Airline

Crash

Rosetta McLeod

CRASH COURSE By Rosetta McLeod BUSINESS IN THE CLASSROOM Cases Computer Simulations have produced a range of educational software programs covering a variety of subject disciplines, including 'minority' subjects such as agriculture and political studies. The programs follow a set format, involving assimilating a wealth of information, and using it to make correct decisions at critical moments. Relevant information is presented in a variety of ways: bar charts, histograms and maps are used to very good effect, and maintain the players' interest throughout. Different levels of difficulty are also offered, and the games can be used by one player at a time or by small groups working on competition. Aimed at older pupils and college/university students, these programs are realistic simulations of real-life situations, providing the user with valuable practice in the application of the their acquired knowledge. Schools and Colleges are placing more and more emphasis on the importance of information skills, and CCS's range of educational software certainly fills a gap in the market - there are very few educational programs available for college students, and fewer still for the minority subjects. The programs are all for the 48K Spectrum and cost £5.95 each. They can be obtained from CASES COMPUTER SIMULATIONS, [redacted]. AIRLINE If it's your ambition to be the chairman of a large company, now is your chance to assess your potential. In this simulation, you adopt the role of chairman of L-Air, an airline which starts up business with £3 million. You have 7 years to increase your net assets to the £30 million necessary to take over British Airways! You have to decide on the number of aircraft to operate, whether to buy or charter the level of staffing and maintenance necessary, the duration of fuel contracts and when to repay loans. Problems encountered include tax demands, increases in fuel costs. and loss of revenue resulting from cancelled flights, strikes, hijacks, air crashes and sabotage. The information is presented through histograms., bar charts and graphics. The first chart displayed is a bar chart showing a forecast of the passenger payload for each level of activity. Using this information, the player must decide on the best aircraft to use, and then finalise his choices after looking at the level of revenue expected. When this is above normal, it may be cheaper to borrow money and buy aircraft instead of chartering. The market rate for each DC10 is £10 million, and when aircraft are purchased for more than this amount, the additional cost is debited against the capital reserves. thus reducing net assets. Crew costs are fixed at £50.000 per DC10 while the cost of maintenance is £90.000 for each aircraft. Results of trading are shown in the form of profit and loss accounts and balance sheets. The graphics are excellent, and the player's interest is maintained throughout by the constantly changing information - you can even read Financial Times reports and receive Telex messages. If you succeed in reaching the target of £30 million. then perhaps Richard Branson may have a rival! CORN CROPPER Aimed at students of Geography or Agriculture, Corn Cropper is a simulation of a commercial wheat farm. The player begins with cash resources of £50,000, 30 acres of rich arable land, a tractor and two farm workers. He must then build up his assets to £250.000. The menu allows the user to call up information of different types: the weather forecast shows the likely rainfall and average temperature for each month, but - as with all weather reports - this cannot be relied upon totally: the crop status histogram shows the stage of growth that the crops have reached, together with information on whether or not a fertiliser has been used; a farm map, showing the cultivated areas, must be referred to before decisions to plant are made; and the cash account shows the monthly expenditure and receipts. All in all, a wealth of information must be accessed before the player decides to take any action. A report is shown at the end of each month. detailing the results of the decisions taken. Unforeseen problems arise from time to time, including such disasters as frost damage, rats eating the seed corn, and even the dreaded fire. The accompanying notes include some useful hints: players are told for instance, that crops need an optimum level of water each month, and that fertilising two month old crops doubles the yield. The program contains five levels of difficulty, providing students with a very realistic and comprehensive simulation. It certainly drives home the point that farming is a highly technical and specialised industry! Corn Cropper is currently used for the secondary school Geography syllabus and in Agricultural Colleges. Amazingly enough, a French version is also available! OLIGOPOLY According to my dictionary, 'oligopoly' means "a market situation in which control over the supply of a commodity is held by a small number of producers, each of whom is able to influence prices and thus directly affect the position of competitors." This game is a management simulation for one to six players, and the objective is for each participant to create wealth at a faster rate than his competitors. The computer gives each player a balance sheet for the year, generates a forecast for demand and costs, and tells each manager about the capital goods industry. Using the computer's information on price, production, marketing, research and development, new equipment and dividends, the managers have to make decisions. When each has done so, the computer compares these and displays two reports for all firms. Results may be kept secret by agreement, as the program includes the option of using a punter for annual reports, forecasts and newsflashes. A bar chart compares the share values for each firm, and a pie chart shows each firm's share of the market. Occasionally, news of imports, overtime and changes in taxes may be flashed up on screen, and this new information may make it necessary to alter decisions. A duration of between 2 and 50 years is selected before play begins, and a useful feature is that even if a game were to be played twice with exactly the same decisions, the results would be likely to differ as the computer generates random factors. I also like the way in which shareholders demands have to be taken into consideration as the managers decide how much of their profits to share with them! If you think you have entrepreneurial skills, try them out with Oligopoly! PRINT SHOP A simulation aimed at Business Studies students, Print Shop covers a period of 12 weeks in which the student becomes sole proprietor of a small printing works. The prospective businessman is asked to make judgements on the following: the number and category of staff to employ: the amount and type of paper to purchase: the quotation for each job and the scheduling of work in an optimum week. The objective is to produce a net profit of over £4,000 in the first three months of trading, making decisions based on the weekly trading accounts, profit and loss, and balance sheets. A great many factors must be taken into account when, for example, hiring staff. A supervisor must be employed for every five production staff, and new premises are required (at double the rent) when this number rises to ten. It has to be remembered that additional staff will be needed when orders start to increase, but as it takes three weeks to train new employees, production will not increase immediately. It may therefore be necessary to contract out certain jobs. This is a particularly good simulation, in which students have to make a large number of decisions after having assessed a wealth of information. The information is presented clearly both on the screen and in the brief accompanying notes. There are three levels of difficulty, but I'm afraid I wasn't even successful at the easiest of these - to be honest, I managed to incur losses, which resulted in the net assets becoming negative. The banker foreclosed and the business ceased! Print Shop certainly tests your business acumen to the full, and creates a feeling of true involvement in the world of commerce. An enjoyable and challenging program. SUPERPOWER Superpower is a strategy game showing the superpowers' influence over Third World countries, and is intended to supplement a Political Studies course. Each player runs the intelligence agency of a major world power, with the ultimate aim of protecting his power's assets in a continent of developing countries. At the beginning, each player has assets in the nine Third World countries, and each is struggling to achieve the highest rate of profit growth. This might be brought about by peaceful strategies, such as building a defensive alliance among the strong countries, or by more aggressive means such as encouraging nations to nationalise a rival's assets. A variety of information is available: a report on any country shows its stability, wealth, foreign relations and government spending: a comparison can be obtained between nations in terms of industry, debt and government spending; or a study can be made of a superpowers' assets table. This information should help the player to make decisions, including what to do about investment, foreign policy, taxes and the armed forces. Annual budgets must be adhered to, and the players must therefore indulge in a variety of strategies, either to maximise the growth rate of their own country or to minimise that of the others. A player might, for example, find himself weighing up the arguments and counter-arguments for persuading a friendly nation to spend more on welfare. While this might reduce expenditure on the hated police force, it could mean that the country is left unprotected from coup or assassination attempts. A detailed understanding of political theory is a pre-requisite for the successful tackling of this program, but it is useful in extending a student's depth of understanding. MANAGE This is an interactive management game for two players which can be used to supplement a Business Studies curriculum. Alternatively, it could have a part to play in management training and economic studies. The aim is to teach the users, by placing them in a role-playing situation, about the significance of pricing policy and the correct allocations of cash resources. Participants begin with £7,601 in cash, and 71 units of stock valued at £35.35 each. They must then make decisions covering the price of goods, marketing expenditure, production/research costs and plant additions. The results of trading are shown by statements and by a line graph of orders and sales. An excellent feature is that the players' decisions interact with each other, leading to a strong element of competition. It's Interesting that players are forced to make immediate decisions, while always bearing in mind the long-term objectives for improving the performance of the company. Although no detailed financial knowledge is required, it is assumed that players will be able to assimilate the fairly detailed information supplied. The game may be played with or without a printer, but if one is used, the results are not displayed on the screen, thus ensuring the confidentiality of information, and making things more difficult for an opponent! The instructions are clearly explained on the inlay, and as this game does not depend on luck, the winner can be sure that it is his knowledge and acumen which has made him successful'. COMMENTS Control keys: clearly explained and kept as simple as possible Keyboard play: very good Graphics: sensible use of graphs and tables in most programs. The graphics in Airline are particularly good Use of Colour: limited

Crash

Producer: CCS, 16/48K, £5/6.00 Start off with £3 million and turn in into £30 million and take over British Airways. Hijacks, strikes, crashes and rising fuel costs all take their toll. If you enjoy strategy games revolving around empire building, then CCS are the people for you. Clear text and illustration graphics. Good value for money.

Read it at Crash - The Online Edition

Crash

Producer: CCS, 16/48K, £5/6.00 Start off with £3 million and turn in into £30 million and take over British Airways. Hijacks, strikes, crashes and rising fuel costs all take their toll. If you enjoy strategy games revolving around empire building, then CCS are the people for you. Clear text and illustration graphics. Good value for money.

Crash

Producer: CCS, 16/48K, £5/6.00 Start off with £3 million and turn in into £30 million and take over British Airways. Hijacks, strikes, crashes and rising fuel costs all take their toll. If you enjoy strategy games revolving around empire building, then CCS are the people for you. Clear text and illustration graphics. Good value for money.

ZX Computing

J. Whittaker

READERS REVIEWS More of your thoughts on the commercial software packages you buy. This feature provides you space to air your views on any software, be it for the ZX80, ZX81 or Spectrum. If you've had a good or bad experience with any of the commercial software packages available for your micro, why not write in and tell us? Your reviews should contain your critical thoughts about the software and the relevant details concerning the availability of the package, its price, etc. You should aim to produce something like 250 to 500 words per package, depending, of course, on how enthusiastic you are about the software. Any reviews published in this section of the magazine will be rewarded with the price of the tape you review. So, if you buy a cassette and send in a review which gets published, you'll get your software for free! AIRLINE Cases Computer Simulations J. Whittaker The main objective of this game is to increase your net assets of £3 million to £30 million. It may sound easy but is it not, because you only have seven years in which to do it. The game begins with an urgent telex telling you that the Civil Aviation Authority has granted you a £1 million trans-Atlantic licence to fly DC10s from Gatwick. Then you are given a bar chart estimating payloads for these DC10s. Then comes a line graph of charter rates for each quarter of the year. You must then decide on how many DC10s you wish to charter; this is done from the previous pieces of information. Then, another decision must be made on levels of crew and maintenance. You must then key in the amount of insurance cover you need. This is usually followed by a disaster namely a highjack, a crash or sabotage, this is why it is usually best to have full insurance cover. As well as these things happening you can also decide on whether or not to sign a fuel contract with Saudi Arabians. But occasionally this is unwise. Sometimes the Americans prove unfriendly claiming that you are not paying sufficient taxes. At the end of each year you are shown a profit and loss account and then a balance sheet. Then comes a Financial Times report which tells you how well you did or didn't. A way of getting a very good Financial Times report is an investment in the form of buying a DC10 but this is only achieved when your airline is doing well. If you get a really terrible report the receivers close in and liquidate L-Air. This is an excellent game which really tests your business skills and initiative but if you buy this expecting very good graphics or an addictive game like 'Space Raiders' you will be very disappointed. Airline retails at £6.95.

Personal Computer News

Lasting Appeal 2/5

Playability 3/5

Use Of Machine 2/5

Overall Value 2/5

Mike Gerrard 2/5

NAME: Airline SYSTEM: Spectrum 16/48K PRICE: £5 (16K) £6 (48K) PUBLISHER: CCS Software, [redacted] FORMAT: Cassette LANGUAGE: Basic OTHER VERSIONS: ZX81, Oric OUTLETS: Spectrum dealers, mail order LAKER FAKER Some people have fantasies about being a footballer or a pop star, but this game is aimed at those whose desire is to step into the shoes of Sir Freddie Laker and run their own airline. OBJECTIVES The target is a simple one, to turn £3m into 130m within seven years. Nothing too ambitious. But reach that target and you can then take over British Airways, though a far more likely outcome is the fate that befell Sir Freddie himself. IN PLAY With no preamble, you're straight into the game and must choose how many aircraft you're going to charter in your first year of operations, not yet having the cash to buy one of your own. A pay-load chart gives you the expected returns an the various numbers of aircraft from one to ten, with a forecast of the charter rates following. Based on these you must decide how many planes to charter. From time to time, if you have the cash, you will be given the chance to buy a plane. Another factor to decide is the level of insurance cover you're going to have - unless you fancy replacing a DC-10 out of petty cash. Though only written in Basic, the responses are almost instant, and once you've decided how many crew and maintenance staff to employ the chance elements start to come into play. These include the inevitable strikes. Sometimes you'll discover that you don't have enough crew or ground staff and flights have to be cancelled, losing you revenue. At the end of a year's trading you will be shown your profit-and-loss account and balance sheet to indicate just how close or far you are from that £30m. Get too far in the red and the liquidator will step in and calla halt to your budding career, and to the game. VERDICT Though I normally enjoy this type of role-playing, I felt that Airline didn't have nearly enough excitement. A great deal of trouble has gone into making the results authentic, with speedy and complicated financial calculations. However, there is too little input from the player for it to be rewarding. It soon becomes boring, and the prize of a printed message of congratulations or commiserations is rather an anti-climax. This Airline, I'm afraid, doesn't really get off the ground.

Your Computer

Boris Allan

SURVEY SPECTRUM SOFTWARE Boris Allan examines the first software offerings designed specially for your Spectrum. Although the Spectrum was announced in April the machine has only become available in large numbers recently. For software suppliers it is still early days. We were therefore relieved to find that most of the programs we received worked first time and reasonably well even if some of them lacked originality. Most of the software we sampled was based on ZX-81 or arcade games but we also tried out some educational and utility programs. Loading the Spectrum was far less frustrating than the ZX-81. The machine performed well, producing particularly good colours but disappointing sound. The limitations of the internal speaker can at least be bypassed by taking the cassette out of the recorder, connecting the two Mic sockets and switching on the recorder. Tone and volume can then be controlled with the recorder's own controls. Games programs are strange things. Long complex programs can be much less enjoyable than a short snappy one incorporating a good idea. So long as the programs are relatively bug-free, as most of these Spectrum games were, then evaluation of any particular cassette is bound to be subjective. To give as objective an assessment as possible we tried out the games on all age groups - even a class of five-year olds. Both Bug-Byte's Spectral Invaders and Quicksilva's Space Invaders approach the standard of real arcade games. Spectral invaders is almost an exact copy of Space Invaders, complete with four different colours for invaders, a flying saucer and high score. Some effects are slightly slower than the Atari original but the graphics quality and the use of colour and sound is excellent. Quicksilva's Space Intruders also had a mutant invader that wobbled and was worth extra points and a hold facility to allow you to stop the game at any point. While the invader programs were written in machine code, Alien Command was written in Basic and was too slow and crude for a space game. Winged Avengers from Work Force is a Galaxian-type game in which waves of attackers move down the screen towards the player's missile firer, break formation, circle about and then attack again. Six speeds are offered and the action is fast. But with the exception of a formation of birds, which appear in the second attack phase flapping their wings very effectively, the display is a little dull. Chromasoft's three programs varied from the sublime to the ridiculous. Worm is a simple but clever idea. A worm on the screen has four segments, and the player has to direct the worm around the screen, eating up numbers. Each time a number is eaten, they flash up randomly, the length of the worm increases by that amount. As the worm gets longer, it becomes more difficult to navigate, because you are not allowed to leave the screen or to cross over yourself. One player reached about 125 segments, and could not find any space. The program is as simple as the display but the idea worked. Defined colours and graphics for the segments would be improvements but only cosmeticBomber is an uninspired rendering of Blitz. Golf is not only unexciting but bug-ridden. Amongst other things the game was unwilling to play the right number of holes. AVC's Fortune could be a useful stand-in for the crystal ball at children's parties. The company's Tables has a more educational objective. The tests of multiplication tables are quite competent but the program would be more useful as a means of generating interest and enthusiasm for mathematics rather than for teaching the tables themselves. Whoever designed it has a keen appreciation of the minds of primary school children, although AVC is stretching a point when it claims the program can be used to the age of 16. One clever ploy to generate interest was the use of the ZX-Printer to give each child a permanent record of its achievement. One kid described it as 'space-age paper'. This theme is reinforced by a countdown to the launch of a rocket each time you play. Time Bandits from Newsoft comprises six separate games on side 1 all combined in an Adventure-style game on side 2. Most of the games have pretty graphics but are rather elementary. Minotaur's Labyrinth is a matter of collecting objects in a maze and Napoleon's army is similar - but without the maze. In Titanic you rely on luck to avoid being sunk by an iceberg while Tower of London is at least distinguished by the appearance of random Beefeaters. Combination is just a matter of remembering a number but Castle of Evil is a little more out of the ordinary. You have to work out the best strategy to cross a web with hostiles converging on you - rather like the Adventure game which used to be shown on BBC 2. Most of the games had not been carefully thought out. It was sometimes possible for instance to offer bribes of minus amounts of money, and thus become richer. Backgammon from Keith Archer worked well enough but was easy to beat and again vulnerable to cheating. There was nothing to prevent you putting more than five counters on a point for instance. Richard Altwasser's Cambridge Colour Collection costs £9.90 for a book of 64 pages and a cassette. Though some of the programs are original, in that they use specific features of the Spectrum, many are not: Maze is marred by a poor algorithm. There is also Breakout, Nim, and most others, including a version of King called Kingdom. The cassette was unfortunately unloadable - the company has had to replace many of the cassettes. We reviewed two graphics packages. Phantasmagraphics plots 2D and 3D patterns and allows you to modify the patterns by entering height, width, perspective and distortion variables. The program is written in Basic and takes up to six minutes to draw a shape. The program contains a bug which causes it to be interrupted by an 'integer out of range' error message for large height and width values. Superdraw 16 is an exceptional program. For £5 you are supplied with an instruction booklet, a pad of screen design pads, and a cassette with a spoken commentary on one side, all in a polythene bag. No other program gave such value for money. The program is written in Basic and allows the user to design screens which can then be saved for incorporation in other programs, which make use of high- and low-resolution graphics, text, and user-designed alphabets of large letters. The 'slide-show' option automatically toads successive screens. High-resolution pictures of a bicycle and southern England among others flash up in turn very much like a slide-show for the unemployed. Two simulation games are available from Case Computer Simulations. Autochef allows you to work your way up as manager of a small catering company. At first you have to avoid being taken over by Trust House Forte - later if you survive you can try to take over Forte yourself. Airline is exactly the same as Autochef except that you are running a small airline.- The two assemblers were useful because they save you money by not buying at inflated prices books which disassemble the Spectrum ROM. Of the two the Campbell version is more attractive as it is written in Basic, and one can learn from studying the program listing - warts and all. The Artic version was difficult to follow, as the documentation had not been prepared, but if the Spectrum documentation is as good as the ZX-81 documentation then it will be terrible. Given the incomplete nature of both offerings, the cheaper price, and the ability to convert from hex to dec and vice versa, sometimes with amusing results, the Campbell Systems offering may be better value.