Pseudo-3D racing game for the HP Prime.

PrimeRoad is a racing game in the spirit of Out Run (Sega, 1986): five stages to cross in one go, from the countryside to Miami Beach, with curves, hills, roadside scenery, traffic, and a clock you have to keep winning back. The race ends when the time reaches zero, or when the finish line of the fifth stage is crossed.

PrimeRoad 1.0 - Quick tutorial (EN)
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The menu
- Up / Down choose an entry, Enter confirms it. The chosen entry grows, in gold, between two arrows.
- START RACE: a new game, from the first stage.
- STAGES: start again from a stage already reached in an earlier game. Stages further on stay greyed out.
- CONTROLS: choose your driving keys.
- HIGH SCORES: the table of the eight records.
- TUTORIAL (or the Help key): this guide.
- QUIT, or Esc: close the game.

Reading this tutorial
- Up / Down scroll one line, Left / Right one page.
- The bar on the right and the counter at the top show where you are.
- Enter or Esc goes back to the menu.

Driving
- Left / Right (or 4 / 6, or a finger left or right of the screen centre): steer.
- Down (or - , or 2): brake. The brake lights come on.
- The car accelerates by itself: there is no throttle to hold.
- With no steering key, the body leans into the curve; it rears up on climbs and dips its nose on descents.
- The speed goes up to 300 km/h.
- Esc abandons the race and goes back to the menu.

Choosing your keys
- Four actions (left, right, faster, brake), up to three keys each.
- Up / Down: the action. Left / Right: the slot. Enter: the slot waits for a key, which you then press.
- Del empties the slot. The last row restores the default keys.
- Esc goes back to the menu, and saves the keys if they changed.

The screen
- Top left, the time left, in seconds. It turns red in the last ten.
- In the centre, the score. Top right, the speed.
- Bottom right, the current leg and stage.
- In the middle of the screen, for a moment, the message of a checkpoint or of a new leg.

The stages
- Five stages, in order: countryside, desert, city, mountains, Miami Beach.
- Each stage has five legs, five different roads, for about five minutes of racing.
- The start line is at the beginning of the first leg, the finish line at the end of the fifth.
- Crossing the finish announces the next stage, then the race goes on with the same clock and the same score.
- Reaching a stage opens it for good in the STAGES screen.

Traffic and crashes
- Twenty-four cars drive in the same direction, at different speeds and in every lane. The Beetle is the slowest.
- Brushing a slightly slower car slows you down, nothing more.
- Hitting it while closing in at more than 45 km/h spins you round.
- Hitting a tree, a rock or a sign at more than 30 km/h rolls the car.
- A crash stops the car for about a second, clock running, then it is put back on the road.
- Off the road, the car tops out around 75 km/h.

Time
- The race starts with 60 seconds.
- A checkpoint every 800 segments gives back 18 seconds.
- The end of a leg gives back 18 seconds, the end of a stage 30.
- At zero, the race stops, wherever you are.

Score and records
- One point per 100 units covered.
- On top of that: 1,000 per checkpoint, 2,000 per leg, 5,000 per stage, and 20,000 for completing all five stages.
- The eight best scores are kept. A score that makes the table asks for three letters: Up / Down change the letter, Left / Right change the slot, Enter saves.
- Esc on the name screen gives up the entry.

Day and night
- The cycle runs on race time, about one turn per stage: 100 seconds of day, 40 of dusk, 150 of night, 40 of dawn.
- Halfway through dusk the car switches on its headlights: an oval of light in front of it.
- Inside the oval, everything shows as by day. Outside it is night: a car there is only two red lights.

Files the game writes
- scores.txt: the eight best scores.
- progress.txt: the furthest stage reached.
- controls.txt: the chosen keys.
- font_adv.txt: the character widths of this tutorial's text, measured once. Safe to delete.

Language
- The game follows the calculator's Language setting: English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese. In Chinese and Japanese it shows in English.

Limits
- A game is not saved: leaving the race means losing it.
- The roads of each stage are the same from one game to the next.
