I've always had a soft spot for Elite ever since I played 'Frontier Elite II' on the Amiga in 1993. Although Elite and Frontier Elite II was vastly different in graphical quality, it still gave a space-sim sci-fi experience like no other! Allowing the user to fight in space, trade, complete missions and even in Frontier Elite II land on planets. In fact I'm not the only one to enjoy Elite, as a coder by the name of Aleksi Eeben, has released an unofficial port of Elite for the VIC-20 (32K + 3K RAM).
Here's the full dev from the website. "VIC 20 Elite is based on the C-64 source. VIC 20 specific graphics, text, keyboard & joystick input, and sound routines were written from scratch to replace the corresponding C-64 code. Of course, the complete enhanced Elite won’t fit within the VIC 20’s limited memory, so some features had to be left out. Following the original 1984 BBC Cassette and Acorn Electron version, the VIC 20 version omits extended planet descriptions, planetary details (craters and meridians), and the missions that appear further on in the game. The pause mode options are dropped, and there is no Find Planet option in Galactic Chart (that would be only really useful during missions).
"Three ship blueprints have been removed: Moray, that never spawns due to a bug; Constrictor, that only appears in a mission; and Cougar, which is so rare it’s seen maybe once in a lifetime. Ships that appear as both pirates and traders are optimized to share blueprints. This made it possible to include 30 different ships, 27 of which are unique design. Also, both Coriolis and Dodo Space Stations are in. For reference, the BBC Cassette and Acorn Electron versions only had 11–13 ships, so the VIC 20 version is arguably bigger and better! Even the suns are kept in, although they do slow things down a bit".
"This port relies heavily on Mark Moxon’s digital archaeology project about Elite on various 8-bit platforms. Check out his work at https://elite.bbcelite.com. Elite for the Commodore 64 was written by Ian Bell and David Braben and is copyright D. Braben and I. Bell, 1985. Mark Moxon’s thoroughly documented and analyzed source code is based on the source disks released on Ian Bell’s personal website: http://www.elitehomepage.org"
Interesting. How is speed comparison - vs C64, Plus/4 and C128 versions?
ReplyDeleteIt is a little faster due to the Vic's processor and screen, but also of course because the bitmap area where the vectors are drawn is smaller.
DeleteFaster than Elite 128?
DeleteElite + was my first experience in the 90’s. Got it free on a CD included with a PC Gamer magazine. I had a home computer back in the 80’s as did many.
ReplyDeleteIt also included Net Hack and Alternate Reality The City. I was amazed how much content and how massive these games were. I missed out on a lot of PC games during that era although I did play a few back in the day.
Elite reminded me of the wireframe Star Wars arcade game with more of the gameplay of games much later such as Wing Commander.
Had a really difficult time getting into the newer version Elite Dangerous because of it’s size and the limited amount of time I have.
I’ve seen quite a few ports of the original game. It will go down in history.
How cool is that! Awesome!
ReplyDelete