atc
NAME
atc - Air Traffic Controller Game
SYNOPSIS
atc -[u?lstp] [-[gf] game_name] [-r random seed]
DESCRIPTION
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 responsibilities
require you to direct the flight of jets and prop planes
into and out of the flight arena and airports. The speed
(update time) and frequency of the planes depend on the
difficulty of the chosen arena.
OPTIONS
-u Print the usage line and exit.
-? Same as -u.
-l Print a list of available games and exit. The first
game name printed is the default game.
-s Print the score list (formerly the Top Ten list).
-t Same as -s.
-p Print the path to the special directory where atc
expects to find its private files. This is used
during the installation of the program.
-g game Play the named game. If the game listed is not one
of the ones printed from the -l option, the default
game is played.
-f game Same as -g.
-r seed Set the random seed. The purpose of this flag is
questionable.
GOALS
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 will need to: launch planes at
airports (by instructing them to increase their altitude);
land planes at airports (by instructing them to go to
altitude zero when exactly over the airport); and maneuver
planes out of exit points.
Several things will cause the end of the game. Each plane
has a destination (see information area), and sending a
plane to the wrong destination is an error. Planes can run
out of fuel, or can collide. Collision is defined as
adjacency in any of the three dimensions. A plane leaving
the arena in any other way than through its destination exit
is an error as well.
Scores are sorted in order of the number of planes safe.
The other statistics are provided merely for fun. There is
no penalty for taking longer than another player (except in
the case of ties).
Suspending a game is not permitted. If you get a talk
message, tough. When was the last time an Air Traffic
Controller got called away to the phone?
THE DISPLAY
Depending on the terminal you run atc on, the screen will be
divided into 4 areas. It should be stressed that the
terminal driver portion of the game was designed to be
reconfigurable, so the display format can vary depending the
version you are playing. The descriptions here are based on
the ascii version of the game. The game rules and input
format, however, should remain consistent. Control-L
redraws the screen, should it become muddled.
RADAR
The first screen area is the radar display, showing the
relative locations of the planes, airports, standard
entry/exit points, radar beacons, and "lines" which
simply serve to aid you in guiding the planes.
Planes are shown as a single letter with an altitude.
If the numerical altitude is a single digit, then it
represents thousands of feet. Some distinction is made
between the prop planes and the jets. On ascii
terminals, prop planes are represented by a upper case
letter, jets by a lower case letter.
Airports are shown as a number and some indication of
the direction planes must be going to land at the
airport. On ascii terminals, this is one of '^', '>',
'<', and 'v', to indicate north (0 degrees), east (90),
west (270) and south (180), respectively. The planes
will also take off in this direction.
Beacons are represented as circles or asterisks and a
number. Their purpose is to offer a place of easy
reference to the plane pilots. See 'the delay command'
under the input section of this manual.
Entry/exit points are displayed as numbers along the
border of the radar screen. Planes will enter the
arena from these points without warning. These points
have a direction associated with them, and planes will
always enter the arena from this direction. On the
ascii version of atc, this direction is not displayed.
It will become apparent what this direction is as the
game progresses.
Incoming planes will always enter at the same altitude:
7000 feet. For a plane to successfully depart through
an entry/exit point, it must be flying at 9000 feet.
It is not necessary for the planes to be flying in any
particular direction when they leave the arena (yet).
INFORMATION AREA
The second area of the display is the information area,
which lists the time (number of updates since start),
and the number of planes you have directed safely out
of the arena. Below this is a list of planes currently
in the air, followed by a blank line, and then a list
of planes on the ground (at airports). Each line lists
the plane name and its current altitude, an optional
asterisk indicating low fuel, the plane's destination,
and the plane's current command. Changing altitude is
not considered to be a command and is therefore not
displayed. The following are some possible information
lines:
B4*A0: Circle @ b1
g7 E4: 225
The first example shows a prop plane named 'B' that is
flying at 4000 feet. It is low on fuel (note the '*').
It's destination is Airport #0. The next command it
expects to do is circle when it reaches Beacon #1. The
second example shows a jet named 'g' at 7000 feet,
destined for Exit #4. It is just now executing a turn
to 225 degrees (South-West).
INPUT AREA
The third area of the display is the input area. It is
here that your input is reflected. See the INPUT
heading of this manual for more details.
AUTHOR AREA
This area is used simply to give credit where credit is
due. :-)
INPUT
A command completion interface is built into the game. At
any time, typing '?' will list possible input characters.
Typing a backspace (your erase character) backs up, erasing
the last part of the command. When a command is complete, a
return enters it, and any semantic checking is done at that
time. If no errors are detected, the command is sent to the
appropriate plane. If an error is discovered during the
check, the offending statement will be underscored and a
(hopefully) descriptive message will be printed under it.
The command syntax is broken into two parts: Immediate Only
and Delayable commands. Immediate Only commands happen on
the next update. Delayable commands also happen on the next
update unless they are followed by an optional predicate
called the Delay command.
In the following tables, the syntax [0-9] means any single
digit, and <dir> refers to the keys around the 's' key,
namely ``wedcxzaq''. In absolute references, 'q' refers to
North-West or 315 degrees, and 'w' refers to North, or 0
degrees. In relative references, 'q' refers to -45 degrees
or 45 degrees left, and 'w' refers to 0 degrees, or no
change in direction.
All commands start with a plane letter. This indicates the
recipient of the command. Case is ignored.
IMMEDIATE ONLY COMMANDS
- a Altitude:
Affect a plane's altitude (and take off).
- [0-9] Number:
Go to the given altitude (thousands of feet).
- c/+ Climb:
Relative altitude change.
- [0-9] Number:
Difference in thousands of feet.
- d/- Descend:
Relative altitude change.
- [0-9] Number:
Difference in thousands of feet.
- m Mark:
Display in highlighted mode. Command is displayed
normally.
- i Ignore:
Do not display highlighted. Command is displayed
as a line of dashes if there is no command.
- u Unmark:
Same as ignore, but if a delayed command is
processed, the plane will become marked. This is
useful if you want to forget about a plane during
part, but not all, of its journey.
DELAYABLE COMMANDS
- c Circle:
Have the plane circle (clockwise by default).
- l Left:
Circle counterclockwise.
- r Right:
Circle clockwise.
- t Turn:
Change direction.
- l Left:
Turn counterclockwise (45 degrees by
default).
- <dir> Direction:
Turn ccw the given number of degrees.
Zero degrees is no turn. A ccw turn of
-45 degrees is 45 cw.
- r Right:
Turn clockwise (45 degrees by default).
- <dir> Direction:
Same as turn left <dir>.
- L Left 90:
Turn counterclockwise 90 degrees.
- R Right 90:
Turn clockwise 90 degrees.
- <dir> Direction:
Turn to the absolute compass heading given.
The shortest turn will be taken.
- t Towards:
Turn towards a beacon, airport or exit. The
turn is just an estimate.
- b/* Beacon:
Turn towards the beacon.
- [0-9] Number:
The beacon number.
- e Exit:
Turn towards the exit.
- [0-9] Number:
The exit number.
- a Airport:
Turn towards the airport.
- [0-9] Number:
The airport number.
THE DELAY COMMAND
The Delay (a/@) command may be appended to any Delayable
command. It allows the controller to instruct a plane to do
an action when the plane reaches a particular beacon (or
other objects in future versions).
- a/@ At:
Do the given delayable command when the plane
reaches the given beacon.
- b/* Beacon:
This is redundant to allow for expansion.
- [0-9] Number:
The beacon number.
MARKING, UNMARKING AND IGNORING
Planes are marked when they enter the arena. This means
they are displayed in highlighted mode on the radar display.
A plane may also be either unmarked or ignored. An unmarked
plane is drawn in unhighlighted mode, and a line of dashes
is displayed in the command field of the information area.
The plane will remain this way until a mark command has been
issued. Any other command will be issued, but the command
line will return to a line of dashes when the command is
completed.
An ignored plane is treated the same as an unmarked plane,
except that it will automatically switch to marked status
when a delayed command has been processed. This is useful
if you want to forget about a plane for a while, but its
flight path has not yet been completely set.
As with all of the commands, marking, unmarking and ignoring
will take effect at the beginning of the next update. Do
not be surprised if the plane does not immediately switch to
unhighlighted mode.
EXAMPLES
atlab1 a: turn left at beacon #1
cc C: circle
gtte4ab2 g: turn towards exit #4 at beacon #2
ma+2 m: altitude: climb 2000 feet
stq S: turn to 315
xi x: ignore
OTHER INFORMATION
Jets move every update; prop planes move every other update.
All planes turn a most 90 degrees per movement.
Planes enter at 7000 feet and leave at 9000 feet.
Planes flying at an altitude of 0 crash if they are not over
an airport.
Planes waiting at airports can only be told to take off
(climb in altitude).
NEW GAMES
The Game_List file lists the currently available play
fields. New field description file names must be placed in
this file to be 'playable'. If a player specifies a game
not in this file, his score will not be logged.
The game field description files are broken into two parts.
The first part is the definition section. Here, the four
tunable game parameters must be set. These variables are
set with the syntax:
variable = number;
Variable may be one of: update, indicating the number of
seconds between forced updates; newplane, indicating (about)
the number of updates between new plane entries; width,
indicating the width of the play field; and height,
indicating the height of the play field.
The second part of the field description files describes the
locations of the exits, the beacons, the airports and the
lines. The syntax is as follows:
beacon: (x y) ... ;
airport: (x y direction) ... ;
exit: (x y direction) ... ;
line: [ (x1 y1) (x2 y2) ] ... ;
For beacons, a simple x, y coordinate pair is used (enclosed
in parenthesis). Airports and exits require a third value,
a direction, which is one of wedcxzaq. For airports, this is
the direction that planes must be going to take off and
land, and for exits, this is the direction that planes will
going when they enter the arena. This may not seem
intuitive, but as there is no restriction on direction of
exit, this is appropriate. Lines are slightly different,
since they need two coordinate pairs to specify the line
endpoints. These endpoints must be enclosed in square
brackets.
All statements are semi-colon (;) terminated. Multiple item
statements accumulate. Each definition must occur exactly
once, before any item statements. Comments begin with a
hash (#) symbol and terminate with a newline. The
coordinates are between zero and width-1 and height-1
inclusive. All of the exit coordinates must lie on the
borders, and all of the beacons and airports must lie inside
of the borders. Line endpoints may be anywhere within the
field, so long as the lines are horizontal, vertical or
exactly diagonal.
FIELD FILE EXAMPLE
# This is the default game.
update = 5;
newplane = 5;
width = 30;
height = 21;
exit: ( 12 0 x ) ( 29 0 z ) ( 29 7 a ) ( 29 17 a )
( 9 20 e ) ( 0 13 d ) ( 0 7 d ) ( 0 0 c ) ;
beacon: ( 12 7 ) ( 12 17 ) ;
airport: ( 20 15 w ) ( 20 18 d ) ;
line: [ ( 1 1 ) ( 6 6 ) ]
[ ( 12 1 ) ( 12 6 ) ]
[ ( 13 7 ) ( 28 7 ) ]
[ ( 28 1 ) ( 13 16 ) ]
[ ( 1 13 ) ( 11 13 ) ]
[ ( 12 8 ) ( 12 16 ) ]
[ ( 11 18 ) ( 10 19 ) ]
[ ( 13 17 ) ( 28 17 ) ]
[ ( 1 7 ) ( 11 7 ) ] ;
FILES
Files are kept in a special directory. See the OPTIONS for a
way to print this path out.
ATC_score Where the scores are kept.
Game_List The list of playable games.
AUTHOR
Ed James, UC Berkeley: edjames@ucbvax.berkeley.edu,
ucbvax!edjames
This game is based on someone's description of the overall
flavor of a game written for some unknown PC many years ago,
maybe.
BUGS
The screen sometimes refreshes after you have quit.
Yet Another Curses Bug was discovered during the development
of this game. If your curses library clrtobot.o is version
5.1 or earlier, you will have erase problems with the
backspace operator in the input window.