Waking Up To Glider PRO!

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This is the list that was once here, then gone, and is now back again. It's a list of suggestions for possible future Glider PRO versions, by the Glider PRO fanclub... Feel free to do anything with them. Ideas by: Chris Bartels, cjsrstka, Alex Diener, Dylan Jones, Mr. Anonymous Guy, Ryan Schipper, skymt0, Natasha Thorpe and John Vertical(list compiler).

So, off we go....

***1. IMPROVEMENTS***
These are features which will not do anything radical, but would be really useful.

-Allow more than 24 total objects / more than 2 boxes of rubber bands /more than 1 sound trigger in a room. There should be no absolute limit... just recommended limits for certain computers.

-Following similar lines: longer room names and welcome/end house messages. If running out of space, just convert to a smaller font. Oh, and an option to remove that number of stars from the welcome message and the message you get after getting a star. So far we've had to fool around with painting the background with similar colour as the message...

-Sound triggers should be triggerable - either by adding a delay time into themselves, or linking other triggers to them.

-Sound triggers, ordinary triggers, and invisible switches should be also resizable. Perhaps you should also be able to rotate invisible stuff (the aforementioned ones & inv. obstacles, rebounders and transporters & lift areas & slide rects). See the farmhouse roof of Davis Station for an example of why this is needed. The most minor version of this rotation-thingy would be to have a upsidedown slide rectangle, to fake a roof...

-If a house has a custom splash screen, it should refresh as whole, not just under the "Choose a house" dialogue box.

-You should be able to choose how a glider disappears through an invisible transport. Leftward slide out, rightward slide out, upward fade, downward fade, common dematerialise, perspective fade-out

-Entering through a floor duct (which needs to have an upwards blower of course).

-Several QT movies in one house.

***2. NEW FEATURES***
Um, yeah, new features. Some bigger, some smaller.

-Dynamic scrolling, so the house would scroll around the glider all the time, not just when changing rooms. This would require the editor to have the same properties, too. If that's too much, try it on a smaller scale: on screens large enough, 25-room-mode would be cool. All 9 inner rooms could be active at once, so the game would load 9 rooms at once, instead of just 1; eg. the copters would start from the very top and fly through all 3 floors... (These lead to some problems with floor supports, though)

-Full-scale animation. Like, leaves blowing in the background, or birds or hot-air balloons (Davis Station) flying around, or raindrops in puddles.

-The ability to switch off things like mailboxes, invisible rebounders / obstacles, and custom graphics. This would remove the need to use all the hiding-prizes-behind manouvres to make a window slam shut or make something (dis)appear. They also wouldn't reappear upon entering a room.

-Customizable bonuses.
a) An alternative weapon besides rubber bands: breath mints / thumb-tacks / paperclips / pencils; ie. something that you drop down instead of shooting.
b) "Slippery foil" which would grant the ability to slide on any surface; "Non-fire foil" would only make you fire resistent; etc.
c) Currently there're 2 movement bonuses: the battery (fly left / right fast) and helium (fly up). So, where's a bonus to fly downwards, through blowers? Or diagonally? Following Glider 4, batteries could be again set to have different amounts of energy.
Furthermore, what about General Movement Bonus which would allow you to fly freely to about any direction? (This would make the controlling quite complex, of course.)
d) Customizing graphics for bonuses. Without the need for patches.

-Related to the G.M.B. above: What about a glider capable of turning 360°? From ordinary to pointing up to upsidedown to pointing down...

-In the editor, 9-room-mode and the "Try this room" option which was in Glider 4.0?

***3. MAJOR REDESIGNS***
Here it would be a complete reconstruction, not just a facelift...

-Competitive online multiplayer mode. You could be playing the same house independently, just racing through; the winner could be judged by least time, most points or least deaths.
Or simultaneously: you could steal the bonuses and shoot the other player with rubber bands (they could be either lethal or non-lethal) You could have separate starting locations, and other player-sensitive objects: you can pass through blue milkcrates but not red; for your opponent, it's the other way round. Same for enemies, prizes, invisible thingies, transporters... TV sets could show where the other player is going at the moment. If this really goes online, this doesn't have to be just 2 players, of course. All the 3 possibilities could be extended to more players...

-A Glider PRO scripting language, so it would be possible to have one switch execute several actions with the proper delays, etc. Some actions could only activate if something else would have been already done - for example, if some bonus would have been collected.

-But.. NO 3D Glider, please!

***4. DESSERTS***
Not really updates, but anyway.

-Could the old Glider PRO be released as open source? Some people have shown interest in this possibility.

-A program which automatically generates custom rooms. You feed it a background pattern of a standard size, choose roof and floor colours, decide whether you want pipe / crack / transistion tiles, and voilá! You have the room background ready with no hassle with shadowing, perspective, or other such things.

***5. APPENDIXES***

1. This is what "Mr. Anonymous Guy" posted on the multiplayer issue. Nice thoughts, IMHO.

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In regards to this multiplayer discussion, I feel that a multiplayer Glider PRO as described would be a pretty neat and fun idea. BUT

I feel that competitive, self-oriented human-opposition gameplay
doesn't feel right for such a peaceful and innocent semblance like Glider PRO. A greater opposition to the players other than such humble, non-sentient enemies such as party balloons, goldfish and L. Frank Baum books would go against the grain of what I feel the Glider synthesis is about. (Knocking down copters in PRO, unlike Glider 4, doesn't reward your destruction with anything more than their absense.) Competitive multiplayer isn't just about placing obstacles in the path of your rivals. There can, and will, be an element of tactics, foresight, overall strategy to unseat a thinking, living opponent. Glider (in my humble opinion) isn't meant to be about either frustration or glory. Gaining a star is a benefit to all. You share the foil and feel each other's pain. Only united can you prevail. And stuff that john calhoun might have said in an alternate universe. Thus endeth thy non sequitur.

BUT anyway, I still think it would be fun to play. Think: switches. Burn your bridges behind you by switching the blowers off as you leave. Thwart the progress of your fellow aeroplane by turning the lights off and seeing how they cope then. Can you find the toaster switches for your goal star before the rival locates and flings them back on? Better yet, could you do unto him the same? Burn up the excess batteries, heck, fling bands backwards for the last bit of precious momentum needed for seizing the precious Scrap of Paper that will leave you one- up over then opposition in the dart-dodging department (New game modes: most lives wins), or the deciding Digital Clock that will break the tie before the clock runs out (Hey, you collect ever more 'time' when time's your fair-weather friend Very conflicting symbolism.) And if bands were lethal to opponents Brrrr. True raw human survival-at- every-cost, knives-at-throats instinctive blackness.

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2. The same guy coming up with more fancy ideas...
Ooo, ooo, i have a good idea! We can have the gliders have weapons such as machine guns and rocket launchers, and they can spurt blood and get damaged and you have to pick up life and, and... ;)

Hmm

Cavity & Screem proudly (misre)presents:
GliderDOOM!!!!!!!™

"Stationary was never more gruesome."
Here are the new DOOMised features of GliderDOOM!!!!!!!(tm):
· Rubber bands are now usurped by the much bloodier EXPLODING
BULLETS!!!!! In six different explosive blood-red colours!!!!!
· Fishbowls, schmishbowls! Purple piranhas are nothing compared to GREAT WHITE SHARKS!!!!!!!
· Balloons? As long as they're filled with ACID!!!!!!
· Darts, as you know, are now replaced by HOMING MISSILES!!!!
· Candles? Don't you mean VOLCANOES!!!!!!
· We've also replaced the plain old mailboxes with WORMHOLES INTO THE DEPTHS OF HEEELLLL!!!!!
· Water drips: Drips, yes. Water, actually TOXIC WASTE THAT MUTATES PAPER INTO BLOODTHIRSY PSYCHO-KILLERS THAT GIVE REALLY PAINFUL PAPER CUTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
· What's this? The humble shredder has been disregared? How wrong you are, because all shredders are now replaced by MEGAGLIDERKIL[dies of overhyperbolation]