjoyed an active and involved fan community during most of its life. A periodical zine called GliderTech was published by Paul Finn between 1995 and 1997 - Glider PRO's heydays. GliderTech published editorials, house reviews, house building tips and each issue was accompanied by a house or two with some examples of obstacles or techniques that could be used in houses. (GliderTech issues can be found for download on various house repositories, and the actual zine is an OS 9 application.) Following 1998 or so, with brief bumps coinciding with the release of the OS X version and the emancipation of Glider PRO, the community activity dropped, but a Yahoo! group is still active. John Calhoun has mentioned that he'd like to create a successor to Glider PRO that goes back to the roots of Glider (for example, by having fewer objects and all-indoor houses) but that it will have to wait until he's done with his work at Apple . The Intel transition and its effect on Glider PRO Influx of new house creators may over time grind to a halt following Apple's decision to switch the CPU architecture of their Mac computer line-up to Intel Microprocessors , scheduled to start in June 2006. Only the "Classic" version of Glider PRO includes a house editor, and since Classic runs the now abandoned Mac OS 9 operating system which only functions on PowerPC processors, Glider PRO enthusiasts buying a new Intel-based Mac will not be able to build houses without resorting to a second, PowerPC-based Mac (or emulation of one). Glider PRO for Mac OS X will continue to run on Intel-based Macs through the Rosetta Compatibility Layer , but the potential for a Universal Binary (that runs natively on Intel and PowerPC alike) is highly dubious at best. HOUSES (a): The number of rooms in the whole house (p): The number of rooms you can actually fly the glider into Absolute Glider
Art Museum
Castle o' The Air
Christmas in Lumberland
Davis Station
Death To Barney
Grand Prix
House of Food
ImagineHouse PRO
ImagineHouse PRO II
In the Mirror
Jocular
Land of Illusion
Lumberland
Metropolis
Mighty Morphin' Power Glider
Nemo's Market
Slumberland
EXTERNAL LINKS
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/Glider_pro Another glider pro group on yahoo |
|
|