home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
World of Mac
/
World_Of_Mac_1994.iso
/
MacCD
/
Interesting demo's
/
Air Warrior Demo
/
Air Warrior Monochrome
/
READ ME
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1990-06-12
|
25KB
|
494 lines
Air Warrior Version 2.0a
A variety of bugs were fixed.
- A problem in the non-digitized sound routines on the Mac II
was fixed.
- A problem in the color art checking when a view was
rejected has been fixed.
- The resource numbers for very large screen control panels
were changed to correct an overlap with color artwork.
- The sight will always be visible when in a turret, regardless
of the setting of the sight option.
- Some new anti-warping code has been added.
- The color explosions have been changed to monochrome because
of the potentially long time it could take to draw a color
explosion.
- If the program recognizes it is running on a very tight
memory situation, such as a 512K machine with old ROM's,
it will adjust its memory needs accordingly.
- Tank turret rotation will be smoother now.
Art work can now be drawn for the tank turret view. The program
will display the "bombsight" art from the gunner's position. This
is view 8.
The meaning of abridged mode has been altered a bit. In abridged
mode, mode 5 or 6, lakes or islands will ONLY be visible if you are
directly over them.
Air Warrior Version 2.0
- Special machine language routines were written to speed up the 16 color mode.
- A large number of new planes have been added:
F-86F Sabre
MiG 15
Ki-84 Ia Hayate (code named FRANK by the Allies)
Yak 9D
Mosquito Mark XVI
Ju 88 A-4
T-34 Soviet tank
Flakpanzer IV "Whirlwind" antiaircraft vehicle
The program can represent graphically:
Mitsubishi G4M 1-Rikko (code named BETTY)
- The ground vehicles now have a transmission, which is operated using
the a s and d keys. a downshifts, and d upshifts, and s puts it in
neutral. The vehicle starts in neutral, and has 3 forward speeds.
If the vehicle is stationary and in neutral, the s key will put it
into reverse. The new "Air Warrior Art" file gives you graphic indication of
the current gear and an rpm gauge.
- Version 2.0 (color) will now enforce the art work checking
limitations that the monochrome version has always required: namely
that the artwork must obscure 80% of the view that the computer
default views do, in order to be accepted. All of the existing large
screen art is accepted; some of the colorized small screen art will
need to be fixed up.
- the o options control command has changed. The old option
numbers are still accepted, but new letters are also
understood. The new commands are:
op set gunsight to lead computing pipper
ob set gunsight to bombsight mode
on turn pipper off
os toggle sight frame on and off
ot toggle visible tracers on and off
oi toggle indicated vs true airspeed mode
og toggle gun sound on and off
oe toggle engine sound on and off
ok toggle "sticky keys" on and off
- A new command was added that the other versions have had
for a while: the d command will tell you the average time delay
in turning a packet around (0 or 1 being perfect.)
- The rudder is now modeled more accurately, in that rudder will
now produce sideslip. If you hit the rudder with the autopilot on,
you'll see it clearly, as the autopilot manages to hold the wings
level, and the plane skids to the side.
- A new feature has been added, a flight recorder (or gun camera).
The camera will record a flight for later playback, and the
resulting film file can be uploaded for exchange to other
machines.
The camera is activated by pressing the 9 key while in
flight. This starts the recording process. Recording can
be suspended by pressing the 9 key again, and can then be resumed
and so on. The camera can be started and stopped as many times as
desired. After the flight is completed, the film can be reviewed by
selecting "Play" from the Camera menu. If you want to keep it,
select "Save..." and specify a file name for the film to go into.
The film is a text file which can be uploaded to GEnie as an Xmodem
text (Genie's 7-bit Text mode will not work with a film file.) To
facilitate transfer of films to other machines, films should not be
StuffIt'ed, since none of the other machines have StuffIt.
To play a film that you have previously saved on disk, or have
downloaded from GEnie, select "Load..." from the Camera menu
and specify the film file. "Play" can then be selected to
start the film playing.
During playback, several keyboard commands are available:
` or esc abort playback
n toggle "out of cockpit" views
s toggle "Sticky View Keys" on and off. This is
especially useful with "out of cockpit" views.
This does NOT affect whether sticky view keys will
be active during normal flight.
[ and ] move the "out of cockpit" viewpoint closer or farther
from the plane.
view keys the standard (or remapped if you have changed them)
view keys work, both in and out of the cockpit.
range keys the standard (or remapped if you have changed them)
view range keys work, both in and out of the cockpit,
for controlling the amount of graphics presented.
There are two options available in the Camera menu "Use Disk
for Film" and "Set Film Size". "Use Disk for Film" is a toggle.
When selected, the camera will record directly to disk. When not
selected, the camera records to a buffer in memory. Recording to
memory, the default, has the advantage that it imposes no
measurable effect on performance while recording is in progress,
but the disadvantage that you have to have enough memory for the
film buffer (default 40K, which will last 2-4 minutes online,
5-6 offline.) A 512K Mac, or one running under MultiFinder, may
not have this much free memory. Recording to disk entails
possible delays while recording (generally not noticeable running
from a hard disk), but requires only 1K or so of additional memory.
"Set Film Size" is used to tell the camera how long the film may
be. When recording to memory, the film buffer will be this size,
and the camera will stop automatically when the buffer fills.
When the recording to disk, this is the maximum file size that
will be allowed, and the camera will stop when it reaches it. The
dialog box will tell you how much memory or disk is available for
the film.
Playback always takes place from disk, unless you are playing
an in-memory film you just recorded. "Use Disk for Film" will
be automatically selected when you choose the "Load..." option.
The film size option has no effect on playback of films.
For curious folks, an explanation of the
mechanics involved in film manipulation. When recording to
memory, the camera just piles up data in the memory buffer.
Playback can take place directly from the buffer, and when
the film is saved to disk, the portable text file format
is written to the specified file. The data remains in the memory
buffer as well, so you can play it again if you want. Starting
a new flight recording, or loading a disk file discards the
contents of the memory buffer.
When recording to disk, things work a little differently.
When you start the camera for the first time in a flight,
a file is created to hold the film. A slight delay will probably
be noticed here, and under MultiFinder the delay can be several
seconds, as the Finder will update the desktop in the background,
stealing the CPU. Data is written continuously to the disk
file while recording is in progress, and the file is closed when
the flight ends. Playback comes straight from the disk file. When
you select Save, the file is renamed to the name you specify (or
copied if you specify a save to a different directory or disk.)
The current playback name is also changed, so you can select
playback again to see the film. When a new flight is started,
the name goes back to the default scratch name, so the film
you have Saved won't be overwritten. If you did not save the
film, the contents of the file are discarded when a new film
is begun. When Air Warrior is exited back to the Finder, the
scratch file will be deleted if it has not been Saved. If you are
really perverse, and reboot the Mac rather than Quit, a file
"camera.scr" will be left on the disk. This is a perfectly good
film file and (unless some sort of horrid error occurred) you can
rename it and Load it later.
Various arcana about films: the films are written in such a
way that they are independent of the particular version of Air
Warrior they were recorded under. They can be played back on
machines that are either faster or slower with the correct
results. The film does know which version of the terrain it
was recorded with, and if the terrain file has changed, Air Warrior
will ask you whether to continue with playback with a potentially
incompatible terrain file (in which case planes may take off from
water and fly through mountains!) The film file is pure text,
so it can be uploaded without concern for modem settings such
as 7 or 8 bits, etc. Since the various machines do not have
the same line termination characters in text, the film has no
line termination at all, so you may have trouble if you try to
open it in a text editor <grin>. There's nothing interesting to
look at anyway!
The film size will vary online or offline, because of the
data being sent by GEnie. The film WILL record such things as
incoming radio messages, or anything else GEnie tells it to do.
Offline, about 120 bytes per second are recorded in memory,
about 130 bytes per second if going to disk.
Someday we'll write a film editor for splicing films and
adding commentary. It'll have to be a separate program, and
will be a real pain in the tail!
- Bullet time of flight is now computed accurately meaning that you'll
have to lead the target and compensate for any
G's you are pulling. Any planes that had a lead computing sight will
have a "pipper" in the gun sight, to aid in compensating for G's.
You can adjust the range that the pipper computes for using the [ and ]
keys (the same ones used for bombsight magnification.) In addition,
you can switch the sight between Fighters and Bombers, to better give
you an idea of how accurately you have to hit the target.
Fighter mode is entered with the kf command, i.e. <esc> kf <return>.
Bomber mode is entered with kb.
One very important point to note: the pipper has NOTHING to do with
where the bullets are currently hitting. It is merely a gyroscope's
attempt at predicting where the bullets will go. Even though the A-26
and B-25 and the World War I fighters do not have lead computing
sights, their shots will hit in exactly the same manner. Changing
sight modes from Fighter to Bomber does NOT make your shots hit
better, it just gives you an idea of your margin of error.
- The way smoke is drawn coming from your own plane in flight or camera
playback has been changed. Smoke will be visible if the plane is losing
either oil or fuel.
- The maximum size of the picture cache has been increased to 20 in the Mac II
version.
- The way the program handles supplementary art files for control panels
and other art and sound has been changed. Air Warrior will now look in
a resource file called "Air Warrior Art" for alternate
control panel arrangements. The file "Air Warrior Art (Vehicles)" will
be loaded for all vehicles, and "Air Warrior Art (WWI)" will be loaded
for all World War I planes. The vehicle file is distributed standard,
as operating a jeep or tank without it is awkward.
In the color version, a different set of files is loaded. The file
"Color Art" contains standard extensions. Such a file will be uploaded
containing a color startup screen, and an excellent color control
panel by Blue Macs (J.BLUM). The file "Color Art (Vehicles)" will be loaded
for vehicles, and "Color Art (WWI)" for World War I planes. For 640x480
mode, the files "Large Color Art" and so on will be loaded, for 1024x768
mode the files "Huge Color Art" and so on will be loaded. These color files
are only loaded if a color monitor mode is selected, otherwise the "Air Warrior Art"
files as mentioned above are loaded.
Plane specific files are still loaded as before. The purpose of the new
files is to make it easier and more efficient to construct custom instrument
panels and sounds that apply to a group of planes or vehicles.
- The "Mouse Sensitivity" option now has entries for horizontal and vertical
adjustment separately. This should make setting up a joystick easier.
- The program will now look for the supplemental art files "Air Warrior Art (Gunner)"
and "Color Art (Gunner)" when a flight starts in a turret. This fixes
a problem in the existing turret art.
- If you have selected a video mode with more than 256 colors, or have selected
both Onscreen and Offscreen compatibility modes, and 32 bit Color Quickdraw
is present in your system, Air Warrior will use 32 bit Quickdraw to manage
the video memory. This will give the best chance of paying off with hardware
accelerators, but will be slower otherwise.
- The way the oil gauge works has changed a bit: the oil guage will read 0 if the
engine(s) are not running (the oil pump isn't on!)
- The name of the configuration file has changed from "config" to "Air Warrior Config".
The program will still read the old "config" file, but will create the new
file name if you change the options. You can then toss out "config".
- You can have Air Warrior automatically open and play a film file on startup
by selecting the film in the Finder, selecting Air Warrior, then choosing
Open.
- The Mac II version is now being compiled with MPW 3.0 rather than
the earlier MPW 2.0.2. If you notice any anomalies, let us know.
This change made the program somewhat larger (MPW 3 seems to make
a less compact program) but should be a wee bit faster, and confers
all the benefits of using the latest (supported!) compiler. The
monochrome version is still compiled with MPW 2.0.2 for size
reasons (the program ends up about 13K smaller.)
New Sound Routines
This version has a major upgrade to Air Warrior's sound capabilities.
The program now uses Apple's new Sound Manager rather than the obsolete
Sound Driver. This has two major ramifications: Air Warrior now uses
Apple standard 'snd ' sound resources rather than the third party
(and now obsolete) 'wave' style sounds. Air Warrior 1.5c will now run
under MultiFinder without the random crashes, which were caused by
errant interrupts from the old sound routines. In order to use digitized
sound with Air Warrior, you MUST be running one of the System 6.0
versions, or System 7 when it comes out.
The old routines slowed the Mac Plus down by about 40% when the
engine was running. The new routines slow the Mac Plus down by
27%, so there is a significant improvement on the Plus and SE.
There is a fly in the ointment: there is a serious problem in Systems
6.0, 6.0.1, 6.0.2, and 6.0.3 on the Mac II series and the SE/30.
The new sounds work properly, but they impose roughly a 100% overhead
on the system, i.e. cutting Air Warrior's performance in half. For this
reason, this version of Air Warrior for the Mac II (i.e. 1.5c (color))
converts the 'snd ' style sounds back to the old style in memory,
and plays them the old way. Thus, Air Warrior 1.5c (color) is still
NOT MultiFinder compatible, whereas the monochrome version 1.5c is.
When Apple releases System 7.0, they have assured us this problem will
be corrected. If you MUST run MultiFinder, you can select "Use Sound
Manager" in the Compatibility dialog. You'll suffer the performance
overhead of 100%, but it will run on a Mac II.
Apple has improved the sound overhead problem in System 6.0.4 and
6.0.5, from 100% overhead to about 35%.
The Mac Plus/SE version still supports the old-style non-digitized
sounds. You may be running any release of the System from 3.0 on up to
6.0.4 to run in this mode. MultiFinder is not recommended while using
the non-digitized sounds, as problems will still result.
A point to note: there are two distinct types of 'snd ' sounds,
appropriately named types 1 and 2. Type 1 sounds can be just about
anything, from tunes played with the Note synthesizer to sampled sounds
to MIDI sequences. The current version of Air Warrior only likes
sampled sounds, but if there is a reason to we might support MIDI 'snd '
resources in the future :) Type 2 sounds are generated and used by
Hypercard, and may only contain sampled sounds. Air Warrior is able
to use sampled sounds of either format, and there is no real advantage
to either one as far as the game is concerned.
There are a number of new sound files being uploaded. The first file,
SoundData.sit, is a straightforward conversion of the old file, with
some additions. This is the file most folks will want to use. It now
has a jet sound standard. The B17snd.sit file is a resource file with
a conversion of the sounds in Ridge Runner's B17. Paste these into the
B17 file to hear them with the new version. The T34.sit file is some
sounds for the Tank. Those of you using the recently uploaded P-40
engine sound will find a snd version of it in the Tank file; if you
like this one better than the standard engine, paste it from the Tank
into the Sound Data file. Two LARGE sound files will also be uploaded,
a full P-40 22 Khz file (with a long starter and very smooth engine),
and a long smooth sample of a F4U-1D Corsair (probably with a Hellcat
starter, as the F4U starter didn't come out on the tape).
Performance Testing
This version of Air Warrior has undergone very stringent
testing between the different computers (Macintosh, Atari ST,
Amiga, and IBM PC) to ensure that the flight performance of
the different planes is the same.
The testing was performed by internally instrumenting the
program, to eliminate the errors that would occur by reading
the instruments or following a stop watch. Not only were the
observable variables instrumented, but also internal aerodynamic
quantities such as thrust, engine horsepower, drag, lift,
angle of attack, lift coefficient, air density, and so on.
The magnitude of the differences being sought was smaller than could
readily be seen on the instruments, since split second timing was often
required to make valid comparisons. Initial conditions for the
various tests were established exactly by an automated facility,
so that no human error or influence would be present. The tests were
performed on a number of different aircraft, representing the various
extremes of both performance and certain critical properties.
The following tests were performed:
An instrumented take off roll, followed by an 11 minute climb,
a minute of level acceleration, then
a 60 degree dive, usually into the ground, or 3 minutes, whichever
came first. Acceptance was based on the point at which the plane reached
full throttle, the point at which the plane left the ground, the
altitude, speed, angle of climb, and engine horsepower at the peak
of the climb, the speed reached by the end of the acceleration, the
time and speed at which buffeting began during the dive (if it did),
the peak Mach number in the dive (for the F-86), and the time and speed
of impact.
A 2/3 aileron deflection roll in expert mode. Acceptance was based
on rate of roll, and loss of altitude and change of attitude during
one complete roll. A roll time varied from 1.5 seconds for the Sabre to
40 or so for the B-17 (the B-17 did not complete the roll before the
test ended.)
A test of full rudder deflection at an exact speed and altitude.
Acceptance was based on the amount of course change, amount of roll,
and amount of altitude lost during a one minute deflection.
A full elevator deflection loop starting at an exact speed and
altitude. Acceptance was based on the g's pulled at various points in
the loop, the altitude gained during the loop, the final altitude at
the end of the loop, the time at which various points in the loop
were reached, and the velocities at various points in the loop.
A test of the top speed of the plane, at two or more different
altitudes representing different performance regimes. The plane was
placed at the correct speed, and acceptance was based on comparison
of internal values during a one minute run at that speed.
A test of stall performance. The plane was placed in a known
climb attitude at a known speed, then throttle was reduced by the
program. Acceptance was based on the speed of the stall, altitude of
stall (a check on the climb), various internal values at the stall,
the time required for the nose to drop through horizontal, the time
required for recovery from the stall, and the altitude changes
associated with those points.
In addition, tests were run at several different settings on the
Mac II, to quantify the effect of monochrome vs color, that is, the
frame rate, on aerodynamic performance (the Mac II was the easiest
machine to perform this test on, it was also done on the IBM PC with
its variable clock speed.) Several equations were changed
to retain better numerical accuracy in accounting for very fast
update times and better accuracy in handling unusual clock frequencies.
Lastly, a drag race was run with a jeep and a tank, to measure
the acceleration, turning radius, and roll performance (grin) of the
vehicle under an automatically controlled test. A bug in the rollover
point in the jeep was found and corrected.
In conclusion, we now feel that the machine to machine performance
is identical, to far greater than the accuracy at which a user can
read the instrument panel and control an airplane manually. One thing
that became apparent early on was how sensitive the planes are, and
how even a very small difference in control setting or initial conditions
can produce results different enough to mislead the observer. Automated
testing was essential.
Air Warrior Keyboard Commands
View Keys
Hold these down to look around. Holding down 2 in combination
will give a combination view.
h Look to the left
l Look to the right
k Look up
j Look down
m Look backwards
g Look forward
= radar mode
Turret Controls
y rotate left
o rotate right
u rotate up
i rotate down
z lock turret in place (hold z down)
Flight Controls
* start/stop engines
space brakes (ground and air if available, hold it down)
; landing gear
< flaps up
> flaps down
f fire guns
a rudder left one notch
s center rudder
d rudder right one notch
b release bomb(s)
x toggle autopilot mode
. center the stick (or double clicking mouse button)
e toggle War Emergency Power
c increase throttle 10%
v decrease throttle 10%
[ increase bombsight magnification
] decrease bombsight magnification
Graphics View Modes
1 See everything possible (Full Mode)
2 Medium range mode.
3 Short range mode.
4 Combat range mode, see only very close objects and planes.
5 Abridged mode, see only planes and essential terrain.
6 Line mode, see only planes and outlines of terrain (monochrome
only.)
Host Commands
Hit the Escape (esc) or ` key before entering these, then
hit return. If the command is followed by a #, you should specify
the appropriate number.
a Arm/disarm bomb release in a fighter, open/close bomb bay doors
in a bomber.
c Suspend flight (Mac II version only. For use with MultiFinder,
will not work online.)
d print some network status numbers.
e Leave the cockpit.
j Change positions in a bomber. To jump to the tail turret, type
jt.
kf set pipper to fighter wingspan mode
kb set pipper to bomber wingspan mode
m# Set radar range
m0 - shortest range
m1 - medium range
m2 - longest range
n Display icons of friendly and enemy types.
o# Toggle Option while in flight
o1 - toggle gunsight frame
o2 - toggle dive bomb sight
o3 - toggle engine sound on/off
o4 - toggle gun sound on/off
o5 - toggle visible tracers on/off
o7 - toggle indicated/true airspeed on gauge.
op - set gunsight to lead computing pipper
ob - set gunsight to bombsight mode
on - turn pipper off
os - toggle sight frame on and off
ot - toggle visible tracers on and off
oi - toggle indicated vs true airspeed mode
og - toggle gun sound on and off
oe - toggle engine sound on and off
ok - toggle sticky keys mode
p Bail out. A second p command pulls the ripcord.
q Toggle view debug on/off.
r Display number of users in flight.
s Toggle light/dark display (monochrome only.)
t# Tune radio to channel.
w Tell you roughly where you are.
z Enter/exit bombsight mode (bombers only)