home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Welcome to DRAGCITY U.S.A. Copyright Richard Nikula 1990.
-
- 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.
-
- 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. 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 ending speed, elapsed time, and
- best time for this execution are shown.
-
- At the completion of each race, your options are displayed at the top of the
- screen. To race again, click the left button on the continue box. To change
- the gear values for additional race scenarios, click on the gears 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 (gears
- can only be adjusted between races).
-
- If you don't have a mouse, C, G, and Q can be used for Continue, Gears, and
- Quit, respectively.
- *
- 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 5 different sets of
- gears for 1st through 3rd. You can mix and match any combination of the 5
- 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.
-
- There is also an automatic transmission mode (which isn't much of a challenge
- but can be used to determine what the best possible speed 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 a
- little. This mode can be activated / deactivated by selecting CTRL-A.
- *
- Option flags are available when executing DRAGCITY. They are as follows:
-
- -m : Suppress mouse usage even if a mouse is present. All entry must be
- done through the keyboard.
-
- -s : Suppresses the sound effects.
-
- -h : Suppresses the request to view help.
-
- -p : Suppresses EGA page switching. If your graphics card doesn't work with
- the paging active, try this option. It will result in slower elapsed
- times however.
-
- For example DRAGCITY -s -m invokes DRACGCITY without mouse support and
- without sound.
-
- The file README.CTY has additional information on the requirements for
- use of DRAGCITY.