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-
-
- Approach Control
- Version 2.0
-
- A Pre-compiler for the Microsoft
- Flight Simulator's Aircraft and
- Adventure Factory
-
- (c) 1993 by John Mechalas
-
-
- This program is shareware. It may be distributed freely provided that
- it is not modified in any way, and that all the accompanying files
- in this archive are distributed with it.
-
-
- - Using the Digitized Speech -
-
- If you decide to include the digitized speech in your adventure files,
- you need to have the .VOC files included in this package stored in a
- subdirectory named APPVOC in your Flight Simulator directory. If, for
- example, your Flight Simulator program is in C:\FLTSIM, the .VOC
- files must be in C:\FLTSIM\APPVOC. This is done so that you can keep
- these sound files seperate from any others that you might have.
- Feel free to record your own voice files if you don't like the voice
- I have chosen for this package. If you do redistribute this archive,
- however, I ask that you distribute the original .VOC files, and not any
- new ones that you have created.
- The speech routines are still in the "experimental" stages, and
- depending on user input, I may or may not attempt to improve (or keep)
- the feature as a part of the program. Let me know what you think.
- See your AAF manual for hardware requirements.
-
-
- - Special Considerations and General Notes -
-
- Perhaps the most limiting part of AAF's PLAY command is the fact that
- you can't specify a variable as a filename. As such, I was forced to
- make a few concessions when creating the voice engine, and although its
- not perfect, it does work fairly well.
- First off, I wanted the program to be capable of speaking heading
- changes as they are issued by ATC. The natural choice was to create
- a sperate file for each digit from 0 to 9, and then play them one at
- a time, back-to-back. So, if you are asked to turn to heading 230,
- the program will play 2.VOC, followed by 3.VOC, and then 0.VOC.
- Since you can't specify variables in a filename in AAF, I was forced
- to use a rather complex IF-ENDIF structure that accomplishes the
- necessary tasks, and it is fairly slow. I "tweaked" the algorithm as much
- as I could, and it does a pretty good job, but there is a noticeable
- delay between the times when the digits are spoken.
- You will probably want to have some sort of disk-caching software,
- and it would also be a good idea to install FASTOPEN. That way, you
- can reduce the time it would take to find/load the .VOC files, hence
- speeding up the speech process.
- The .VOC files don't exactly match with the printed ATC commands, due
- mostly to limitations imposed by AAF, but I did my best to make things
- work out. You may find different ways of implementing the speech
- routines, so experiment a bit if you find what I have to be inadequate.
- The files VOC.RSC contains the basic command structure for playing
- most of the .VOC files (namely the digits and the heading commands). If
- you plan on using the digitized speech files, this file MUST be in the
- same directory as the APP.EXE program. Feel free to modify this file as
- mentioned above, but if you redistribute this archive, I again ask that
- you include the original VOC.RSC, and not a modified one.
-