Airlines Acrobat Manual - Lucas` Abandonware
Contents
1. Henrik Thomas Sigurd Kristensen Programming Alland S rensen Manual Morten Pedersen Acrobat Manual Pete Rundle2. The rate of interest is variable depending on the state of the market Fleet value This will be the value of your planes The value is set according to the price you are able to get for your planes if they were all sold at that specific moment The fleet value is used when you wish to obtain an additional loan from the bank Shares The amount in shares will be the share capital At the start of the game this will be 50 000 000 It will be possible to sell up to 49 of your shares Quotation The quotation w ill be the value of your company shares This quotation will only be useful when you want to sell some of your shares The quotation will from the start ofthe game be set at 80 This means that if you want to sell shares at a value of 10 000 000 you will only get 80 of that value and that w ould be 8 000 000 Ata quotation at 110 you would get 11 000 000 The quotation changes throughout the game depending on the company results and reputation Share holding This show s what percentage of the company shares the specific player ow ns This will be 100 until that player sells some of their shares It is alw ays possible to sell some of the shares at the current quotation until 49 of the shares have been sold If a player has sold some of the company shares then some of these will automatically be repurchased by the player every year So long as the company shows a surplus The number of shares to be repurchased wil
3. plane has installed The levels are Budget Standard Medium High class and Exclusive Value Determines the value of the specific plane at that specific moment This value is the price you will receive if you sell the plane TheBuy Sell screen will not have this requester and or information area 6 1 2 Map screen The icon for the map screen show s a little map The map screen will be the actual play screen The screen contains a world map plus the information described above On the w orld map you are able to get information on the airports utilised within the game You simply click on one of the cities on the map and all the information regarding the airport in that city will be displayed at the bottom of the screen The information contains the follow ing data Name of the airport The position of the airport longitude or latitude Monthly services Passengers Cargo The longitude and latitude are used for calculating the distance betw een the airports The monthly services are numbers representing the average number of passengers and the average tonnage of cargo that will have to be transported from this specific airport every month These numbers can be used w hilst considering where to open an airline Itw ould be most profitable to open an airline from an airport with high monthly services The numbers derive from different statistics and are used for different calculations w ithin the game Atthe right h
4. the date and time The small arrow s to the left of the date and time are used for Speeding up time Click on the arrows and the time will accelerate to the 1 of the next months or until a special event takes place by 6 11 Plane requester The right side of the screen contains a small plane requester and an information area Using this requester the active player is able to look through their own planes The information area contains information on the plane in the plane requester The follow ing data will be presentin the information area Route info If the plane in the plane requester is the air then the route details will be present in this field Flight hours The flight hours is a record of the total number of hours that the specific plane has been in flight since its last main check or service After every repair this field is set to zero Total hours The total number of flying hours for the specific plane in the plane requester Plane state Gives information regarding the state of the specific plane The plane could be active grounded or available If the plane is grounded you will be told why Home airport This will be the place where the plane is located when it is grounded being repaired or when it is available This could be important if something happens to that specific airport the plane might be damaged Possible situations include storms earthquakes etc Equipment What level of equipment the
5. to route On the attractive routes you will be able to get a high ticket price Attractive routes are routes betw een very popular airports You are able to charge a higher price for flying to New York than to Peking It will also be more expensive to get landing rights in New York than in Peking Another important item to consider when deciding the ticket price is the level of equipment on the specific plane To set the ticket price you click on the price up dow n icon Main check Every plane in the game will need a main check after a certain number of flying hours On the Buy Sell screen you can see how many hours a certain plane can fly before it will have to go through a main check In the information box on the other screens you can see how many hours the individual plane as detailed in the plane requester has flown since its last main check see flight hours You will have to remember to put your planes through these main checks This is done by clicking on the tool icon on the route screen Ifyou forget to put a plane through its main checks the risk of that plane crashing w ill increase as time passes The plane could also be grounded for a main check by the aviation authorities A main check normally takes about one month but if the plane has been grounded by the aviation authorities the main check w ill take longer 61 5 Charter screen The icon for the charter screen shows a person with a trun
6. Submitted by Josef for Home of the Underdogs http www theunderdogs org AIRLINES USER MANUAL Text by Morten Pedersen Layout by Claus Michelsen Acrobat Conversion by Pete Rundle Copyright C 1994 by Interactivision The softw are manual text graphic arts and names are copyrighted No partofthis publication may be reproduced in any form broadcasted transferred or translated into any foreign language without written permission by Interactivision Contents 1 Introduction 2 System requirements 3 Loading and installing the game 4 Controls 5 Player selection 6 Game play 61 The screens 6 1 1 Plane requester 6 1 2 Map screen 6 1 3 Buy Sell screen 6 1 4 Route screen 6 1 5 Charter screen 6 1 6 Cargo screen 6 1 7 Finances screen 6 1 8 Office screen 6 1 9 Archive screen 6 2 Load Save Quit 6 3 About 6 4 Pop ups 7 Planes contained in Airlines 8 Final words 9 Credits 1 Introduction From time to time you have watched airliners cross the sky above you Each of these flights needs a lot of planning on the ground and the flight itself is only a small partofthe controlling of an airline Airlines gives you the chance of getting to know how the running of an airline company takes place You will be able to compete against your friends w ith each of you w ill be controlling your ow n airline company Airlines can be opened betw een locations all over the world and realistic events that might influence your comp
7. al deadline will get the contract A lot of things will have to be considered before biding on the contracts You w ill have to consider how low abid you can give without loosing money on the flights Some of the other things to consider w ould be Do you have an available plane for the flights how much would each flight cost and can your plane carry enough passengers When you bid on the contract you w ill have to offer a low er price than the price in the Lowest bid If no bid has been given your bid will have to be lower than the Maximum price If you want to withdraw a bid simply click on the withdraw bid icon When the deal deadline has been reached a pop up will tell you who has been given the contract A pop up will also appear if a contract has been broken this will happen when the charter period is exceeded Just before a charter route is going to start a plane will have to be assigned to the route This is done in the Archive function w here all achieved contracts can be found It will be up to the player to remember the starting date for the route and to havea plane assigned to the route before that date 6 1 6 Cargo screen The icon for the cargo screen show s three boxes on top of each other The cargo function works in exactly the same way as the charter function You find the desired contract and bid on it The company with the lowest bid will get the contract In the contract information you can see
8. al events thathave happened to the players These events w ill be the ones that have appeared to the player as on screen pop ups Furthermore it contains the information given to the players on the pop ups It will be possible to see if planes have crashed been grounded or if there have been oil crises and so forth Accounts The players can fetch and look through their company accounts for the past year Cargo In this section the player will be able to look through their achieved cargo contracts The player w ill be able to see when the deal is going to start and therefore see when it will be necessary to assign a plane for the flight Charter It is possible to look through the charter contracts It will of course be necessary to assign a plane for each of the charter routes The draw ers are selected by using the four icons located next to the four player icons Next to the four draw er icons there are two plane icons These are used for assigning planes to the cargo and charter contracts and to remove planes from the contracts The plane that will be assigned to a route or removed froma route will always be the one present in the requester in the right of the screen When a cargo flight or a charter flight has been finished the planes will become available for other flights automatically 6 2 Load Save Quit The icon for Load Save quit shows a 3 diskette The game can be saved and loaded The program alw
9. and side of the screen you will have the little plane requester When you look through your different planes in the requester the routes for the planes w ill be displayed on the world map 6 1 3 Buy Sell screen The icon for the Buy Sell screen shows a plane HI Thiswill probably be the second screen entered once the game has started On the Buy Sell screen you buy sell and equip planes There are 24 planesin the game 16 airlinersand 8 cargo planes The game begins in the early seventies Fromthe beginning of the game there w ill only be a few different planes available but others will appear in the year that they entered service When a new plane appears in the game a pop up will inform the players The top of the screen will contain a large picture of the selected plane You w ill be able to look through the different planes using the long arrows in the left side of the screen When view ing the different planes the information for them is displayed at the bottom of the screen All the information for the planes is as exact as it w as possible for us the developers to obtain The most important information is debatable but the price the range and the number of passengers are all important factors that need to be considered before purchasing At the left side of the screen there are some icons These icons refer to the plane model that is displayed in the top of the screen Buy If you wish to buy a plane
10. anding rights to the destination airports To open a route you will have to follow these steps 1 Use the mouse to click on the desired destinations on the world map 2 or 3 Find the plane you wish to put on the route from requester at the right of the screen 3 Click on the Add plane icon F When you choose the route destinations a line will be draw n between the cities you have selected If you wish to remove a destination from the route just click on the destination a second time When creating a route you will get information about this route at the bottom of the screen You can for example see the total distance covered by the route Ifthe distance betw een 2 destinations is longer than the range for the selected plane you will be required to select another plane You could make a shorter route If you have chosen a plane flying on one route and you try to put it on the new route you will be asked to confirm that you wish to move the plane To remove a plane from a route just select the remove plane icon Ticket price When a route has been created and a plane has been assigned to the route the ticket price will have to be set If you have a route with 3 destinations you will have to enter 2 prices One price for the route betw een destination numbers 1 and 2 and one price for the route betw een destinations 2 and 3 The ticket price you are able to charge differs a great deal from route
11. any will take place through the game Be aware of your competitors actions consider your countermoves and you could be heading for a top position in the industry The object of the game is to amass a fortune bigger than your opponents and defeat them on your w ay to the top If your competitors end up bankrupt you can keep on playing the game and build your own empire 2 System requirements To run the game properly you w ill need the follow ing 100 IBM compatible PC 80386 or higher preferable Microsoft compatible mouse MS DOS 5 0 or later VGA graphics 600 Kb of free base memory 3 Loading and installing the game The game can be run from diskette or installed on a harddisk To run the game from the diskette simply access the specific disk drive w here your original Airlines diskette is located and type AIRLINES Ifyou wish to install the game on a harddisk access the disk drive where your original Airlines diskette is located and type Install and follow the instructions The program will then be installed on your harddisk and to startthe game type AIRLINES 4 Controls In the game all selections are made by activating a number of icons For that purpose a mouse is needed To make a selection simply click on the desired icon with the left mouse button The right mouse button has no effect in the game If you wish to enter some text in a text field you will have to activate the field by clicking on
12. ays uses the savegame directory entered in the beginning ofthe game This function contains a requester In the requester there will be a list of games already saved If you select one of the files from the list the name will appear in the box beneath the listand you can now select either save or load If you wish to save a game under a new name click on the box under the list of files enter the name and select the load icon To quit a game simply click on the quit icon 6 3 About The icon for the about window shows a question mark The about option gives information about the developers of the game and the copyright of the product 6 4 Pop ups As mentioned earlier different events w ill take place during the game A lotofthese events w ill appear to the players as small pictures that pop up in the middle ofthe screen Some of the pop ups will just be for information Most of these pop ups w ill effect one or more of the players in the game When a pop up effects a player the name of the player s company will shown be on the pop up The follow ing list is a description of the pop ups and the effects they have on the players Hostage crisis Some destinations around the world are more exposed to terrorists than others When flying betw een such destinations there is a higher risk ofthe plane getting hijacked If a plane get hijacked the company who own the plane will get a bad reputation This means that for a p
13. causes a reduction in the numbers of passengers Plane crash From time to time plane crashes takes place A random function will decide w hat plane is going to crash Fortunately plane crashes are very seldom and this is reflected in the game Planes that have not been taken through their main checks will have a higher risk of crashing than the other planes A plane crash gives the company a very bad reputation Major repair If a player does not take a plane through a main check the plane mightbe grounded by the aviation authorities The plane will be grounded for about one and a halfmonths This could be disastrous if the plane was assigned to a cargo or charter contract Contract signed When a contract reaches the deal deadline it will be important to see who has had the low est offer The contract signed pop up will tell which player has received the contract Contract broken If a contract is broken this pop up will appear The break of a contract means that the player in question will get a fine contract is broken if the time limits have been exceeded Financial problems A number of things could happen to an airline company and some items can cause financial problems Ifthis pop up appears to a player he she should take action in a hurry and do something to avoid ending up bankrupt Closed This will be the end of the game for any player unfortunate enough to be mentioned Information pop ups New plane r
14. eleased When a new plane is on the market this pop up will tell you about the model After this pop up has appeared the new plane will be for sale through the Buy Sell function Another year passed Every new year this pop up will appear 7 Planes contained in Airlines The follow ing list contains all of the planes in Airlines with information on the year of their development They will only appear in the game from the year of their development Ilyushin I1 62M 1963 Boeing 727 256 Tupolev TU 154 1968 pal LAPT EAM ENS Concorde 1969 Boeing 747 200F 1972 Embraer EMB 110 Bandeirante 1972 McDonnell Douglas DC 10 30 1972 Boeing 747 206B 1975 Shorts 330 Sherpa 1976 Agusta SF 600TP Canguro 1978 Lockheed L 1011 500 Tristar 1978 Antonov AN 32 1979 Boeing 757 1982 British Aerospace 146 100 1983 Boeing 737 300 1984 British Aerospace ATP 1988 Antonov AN 124 Ilyushin Il 96 300 1985 1990 CASA C 212 300 Aviocar Airbus Industrie A340 300 1987 1993 McDonnell Douglas C 17A 1994 8 Final words The developers of Airlines hope that you will enjoy this game and thatyou will spend hours upon hours exploring the airline business We wish you well in your quest for the ultimate airline but most of all have fun and enjoy 9 Credits Producer Claus Michelsen Design Claus Bjerre Henrik Thomas Morten Pedersen Alland Sgrensen Graphics Jakob Kristensen
15. elect the desired model and click on the equip icon You will then geta list of all of your planes of that model Select the little square to the left of the desired plane The higher level of equipment gives you the option to raise your ticket prices and it also gives you a better price for the plane should you decide to sell it G The large I stands for information When you use one of the above mentioned functions the information on the selected plane model w ill disappear You use this icon to make the information on the plane model reappear 6 1 4 Route screen The icon forthe route screen will show this route sign After you have purchased a plane you will wish to open a route To open a route you will have to enter the route screen by selecting this icon Itis possible to open a route with 2 or 3 destinations If you open a route with 3 destinations the program will alw ays find the shortest route covering all destinations This meansthat if you try to open a route covering Copenhagen London and Stockholm the program will make the route London Copenhagen Stockholm Routes can be opened all over the w orld and players can open routes betw een 2 or 3 destinations even if another player has opened a route betw een the same destinations It might though not be profitable to do so but this will be decided depending on the monthly services covering the selected airports When you open a route you will be buying l
16. elp you to see if and w here something is going w rong The office screen is displayed as a monitor on w hich the charts will be shown In the low er left of the screen you will find four icons The icons representthe follow ing charts Route balances When the office function is accessed this w ill be the chart displayed on the screen The route balances informs the player aboutthe airline routes In the top right of the monitor there will be a small box In this box you will see the financial information regarding the route flown by the plane currently in the small plane requester to the right side of the screen The information w ill show the income expenses and balance for the specific route The numbers will refer to one months flying on that route If the route is running at loss then the balance numbers will be red When you are in the Route screen and you have opened a new route and set the ticket prices you can enter this function to see if your decisions are profitable If the balance in the little box is positive then the route will give a profit If the balance is negative you might consider changing the ticket prices or removing the plane from the route in question The chart on the monitor displays the income expenses and balance for all the routes in the company The income is represented by the green line the expenses by the red line and the balance by the yellow line When the yellow line is below 0 your r
17. eriod of time a lot less people will fly w ith that company Illegal transport busted If a player have decided to transport some illegal goods threatened animals or weapons and is caughthe she will have to pay a very large fine Oil crisis Differentthings happens around the world and some of the things w ill cause oil crises An oil crises w ill effect all the players Each flightwill be more expensive and it may be necessary to raise the ticket prices or remove planes some of the different routes Employee meeting If the employees in one of the companies are dissatisfied they plan a strike The employee meeting pop up will come before the strike so that the player in question will have the opportunity to prevent the strike It often helps to raise the w ages Strike When the player does not take action after the employee meeting or if he have not done enough a strike starts The strike w ill only be called off when the employees are satisfied Therefore it might be sensible to raise the employees w ages quickly As long as the employees strike the company will not be earning any money but a lot of the expenses will still be incurred Storm over airport Some parts of the w orld are more exposed to natural catastrophes than others When flying to these places there is a larger risk of planes crashing A plane crash gives a loss because the plane is lost but the crash also gives the company a bad reputation which again
18. how much cargo will have to be transported instead of passengers and you w ill have to find a plane with the required capacity It is possible to fly with different kinds of cargo The cargo could be things like Mail Textiles or electronics Furthermore you might be offered to transport w eapons and threatened animals These items w ill give a good price but there is also a large risk of getting caught The plane will be assigned to the route in the Archive function 6 L7 Finances screen The icon for the finances screen shows a computer On the finances screen you can getan overview of your financial situation You can see your liquid assets share capital and so on The finances screen is formed like a monitor on which the information is present The information is as follows Liquid assets The money you have available for buying planes buying equipment paying offthe bank loan etc It w ill be from here the money is taken for paying off the bank loan The liquid assets w ill atthe startofthe game be 50 000 000 Bank loan At the start of the game you will have a bank loan of 100 000 000 The half of this money is transferred to the liquid assets and the second half of the money is transferred to the share capital Monthly payoff The monthly payoff forthe bank loan is set to 2 000 000 at the start of the game It is possible to low er this payoff but not to a value low er than the interest on the remaining loan
19. it and then type using the keyboard 5 Player selection In the start ofthe game the number of players will have to be selected The game can be played by 1 to 4 players ata time Each of the players 2 3 and 4 can be assigned to the computer or they can be excluded Each of the players w ill have to name their ow n airline The airlines controlled by the computer will also have to be named which can be done by the human players If no names are chosen for the computer airlines the program will automatically assign each of them a name Furthermore a savegame directory will have to be named The game can be saved and loaded and for that purpose a savegame directory is needed The name for the savegame will have to be entered and the program w ill try to make the directory 6 Game play This section will describe all of the screens in Airlines and how the game is played Atthe start of the game each player will have 50 000 000 in liquid assets and shares set at a value of 50 000 000 You will own all shares in the company 100 but you will be able to sell up to 49 of the shares It is only be possible to sell 49 of the shares because if you sell more you will not be the outright ow ner of the company any more The shares will in the beginning of the game be set at quotation 80 which means that if you sell some of the shares you will only be able to get 80 of the value they are set at The liquid asset
20. k From time to time different charter contracts are offered to the airline companies The charter contracts w ill appear on the charter screen Ifyou are interested in flying charter routes you w ill have to enter this screen once in a while to see if there are any available contracts If you find an interesting contract you will have to place a bid for flying the charter route It w ill be necessary to take a look a the contract information to avoid giving too low for a bid On the left side of the charter screen you will see the different contracts and when you click on one of them further information regarding the specific contract will appear on the sheet of paper at the right side of the screen The information on the contracts is as follow s From The start of the charter route To The charter route destination Flying distance The distance betw een the two airports Flights per month The number of flights each month Passengers Number of passengers on that route each month Period The dates w hen the flights are going to take place Fine The fine you will have to pay if you break the contract Maximum price The maximum price the charter company will pay Deal deadline The contractwill be signed at this date Lowestbid The low est bid on the contract atthe moment All the airline companies in the game are able to bid fora charter contract and the airline company with the low est bid at the de
21. l depend on the company surplus It will be a maximum be 10 of the total shares that can be repurchased every year Atthe bottom left of the screen there will be the following functions Change payoff This function allows you to change the monthly payoff to the bank As earlier mentioned the payoff at the beginning of the game set to 2 000 000 Ifa player w ishes to payoff all his loan he she simply sets the monthly payoff to the size of the loan Obtain loan A player will be able to obtain aloan at anytime in the game The size of the loan depends on the reputation of the company and on the fleet value for the specific player Shares The shares function gives you the option to sell some of your shares Youwill be asked what percentage of your shares you wish to sell Itis only be possible to sell up to 49 of all the company shares Change Salary You are able to change the monthly salary expenses You might try to save some money by lowering the salaries or if you have problems with your employees you might w ant to raise the salaries From the beginning of the game the salary expenses are set at 2 000 000 In the office function you can see what your Salary expenses are and compare them to the average salaries of all four players 6 1 8 Office screen The icon for the office screen show s a graphical chart mI In the office function you can get an overview of how your company is doing Different charts w ill h
22. of the model displayed in the top of the screen click on the buy icon You will then get a list of all available planes of the selected model both new and used This list contains the price ofthe plane the total flying hours and the level of equipment You are able to look through the other plane models even though you are still in the buy function The list w ill then show the information on the plane model in the top part of the screen To buy a plane click on the little square to the left of the plane that you w ish to buy Sell to To sell a plane just click on the sell icon The sell icon also refers to the plane selected in the top When clicking on the sell icon the active player will get a list of all their own planes ofthat model It is also possible to look through the planes while show ing the list of available planes atthe bottom of the screen When the desired plane is found select on the little square to the left of the desired plane you will then have to confirm the deal or to not accept the deal The revenue generated by the sale of the plane will be added to your liquid assets Equip Yl All the planes ow ned by a player can be equipped with different levels of equipment You w ill only be able to install a higher level of equipmentthan the plane is currently fitted w ith Itis not be possible to sell equipment The price of higher level equipment differs from plane to plane To equip one of your planes s
23. outes are running ata loss overall and when the yellow line is above 0 the routes are making an overall profit These charts are updated on the first of every month The letters at the bottom refer to the months of the year January February March etc Employees The employees screen gives you an overview of how well your employees are paid compared to the average for theirtype of work The red line represents the salary expenses and the yellow line represents the average salary expenses for all four of the companies within the game In the small box you can see the monthly expenses and the monthly average show n as anumerical value If your salaries are too far below the average then your employees will start giving you problems They will arrange employee meetings and maybe even strike A pop up will tell you about the employee meeting and if you do not take action within a certain time another pop up will tell you that your employees have declared a strike A strike by your employees will in a very short time give you some serious financial problems but you w ill be able to do something about it The strike might be called off if you raise the salaries for the employees This is done in the finance function and it might be wise to do so if you get a message about an employee meeting Company balances This function is very useful because it gives the total picture of how your company is doing In this calculation all e
24. s and the shares have been achieved by obtaining a bank loan and at the beginning of the game you will owe the bank 100 000 000 As earlier mentioned the game is controlled completely by mouse Different icons w ill represent different screens and actions The icons will always be placed in the bottom of the screen and a selection of the icons will be the same across the different screens If a function is inaccessible the icon will be ghosted Different events will take place during the game Some of the events can be caused by one of the players w hile others appear without any influence of the players These events could bePlane crashes Oil crises Storm over airport etc 6 1 The screens Thescreens will all have the same layout except from the Buy Sell screen In the low er left corner of every screen you will find the players box where each player will be represented by a colour and a number from 1 to 4 1 When a player w ants to take active part of the game he or she simply clicks on the number representing their own company player can take action at any time he or she will not have to wait until they get their own turn At the top of every screen you w ill find an information bar At the left side of this bar you will see the name of the active player Furthermore the border of the screen w ill have a colour that refers to that specific player Atthe right side of the information bar you will find
25. xpenses and all incomes are collated Even though all your airline routes give a profit it might not be enough to counterbalance the expenses for the company Expenses like salary and loan payments to the bank will also have to be considered The green line in this function show s the total income for the company the red line show s the total expenses and the yellow line shows the balance In this function it is at any time possible to see ifthe company is making a profit This isthe case w hen the yellow line is currently above 0 Overall standings The overall standings show s how all four of the companies are doing compared to each other The overall standings are represented by barswhere the green bar show sthe income the red bar show s the expenses and the yellow bar shows the balance You can easily see how you are doing compared to your competitors using this function 6 1 9 Archive screen The icon for the archive function shows an filing cabinet The archive screen is designed as an archive To the right hand side of the screen there are four draw ers and on the left side there is a sheet of paper The four draw ers contain the different events that have taken place over the last year When one of the drawers is selected the contents of the draw er w ill be shown on the sheet of paper and it will be possible to look through the various pages The four draw ers are History This draw er contains the speci
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