Jet

    by Thom Robertson
    
    8/2/90

This little game was written in Lattice C 5.04 on an Amiga 1000 with 2.5
megs of memory under Workbench 1.3.

Jet runs on the Workbench screen.

Playing Jet is more complex than the other compiler-time games I have made.
You load Jet by clicking on the Jet icon or by typing "jet" from the CLI. 
When the window appears, you will be told where the baddie is, and to press
the space bar to continue.

After pressing the space bar, you will see a square area in the upper
portion of the window.  This area will probably have nothing but a single
dot in the center.  The square is your radar display, and that dot is you.

The radar has five magnification settings, controled by the F6-F10 keys,
with F6 being the smallest magnification.  Hit the F10 key, and you will
see four dimmer dots in a square around your dot.  These dots are only
ground reference dots, and only appear on the highest MAG mode.  You will
also see other, brighter dots.  These are the enemy planes, and you must
put AMRAAM missiles up their tailpipes to win.

The big bar at the bottom of the window is your thrust indicator.  Increase
and decrease your thrust with the up and down arrow keys.  The circle to
the right of the thrust bar is your heading indicator.  You can turn your
plane with the left and right arrow keys.  Turn your plane to the nearest
enemy dot and accelerate.  The lines above the word "Lock" are your
aircraft silhouette.  This indicator shows which way you are turning.

When you get close to the enemy, press the F keys to magnify in and out. 
When you are close to your opponent the MAG setting of F8 is best.  When
you are close to the enemy, you must get behind him in order to get a
target lock.  This will let you fire your missile with the space bar.  The
missile will be a blinking dot on your radar.  Remember, to get a lock, you
MUST get behind him and move toward him.  You can't see by the dot on the
screen which way he is going, so you must figure it out by his relative
movement to you.

When you get a lock, the word "LOCK" on the window will light up.  You can
now fire your missile.  Notice that the word "Amraam" on the window has 5
dots next to it.  This is your missile store, and as you fire, the dots
disappear.

The enemy planes must also get on your tail to fire.  Once they do, their
missiles will look like blinking dots moving towards you.  You can dodge
the missiles by turning, as you can turn faster, but the lock will remain
and the missile has a long life (about 20 seconds).  You can also use your
chaff to destroy the missile when it gets close.  Press the "c" key to fire
chaff.  The missile must be VERY close for this to work, however.  The word
"Chaff" on the window has 10 dots next to it.  These are your chaff packs,
and the dots will disappear as you use them up.

Remember, if you get hit by a missile, the game is OVER.

When you have shot down the last enemy plane, a message will tell you to
return to base at 50,50.  Notice the word "Quadrant" on the window.  The
two numbers next to it are your current position.  The numbers get bigger
as you fly up and left.  Fly in the proper direction until your position is
50,50.  You have just won the fight!  Congratulations!

HINTS:

It is much easier to get a lock on the enemy by throttling back and turning
inside of him.  However, enemy missiles are more dangerous when you are
slow.

Once you have launched a missile, any turning you do will be mirrored by
the enemy, which might cause your missile to miss.  I have found that, once
your missile is away, the best tactic is to run like hell in a straight
line and hope your missile gets him before his gets you.  If you kill an
enemy, his launched missile will be destroyed too.

You will have to deal with between 1 and 5 enemy planes, and you don't want
to have to deal with them all at once.  So, be aggressive.  Use max thrust
to reach the nearest enemy, and kill him before his buddies reach you.



I made this game because I wanted a compiler-time game; that is, a game that

1. runs on the workbench screen
2. uses little memory or processor speed
3. is very polite, multi-tasking-wise
4. is at once fun and mindless

Jet uses much more processor time than I would like, mainly because it uses 
floating point math.  However, it's still fun and system friendly.


This program was created by me, Thom Robertson.  I take no responsibility
whatsoever for damage done to anyones computer or disks or data that occurs
through use of this program.  I have satisfied myself that it works fine on
the system I developed it on, and I believe it will work equally well on all
other Amiga computer systems.  Liability-wise, though, you are on your own.

I give anyone the right to use and copy this program, Jet, for
non-commercial purposes only.  Just keep the .info and .doc files with it.
However, this program is shareware.  The price is a letter, from you to me,
telling me how you like it, how you use it, what could make it better, etc.

If you have any problems, comments, or questions, please feel free to
contact me by U.S. snail.

Thom Robertson
803-C Autumn Circle
College Station, TX. 77840
(409) 268-7759