PsL Monthly 1994 January

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Text File | 1993-05-13 | 14.4 KB | 297 lines

Welcome to DRAGCITY U.S.A. Version 3.0 Copyright Richard Nikula 1993. Your uncle died and has left you his dragster. Its not state of the art. In fact, its a manual 3 speed job with the engine in front of the driver. You've decided to cast good judgement aside and race it yourself. STARTING DRAGCITY To invoke DRAGCITY, enter the following command: DRAGCITY [options] Options are as follows. I would suggest that if you use the same options most of the time to create a batch file or to specify the options from menu program. -m : Suppress mouse usage even if a mouse is present. All entry must be done from the keyboard. The keyboard can be used for entries even when this option is not used, except the gears display which results in unexplainable (in a paragraph) gear selections. -s : Suppresses the sound effects. -d : Suppresses digital sound effects and uses the PC speaker -l : Moves the tachometer to alternate location. -t : Activates tournament mode if 2 or more players are racing. -p1name: Specifies player 1's name. -p2name: Specifies player 2's name. -p3name: Specifies player 3's name. -p4name: Specifies player 4's name. -a# : Set the default accelerator sensitivity. The default value is 5. The accelerator can still be adjusted during game play. -c# : Adjust for various (fast) computer speeds. The game should autoadjust for processors up to 25Mz. However, if you find the elapsed times to be too fast, specifying -c1, -c2, etc will slow you down. -xn# : Sets the car color for player n's car. # is any number between 1 and 255. Numbers 1 thru 7 and 56 thru 63 represent work best. The following settings will most likely not need to be specified but can be if problems with default settings occur: -p : Suppresses page switching. If your graphics card doesn't work with paging active, try this option. It will result in slower elapsed times however and eliminates access to gears and history at some times. -e : Set video mode to EGA 640 X 350 X 16 colors -v : Set video mode to VGA 640 X 350 X 16 colors. Note: options can be combined but must be specified separately as in the following example: DRAGCITY -m -s -p1Joe -p2Bill starts the game no mouse, no sound and 2 players (Joe and Bill). INITIAL OPTIONS MENU As an alternative to using the option switches, you can specify the settings via the options menu. The options menu is presented automatically when DRAGCITY is started with no switches. The options can be changed by typing the first letter of the option (or if mouse support is active, by clicking near the beginning of each option). To leave the options menu, press ENTER (with the mouse, click on the "press ENTER" line or press both buttons simultaneously). If for some reason, you don't want to continue with DRAGCITY, pressing escape (ESC) terminates the program. The option settings and their defaults are as follows: Players - Default is 1 player. Up to 4 players may be specified EGA/VGA - Default is based on current graphic monitor. Shouldn't need to be adjusted. Mouse - Default is Mouse active if a mouse driver is loaded or Keyboard if not. If DRAGCITY can not find the mouse driver, you cannot set the mouse option on. Sound - Default is sound on. Sound can be set off. The game makes a small amount of sound to indicate relative speed. If you wish to play without being heard, turn the sound off. If a Sound Blaster driver is available, digital sound will be used. Note, the sound blaster driver must have the correct port, DMA, and IRQ values set in it (these are not overridden). If you get errors initializing the sound support, use INST-DRV to change the driver. Tournament - Allows racing in either friendly or tournament modes. In friendly mode, racers take turns one a time and compare times. In Tournament mode, the players race against each other based on the draw. Requires at least 2 racers. Default is "friendly". Actually I like to play tournament mode by myself and use my imagination. PLAYER NAME SPECIFICATION Being a pleasant program, DRAGCITY requests that players enter their names. You can either enter your first name as requested or just press ENTER (or a simple mouse click will do), in which case, you will be known by the affectionate name, PLAYER1, PLAYER2 and so on. If you specify all names via the switches above, you will bypass this request. Names are used to show whose turn it is and for posting entries to the history file. RACING: To drive, you need an accelerator and a clutch. If you have a mouse, the right button acts as the accelerator. When pressed, you accelerate otherwise you slow down. The left button is your clutch. Just tap it whenever you want to change gears (and initially to leave the starting line). If you don't use a mouse, the space bar can be used as an accelerator (pressing it once starts accelerating and pressing it again starts slowing you down). Also the ENTER key is the clutch (which works just like the left mouse button). The first thing you need to do is stage. (Note, before you begin the stage you can press ESC to activate the menu bar and choose gears to alter the gears as desired.) This is done by accelerating up to the starting line. As you enter the staging area, the upper yellow light will turn on. As you complete staging, the 2nd yellow light goes on. Once this occurs, the remainder of the lights will begin to cycle. You want to engage the clutch as soon as the bottom green light goes on. If you engage the clutch too soon, you "red light" and have to start over. You also need to adjust your engine speed (using the tachometer) to get a good start while not starting too slow, "going up in smoke", or blowing your engine. Your RPMs when you leave the starting line have a big influence on racing time. Once you have starting racing, you will change from the starting line view to the racing view. As you race, you will need to shift. Shifting too soon will result in lugging down the engine and a slower racing time. Shifting too late also slows the racing time. You'll have to get to know your car to determine the optimum points. If you rev your engine too high, it will break so be careful going above "red line". If you blow your engine while racing, the red light in the middle of the oil gauge will glow (you may be able to coast across the finish line if you are going fast enough). At the completion of the quarter mile, your reaction time, elapsed time, total time, and top speed are shown. If any value is in the top ten, it will be followed by an asterisk (*). At the completion of each race, a menu bar is displayed at the top of the screen. To race again, click the left button on the Continue box. To display the record file, click on Records. To change the gear values for additional race scenarios, click on the Gears box. To show an analysis of the race, click on the Breakdown box. To quit, click on the Quit box. If during the race, you want to quit, pressing ESC will display these boxes. Only continue and quit can be selected, the remainder can only be viewed before and after racing. If you don't have a mouse, C, R, G, B, and Q can be used for Continue, Records, Gears, Breakdown, and Quit, respectively. GEARS ADJUSTMENT If you select the gears display, the current settings will be shown in red. Each gear has an optimum speed range which yields the most increase in RPMs. Above and below this range, the gears are less efficient (and thus result in slower elapsed times). The low gear range also has an affect on the RPMs at which "burn out" will occur (burn out is easy to recognize because the RPMs will be high but the speed will be low). The ranges and values for each gear are shown on the gears display. You can choose from 6 different sets of gears for 1st through 3rd. You can mix and match any combination of the 6 gears. With a mouse, just click on the desired square. When complete, click on the accept box. If you don't have a mouse, just select the square desired by its coordinate. For example, L2, M3 (This will be clearer when you see the gears display). To accept the changes, simply type an A. The gears display shows the accelerator sensitivity. Basically, this allows you to adjust how responsive your accelerator is. The higher the value, the less responsive. This is only of importance at the starting line. By altering this value, the RPMs will increase faster or slower. The accelerator sensitivity can be adjusted at any time, however it is only displayed here. (As a suggestion, to determine the best value sit at the starting line after the green light and increase and/or decrease the sensitivity until it feels right, than race. After the run, invoke the gears display to view the value for future reference). To Increase the tension, use the plus key (+), to decrease, the minus key (-). When viewing the gears display, you can also use the x key (exchange) to change the car color. If you invoke the gears display from the starting line, the car will change color as soon as it moves. Note, if multiple players are playing, each has their own set of gears, color and accelerator sensitivity. Changing one player's values does not affect the others. HALL OF FAME This program maintains a history file of racing statistics. It can be accessed before and after racing from the menu bar (Records). There are 4 categories as follows: Top speed. The speed at the end of racing. Reaction time. From green light to start. Elapsed time. From start to finish. Total time. Reaction plus Elapsed time. Your current run is also shown for comparison to the top values. You can reset the Hall of Fame by deleting the DRAGCITY.SCO file. To exit the Hall of Fame, pressing any key or a mouse click will do. TOURNAMENT PLAY When 2 or more racers are participating, you can use a tournament format. The players are randomly seated into 1 of 4 positions in the semi-finals. To advance to the next round of competition, the racers must win the round. If the player has a "solo" round, they must finish the race. Blown engines, red lights, etc, disqualify the racer from advancing. In 3 player games, one player is given a solo run in the semi-finals. In 2 player games, both players are given solo runs in the semi-finals. After the semi-final round, the winners advance to the finals. The player with the lowest elapsed time goes second (since lane choice is of no advantage the faster racer gets the advantage of seeing the run of the competitor and thus knows how good of a run is required to win). At the beginning and end of each round, the tournament board is displayed. This shows the racers that advanced as well as the racing times for all competitors. To return to racing, press any key (or click the mouse). AUTOMATIC MODE There is also an automatic transmission mode (which isn't much of a challenge but can be used to approximate the best possible time is for a given set of gears). In this mode, all you have to do is hold down the accelerator. Leaving the starting line, shifting, etc are handled automatically. Although this is automatic, there is some variation and the elapsed time will vary. This mode can be activated / deactivated by selecting CTRL-A. The file README.CTY has additional information on the requirements for use of DRAGCITY. ----------------end-of-author's-documentation--------------- Software Library Information: This disk copy provided as a service of Public (software) Library We are not the authors of this program, nor are we associated with the author in any way other than as a distributor of the program in accordance with the author's terms of distribution. Please direct shareware payments and specific questions about this program to the author of the program, whose name appears elsewhere in this documentation. If you have trouble getting in touch with the author, we will do whatever we can to help you with your questions. All programs have been tested and do run. To report problems, please use the form that is in the file PROBLEM.DOC on many of our disks or in other written for- mat with screen printouts, if possible. PsL cannot debug pro- programs over the telephone, though we can answer questions. 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