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Creation Of Elite Charted
Thanks to The UK Guardian for their book excerpt focusing on the creation of classic 3D space shooter Elite. The piece is introduced: "Computer games weren't very good in 1982.. which was what prompted two teenage mathematicians to create the cosmos of their dreams, making them a fortune and inspiring computer nerds the world over", going on to explain why Elite, originally for the BBC Micro but with "the best conversions... for the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Acorn Archimedes" innovated in 3D graphics, complex trading systems, and "having the computer generate the game universe" for the player. However, nothing can explain Elite: The Musical.
However, nothing can explain Elite: The Musical. nothing can explain Lobster magnet or any of the other bits of crap all over the net XD tis 'splainable :P
You win battles by knowing the enemy's timing, and using a timing which the enemy does not expect. Miyamoto Musashi
Read the Article on Saturday - was surprisingly good.
The article mentions that Acornsoft, the original publishers, didn't want to pay royalty rates as high as Braben and Bell wanted, so they retained publishing rights enabling them to sell those rights at auction to BTSoft, leading to Elite on other platforms.
IMO, by far the best version produced was for the Acorn Archimedes in 1992 - circa 10 years after the original.
Many happy hours as an undergraduate whiled away back then...
I heard inmates in prison are forced to visit every planet in elite 'twice' as a form of tortue. However, don't quote me on that.
If you loved the freedom and challenge of Elite back in the day, or Origin's Privateer a bit later... I would strongly suggest you check out the game Vega Strike. It looks good, plays good, is open source, and probably has even more freedom than Elite.
If Elite was your thing, it's worth a look.
no thanks
Frontier (Elite 2) is available for download and can be registered for just 5 UK-Pounds... I don't know the exact number of galaxies included, but there were more than 256...
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
Ditto with Starflight. Both series had the gaming down cold, and I'd like to see what could be done with them using today's technology.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I agree, very interesting article. But no pics?!?
"3L33+"
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/pc/index.htm
:^)
Now when is someone going to do like a "Tenebrae" version with OpenGL, etc?
The article is from Chapter 3 of Francis Spufford's "Backroom Boys". I enjoyed the book immensely.
As the subtitle suggests it is unashamedly British in outlook, but celebrates engineering with six anecdotal stories that would warm the heart of any geek (or at least allow them the odd knowing chuckle).
As well as Elite, it covers Britain's space program (Black Arrow, Blue Streak etc.), Concorde (topical), cellphones, the Human Genome, and a reprise on Britain's space program with Beagle 2. Not a proper review I know, but a recommendation all the same.
If you liked Elite, consider trying out Eve Online. It's basically massively-multiplayer online Elite.
http://www.cjpinder.clara.co.uk/elite.html
A guy called Christian Pinder successfully re-engineered a C version of Elite from the original Assembler source. It uses the Allegro library.
I spent many hours reliving my misspent youth a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, David Braben, who had been turning a blind eye to what was a possible infringement of his IP, asked him to pull the source and binaries as someone had ported CP's Elite:TNK to the GBA. The timing couldn't have been much worse as Braben's company frontier had just released a game called 'Darxide' for the GBA that was itself very similar to Elite, and Breadbin didn't want the (free) competition.
Since then Chris Pinder started work on a sequel to Elite:TNK called 'Darkness Rising' which later changed to 'the Dark-kind' (http://www.darkkind.co.uk) - I played an early Alpha about a year ago, but everything has all gone very quiet on that front. Interestingly enough, the last few messages Christian posted on his forum (now defunct - domain name expired) mentioned the fact that he was getting programming help from none other than Ian Bell, the other co-creator of the original.
After Elite, David Braben's company (Frontier) created Frontier Elite (Elite 2) and then 'Frontier: first encounters' (Elite 3). This last title was released by the publisher's before it was ready, and was riddled with bugs. People still play all the versions, and a guy called John Jordan has re-engineered FFE to run in Windows. http://www.jaj22.demon.co.uk/
=#= Man, you are such a loser! Why can't you be an individual, like the rest of us?
But they were both interested in the same things, and they were both better than most people at doing those things, which made them natural allies and collaborators.
To a good half of their fellow students, of course, they were just indistinguishable nerds.
LOL@them
Karma: -2^0.5 . Mainly due to the imbibing of dihydrogen monoxide
If you liked Elite - look at X2, written by EgoSoft.
http://www.egosoft.com
All that Elite had and more, including buy/fly fleets of ships. Multiple races with over 70 different ships. A true supply/demand trading system and scripting for all you hax0rs.
I've been playing Eve Online for a while now, and it really feels as much as a massively multiplayer Elite as anything possibly could. There are thousands of systems, each with their own market of supply and demand, there are dozens of ships and hundreds of upgrades a player can bolt on to them. Players go out hunting pirates, running missions, doing trade runs, or even mining asteroids. If you've ever spent time on Elite and wondered what the game would be like if there were thousands of other people playing at the same time, you could do much worse than giving this game a try.
I want the fire back.