Altair-III : Search And Rescue

Dear Mum & Dad,

I know you haven't heard from me in ages. I heard about the storm. Never expected that much flooding in Ontario again. They were saying we're through the worst of the climate crisis, but maybe that's just talk to calm what's left of the markets. Sorry you lost the house. Lots of great memories there. How are you getting on? Whose floor are you camping out on now?

I just finished basic training. Yes, I got an A-grade, and got a job right away on a station orbiting Altair-III (a.k.a. Tourmaline, an uninhabited planet). Out on the wild frontier! They seem pretty eager to have me. It's only a few weeks' travel from Marsport by the regular supply flight, so I might even be able to see you next Christmas. The idea of actually travelling 16 light-years so quickly still hasn't sunk in. But people do it all the time now. I'll probably get bored on the flight out.

From what I can tell, Tourmaline High Station is a tight-knit community of scientists, engineers and explorers. They apparently carry out plenty of missions through the Altair system, so I hope I'll get plenty of S&R experience. Is that callous of me? Not sure if I'll be starting as a pilot - probably they'll get me polishing brass or washing up their coffee mugs to start with :)

With love - Me.



This is a science fiction action story, based around a simple 2-D orbital simulator, so a section of the story involves flying a spacecraft in orbit around a planet and docking with another craft. No previous knowledge of spaceflight is needed, since there should be enough background and instructions. Please read the notes below first:

FLIGHT MANUAL & AUTOPILOT: Space is huge! Like, REALLY huge! It's hard enough to learn how to light the rocket and accelerate, but how exactly do you rendezvous with another spacecraft, get close enough to match velocity, and dock with it? At times this will seem impossible. And there are so many controls to learn! But fear not - help is available! Firstly, there's a manual which you can read while piloting, in case you can't remember everything you learned in pilot training school. There's also an autopilot, which allows you to get closer to where you need to go. In fact... if you don't mind a low-scoring game, you can probably avoid all that troublesome piloting completely!

TIME: Because in real life a flight like this could take many hours - even days - there is a button to 'speed up time'. Be careful to use it wisely - if you're running at 1000-second intervals, you may overshoot. Take special care when you're firing the main thruster: I advise that you do your 'burns' at the 1 or 10 second setting. But the game will often return you to 1-second steps when you make certain actions, to help you avoid this scenario.
Your first full playthrough might take as long as 30 or 60 minutes of real-life time. It mostly depends on your piloting!

SAVES: This game uses Javascript. If you save your game while flying the orbital simulator, there's no guarantee that the game will remember where you are, since the extra data for spaceflight has to be saved separately from the CYS variables. [Coders: FYI it uses localStorage.] I've tried a few saves, and it actually remembered where I was in orbit around the planet. But I don't know how long the javascript data will remain on your computer. So it's best to save your game while you're not on the 'Flight Seat' page (or on the Sagan), and if you save while you're in flight, don't expect perfection.

SCREEN SIZE: This was developed on a full-sized laptop screen. It's not intended for phones, but you can try!

BUGS: I wouldn't be surprised if someone finds a bug I haven't seen yet - whether in the code or in the logic of the story. Leave a comment and I'll take a look.
Known issues:
- sometimes when clicking 'continue' on the flight seat page, the browser hangs for a while. A little patience goes a long way - usually it will resolve.
- if you try to accelerate away from the planet, eventually something will go wrong!
- The radar screen often blinks and forgets its graphic overlay temporarily
- Occasionally the story might forget where some of the characters are meant to be. Just pretend we're talking on our suit radios!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: I could not have written the code for the simulator without the help of BradinDvorak . Thank you! I could write a long article for CYS from all the things you showed me.
Many thanks too are due to Mizal and Ogre11 for replying to posts & questions along the way.