The simulator pod¶

The simulator pod (simulator_pod, 0x0044F3D0) is the screen Enter Simulator Pod opens in the Reliant's rooms and the Yamato's (The Reliant's rooms). It runs in a loop of its own on a screen 640 by 480, over a picture of the pod, and flies the simulator's missions itself: three training missions and Instant Action. Its code lies within C:\lancer\interface\loadout\loadout.cpp.

In OpenReliant¶

interface/loadout/simulator_pod.zig holds the pod. The driver runs its loop (Driver.simulate in openreliant/rooms.zig), keeps the rooms and the pod open while one of its missions is flown, and goes back into the pod as the mission ends (Driver.backFromSimulator).

Fix: RESTART in the pause menu starts the pod's mission again, as it does Instant Action's from the main menu. The game flies the pod's mission once, and comes back to the pod however the mission ends, RESTART among them.

The screens¶

As it opens, the pod reads inter\simpod\simgfx.spr, the shapes that light its choices, and the ITAC's large font, inter\itac\itacbig.fnt, which its title is written in. On the Yamato, for a mission after 18, it first plays inter\simpod\hud_controls_up_.bik over the screen. Its two screens (simulator_pod_screen, 0x00524FDC) each have a picture behind them, the first and the last frame of inter\simpod\training.bik, and a title at (42, 85), from its left:

Each screen's choices are a table at 0x004EBB38 (simulator_pod_items), 0x58 bytes a screen: the count, the rectangles, the lit shapes, the screens each leads to and the strings that name them. Only the first screen reads the screens they lead to; the code takes the rest by each choice's place.

The pointer finds a choice inside its rectangle, the edges left out. Its drawing (simulator_pod_draw, 0x0044F840) lights the choice under the pointer, its shape drawn a pixel in from the rectangle's corner with the palette of simgfx.spr, and writes its name centred at (320, 440), in white, in the front end's large font; then the title, and the pointer: the front end's, shape pointer_clock / 4 + 1 of interface\frontend.spr, whose ticks run on by the game's each pass and back to 0 at 64 (pointer_clock, 0x0051D7C8).

Escape leaves the pod. The left button takes the choice under the pointer for as long as it is down (itac_left_down, 0x00520138). Every choice but Leave Simulator plays sound 12 of the rooms' wlksmp.fat at full volume, and a mission plays it twice.

The missions¶

The pod flies a mission itself (0x0044F622 on), in the simulator: the training missions in its training (simulator_mode 1, which the loading screen calls Calibrating Simulator), and Instant Action in its own (simulator_mode 2 and simulator set), as the main menu's INSTANT ACTION flies it (Front end). It clears the attempt's variables (mission_reset_variables), loads (mission_load), puts the player in a Grendel, ship type 2 of player_loadouts, and runs the mission from .\missions\%s.dte, where the name is mission31, mission30, mission32 or mission29. Then it puts back the pilot's kills (skull_count) and mission_number as they were.

No hangar movie, landing, debriefing or medal comes with the mission, and the campaign's records keep nothing of it; the game's variables, which are the campaign's, keep what the mission left in them. The pause menu stands in for the debriefing, as for Instant Action's (Pause menu): LEAVE MISSION goes back to the pod.

Back in the pod, a training mission leaves the training missions' screen up, and Instant Action brings back FLIGHT SIMULATOR and its picture. As the pod closes, every voice ends, the rooms' hum among them, and on the Yamato inter\simpod\hud_controls_down.bik plays over the screen; the rooms go on with step 0xB of wlksmp.fat (The Reliant's rooms).