RULES 1. Introduction A wide-spread railroad network starts embracing continents in the dawn of 19-th century. With the development of infrastructure manufacturing of locomotives and railroad cars grows, traffic gradualy increases... You are in charge of railroad traffic controlling on a major section of sophisticated network with siding, switches, signals, crossings and other means of shunting. You goal is to assure an uninterrupted collision-free passage of differrent trains to target points through this section. You success both in traffic dispatching and railroad managing and constructing determines your score. 2. History period simulated is from 1800 to 2000. You will get the oppotunity to control the trains specific for every period over these two centuries. As you progress in the time scale the technical characteristics of the trains are getting better. The power and speed increase. You will see all kinds of locomotives from the ancient steam locomotive, then electric traction and diesel ones to the gas turbine machines. 3. Railnet is to be constructed from elementary track parcels connecting each other in several different ways, switches, signals, crossing, dead-ends and other elements. The railnet on the play screen has from 1 upto 6 entrances (outlets). These are the track parcels crossing left and right boundary of the game screen. Each entrance parcel is surrounded by several houses of the same bright color forming together Yellow, Red, Cyan, Blue, Green and White towns. It is only on these entrances that the trains enter or leave railnet. You can construct any railnet by adding any elementary parcel provided you have enough money for its building. So the topology and geometry of each railnet is under your control. Several topology restrictions on it still exist: for instance, you'll not be allowed to construct triple switches etc. 4. Trains enter your railnet from occasional towns (entrances). The color of the train determines the color of the town (entrance) where this train should be routed to. For example, the yellow train (come from Red or any other town) should be routed to Yellow town. You can use switches and signals to control the train. The train moving to either closed switch or closed (red) signal will stop and then immediately CHANGE ITS DIRECTION FOR OPPOSITE and CONTINUE MOVING. So each closed control element provides such a reflection. After reflection the train moves backward in usual manner and may be routed to the destination town. The train itself IS NOT UNDER YOUR CONTROL; you control the means of traffic organization and use the railnet topology you'd built instead. Every type of locomotive has its own power characteristics. Generally the power gradually grows as you move forward two centuries time scale mentioned earlier. The power of locomotive determines the maximum speed that the train can move at. Each train is moving with its constant linear acceleration that mainly depends on its total weight that in turn is proportional to the number of the cars in this train. The train then reaches its maximum speed and continues moving with it. For any accident with the trains you'll be charged for the amount of money proportional to the number of cars involved in the clash. You will pay SEVERAL TIMES MORE FOR EACH PASSENGER CAR in comparison with non-passenger car. Each train routed to its destination town crosses the screen boundary and disappears. You'll get your money for each car routed. Every train routed to the entrance that is not its destination will just be reflected as it occurs at ordinary dead-end. MAD train. At the higher levels of the game you can see the blinking train appear. This is the MAD train. The train without the operator (as well as with dragged or overdrunk operator), with fault control system, with the hostages captured by criminals etc. is the MAD train. Mad train does not obey your control AT ALL: it will not reverse on red signal and will clash at closed switch or dead-end. However it still will disappear at any entrance. So the best you can do with mad trains - route them to any entrance or at least force it to clash. 5. Entrances (more) You start the game in 1800 and will have a couple of entrances soon in the beginning. The land is still virgin over there and you can see several forests around. Then you begin constructing your own railnet to provide the routes between each pair of towns. As the time passes you'll notice the houses appear once in a few years. These are the future towns and every 40 years you'll get the new entrance in the new town. So you'll manage 6 entrances railnet by the end of 20-th century. Locking. The entrance formally is the track parcel crossing the screen boundary. Any time you should expect the new train coming in you railnet from any entrance. There is the only exception and it is reffered to as ENTRANCE LOCKING. Once the entrance is occupied by at least one car of any train the entrance becomes LOCKED. Any new train(s) that is to come in your railnet from this LOCKED entrance has to wait till this entrance becomes UNLOCK. Once there is such a train(s) you can see the entrance man rise the hand with a flag on the display panel. 6. Contructing the railnet you should know that 1) every parcel cost you 2) there is a few topology restriction 3) you will be charged for any tree in the forests you will cut down or any house destroyed. 7. Destruction The rails get older and sometimes you railnet will have destructions on it. You can see them as the small blinking red-border white triangle with a bang in the center (traffic danger sign). The destruction also appears at the location of the accident. The train meeting the track damage on its way will have an accident in turn so you need to repair the track. The longer is total railnet the more destructions occur on it. 8. Repair To repair the track you should use the special platform named server. Server is called from any entrance and may be routed to any entrance then or kept in the railnet. You pay for its call, and for it's repairs. The server meeting the destruction of the track on its way makes a short stop and repairs the track. Any number of servers can operate simultaneously over you railnet. 9. Levels The game has potentially infinite number of levels. Any new level introduces the higher flow of incoming trains, the higher intensity of destruction and adds one or more new events. When you succesfully reach 2000 year in the game you just have the same initial situation in 1800 but your money and routed trains counters are from previous level. 10. Pausing, saving and restoring the game Any time in the simulation you can just strike any keyboard button and you'll get in PAUSE mode. The menu appearing on the screen offers either to go on or save or quit. Save the game when you have to return to current point of simulation later or keep it for somebody else or investigate another 'realization' in the future. All the saved games reside in the working directory on your disk and may be restored later. Each save takes about 4K of disk space. To restore the game you choose "LOAD GAME" option in the main menu. You can see ARCHIVE menu then. It provides the opportunity to look through all the saved games showing you the full saved game screen and current characteristics of that session and the file. Here you can also delete the old games. Having chosen the saved game you just use menu "GO" option to start simulation. Currently there is a 'pause toll' introduced in the game. When you go on playing either after pause or after the previously saved game one extra train will immediately come into your railnet from occasional entrance. This might prevent the real-time game to become step-by-step game. 11. Person profiling All your achivements, records and saved games are profiled by users (players) names. Once you run SHORTLINE from DOS command line using you name as the argument the system registrates you and will keep track of your sessions later. Now you name may be shown in the record table. Also you can identify the saved files by your name. Finally, the system will follow your current play level and if you start new game you'll be proposed to play at the level you have already reached before. Running SHORTLINE without player names will cause profiling with the name "Unknown". You can load and play somebody's game with no restrictions but all the best results will belong to the owner of the saved game. 12. Controls You use 2-button mouse to control the simulation and keyboard to work with menus. There are only 5 mouse actions that control all the simulation. MOUSE ACTION -------------------------------------------------------------------- click 2 buttons together - toggle between ROUTE and BUILD modes left button (ROUTE mode) - toggle the nearest switch or signal right button (ROUTE mode) - call the server from nearest entrance left button (BUILD mode) - choose the track parcels to be build right button (BUILD mode) - build the track parcel shown -------------------------------------------------------------------- 13. 'Inside SHORTLINE' This manual is to be supplied. It'll contain the detailed description of the model geometry and topology, math formulas and constant using in simulation, provides the better understanding of different aspects of the game and give strategy tips. * * *