Lunar Lander

This is a C implementation of the old "lunar lander" game seen in amusement arcades in the seventies.

History (modified from the original README)

I wrote this in 1989 while working for legendary Toronto Unix house HCR. Former versions were ported to various System 5.3 systems, namely 386/ix and HCR's port of System 5.3 to a VAX. It has also been ported to a version of BSD.

Lander utilizes some of the nifty SysV.3 curses capabilities such as line drawing. Anyone using an ANSI compatible terminal should see the full effect. Assorted Visual terminals will give the same results with a decent terminfo file.

This was posted to Usenet group comp.sources.games in 1989. I didn't keep backups of my stuff back then, so I revived this source from a Usenet archive.

Building

Lander compiles and runs on Debian, Ubuntu, and probably most other Linux ports. A Curses library and an nroff work-alike are required.

sudo apt install groff-base libncurses-dev

If your terminal emulator (xterm, et al) doesn't display line drawing characters correctly then invert the #if in InitialiseScreen() in screen.c.

Lander was written for VT100 style terminals. They had 80 columns and 24 rows. For maximum nostalga resize your terminal emulator to 80x24.

Lander uses a high score file that is writable by all users running the program, please edit the Makefile to ensure a valid name is used. Lander will attempt to create the HS file the first time the game is run and a successful landing is completed.

Controlling the Lander

The lander is fitted with three rockets:

           /~\
           | |
    left  -+++-  right
            |
      vert. thrust

Press keys '0' - '9' to set the default power level, where '0' == no power and '9' == full power.

Pressing 'z' sets the power output of the left rocket to the default, this has the effect of pushing the lander to the right (if the default power level is > 0).

Pressing 'c' sets the power output of the right rocket to the default, this has the effect of pushing the lander to the left.

Pressing 'x' sets the vertical thrust of the middle rocket to the default level, if this is non zero it will slow the rate of descent of the lander. If it is set to zero the lander will drop like a brick!

What's on the Screen

The top of the screen reads;

    alt:  X:  dY:  dX:  Score:

• alt is the current altitude from "sea level" in metres
• X is how far you have moved horizontally (in meters)
• dY is your rate of change of vertical movement, (e.g. -10.0 means you fell 10 meters in the previous second)
• dX is your rate of change of horizonal movement, (e.g. -10.0 means you moved left 10 metres in the previous second)
• Score is your current score.

At the bottom of the screen;

    Thrust - L:  vert:  R:  pow:  Fuel:

• L is thrust from the left rocket (pushes you to the right)
• R is thrust from the right rocket (pushes you to the left). Both 'L' and 'R' alter the dX value.
• vert is thrust from the vertical rocket (slows the lander's rate of descent i.e. alters dY)
• pow is the default power setting that will be used when you press 'z', 'x' or 'c'
• Fuel the amount of fuel left, when this reaches zero all thrust from rockets ceases.

How to win

The two rules for a safe landing are;

• Try to get dY >= -5 metres per second, anything faster than -5 will cause the lander to explode.
• Make sure you are landing on a pad.

The score accumulates with each successful landing. A bonus is added on each landing for conserved fuel.

For subsequent consecutive landing attempts the initial lander vertical and horizontal velocity increases.