The Making of ELITE (Computer Videogame) 

+CMDR Sunburn "There are quite a few middle aged commanders out there" lol so true, just look on forums "Loving the game!" says the 57 year old guy :-D

+CMDR Sunburn Yep. To be fair, most kids have no idea what Elite is. Not surprising, as the last Elite title was released in 95. 21 years ago now. (Excuse me while I dwell on all those years, and what the hell I actually did with them.) Now, I'm hooked on Elite Dangerous!

+CMDR Sunburn I thought u were going to write.. 30 years later.. someone knocked on the door and i realised i was still playing elite :) especially as that sentence came after "I was absorbed in elite for more than a few weeks".. 30 years later... etc :) hahah.. funny.

+CMDR Sunburn Just out of curiosity Sunburn, how old are you? I'm 47 next month I played Elite when I was what 15. I started with a ZX80 going on to a Vic20, CBM 64 and then an Amiga when I was 19. I've just bought a HTC Vive. All for this game. it's costing me a fortune and I'm loving it. I've bought the X55 Rhino and thinking of buying a Warthog at another £256. Hell I was gonna buy a one bedroomed flat as the ex missus sold my house. That's out of the window now. It'll be a 2 bedroomed flat minimum so I can have man cave and set up the Vive with room I can house it in. How our hobbies take over our lives.

You should try it in VR.

Damn! Your Dad must’ve been Musk to afford all that. I was on the C64 with the tape driver. Respect to your dad!😊

And that was when? 2015?

​@@noelht1Tape driver. ROFLMAO. A 64-bit "tape driver". You bet.

@@deeremeyer1749 ~1985

​@@deeremeyer1749what are you talking about you muppet

Have you got back into it since now that there are more options available for putting together a game?

@@CaspianNomadyou mean that there is no competition anymore?

I learned c64 basic, but Amiga 500 I learned assembly. Created some games for fun.

@@jounisaastamoinen1099 very lucky of you to learn the same assembly language. Though MUL and DIV is so much better on x86 . And REP MOVS .. why don’t people celebrate this? Memcpy is even in the C standard library.

I hope the last thing you hear is, "Durka durka!" Might seem harsh, but I stand by it.

Unless my audio is WAY out of sync, it's a Viper on screen when he says that :) EDIT: My apologies, just got the bit further on when it's the Cobra on screen and narrator says spinning rocket.

UrgentementeUK Ahh, I see. I thought I had been missing something really obvious, like a dial somewhere. Ha. Thanks for the information.

Ah the old geezer doesn't know that.

Alex Cheetah now im gonna buy one because it was one of the first ever 3 dimensional products of computing!

i thort that is was a sidewinder

+Stephen Blane I guess someone lost his job in the process lol.

Well they aremt around now, so they lost their biggest leap into the games industry.

@Jules Thorn EMI, try and keep up with the conversation. 🙄

The same as Decca Records when they turned down a little known beat combo in the early sixties.

@@mrjoneseastend Was about to say the same :-D

Lassi Kinnunen yep, i can't see SC ever delivering. Look at what theyve done in the 5-8 years of development; basically nothing but pretty graphics. Not to mention the business model with those purchasable ships that dont exist. It's kind of sad because I really wantva rivalry between ED and SC to force both titles to innovate and one up each other. SC will probably meet the same fate as NMS on launch; the team was too ambitious and couldn't meet their goal.

The original was a sim based on the routines made by Bell. Elite Dangerous is a dumbed down arcade WW2 fighter in space game without any content and as far from a sim as can be.

@@hans-joachimbierwirth4727 why would you say something so edgy?

Edgy? Braben himself esxplained that he wanted an arcade ww2 fighter in space and that's what it is. A speed limit of 700 mph and boosting mechanics - that isn't a space sim at all but the most stupid shit ever in gaming history. A speed limit in space is something only retards could come up with or even just tolerate. I can't do that.

​@@hans-joachimbierwirth4727 The only thing that is stupid shit, is your comment. When you are not making a game for a small niche market full of newtonian nerds, but for a audience that includes casual players, you gotta try to balance the realism and playability. Sure, speed restrictions even with FA off - that is as *unrealistic* as far as space flight goes, but I accept that, like other silly things like weapons and radar that have a reach of only few kilometres *in space*. FE2 and FFE had better and more realistic newtonian flight, but were far from perfect, as games. ED simulates SPACE very well, just not ship flight physics.

Ohhh, it was exactly the same for me! I only got to play it at a friend's home at first, but it inspired me greatly.

What's insane is how oblivious I've been to this game, despite having played it as a kid. Even to this day I've been wanting to design a game that lets me do this, only to find out that the first 3D game ever made is almost exactly the kind of thing I was trying to recreate. Combine aspects of DOOM in to it and bring it to the modern age and you have the game I've been dreaming of. Something that feels like (for me, being an anime lover) living a story from cowboy bebop. One of my favorite game from the late 90's was Space Rangers, and it was just a turn base, isometric variant of this game but with a lot less space to explore... HOW does a game come out in 1999 that isn't 3D, yet manages to have only a fraction of the area to explore. I've been playing the hell out of Oolite, the tribute game with a full compliment of expansions and I'm a happy, happy person. A free game that has captivated me more than an elder scrolls game ever has :) That and I downloaded Elite: The Next Kind since it was offered for free, too.

I Agree

See you in elite:dangerous commander.

You missed out on Frontier: Elite II, the best of the bunch! I'd say even better than Elite Dangerous because they actually delivered on what they promised and didn't trickle feed everything as paid DLC.

@@bashkillszombies How a 1,44mb game was more full of data and good memories than this 90gb monster of a game

HrRueben Ditto that

It's decades for me now. lol

Same, freaking awesome game

Bobio are you still playing ELITE??? I started May 2017 (Xbox) and still love it and can't wait to see what 2018 brings. I'm 44 this year and played the original on BBC b.

Yea lots of gamers prefer a quick n easy pleasurable experience and have not known the joy of playing elite I still try 2 convince my friend to play it with me but he's a cod fan hardcore.

It's worth remembering that the original computer games were ports or analogues from arcade games. Arcade games need to be short, time limited, and have a score so that players won't be on the machine forever, will still keep feeding coins into it, and will keep coming back in order to bat their personal best. On a game for a home computer, there's no reason to keep those limits.

It is never too late.

486 SX? That was a pretty good system, at least if you bought it when it first came out. My first PC was a 386 SX. It had a whopping 1 Megabytes of memory. But I played "Aces of the Pacific" to death on it!

I got to deadly

The disk version was actually slightly larger...had more ships, and missions.

Go Brits my ass. Games came from all around the world. Without the americans, western, central and eastern europeans and of course the asians games would be much worst than today. It was a collective effort.

@@Zodroo_Tint He says on his british invented computer over the british invented world wide web in the English language...

you needed more technical knowledge but you needed to learn fewer things. Learning how to code in Assembly is MUCH less information than knowing how to use Blender, Unreal Engine, and then scripting or C++. The game engines allow you to leap frog certain technical aspects of game programming, but learning how to use those engines is usually actually more information than you would need to just do it yourself. and of course saves you the hassle of having to learn how to do something that doesn't interest you. Game engines don't simplify things, they trade the ability to not have to do those things yourself for having to learn how to do things THEIR way. That's probably the biggest stumbling block new game designers run into, they think these game engines are going to make it simpler. they don't, they actually make it more complex, and restrictive as well. They just make making a game less technical.

But that "Trader" game wasn't really known widely, I've seen reference to then being inspired by a table D&D style game rather than a program. The 8bit home computers came out and anything on mini or mainframe was effectiveky unknown. The idea of the campaign game was totally new to us, I first saw it at Uni when colleagues ran a copy in one of the Comp. Sci. labs.

I afeel the same.

@@comrades6868 me to

That's what many expected but it became the worst game ever made in gaming history.

Reminds me of the time I first tried docking.... There was no survivors....

Kain I understand your pain. An analogue joy stick helped me a lot.

The instinctive way to approach docking, was to get as close as possible, which was entirely wrong of course. I found out that by moving away from the spinning surface, you could more easily align your craft. And I used a digital stick, on a C=64. The hardest thing was actually to spot the correct spinning surface where the docking bay was located. Even the docking computers could get it completely wrong and try to dock through the opposing side of the space station.

AudieHolland I can't remember if this was the "official" way or I read it in a magazine somewhere. Aim for a spot between the planet and the docking station, and go full steam ahead. Switch to the left or right view, whichever side the docking station was. Wait for the docking bay to be dead centre of the viewing window, and slow to a stop. Pivot around so the docking bay is dead centre of the front view window. Now creep up to the docking bay at 1/4 speed, making adjustments to the spin ( again, analogue joystick is king here). Tense every muscle in your body, half close your eyes and repeat your favourite swearword, until docking is complete.

anthakata Official or not, that's the best way. Because I believe that in the original Elite, the spacestation's docking bay was always facing the planet. After that, it was easy, even with a digital joystick. The thing is, once you've got the rotating correct, don't be afraid to go full throttle. But perhaps the C=64 version was slightly easier because it couldn't handle vector graphics as well as the BBC.

+racefaceec90 You missed out so much Race, it was a stunning game. Also at the time was Paradroid. Another graphically poor (they all were then, kids are spoiled now) but so much in depth game. Viking raiders as well. Jet Set Willy. Manic Miner. Such a great time. no worries, no bills and you could just get on with gaming. Now it's bills, council tax and politics. I left school in 85, nothing, Thatcher Govt. I joined up. But I was and still am a gamer at heart. I have Xbox's, Playstations, the works. But Elite has always been the best in entertainment.

Meh, the NES and SNES had way better and more memorable games than any PC had back then

racefaceec90 I find the NES version a little easier to get into. Bit of a learning curve on dealing with the interface but still easier than the keyboard shortcuts on the home computer versions.

I remember it came with a novella that helped immerse you into the world as well.

Did you play ED? :)

@@theodorleijonbergandreasse3228 Hey Man, how are you :D I bought it some time ago, but never even installed. Always letting it for after some other games. I played the combat demo though, really liked it :D

@@ivanfidelis dang you should hop on now then! It's a great game and a great experience.

Except minus trading, minus space, minus ships, minus space ports, minus pirates, minus space combat, minus upgrades, minus shields, minus missiles, minus ... well. Minus everything that made Elite Elite.

BaSH PROMPT I meant in in there unusual use of free will, self driven goals and atmosphere not in there gameplay features,... as you would know if you had read all my post just because two games have different settings and mechanics doesn't mean you can't compare them in other respects P.S. hate to nit pick but minecraft does have trading and upgrades

Clara Pagett I got what you meant.

PirateFromVoid greetings from the future

Nah. only people who played the game back then would be interested. I know I did and it was hard for me to watch it in 240p. I figure most kids today wouldn't touch anything below 480p.

true.

David Cook Way to go dude. :D I practically wore out Electron kybd playing Elite. I even fitted an extra 3.5mm jack socket so I could route the audio direct to a hifi. All this with just a 14" B&W TV...

mapesdhs It was a classic for sure (absolute genius from Mr Bell & Mr Brabham). I also played in on a B & W Telly back in the 80's (although we weren't missing anything as the game was totally monochrome on the Electron, lol). My brother was really good at it but I tended to be naughty and play as a fugitive.

David Cook Best run I ever managed was 35t of narcotics bought for 0.2, sold for 107 each. The journey was one hell of a scrap. :D Normally I didn't trade in such stuff, but it was too much of a fun chance to pass up. Strange thing, when I finally saw the Beeb disc version, I wasn't keen on the look of it, the game looked too colourful. I preferred the way it looked on a friend's C64. In ED, I currently have 30M cash, saving for an Asp, using a maxed-out Cobra to run cargo missions of whatever kind make most moolah. :D Who can ignore 480K for a single shipment of slaves, hehe! I'll never forget the original though, I played it for months. I even built a sort of cubicle out of chair backs & blankets to block out all unwanted light. :D

mapesdhs Good stuff. Yeah those pesky viper ships were always on my tail. I remember seeing the BBC Micro disc version being demonstrated on Micro Live programme, it did look really fast. The C64 one was good, then the Amiga had the vectors filled in.

Perhaps they weren't included, they weren't hard to find on the original BBC Micro floppy version but weren't included on cassette

***** Star Raiders? That was a sprite-based pseudo-3D game. It wasn't true 3D, and it wasn't an open world game. You had a specific mission, which was to clear all sectors of enemy craft. Its combat was closer to that of Missile Command or Tailgunner than to Elite. Very little overlap in tech or mechanics.

***** Star Trader was a text-based game (with a map) written in BASIC. So its similarities to Elite are: 1. It involved trading 2. It involved space You're REALLY stretching here.

***** Where and when did they make that claim? Sounds like something you made up.

KaitainCPS Battlezone wasn't on home computers at the time. what's being claimed is that at the time, the big companies thought it was impossible to do on HOME COMPUTERS. something which the creators of elite made work with a bit of creative thinking approaching the programming method.

ert000 I'm sorry, but the quote is, "Those early 2D games were produced by some of the biggest companies in the world, like EMI and Atari", and it says this while showing Atari's "Battlezone". At the very least that's lousy editing.

Oh, doing stuff in Assembly became quite a thing among BBC Micro owners....