THE TOOLS



14 buttons can be found just above the test tubes.  These are the tools.  To use a tool, place the mouse cursor on the tool and click.  Then when you move your cursor over to the pond, your cursor will look different.  This means that you are in a specific tool mode, indicated by your cursor icon.  You can now do a variety of things by clicking into the pond or on a swimmer.  The following list describes what each tool does:



1 Select

Selects a swimmer when you click on it.  A gray circle appears around the swimmer and stays there until you select another swimmer.  If you click in the pond, not on a swimmer, any selected swimmer becomes de-selected.  The currently selected swimmer is the one which will be acted upon if you select one of the swimmer actions from a menu (see section on menus).  



2 Add Food

Creates a new food bit where you have clicked.  You cannot add more food if there are 1000 food bits in the pond.  



3 Erase Food 

If you click and drag this tool across the pond, any food you pass over will be killed.  



4 Zoom in	

Zooms the microscope view in.  The magnification increases and swimmers appear larger.  You can also use the "+" or "i" keys for the same effect.  



5 Zoom out

Zooms the microscope view out.  The magnification decreases, swimmers appear smaller, and more of the pond comes into view.  You can also use the "-" or "o" keys for the same effect.  



6 Move View 

Moves the microscope view around.  You can also use the arrow keys or the scroll bars for the same effect.  



7 Reset View

Sets the microscope magnification all the way out - the view zooms out to the whole pond.  (NOTE that this tool does its thing AS SOON AS you select the tool).  You can also use the "r" key for this.  



8 Add Random Swimmer 

Creates a new random swimmer.  Wherever you click your mouse cursor in the pond, a new swimmer appears whose genes are random.  Each swimmer will look different.  The maximum number of swimmers that can be manually added to the Pond is 450.  After this you will not be able to add any more.  



9 Kill Swimmer

Kills the swimmer you click on.



10 Erase Swimmers

Swimmers are killed as you click and drag the eraser over them.  



11Engineer Swimmer 

Opens up a dialog box with sliders that let you change individual swimmer genes.  The swimmer appears enlarged in the pond area against a grid so you can see the results of your genetic engineering immediately.  If you click and drag inside the swimmer window you can change the swimmer's focus, which helps you see the results from tweaking the "turning" genes.  



12 Clone Swimmer 

When you click on a swimmer, an identical twin is created next to it.  



13 Zap Swimmer 

When you use this tool and click on a swimmer, it mutates some of its genes.  Since this is a random mutator, the results are unpredictable.  Sometimes, the zapped swimmer will just get a little tweak in one of it's limbs.  Other times, it will zap it into an entirely new form, and change it's characteristic movements.  



14 Get Swimmer Info 

You can click on a swimmer for a dialog box which gives some basic facts on that swimmer.  It tells you the swimmer's:  



mental state

age

energy level

number of limbs

number of segments per limb 

preferred mate color



Each of these tools can also be accessed through the Tools menu.  By selecting one of the tools in the menu, you go into that tool mode, as if you had selected the actual tool.  This is useful for when you are in full screen mode and cannot access the tools directly.