• THE DOLPHIN: You were amazed when your glider turned into a dolphin, right? Here's the secret: the dolphin graphic was substituted for the "foiled glider" PICT sequence. Each dolphin view was drawn within the standard glider outline and blue "sea pixels" added to fill out the mask. In addition, a dolphin image was substituted for the foil prize, so that when the glider contacts it, it appears to turn into a dolphin. Yes, the dolphin has "foil power" but the dolphin section of SeaCaves was constructed so that foil power is never needed.
• THE ENTITIES: The "active" entities (the ones that pulsate) are substitutes for the electrical outlet. The "remote" entities (the pink bubbles) are substitutes for switches. Destroying a remote entity has the effect of turning off the active entity to which it is linked, so you have to find all the pink bubbles which are dispersed throughout the caves in order to get to the magic starfish. Don't you love that "popping" sound?
• THE ENEMIES: You've probably figured this out by now: the shark is a dart, the jellyfish is a balloon, and the electric eel is a copter. Shooting a shark or an eel fries it to the bone. Shooting a jellyfish causes it to shrivel up and squeak.
• THE PRIZES: These were tough ones to substitute graphics for because of the clock hands or numbers which will overdraw any substitute clock PICT. For the digital clock, I drew a scallop shell with repeating vertical bands and substituted the same vertical band for the digital numbers. For the cuckoo clock, I drew crystals attached to a whitish cluster to camouflage the white clock hands. For the wall clock, I drew white "dolphin rings" and covered the clock hands with an addition PICT of sea blue. For the alarm clock, I drew the fire coral which is lacey enough to camouflage the black clock hands as long as it is used only against a black background.
• SEAHORSE: I don't know if seahorses can really swim fast, but it seemed like a suitable substitute for the battery.
• GIANT CLAM: A substitute for the basketball! I used an additional custom PICT for the bottom of the clam shell, with the top of the shell being set to zero height so that it moves only one pixel, giving the effect of opening and closing.
• JUMPING CRAB: This was easy as toast! Just don't ask me what a crab is doing in a nautilis shell.
• SEA URCHIN: Again with the help of an additional custom PICT, the water drip was converted into a clump of spines and positioned over the urchin body. Normal drip rules apply.
• POWER DRAINS: invisible microwaves, what else?
• TEDDY'S MESSAGE BOARDS: The first one is simply a QT movie drawn to fit over the graphic of Teddy's message boards. (Did you notice the different text scan speeds?) The second one, at the start of the dolphin sequence, uses a substitute graphic for the Mac screen startup to display the new message.
• SEA SPIKES: Each spike contains a stack of very narrow slide rectangles embedded in a tall narrow invisible rebounder. Ramming into the rebounder while simultaneously impacting the slide rect causes the glider to jump upwards. The spikes are "fine tuned" to produce varying degrees of jumping capability by the ordering of the slide rects. The greatest amount of "jump" is obtained on stacks where the object numbers of the slide rects goes from low (at the bottom) to high (at the top).
• HOT LAVA: The volcanoes are simply substitutes for the hibachi. The smaller lava spouts coming out of the floor and the side walls are substitutes for the candles. The large lava pits are a bit more complicated. They use a substitute PICT for the jumping fish, although the PICT for the fishbowl itself has been deleted. A custom PICT for the rocky edge of the lava pit completes the illusion. This was the toughest set of graphics to do. That darn fish animation does not stay in one place - it goes up and down!
• SEAWEED: cobwebs, of course.
• THROUGH THE WALL TRANSPORT: I made the mailboxes invisible by substituting blank PICTs for them, but the mailbox posts had to be masked with a custom PICT of rock. The flashing mini-bubble was courtesy of the VCR animation (substituting a blank PICT for the VCR itself).
• VAPOR TRAIL: That's the vertical stream of bubbles that shoots your glider upward. It's just a blower with a stack of slide rectangles, but they must be in ascending order or else the glider will stop at the rect with the highest object number!
• WHALE SONGS: They seem to be everywhere, yet you never see them, right? I substituted various whale sounds for the guitar, wind chime, and coffee maker snds. The objects themselves were made invisible by pasting a blank image into each PICT resource.
• THE EDITOR: Glider SC has a fully functional editor (did you notice that SeaCaves is unlocked?) but it looks a little different because of all the empty spaces in the object pallettes for the items I have deleted. Actually, you can still get shelves, cabinets, etc. if you select the right blank spot on the pallette, and they will draw, but some things will be missing, like the table base, the dresser knobs, etc. Anyway, go ahead and muck around with the editor if you want. Create your own version of SeaCaves!
