ATC
The Air Traffic Control Simulation Game
Copyright 1990
by Griff Jackson
Release 00.00
(SHAREWARE $15)
ATC is a program that simulates an air traffic regional control center.
You are the controller, and you direct the planes (up to 8 at a time) to
the airport. You control the planes' heading, altitude and speed. You
receive points for directing the planes correctly to the airport. You
also have to contend with planes departing from the same airport, and
you have to make sure that the planes do not collide with each other.
You also have only a limited amount of time to get the plane to the
airport. You receive fewer points for a late flight, and if a flight is
very late, it will run out of fuel and crash. All program input is done
with the left mouse button.
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IMPORTANT NOTICE: This program is copyrighted by Griff Jackson, but can
be freely distributed, providing that the following rules are respected.
- No change is made to the program nor to the accompaning documentation.
- The package is always distributed in its complete form consisting of
3 files:
ATC - executable program
ATC.doc - this documentation file
ATC.info - icon for the executable program
- Every form of distribution is allowed and encouraged, but no fee can
be charged for this program exept for, possibly, the cost of magnetic
media and/or disk duplication and shipping.
- Inclusion in PD software libraries such as Fish Disks is allowed,
provided the fees charged for these disks are comparable with those
charged by Fred Fish.
- The program cannot be distributed in any commercial product without
the written consent of the author.
By copying, distributing and/or using the program you indicate your
acceptance of the above rules.
This program is supplied 'as is': the entire risk as to the quality of
the program is to the user. In no event will the author be liable for
direct or indirect damage or loss resulting from the use of this
program.
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SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
- WorkBench 1.2 or greater.
(the program was tested under 1.2 only)
- MathTrans.library in LIBS: directory
- Translator.library in LIBS: directory
- approximately 175K of free memory
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INSTRUCTIONS:
To run ATC, type "ATC" from the CLI or click on its icon It will take a
few seconds for the program to load. Once it has loaded, you will be
presented with the "Set Up" screen. Here you have a few choices to
make:
ATC has three levels of difficulty: easy, medium, and difficult. The
differences between the levels are things like the amount of time the
flights are spaced apart and how quickly the planes respond to changes
in altitude or speed.
ATC uses the Amiga's built-in speech facilities. If you want to hear
the speech, select "Sound On"; otherwise select "Sound Off". If you are
playing the difficult level, the speech facility can slow the game down
when many flights are in your airspace - especially when playing with
more than 20 total flights.
To select levels or sound, you must first unselect the item which is
already selected - then select the new entry. The defaults are "Easy"
and "Sound Off".
The "Number of flights" button controls the game length and difficulty.
A game with 100 flights will last about an hour; 20 flights about 10
minutes. Shorter games are usually easier to play - the action does not
get quite so fast and furious. Be sure to press RETURN after changing
the number of flights.
When you are satisfied with the set up, select the CONTINUE button.
Then the screen will change to purple, and after a few seconds, the
radar screen will appear and the game will begin.
The object of the game is to direct incoming flights to the airport for
landing and to direct departing flights out of your airspace. The
airport resides at the center of the green sweeping radar line. Before
an aircraft can land, its heading must be 180, speed - 100, altitude -
500, and the distance must equal 0. A successful departure is at 20000
and a speed of 400 when the aircraft leaves your airspace. The game is
over when the last scheduled flight has either landed or left your
airspace.
THE RADAR SCREEN
Flight Status Display
In the upper right hand corner of the screen is a blue rectangle in
which information about a selected flight appears. When the program
first starts up, some of the information will be zeroes until a flight
is selected. Here's a description of the data appearing in the blue
rectangle:
Fl #: - the flight number for the selected flight. Also displayed
is the "In" or "Out" indicator which shows if the flight
is arriving or departing. The flight number consists of
two parts: a 2 digit abbreviation for the airline name
and a three digit number. ATC has four airlines:
BA - Beta Airlines
CO - Consolidated Airlines
IC - Intercontenential Airlines
NA - National Airlines
Stat: - There are three possible statuses:
Normal - everything's ok
Priority - the flight is late
Emergency - the flight is low on fuel
Schd: - This the scheduled arrival or departure time. ATC always
begins with an arriving flight scheduled to arrive by
8:45 in the morning. Note: flights enter your airspace
approximately 45 minutes before their scheduled arrival
time. When the airport is particularly busy, some
flights may enter your airspace later.
Dist: - This is the flight's current distance from the airport.
The flight can't land until the distance reads zero.
Head: - This is the flight's current heading. There are eight
possible headings: 0, 45, 90, 135, 180, 225, 270, 315.
To change the current heading, click on the up/down
arrows to the right of the display. To land, a flight
must have a heading of 180, that is, all landings must be
to the south. Also, all departures are to the south.
Alt: - This is the flight's current altitude. There are six
possible altitudes: 20000, 15000, 10000, 5000, 1000, 500.
To change the current altitude, click on the up/down
arrows to the right of the display. To land, a flight
must be at 500 feet.
Spd: - This is the flight's current speed. There are four
possible speeds: 100, 200, 300, 400. To change the current
speed, click on the up/down arrows to the right of the
display. To land, a flight must have a speed of 100.
Fuel - This is the current amount of fuel left. If the amount
goes under 50, the flight's status changes to "Emergency."
IF the amount goes to zero, the flight crashes.
Flight Schedule Display
Just under the Flight Status Display is a white box - the Flight
Schedule Display. This box will display the arrival/departure time for
all flights. To cycle through the flights, click on the up/down arrows
to the right of the box.
Flight Message Display
Just under the Flight Schedule Display is a black box - the Flight
Message Display. All messages from the aircraft to you will appear in
this box. If speech is enabled, the messages appearing in this box will
also be reported verbally.
TOD Display
This box displays the game's current time of day in hours and minutes.
You will notice that the game's time of day moves along quite a bit
faster than real time.
Score Display
This box displays the current score. The score is determined as
follows:
On time landing = 10 points
Late landing = 5 points
Emergency landing = 2 points
Crashes = 0 points
You also get points for getting a departing flight to 20000 feet and 400
knots when it leaves your airspace. 5 points for each.
A perfect score for a game with 20 flights is 200; with 100, the perfect
score is 10,000.
If an arriving flight leaves your airspace without landing, there is no
way to get back, and it will crash when it runs out of fuel.
QUIT button
Clicking on this button at any time will end the game. If you want to
play again click on the "AGAIN" button; otherwise, click on the "QUIT"
button.
PAUSE button
Clicking on this button will pause the game indefinitely.
The radar
Once a flight appears on the radar, you can select it by positioning the
mouse pointer over it and clicking the left button once. The aircraft
appear as V-shaped objects and they are color-coded:
white = normal arriving flight
yellow = currently selected flight
gray = departing flight
green = late flight
red = emergency flight (low on fuel)
ADDITIONAL NOTES
- Flights at the same altitude and near each other will crash.
- At an altitude of 500 and a speed of 100, if the distance is 0, but
the heading is not 180, the flight will crash.
- At medium and difficult levels, it will take an aircraft a few
"game minutes" to reach its new speed or altitude. You must wait
for it to attain the new speed or altitude before you will be
allowed to select a new one.
- The performance characteristics of the aircraft are simulated. This
may not be how they work in real life. This is not FAA approved
training material. So, do not try this with real aircraft.
- A departing flight always starts out at 1,000 feet with a speed of
100. An arriving flight entering the airport at an altitude will
collide with the departing flight causing both flights to crash.
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TROUBLE-SHOOTING
If the game locks up and you can't move the mouse cursor, the problem is
probably a lack of memory. To remedy this, re-boot your machine and
avoid running any background tasks that take up memory. A lot of
fragmented memory (an Amiga that has been turned on a long time with
many different programs having being run) can screw up almost any
program that requires blocks of contiguous memory. If you have a
machine that only has a really small amount of memory (ex: 256K), then
this program may not run if anything else is also running. One more
thing: make sure that the library files mentioned above are available in
the correct directory. If not, ATC is guaranteed not to run. If none
of the above seems to help, contact me at the addresses given below.
Also if you have any suggestions for improvement, please let me know,
and I will consider installing them.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
ATC was developed using the Benchmark Modula-2 Software Construction Set
by Leon Frenkel. Thanks to many Modula-2 programmers whose source code
was a great help in figuring out how to use the Amiga's kernel routines.
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ATC is SHAREWARE. If you like it, use it, and would like to promote
this method of software distribution, please send a donation to the
author. Registered users (those donating $15) will recieve a disk
containing:
- a version of the program using digital sound effects
- any future upgrades
- Modula-2 source code
The author can be reached at:
Griff Jackson
2205 17th
Plano, Texas 75074
(214) 424-3762 (voice)
Also please report any problems or bugs to the above address or to:
G.M.JACKSON on GENIE or OCS180 on People Link.
April 8, 1990
