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Geek Culture / David Braben - Elite's 25th Anniversary

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Morcilla
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Posted: 20th Sep 2009 11:40
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Best game ever was made 25 years ago

Quote: "Elite is a space trading and combat computer game, originally written and developed by David Braben and Ian Bell and published by Acornsoft in September, 1984 for the BBC Micro computer."


Here is David Braben talking about it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffQ_Uw55S3o

A very interesting video showing his point of view, and how this game changed the industry

And here is the main page 'Frontier invites you to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Elite':

http://elite.frontier.co.uk/home/

You can even register for information on forthcoming new developments in the world of Elite

Well, happy anniversary Elite!
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Van B
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Posted: 20th Sep 2009 18:55
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Elite was pure genius, especially the timer based movement which means that if you run it on an emulater you can un-cap the speed and play it incredibly smoothly.

Was always something I just messed around with though, never really player it too deeply - I played Frontier a lot more though.


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Morcilla
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Posted: 21st Sep 2009 12:09
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Yeah, of course only purist still play 1984 Elite.
The third part 'Elite III: First Encounters' (ffe) is the best one to play nowadays in my opinion.

I wanted to show an example feature, that impressed me as well as many other details in the game, the oblated stars in ffe.

Here is a pic of Achenar (a real existing star) at 1 AU of distance:



As you can see Achenar looks oblated or elliptical (this is usually due to high rotational speeds). Well, the fact that this kind of stars were included with this shape for representation is, in my opinion, an unexpected feature that makes ffe more realistic regarding this kind of stars.

Achenar is in fact, an oblated star. Besides having increased complexity for development, this does not only show an effort to include these kind of details for improved realism, but also reveals a background investigation of scientific data that I guess it was not as easily accesible fifteen years ago as it is today... great job.
Not to mention that, even nowadays, it is hard to find a computer game representing oblated stars.

Have a more artistical picture at closer distance from the star:



Also the video is extremely interesting in my opinion, Braben telling how the project was against the market, where all action games of that epoch were intended to have short game plays and simple controls.
It opened a new brand type of games, where you got addicted to the ship improvements and adventures in the deep space
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Van B
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Posted: 21st Sep 2009 12:37
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Well it certainly fired up peoples imagination, not just to make a massive game like that, but also to base a game on 3D space combat - if Elite could do it on such a grand scale, then they could surely do it on a small scale, and lots of people did.

I noticed last week that Carrier Command is being redone, which just sounds great - multiplayer Carrier battles over resources and islands, should be a pretty interesting game. Maybe this is the renaissance for all those 80's games that pushed the envelope - people have ached for a MMElite for years, not just trading or combat, but everything. We can only hope I suppose, until then the Starwraith series should keep us occupied.


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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 21st Sep 2009 13:44
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I used to have X2: The Threat. It was kinda fun but I felt it needed more scripted quests rather than the one main plotline and auto generated cargo runs. How similar is the X Universe to Elite? I would imagine the latter was a huge inspiration for the former.

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Morcilla
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Posted: 22nd Sep 2009 18:34
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Yes I remember playing Carrier Command for the Amiga. Definitively interesting.

About X2, well, I've never played the X Universe series, so I don't know.
I played some others, and perhaps the best one of the 'Elite clones' would have been Freelancer, but its story is linear as well, so in my opinion no other game has ever reached again the impact and feeling of the original Elite game.
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Libervurto
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Posted: 25th Sep 2009 10:19
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This game is truly legendary, I've heard about it for years and years and have played it on an online emulator but it didnt say what the controls were. I played Oolite a while ago (a fan-game with 3D textures) and was pretty impressed but I think I prefer the wireframe look of the original, it's beautiful because of what it is and what it means; to change that and try and update it loses part of the games soul and meaning. It's the fact that they did it 25 years ago that makes it impressive, modern computers could do that easily but back then they had to be really smart.
I had a BBC computer as a kid but wasn't lucky enough to have Elite.

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Dazzag
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Posted: 25th Sep 2009 11:16
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Best game ever. I remember almost crying when I got it for my birthday (biggest box and expensive game ever for me at that point - £15 on the Speccy) and couldn't get the damn lenslok to work. My mum kept calling me to come to dinner but I *had* to get it to work. I didn't and got dragged away. Heh, if I remember rightly you had about 3 goes and the computer restarted prompting another 5 minute loading spell

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
Current fave quote : "She was like a candle in the wind.... unreliable...."
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Van B
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Posted: 25th Sep 2009 11:30
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Hehe, yeah I remember my cousin bringing it round and messing with the lenslock for a solid hour, because our TV was just a bit too big for it. Ended up guessing the letters most of the time, but back then we were just glad we got in after a few tries. I can imagine thousands of people finding these little red gadgets with the lens, and wondering what the hell they were.

The worst copy protection ever though was Jet Set Willy, it had a fold out grid of coloured squares and you had to find the right one - but this thing could give an aspirin a headache, back when colours seemed to fight with each other a lot more - especially those cheap spectrum magazine, hey lets use dull red and dull green, then destroy a generations eyesight - it's not age that detriments your sight, it's Your Sinclair.


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Libervurto
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Posted: 25th Sep 2009 13:51
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OK ive decided my computer needs the original version of elite on it, i've found this page with some downloads but i'm a bit confused which files i need and what i need to do with them.
any help?
http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/bbc/index.htm

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Van B
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Posted: 25th Sep 2009 13:59
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That would need a BBC emulator. There should be plenty, but there is a link to an emulator on that exact page


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Libervurto
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Posted: 25th Sep 2009 14:10
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ok so i download them both and then i can run the emulator and load the "disk" into it?
sorry to be so noobish but ive had trouble with emulators before.

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Van B
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Posted: 25th Sep 2009 14:20
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Yeah, that should do it - emulating the BBC should be a lot easier than emulating other systems. For instance it's quite tricky to emulate the 16-bit computers like the Amiga and ST because they need OS disks which can be annoying to get hold of. But emulating a BBC, C64, Spectrum etc should be a lot easier.

You would download them, then extract the emulator or install it, then make a folder in the same place for your roms, and stick Elite in there. Then when you run the emulator there will probably be a file menu to let you select the rom. Your probably best to use exactly what that site suggests, because Elite is not your average game, I tried to run the Speccy version on my DS, and the screen get's some bad interference - but every other game I try works perfect .


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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 25th Sep 2009 14:26 Edited at: 25th Sep 2009 14:27
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Probably because it uses quirks in the interrupts systems and tiled background renderers of consoles. I'm guessing the NES version is using a single background layer that is the same row over and over again and every time the vblank reaches the next row of tiles it renders it to tile RAM.

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HowDo
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Posted: 25th Sep 2009 15:33
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I thougth they did a dos version of it later on, anyone found that copy anywere.

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Dazzag
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Posted: 25th Sep 2009 15:39
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They did. Used to have it years ago but it was rubbish. Mainly because it was written pretty much for an exact spec of computer. Everything that ran it afterwards just ran it stupidely fast. Even on a 286 if I remember rightly. Press a button and see stars spinning at super speed for ages. Not good. Although can now get apps to slow your computer down so perhaps possible to tweak just so. Not sure how good it was compared to the original 8bit stuff though. They just seemed *better* for some reason. Even my ST version overall sucked compared to my original Speccy 128k version (think was 128k version rather than 48k). Was something to do with the way the enemies attacked I seem to remember. The Speccy did it quite nicely whereas the ST version seemed a lot worse to me (then again played the Speccy version a *lot*).

Cheers

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Van B
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Posted: 25th Sep 2009 16:10
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I remember Frontier more on the ST, but the thing with that is you could cheat, which might be a clue as to why it was more difficult on the ST. In Frontier, you just lock on to an enemy, fire a missile, make sure your not pointing straight at the blighter then set the run speed to max, then back down to normal. See the enemy couldn't evade the missile in time, it might only get 1 cycle to adjust itself or chaff or whatever, but rather than the missile taking it's course and heading towards the enemy, it would be thrown right at it because the game speed denotes it.

Perhaps because the ST is faster, the enemies have more AI to play with, full cycles to calculate everything - so they could be much smarter on the ST just because it has enough power to do everything properly. So instead of a smoother, fairer experience you'd get with the BBC version, the AI becomes sharper and the game becomes faster. Making it smoother rather than faster would probably have taken some time, so they just ported it instead. Elite is a timer based game, so if there's a slowdown, the movements have to be amplified to take care of it, which detriments accuracy.


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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 25th Sep 2009 16:17
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Quote: "Perhaps because the ST is faster"


You didn't perhaps think, maybe they wrote more complicated code too? It's true that the AI would have more reaction time on a higher framerate in a timer based system but reaction time is rarely the issue with AI in games.

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Van B
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Posted: 25th Sep 2009 17:12 Edited at: 25th Sep 2009 17:15
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In a game like Elite, reaction time would be critical. If there isn't enough time for an enemy to avoid another enemy, then they crash. If that's not important then what is?

If AI needs to find an obstacle, then adjust it's direction, and move away from it, then it's not gonna do all that at the same time, it has to actually move. So if theres a ship 10 meters in front, and your moving at 20 metres per cycle, when do you get the chance to move, when does the other ship get a chance to move. This delay could be caused by anything, but the bottom line is that with timer based movement, you can easily end up with issues 25 years later on computers 3,000 times faster.

I don't think for 1 second that they changed the core logic code between the ST and the BBC, or any platform for that matter. David Braben was one of the first advocates for portable code, that's why Elite made it to everything, that's why it took him 1 day to port Frontier to the ST from the Amiga.


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Libervurto
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Posted: 26th Sep 2009 00:33 Edited at: 26th Sep 2009 05:29
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I got it working eventually after some hair pulling. Well half working...

The emulator links are all broken but I did find BeebEm, it's pretty good; everything packaged and ready to go from install (unlike horizon which comes without ROMs) and it emulates four models of BBC.

I'm not sure if I actually downloaded the correct version of Elite as Ian Bell's site is a bit disorganised, but I eventually got it to work once I realised the file extension was wrong (.SDD instead of .SSD), simply changing it did the trick.
There is still a problem, when I try to jump to hyperspace it freezes and says "Not Found". I'm not sure if this is a game message telling me I didn't select the planet properly or if I'm missing a file or whatever. It does freeze up though so surely not a game message.

Any help appreciated

[edit]
Problem solved, see next post.

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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 26th Sep 2009 03:21 Edited at: 26th Sep 2009 03:21
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David Braben...I've met him, and he took my photo! Yeah, I love Elite. Currently working on a similar game.

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Libervurto
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Posted: 26th Sep 2009 05:25 Edited at: 26th Sep 2009 05:27
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OK I've figured it out!

For anyone else who wants to play the original Elite written by David Braben and Ian Bell here's what you need to do...

1. Download the BeebEm BBC Emulator and install.
2. Download the Elite disk image, unzip, change the file type from ".SDD" to ".SSD" (I'm convinced this was just a typo).
3. Copy the disk image file to the BeebEm disk images folder (found in my documents).
4. Run BeebEm, click HARDWARE>MODEL>BBC B plus (oops I've forgotten what the model is called but there's a standard one and a "plus" which is the one you want)
5. click FILE>RUN DISK and select Elite.ssd.

When you want to save the game click FILE>SAVE STATE and it will save the game exactly where you were, then when you come back you don't even need to load the disk just LOAD STATE.

Here's the playing manual

Have fun

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Morcilla
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Posted: 26th Sep 2009 20:19
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Weren't those ships lovely?

Elite - Observer's Guide To Ships In Service
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Libervurto
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Posted: 27th Sep 2009 23:37 Edited at: 28th Sep 2009 00:09
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They are and the Cobra mk III only has 10 vertices! It's such a perfect design.

You know when you play some games and think "I wish I knew how they did that" or "that's pretty clever I might steal that idea" well I've said that about almost everything in Elite! Even little details like the planet descriptions are amazing and just help to make it feel like a real living universe.
There's so much to this game and to think they wrote it on an acorn!
I'm never going to complain about DBC being limited again.
Looking at the other games released that year really hits home how much of a leap forward this game was.

[edit]
this is from ian bell's site
Quote: "Here, as elsewhere on this site, I provide a link to Elite coauthor David Braben's site. It includes "shareware" releases of his "Frontier" Elite sequels and his accounts of Elite "history" and the "takedowns" of this site. Nowhere does his site link to mine."

That doesn't sound too friendly, I wonder what happened...

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Morcilla
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Posted: 28th Sep 2009 12:10
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Quote: "They are and the Cobra mk III only has 10 vertices! It's such a perfect design."

I agree! the Cobra mk III is very special when you look at it.
A true classic design, where many years have passed, but you wouldn't change a thing on it. And only ten vertices! I wasn't aware of that, it makes it even more incredible.
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Chris K
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Posted: 30th Sep 2009 12:27
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Quote: "That doesn't sound too friendly, I wonder what happened..."


The Bell/Braben fiasco is pretty well documented. I think it basically boils down to Braben being the better business man, and probably a bit more cut throat, and Bell being more of a nerd and rather sore that Braben built a fantastic studio.

Bell spent most of his Elite money on making his own Rave album I think...

-= Out here in the fields, I fight for my meals =-
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