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About this house

My inspiration for this house came from the amazing automation houses of Autopilot (Ward Hartenstein) and Autohouse (by Ian Patterson) in which the house was self executable. Due to a combination of blowers and switches the gliders path was automated to dodge enemies, grab objects and perform almost impossible maneuvers. However I noticed that most automation houses don’t usually provide support for 2 player games, this was due to the 1 second delay between the entries of the players into a room. In an experimental attempt to create an automation, that supports 2 player games I decided to take advantage over the delay between the two players. For instance the first player might hit a switch which turns on a blower that causes the second player to take an alternative path.

This house was created by the use of several blowers, various switches, a lot of luck, trial and error... and headaches. Any one who has ever created an automation house will know how time consuming it is. Ironically it took longer to create custom graphics that were compatible with glider and squeeze past the 24 object limit, than it was in creating the automation. However it was worth it in the end.

Features

• No. of rooms: over 80 (including 3 boring rooms and 2 pairs of almost identical rooms)
• Compatibility: The game should be compatible with both 1 and 2 player modes
• Amazing Manouvres: Watch as both the gliders (often taking separate paths) dodge swarms of enemies and obstacles, snatching up prizes along the way as well as performing almost impossible and daring moves (without a single scratch).
• Prizes:About 95% of prizes are collectable (apart from those that "disappear").
• Miniature-Movie: although there isn’t a custom QuickTime movie yet(due to the problems of exporting animations to that format) you can look at the SWF. File (Sun3) that represents what the movie was meant to look like (although it’s not the same size as a GP movie). The flash movie was constructed using GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) and a trial version of Macromedia Flash.
• Other Highlights:
  • Watch in amazement as the gliders morph into metallic custom gliders before you’re eyes
  • Enter the mysterious world within the chest

Notes and disclaimers

• Custom art: 60% of the custom art is original; the rest was from people like Samuel, Ward Hartenstein and “warm3669” who permitted the use of their artwork. I must also admit that a lot of the artwork was created from heavily editing and modifying existing graphics which I found on the web.
• As this is a demo version (I’m still expanding the house), you may notice that some of the custom graphics are missing, have holes in them (due to white appearing as transparent) or may be a bit pixilated. I may try to fix this in future versions.

Credits

• Ward Hartenstein (for the C&G cup), “Warm3669” (for the aquarium art), and Samuel Bradshaw for the permission to use their artwork.
• John Vertical, Samuel Bradshaw and other members of the forums on glider for advice on the game.
• The programmers of Basilisk II and HFV explorer, for allowing me to run classic Mac applications on windows.
• John Calhoun (the programmer of Glider) for creating such a brilliant game