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A I R T R A F F I C C O N T R O L L E R
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Atc lets you try your hand at the nerve wracking duties
of the air traffic controller without endangering
the lives of millions of travelers each year.
Your goal in Atc is to keep the game going as long
as possible. There is no winning state, except
to beat the times of other players. You can
- launch planes by increasing their altitude
- land planes by letting go to altitude zero when
exactly over the airport
- maneuver planes out of the arena.
The game ends when
- a plane crashes, i.e., when it has altitude zero in the
wrong place,
- a plane leaves the arena at the wrong altitude, i.e., at
an other altitude than 9000 ft, or in the wrong place,
- a plane lands instead of exiting, or the other way around,
or lands in the wrong direction or at the wrong airport,
- two planes collide, i.e., when they are adjacent in all three
dimensions.
The radar display shows
- planes: lower case for jets that move every turn, upper case
for props that move every other turn, the digit attached is
the altitude;
- airports: an 'a' together with a arrow indicating the direction
in which planes take off or are supposed to land;
- gates: planes enter the arena here at 7000ft (always in the same
direction), they are supposed to leave, coming from
any direction, at 9000ft;
- beacons: a '*' indicates a beacon. You can tell a plane
in advance to do something once it gets to a beacon, this is
called a 'delayed command'.
The active list shows you what planes are in the air, at what
altitude, where they are heading, and whether delayed commands
have been issued.
It also shows, under 'holding' what planes are waiting at
airports for take-off.
Commands.
All commands start with a plane letter. Use lower case only.
- ? help. Show possible continuations at this moment.
- a altitude. Specify a plane's altitude (and take off)
- 0..9 Go to given altitude (thousands of feet)
- c/+ Climb relative amount
- 0..9
- d/- Descend relative amount
- 0..9
- m mark. Display in inverse video.
- i ignore. Don't display inverted. Inverse video is switched on
automatically when a delayed command is executed.
This is useful if you want to forget about a plane
for a while.
- c circle clockwise.
- t turn. Change direction
- l left 45 degrees
- r right 45 degrees
- L left 90 degrees
- R right 90 degrees
turn to absolute direction; is any of the keys
'qweadzxc' around the 's': 'w' is north, 'q' is north-west,
et cetera.
Delayed commands.
Commands 'c' and 't' can be delayed: append the delay character
'@' and the number of the beacon. The beacon has to be in the flight
path. Example 'ate@2' means
plane a, turn 'e' (i.e., north east), at beacon 2.
Game format.
A game file has a simple format.
The first four lines contain in this order
- the number of seconds between turns
- the average number of turns before a new plane enters the game
- the field width
- the field height.
The rest of the file then specifies airports, exits, beacons,
and lines. Lines have no real function, other than to help you.
Atc was first created by Ed James of UC Berkeley.
This, slightly simplified, version by
Victor Eijkhout,
Dingostraat 53, 6531 PA Nijmegen,
the Netherlands.
Programmed in ST-Pascal of CCD. This program is shareware.
Kindly show your appreciation.
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