Many games are good, some innovative and a few revolutionary. Above are just single masterpieces – Dafabet India one of the founding fathers of open worlds and 3D technology. On the occasion of the 35th anniversary, we shine a light on the development of the long-running space simulation series.
In the early 1980s, the world of digital gaming was in turmoil: the epic video game crash ended the boom of the Atari VCS 2600 success, the Nintendo Famicom console (known here as the Nintendo Entertainment System) celebrated its breakthrough, and home computers like the Commodore 64 were on the rise in both the US and Europe. At this time, young Cambridge students Ian Bell and David Braben have a bold idea: they want to develop a polished sci-fi game in which players explore the entire universe in a spaceship and enjoy maximum freedom.
Elite: a completely new gaming experience
It took the two Brits three years to finally realise their plan in 1984: Elite originally appeared for the BBC Micro home computer popular in the UK at the time, and the first version consisted of eight galaxies, with 256 planets each. Although players are not allowed to land on them, they can dock with stations floating in orbit. Each station offers all kinds of trade goods, including food, computer equipment or slaves (!). You can also equip your own spaceship with more cargo space, better weapons or an extremely useful but also quite expensive docking computer. After all, the stations are constantly rotating around their axis, making the course to the narrow docking hole a test of patience – including a series of “Game Over” messages after an unsuccessful attempt.
Ironically, the lack of a clear game objective is Elite’s great strength: you can, for example, travel around the universe as a peaceful merchant and legally earn a small fortune. Alternatively, stock up on weapons and hunt down harmless merchant ships. Meanwhile, the especially brave ones start a career as a bounty hunter and earn solid bonuses by fighting pirates. Or you can simply get yourself an asteroid laser and loot the resources of the lifeless rocks that fall through Digi-Space
All this may not impress many in 2019, but in 1984 such freedom of gameplay is unheard of. Most game developers of the time relied on classic platform jumps (Jumpman, Manic Miner) or simple shooting orgies (Defender, Zaxxon). Even more complex games are limited to a few play screens (such as the action-strategy combination Archon), consist of text-based deserts (such as Infocom’s sci-fi adventure Suspended) or are designed only for patient strategy fans (see Eastern Front). Elite, on the other hand, is huge, innovative and three-dimensional. Although the game is rather slow and the journey to the planet takes a few minutes, the innovative technology is mesmerising. We can move freely in all directions, and orbital stations and foreign spaceships are shown as wireframe models with just the right perspective. The well-designed radar also provides the necessary visibility and prevents orientation problems.
As a small bonus, the original Elite version offers two secret missions that are only available after you destroy a certain number of spaceships and reach certain galaxies. Little things like this are the cherry on the cake and keep players hooked in the long run.
Pioneering to the last bit
Now every seasoned programmer wonders: how did the developers do it back then? How does such a first-rate game with a solar system of 2048 fit into BBC Micro (Model A) in just 16Kbytes (read correctly: Kilobytes!) of RAM?
Firstly, through various technical tricks, Ian Bell and David Braben have tickled 22KB off the hardware, which is still very little. Finally, an uncompressed WordPad file of 22,500 characters (which, incidentally, is about the length of this article) comes out the same size. Also, the game is written entirely in assembly language. The programming language is very complex and therefore difficult to master, but at the same time, it is fast and perfectly suited to optimization.
Thirdly, the entire universe is procedurally generated and created using the so-called Fibonacci sequence. The principle, developed by the mathematician Leonardo da Pisa in 1202, requires several numerical values that are continually added to create new data. Elite automatically converts this into important information, such as the name of a planet or its size. In fact, Bell and Braben kept trying the numbers until they were satisfied with the resulting galaxies
The high quality and uniqueness of Elite brings enormous sales success for its inventors: the BBC Micro version is sold over 100,000 times – about one in five computer owners buy it. The space simulation was so ahead of its time that it wasn’t until 1989 that Gremlin Graphics FOFT: Federation of Free Traders entered the market as a competitor, which was, however, technically overwhelmed. Elite would be released for numerous other computer systems before 1991, as well as for the Nintendo Entertainment System 8-bit console; we present the most important adaptations in our pictorial series. Even years after its release, Oroigina is considered a current hit and consistently receives positive reviews. This achievement is all the more remarkable
Frontier: Elite 2: A Universe for Life
However, the calls from elite fans for a true successor are now getting louder and louder. Ian Bell and David Braben have been thinking about it since the publication of their masterpiece. However, they quickly shelved any plans because the currently available hardware offers no scope for a sensible further development of the Elite concept.
While Ian Bell gradually loses interest in game development, David Braben remains in business and finally begins development of Frontier: Elite 2 in 1988. It takes him another five years, during which time he develops the sequel almost single-handedly and almost without influence. from his old colleagues. Frontier: Elite 2 was released in late 1993 and, unlike its legendary predecessor, is one of the most controversial works in gaming history.
During development, Braben focused mainly on two aspects: an even larger universe and as much realism as possible. There are no less than 100 billion (!) solar systems teeming with planets and stations in the program code. Although the former still look very bare, they sometimes conceal a small spaceport to land on.
The flight controls, which want to be as physically correct as possible, are more than daring. Best example: because the player is in a vacuum with his ship, he can theoretically accelerate to the speed of light. However, there is one catch: inertia. Let’s say you already have a lot of speed, causing your speedometer to shift from kilometres per hour to kilometres per second. However, if you turn now, only your line of sight changes. Due to mass and inertia, it takes some time before your ship’s engines can fully turn around and you’ll actually go on a different course. The same applies to slowing down or turning around, so you must react early, heading towards the planet, otherwise there will be an explosion.
Since acceleration is based on the laws of physics, and covering very long distances takes forever, you can speed up time by tens and tens of thousands at the touch of a button in Frontier: Elite 2. The problem here: if you intercept an enemy spaceship, the game switches to normal speed. And when you’re hurtling through space at several thousand kilometres per second, changing your trajectory is almost impossible. Travelling from one system to another would take too long, even with this frame-by-frame concept, so Frontier goes beyond the physics we know and gives you a futuristic hyperspace jump.
In other respects too, Braben has turned the screw of complexity on the elite successor, resulting in a sluggish start. Compared to its predecessor, you have other spaceships, significantly more merchandise and – thanks to a random number generator – countless missions at your disposal. The real story is still missing, as the Federation and the Empire are two warring factions. You can carry out military missions for both, gaining glory on the one hand and making each other unpopular on the other.
From cult hit to niche title
It all sounds like an astronaut’s dream. And there are quite a few players who love Frontier: Elite 2 for its vast universe that no living person can fully explore. But while the procedural technology of its predecessor’s game world has been consistently lauded, criticism has suddenly sprinkled in. The main reason is the general increase in the quality of the games released at the time, so there are now plenty of games with more content, more graphics and, above all, more variety. We experience a complex story in the flight simulator Strike Commander, get lost in the complex levels of the first-person shooter Doom, or explore completely different parallel worlds in the RPG Ultima Underworld 2.
The Frontier universe is certainly much bigger than all the examples just mentioned combined. However, some sceptics believe that somehow it all looks the same! Unsurprisingly, many players are perplexed as to why they would want to explore the most remote corners of the virtual universe when there is virtually no significant difference with an almost identical starting system. The same goes for the randomly generated missions, which are completely interchangeable and universal.
What’s more: while the original Elite was unique and innovative, the successor feels cramped and overly complex. Physically correct flight controls aren’t to everyone’s liking, because they swap realism for accessibility and gameplay. And the user manual proves extremely difficult to get used to because of the cluttered icon system and surprisingly awkward star maps.
Last but not least, the graphics, with their bright colours and poorly-drawn icons, are a real disappointment compared to their predecessor’s revolutionary technology. All this is all the more striking when you consider that just a month before another PC space game was released: Wing Commander: Privateer. The space game has only a few planets in its luggage, offers a much simpler trading system and is limited to arcade flight controls. But the chic optics, ingenious soundtrack and touch-and-go plot are convincing.
To this day, Frontier: Elite 2 oscillates between inventive and boring. David Braben has undeniably programmed an entire universe and, like Elite, created something unique. At the same time, however, he reveals the essential problem of procedural world-building: what is the point of 100 billion star systems if they look like twins? Without a certain amount of imagination, the fun of the game goes down the drain. On the other hand, if you get involved and dream of foreign stars with the right attitude, you’ll stay in virtual space for months or even years.
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