Fly On-line
It has been quite some time since there was a page at the North
German Lottery site, http://www.nkl.de, on which you could fly a balloon.
Unfortunately, after a while the game was taken off the site but I had a copy
on my hard disc.
Honest and law abiding as one is, I have asked NKL if I could put the
game on my site. They have forwarded my mail to the agency who hold the
copyright. But so far I have heard nothing so I have assumed they don't
care.
So here it is. For those of you who like the trial and error method go
ahead and play. For those of you who can read instructions......
Before you start you will need to have Shockwave installed on your
computer, otherwise you will only get a grey square on your screen when you try
to play. You can download it from
http://macromedia.com/shockwave/download/.
If you get the error message
"Missing Shockwave Decompression Xtra"
go to http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2003/ofr03-193/cd_files/Xtras/?C=S;O=D
then copy the file and paste to C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Shockwave nn\Xtras where nn is the version of Shockwave you have installed, e.g. C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Shockwave 10\Xtras
Rules The idea of the game is to manoeuvre the balloon over the stadium
and drop a marker or in lottery speak, a ticket, into it. Then land as near as
possible to the finish circle.
The score is calculated on time with a 20 second penalty for each metre
by which you miss the finish circle.
The Cockpit
The Wind, shows the current wind direction.
The Hohe is the altimeter which shows the current height
The Variometer shows the current rate of climb, (1 to 3), or descent (-1
to -3). When it points towards 0 the balloon is flying straight and level, a
rare occurrence for some!!.
The Brenner is the burner, click on this to burn. As you do so the
temperature inside the balloon rises and the balloon goes up.
The Abwurf Lose icon is used to drop markers/tickets. You need to be in
the panorama view to drop markers and you need to be higher than 40 metres or
you will collide with the stadium. You have a maximum of 4 markers and just to
make it difficult only one can be in the air at a time. When you get one in
there is an announcement. To the right of the Los icon markers which have been
used are shown, if you missed they have a cross through them.
The Tank shows how much fuel you have, run out and you will descend
rapidly and ............
Click on the Karte, map, to change views from Map to Panoramic and back.
The map view shows the area of play, significant topographical features and
wind corridors. The panoramic view shows the real life view, not to mention the
cows.
How To Play
You start the game when you click on the burner button, thus activating
the burner. The balloon will rise and after a while will descend unless you
burn again. Direction control is achieved using the winds and wind corridors
which exist in different areas and heights.
The direction of the base wind is randomly generated for each game, you
can see it indicated as a wind rose in the corner of the panoramic view.
The balloon will always travel in this direction unless it is in a wind
corridor or in the Help winds which occur at an altitude of between 290 &
320 metres. The Help winds go towards the centre map. To use a wind corridor
you need to position the centre of your balloon in the corridor and at the
indicated level. These winds are twice as fast as the base winds.
So these are the rules of the game. After so much theory your head must
be steaming!!! But it is not so complicated. But I must warn you it is
addictive.
