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The Best of Select: Games 9
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CD_1.iso
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dosgames
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gridlock
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gridlock.txt
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1993-05-24
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50KB
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1,124 lines
file GRIDLOCK.TXT
================================================================
INSTRUCTIONS FOR GRIDLOCK
================================================================
Fred Lee
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ........................ 1
COMPUTER REQUIREMENTS ............... 2
THE FILES ........................... 3
STARTING THE PROGRAM ................ 3
YOUR SECTOR OF THE CITY ............. 4
MAIN MENU ........................... 4
Quit without saving (7) .......... 5
Quit this program (6) ............ 5
Turn sound off (5) ............... 5
Clear things (4) ................. 5
SET INTERSECTIONS (1) ............... 6
Type ............................. 7
Phase ............................ 8
Slave light ...................... 8
Slave delay ...................... 9
Demand ........................... 9
Normal-time demo ................. 9
Copying intersections ............ 9
Paper work ....................... 10
PLAN A TRIP (2) ..................... 11
RUN (3) ............................. 12
Traffic .......................... 12
Day or night ..................... 12
Mall lights ...................... 12
Running .......................... 13
Accidents ........................ 14
Speed ............................ 14
Time clock ....................... 15
Test cars ........................ 16
HOW THE CARS BEHAVE ................. 16
HINTS ............................... 18
Re-starting the RUN mode ......... 18
Car-speed facts .................. 18
Synchronizing .................... 18
CONCLUSION .......................... 19
INTRODUCTION
Did you ever think, when you were out there driving in the
traffic, that you could set the traffic lights much better than
the clowns who are paid to do the job? You probably think that
your parakeet could do it better. Well, here's a chance to see
what you can do. GRIDLOCK gives you a whole section of town, the
Morass district in the great metropolis of Quagmeyer City, PU,
with lots of cars driving around in it. You can decide what kind
of lights or stop signs to put at what intersections and you get
to set the lengths of the cycles. Your district consists of some
eleven avenues crossed by twelve streets and one expressway.
(There is a common misconception that it's called an expressway
because you can zip along on it at high speed and not have to
stop at a lot of red lights. So when you find yourself poking
along it in bumper-to-bumper traffic and being stopped - maybe
two or three times - at every intersection, you tend to invent
all sorts of new ways to express your feelings. And that's why
it's called an expressway. On a good day, you can see thousands
of drivers all in a row muttering a fantastic variety of
expressions.)
You can look at the game in two ways. You can try to design
systems that will make traffic flow as smoothly and quickly as
possible. Or, if you think that you might want to apply for a
job with your city's Department of Setting Traffic Lights, you
can practice setting lights in such a way that every car will get
to every intersection just as the light turns red and just
generally foul up the traffic and achieve - - - gridlock.
There are two ways to measure your success or failure as a
traffic designer. One way is to see whether you can get maximum
(100%) traffic to flow without getting hopelessly blocked
intersections, accidents, and police cars out in force. That
isn't easy to do. Even if you succeed for a while, sooner or
later, something could go wrong. Maybe a more realistic test
would be to see how long you can run at maximum traffic before
something bad happens. The other way to measure your success is
to see how long it takes for one of your test cars to go from
point A to B under different traffic conditions.
You can try your ideas on the normal traffic in your sector.
The computer controls these cars. The only thing you can control
is the number of cars that are driving around. There are also
two special cars, called test cars, that you CAN control. You
1
get to program their routes and the computer times their trips
for you. The test cars are your only means of accurately
comparing different systems. That is, of course, by running the
same test routes with the different systems of traffic controls
and seeing which take more time. (The computer automatically
generates appropriate expressions for the drivers of the test
cars to mutter. But due to certain regulations, they cannot be
put on the screen or printed out.)
Being a computer simulation, this town is not a hundred percent
realistic. Unlike yourself, the cars obey the speed limit. They
don't try to beat the red light the way you would. They do
sometimes make left turns on yellow lights, though. Especially
if they have been prevented by oncoming traffic from turning when
the light was green.
There are no pedestrians. So there are none of those
buttons that slow down a light so that even a very old lady on
crutches can make it across and have time to get home, cook
herself a cup of tea, and drink it before the light comes back to
life. Of course, with no pedestrians, there is no way of hitting
one. Sorry about that. But cars can occasionally hit each
other.
The program is run from menus and most things that you have to do
are explained right on the screen so that you should be able to
blunder your way along. For the three of you who actually read
instructions, the following pages give you more detail than you
get on the screen.
The traffic in GRIDLOCK drives on the right side of the road.
That means the game would not be useful in, say, England, where,
as the great writer Dave Barry reports, they drive on both sides.
Ironically, it will also not be popular in Japan where most of our
cars are made.
COMPUTER REQUIREMENTS
To run GRIDLOCK takes an IBM (or compatible) computer with at
least 512K of RAM and EGA or VGA color graphics. Computers with
clock speeds of over 16 MHz run the program at full speed. Below
that speed, as speeds drop lower, the action slows down. The
slow-down is hardly noticeable at 12.5 MHz. Below that speed it
becomes more and more apparent.
2
THE FILES
The GRIDLOCK disk holds the following disks:
README The first thing you should read
GL.EXE The main gridlock program file
GRIDLOCK.RTS Stores car routes
GRIDLOCK.DAT Stores all traffic conditions
GRIDLOCK.DOC This instruction file (ASCII text)
The .RTS, .DAT, and .EXE files must be on the same disk drive
when the program file GL.EXE is being run.
STARTING THE PROGRAM
The GRIDLOCK program is in the file GL.EXE. It can be run from
the hard disk or a floppy. The data files GRIDLOCK.RTS and
GRIDLOCK.DAT must be on the same drive as the .EXE file.
To run, get the prompt of the drive you want to use and enter GL.
That starts the program which then reads the two data files. One
of these, .DAT, stores the conditions and settings that were in
use the last time the program was run and was terminated with
option 6 (Quit this program) of the main menu. That allows you
to continue the program as it was when you left it.
If you don't want to continue the program as it was when you left
it, start the program by entering GL SKIP instead of GL. That
causes the program to skip the reading of GRIDLOCK.DAT so that
the conditions such as traffic light settings and cars on the
road will all be cleared when the program starts. This way of
starting takes less time.
If you want to save a number o