Fachoda Complex is a lightweight airplane arcade simulator, free to use/copy/modify under the terms of the GPLv3.

For further details, see homepage.

To compile fachoda from source, run:

cd src && make

should do it, provided you have SDL, libjpeg and openAL installed (on Debian distributions, I mean the -dev packages).

For better performances you can try:

cd src && CFLAGS="-O3 -ffast-math -funroll-loops" make -j6

The objective is to make as much money as possible by destroying as many enemies as you can. From time to time rewards are offered for destruction of a given target (be it friend or foe), flagged in the map with a small magenta skull. As you have to pay for every bullet you'd better go for these before a computer controlled plane or tank does it.

You need to return to your home base and park to refuel and repair your plane. There you can also buy a better plane by parking your plane close to an unused one you can afford and press F10.

Each time you earn or lose money the new balance is written in front of the screen (blue for credits or red for debits, then white for the actual balance).

Your final score is the maximal return on investment achieved during the whole play.

Whenever your plane get shot down you will take the control of another plane that's flying on your side and which value is less or equal to the one you just left, until there's no more and the game is over. When respawning, though, the Lord takes all your money but $55.

You can fly six different warbirds:

• Snophill, a red biplane with no bombing facilities
• Dewoitine, a green good old plane
• Bogoplane, an ugly white war bird
• Spitflame, a raced red acrobat
• Corsair, escaped from the pacific
• Moshito, an orange bi-propulsed gunner

Each have various abilities and capacity. You start the game in a Dewoitine.

	Goods:
Buller ............ $1
Bomb ............ $200
Fiul tank ....... $400 (approx)
Repairs ....... depend

	Planes:
Spotwill ........ $300
Dewoitine ...... $1000
Bogoplane ...... $2000
Corsair ........ $5000
Spitflame ...... $6000
Moshito ........ $7000

The mouse controls the flight stick. Left button fires the selected weapon, right button switches between guns and bombs.

You can play with keyboard instead ('-nomouse' option). The numeric keypad's 8, 4, 6 and 2 then works for up, left, right and down, while 5 centers the stick. You can also set keyboard sensitiveness in the option menu, and tune the neutral point of the flight stick during the play by the combinations 5+2 or 5+8 (that is : center+up and center+down) on the keypad.

In -nomouse mode, space fires and control switches between weapons.

Here are a key list. You can redefine all these in the option menu.

ESC: Quit

+/-: throttle

F7/F8: zoom in map mode and external views

F4: swap between internal views (normal/dogfight)

F6: external view (traveling)

F5: swap between external views (around, satellite, pursuit, bomb)

F2/F3: cycle through other planes of your side, or through close planes in dogfight view

F1: view your own plane, or select the closest enemy plane in dogfight view

F9: map view

P: autopilot

G: gears

F: flaps

B: wheel brakes

X: accelerated mode (make sure to set autopilot first!)

S: set a flag at plane's location on the map

N: set navpoint to home base

Arrows: watch in every direction in internal view ; move the map in map view

Home: back to front view (must be hold in dogfight view)

End: rear view (same)

Delete: left view

PgDown: right view

PgUp: up view

Insert (hold): focus at the instrument panel

Pause: guess what

F10: sell your plane and by the closest one amongst those parked at your home base.

Enter (hold): display the highs-cores

Mouse: move the command controls

Left click: fire with the active weapon

Right click: select the other weapon (guns/bombs)

F12: suicide

                     +--+
 ---------  -------- |a | -------   +-------+
|elevating|| speed  ||na|| alti  |  |bullets|
|  speed  || meter  ||gt|| meter |  |  bombs|
 >-------<  >------< |lt| >-----<   +-------+
|  slope  ||throttle||ea||       || Gear |Flaps|
|indicator||--------|| c||compass| >----< >---<
 --------- |  fiul  ||ok||       ||Brakes|Auto |
            -------- |f | -------        |pilot|
                     +--+

Some restore antique furnitures or old cars for a hobby. I am restoring a restoring a vintage piece of code, a small game that I quickly put together at the end of the former century and have not touched since.

I've always wanted to come up with a follow up but even if I started on several occasions I never achieved anything, nor did I maintained this original version. Being not interested in games nor 3D rendering any more, the only second version of it I can seriously envision now is to bring back to life this rusty piece of software.

I addition to bringing peace to my conscience I will also probably gain a few good laughs rediscovering the old bugs and non portable monstrosities I committed back then.

So, after a quick diagnosis, here is a short list of what need be done:

• Replace the former README (done!)

• Replace the old MMX x86 code by slow but portable C equivalent (done)

• Fix the bugs related to framerate issues (hosts are much faster now and I suspect this will reveal some problems) (done)

• Upgrade build process to modern (??) autotools

• Fix compilation warnings, move around the code, reorganize the files somewhat to comply with my present taste

• Replace the whole software renderer by a mere OpenGL 2.1 renderer, saying goodbye to the original (but somewhat bugged) shading of the game

• Replace the aforementioned OpenGL 2.1 renderer by a modern OpenGL-ES renderer with simple shaders in order to revive some of the original feeling of the game (but not the related bugs).

And do all this by small steps, without imposing on myself any deadline or interfering with my many other projects.

After all, the game was already released 12 years ago wasn't it?