
The making of Elite - callum85
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/18/features.weekend
======
Theodores
Those of us that wasted whole summers playing Elite were in for a shock when
PC's came along - no games were anywhere near as good as Elite! We had been
brought up on the good stuff and nothing that came along subsequently was
anywhere near as compelling. Even the licensed versions of Elite on other
platforms were a pale imitation. Because of this I gave games a wide birth,
probably until the Playstation came along a generation later.

What Bell and Braben were able to achieve was tantamount to magic in many
areas. As explained in the article the 8 galaxies with 256 stars was quite
amazing. We all knew there were only so many banks of 16K RAM so how was this
possible? The display was also quite incredible, even if you thought you knew
a lot about the display modes. The top 3/4 was hi-resolution black and white
and the lower dashboard was chunkier 4 colour. Swapping display mode mid-
screen-refresh was truly out there. As for the 3D graphics, there was no
openGL back then. Anyone that has had a go with openGL knows it is hard enough
as it is. Bell + Braben did 3D with no library and in pure assembly language,
hidden line removal included. The game may not have been networked however
that was not a problem, there was plenty to talk about. This word of mouth
aspect meant that a lot of Elite gameplay (such as the missions, getting stuck
in hyperspace, mining asteroids and the consequences of trading in contraband)
was part myth. There was no knowing what extent the gameplay really involved,
friends could tell you things they found and you might not be able to find out
for yourself.

There were plenty of other BBC micro games that were excellent, obviously not
to the same degree as Elite, however, Elite did captivate a whole generation
for months at a time. I wonder what the opportunity cost of this was. Instead
of moving up from 'mostly harmless' to 'elite' we could have had a lot else
done by the likes of myself during that time.

~~~
willmacdonald
I spent so many months playing this game. Loved it.

Regardless of the technical achievements of the developers, it also captured
the imagination like no other game.

I'm anxiously waiting for the Kickstarter funded release of Elite Deadly.

~~~
GFischer
I wasn't aware of that. It's called Elite: Dangerous now :)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite:_Dangerous](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite:_Dangerous)

~~~
waqf
Should we expect future sequels called Elite: Competent and Elite: Above
Average?

~~~
lokedhs
Just wait for the collector's edition. Elite: Elite.

------
codeulike
I had a BBC Model B, and was 10 when Acornsoft published Elite. I persuaded my
parents to buy me the game, but we were on holiday that weekend, so I had all
weekend to peruse the game box's contents without a computer to play it on.

For the time, the box that the game came in was also revolutionary.
[http://www.retro-kit.co.uk/page.cfm/content/Acornsoft-
Elite-...](http://www.retro-kit.co.uk/page.cfm/content/Acornsoft-Elite-In-The-
Box/) It has a big thick manual, a novel, posters. I spent the whole weekend
reading the manual. It was mind blowing, and hilarious - written as if you had
just bought a Cobra Mark III and it was explaining the details of your new
ship to you. Some parts of it had flashes of Douglas-Adams style humour.

Loading up the game and playing it was also mindblowing. There were so many
different keys and controls. You could switch to side or rear view cameras
from your ship - even just watching the parallax stars float by was amazing.
The solar system you were flying around in was bewilderingly huge, with a
planet and a distant sun that you could actually fly to. On my first go I
mistook the space station for a Thargon (I had really taken the manual to
heart) and fired on it. Big mistake. The police were launched and they shot me
to pieces. The 3D combat felt very realistic, and the clever 3D radar made
everything understandable. The fact that I could launch a homing missle and it
would use its own AI to fly to its target was incredible.

And it was a _hard_ game. Trading was hard. Docking was hard, until you learnt
how to line up properly from a good perpendicular angle. Getting more than a
few systems away from your start point was hard. Flying to anywhere but the
safest systems was very dangerous. It was hard to build up money and buy new
kit or fuel. The manual said there were 8 galaxies with hundreds of systems in
each galaxy, but it was hard to survive more than a few hops.

This was running in 32K of RAM. The game loaded from a floppy disk that had I
think 100K of space on it.

The overall impression was a mindbendingly huge game of so much depth and
diffuculty. The state of the art in those days was supposed to be Arcade
machines, but they had nothing to compare to this - because Arcade machines
were based on people playing for a couple of minutes. This was a game that
could keep you busy for years. Nothing like that had existed before.

~~~
noir_lord
I didn't have an experience like Elite again until I played X3 for the first
time.

It's an upscaled Elite with modern graphics and all the improvements you would
hope for (and a ridiculously intricate universe, stock markets, shifting
alliances, side missions).

I don't think I even visited all the systems in the first one before the mods.

------
Luc
Ian Bell's site has the source code and various disk images for your perusal:
[http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/bbc/index.htm#src](http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/bbc/index.htm#src)

Though having the source code is only very very marginally better than looking
at the raw machine code. It's very terse and written for a quirky assembler.

------
melling
It's always great to get some behind the scenes into how a great piece of
software was built.

Last night I finished the book about id Software.

[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222146.Masters_of_Doom](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222146.Masters_of_Doom)

Any other great recommendations?

~~~
ibrow
Masters of Doom is a fantastic book, really enjoyed reading that.

From that I then also read the Making of the Prince of Persia[1]. This is
Jordan Mechner's journal from his time during the making of this game. Not
just about the game but about some of his life in general too. Not as riveting
as the Masters of Doom, but still a very interesting little read.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Prince-Persia-
Journals/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Prince-Persia-
Journals/dp/1468093657)

Edit. Oh yes, just remembered. For a real trip down memory lane you might want
to check out Speccy Nation[2] too. It took me about an hour to flick through
but it was so much fun, afterwards I had to call up my best friend from the
time (another ZX Spectrum addict) and tell him to buy a copy!

[2] [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Speccy-Nation-
ebook/dp/B0096BFBSA](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Speccy-Nation-
ebook/dp/B0096BFBSA)

------
milliams

      But while they were still sorting out the mechanics of combat and docking, they 
      started to worry about the adequacy of what they'd be giving the player (whom they
      imagined, of course, as a hypercritical consumer like themselves, bored with Space
      Invaders after the first brief rapture). It wasn't too hard to come up with a 
      solution. They could keep the player interested by letting them upgrade the weapons
      on their ship to ones that made bigger bangs and allowed you to use different
      tactics. But this little alteration perturbed the universe of the game. The classic 
      action game of the early 1980s - Defender, Pac Man - was set in a perpetual present
      tense, a sort of arcade Eden in which there were always enemies to zap or gobble,
      but nothing ever changed apart from the score. By letting the player tool up with
      better guns, Bell and Braben were introducing a whole new dimension, the dimension
      of time. They were saying they wanted the player to hope, to scheme, to plan. Also,
      to play for much longer than a slam-bang 10 minutes. And that was only the 
      beginning. The solution threw up a further problem, as each of their solutions
      would. How would the player get a bigger gun? They should earn it, Bell and Braben
      decided. No free lunches in this universe. But that implied money, in a set-up that
      a moment before had existed quite happily as an economy of pure explosions. "We put
      a bountyon the pirates. Then we thought even that would become quite samey..." They
      kept following the implications of each invention until they arrived at another
      invention. A money economy with more sources of income than just bounty for shooting
      pirates implied trading. Suddenly, the player's spaceship wasn't just a nimble 3D
      firing platform: it was a cargo hauler as well. And trading implied places in which
      to trade. The game needed serious three-dimensional geography. And things to trade.
      And prices. And markets... The new wishes multiplied. They kept going. 
    

I played Elite and Frontier on my Atari ST as a child but looking back I don't
have much of a sense of what the rest of the games market looked like. Does
anyone have a feeling of just how original and innovative this sort of open-
world RPG style game was back then?

~~~
sambeau
I do.

It was a total game changer in every way. Partly, the 3D; mostly, the scale.

If it wasn't for the discovery of the Mandelbrot set around the same time it
would have been denounced as totally ridiculous. But, as Fractals were just
becoming popular around then, it fitted neatly into the Zeitgeist.

As for the 3D the only time you saw it on a home computer before Elite it was
'fake' e.g. in a basic maze game like 3D Monster Maze (think Wolfenstein but
with only 4 straight-on views, no guns and a badly drawn pixelsaurus to run
away from) or as an isometric game: Ant Attack springs to mind. As I recall
Ant Attack[2] was also amazing for it's shear scale, if you look at the full
3D map[3] it's amazing to see how far we've come!

In the arcade we had 'real' vector 3D: Battlezone and later on Star Wars[5],
the latter being the first I remember being in colour. I am sure these were an
influence.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_Monster_Maze](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_Monster_Maze)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_Attack](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_Attack)

[3]
[http://maps.speccy.cz/map.php?id=AntAttack](http://maps.speccy.cz/map.php?id=AntAttack)

[4]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlezone_(1980_video_game)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlezone_\(1980_video_game\))

[5]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_(1983_video_game)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_\(1983_video_game\))

------
danmaz74
"But back then it seemed disturbingly complicated, perhaps a recipe for chaos,
to have the plan for _a game shared between two brains_." :D

------
amiramir
The nice thing about the hard parts of the game is that there was a sense of
accomplishment once they were mastered.

Docking used to drive me to tears. First get in line with the dock. Then start
to rotate in sync with it. Only to fail. Even after I got the hang of it I'd
blow it once in a while. Still remember playing with friends and having one
who was the best "docker" step in at the critical moment.

Similarly when I got my Acorn Risc Machine/Archimedes, the bundled Lander game
was also hard but it was a satisfying challenge, and the best demo of the new
machine.

I remember thinking at the time that Braben was brilliant and wondering where
his life would take him. I'm glad that he has now put his brilliance to use
with the Rasberry Pi.

------
jpalomaki
Braben's presentation from Game Developers Conference (2011):
[http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014628/Classic-Game-
Postmortem](http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014628/Classic-Game-Postmortem)

------
pc86
The article is from 2003 (not a criticism, just trying to get someone to add
that to the title).

~~~
kubiiii
I was wondering why there was no mention of elite dangerous.

------
drill_sarge
I played the C64 version a while ago and it really hasn't aged well. If you
want to play it (again) you should go straight with the MSDOS (plus) version.

~~~
JonnieCache
Is there a reason I wouldn't want to fire up the original BBC version?

Also, surely there must be a js/canvas port by now.

EDIT: the author apparently recommends the NES version:
[http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/nes/index.htm](http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/nes/index.htm)

~~~
daviddlhg
Well, Archie or Amiga versions might be worth a look. Bell does say "regarded
by many as the best ever version" about the Archie version on the page:
[http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/game.htm](http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/game.htm)

Though I was on an Amiga (and the then-poor PC with CGA or EGA in school,
bleh), have never tried the Archie version:

Amiga Elite:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsuWgLEQBxM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsuWgLEQBxM)

Archie Elite:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRBuTU9ovP8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRBuTU9ovP8)

There's also Frontier: Elite II. By that stage, high-end PCs were beginning to
outperform low-end Amigas at some brute-force processing tasks including
software 3D rendering, so the graphics are arguably better on the PC version
(limited texture mapping, edit - though OTOH it sort of looks out of place
looking at it now, the amiga version with no textures is more consistent and
clean visually if perhaps less technically impressive), you needed a pretty-
much PC-priced-anyway high-end/accelerated Amiga model to run at the frame
rate shown in the video:

Amiga Elite II:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzEj4Gq7fT4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzEj4Gq7fT4)

PC Elite II:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjoMq-H3b8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjoMq-H3b8o)

------
rwmj
This book "Backroom Boys" is thoroughly enjoyable.

~~~
arethuza
From the cover of the book:

"Britain is the only country in the world to have cancelled its space
programme just as it put its first rocket into orbit."

Great book - if _slightly_ depressing.

~~~
bolder88
why depressing? I've never understood this fascination some have with spending
billions going on a fun trip to mars.

That sort of thing should be funded by rich people or corporations who see
market value in doing it. Not paid for by taxes.

We have enough problems to solve here that will actually benefit people.

~~~
outworlder
This is the saddest comment to appear on HN for a while.

Amazing that you don't think space exploration will benefit people. What other
problems would you rather focus instead? I bet most, if not all of them, are
caused by poor wealth distribution, not lack of money.

~~~
yoran
He'd rather see millions of VC money being put into the next SnapChat, which
has obviously much more benefit to humanity than space exploration!

~~~
bolder88
Certainly not. I'd rather see taxes lowered, so people can make their own
decisions about how they want to spend their own money.

I'm perfectly happy to live my life on Earth. If they suddenly colonise Mars,
and it's fantastic, and it makes you live twice as long and have superpowers,
I would still rather stay here. I'm simply not interested in it.

People often cite the technological advances - "velcro" etc but I don't think
you're getting value for money if that's your aim, and again, I think it
should be done in the private sector rather than forcing people who have
absolutely no interest in space, to pay for it.

~~~
rodgerd
> I'd rather see taxes lowered

And here was I thinking "spend money on more web apps" was the nadir of human
ambition on HN.

~~~
bolder88
I think the ambition on HN is generally

    
    
      * Make another useless timewasting webapp
      * Sell it for billions
      * Solve world hunger, philanthropy, make the world all better again

------
thomaslangston
For those pining over the experience of Elite you can also get similar
gameplay in:

Medieval flavor: Mount and Blade series (I suggest the "Mount and Blade :
Warband" game).

Sci-Fi MMORPG: EVE Online

~~~
JeffL
Our MMO game, Star Sonata, is also in the same sort of genre, though it's top
down-ish more like Star Control, and we have a lot of economic emphasis on
building colonies, stations, and automated trade slaves that run your economic
empire while you're offline.

------
Gravityloss
No comments on the obvious relations to the startup world?

Here we have two people on virgin territory, because they were building
something to their logical conclusions and fulfilling their rare ambition of
excellence.

They weren't really copying anyone else or cutting much corners.

I believe that the world is full of possibilities like that - but we somehow
fail to see the whole process through.

What are the next services that will blow the mind? That will have the users
say "I never knew that was possible!"

