I have noticed, over the last year or so, that some of my clothes - particularly some of my favourite shirts - have been getting tighter. With several, it has come to the point where they strain at the buttons when I sit down (and, thanks to their propensity to fold over along the line of buttons, reveal glimpses of my pasty, furry flesh that I might prefer they didn't).
The funny thing about this is that I hadn't noticed my waistline expanding significantly during this time... certainly, no-one else has mentioned it. In fact the last time anyone so much as asked if I'd put on weight since they last saw me (assuming it was a significant length of time) was probably over a decade ago.
I'm not sure I've ever suffered terribly from vanity. Due to a combination of being tormented as a child about being ugly/weird/fat/a long-haired hippy, I don't tend to worry too much about my appearance (though my now-shorter hair is a source of some frustration due to becoming unruly after a couple of months' growth and because it's slowly thinning on top), and there's a tendency for males in my family to get a little larger after the age of about 30. Middle-Age Spread doesn't concern me overly...
What it does mean, though, is that some of my older clothes - such as the aforementioned most prized shirts, a couple of which are, after all, more than a decade old themselves - will have to be replaced.
I'm sure there are some folks out there who just read that last line and though "What the actual fuck? This dude has been wearing some of the same shirts for ten years?"... To which I shall inevitably respond by referring them back to the opening sentence of the third paragraph, and add that the shirts in question are seriously fuckin' cool. I mean, one of them - which I commonly and very fondly refer to as "my gay cowboy shirt" was purchased while on holiday in New York, taking advantage of the discount card offered by Macy's to any tourist that walked in their door and visited the customer service desk. It was also my first ever designer shirt (Guess, if you must know :P), setting the precedent that has since allowed several other designer shirts into my wardrobe, after I spent my teens and early 20s pouring scorn on such foppery.
But I digress.
The problem with the idea of replacing some of these shirts is that the style is no longer en vogue (or, quite probably, in Vogue). I'd quite like to replace these shirts with something similar, but the kind of thing I was buying back then just doesn't seem to be as common these days. When I took my girlfriend shopping over the last weekend (neatly reversing the gender stereotypes by dragging her around Menswear departments throughout the many clothing shops in Uxbridge), I was more than a little disappointed to find that lumberjack shirts seem to be the in thing at the moment. That kind of thing is OK... but it's not the sort of thing I'd fill my wardrobe with.
Distressingly few shops, in fact, had anything I was especially interested in, let alone in the right size... but I have found - so far - that moving up from Small shirts to Medium makes them even more difficult to find in stock.
Amusingly, when I picked up a new pair of jeans - to replace a pair that had worn through between the legs (it's not exactly 'chub rub', but I certainly don't walk like a cowboy who's been too long in the saddle) - I decided to get the size larger than my usual because my previous usual now tends to be a little tight around the hips and (ahem) groin. The last time I bought a pair of jeans in the larger size, I had to hold them up the first day I wore them, and dive into a shop to buy a belt before getting to the office, lest they end up round my ankles at some awkward moment. This new pair can still be pulled off without unfastening, but they're a better fit overall. Kudos to Asda, I guess...
Also, on an entirely unrelated note, I've started purchasing boxer shorts as underwear to replace those that have become worn out (I don't think any of my pants are a decade old, but I honestly can't be certain). I used to dislike them as they offered no support and tended to ride up my legs during the day... but now, aside from finding certain parts of my anatomy hanging in unexpected ways, I find them far more comfortable. I'm buying them a size larger than I need to, since I'm clearly on the cusp between waist sizes now, and the fit is tolerable... and very airy.
So while I may no longer be the lithe figure of my youth, I'm not desperately unhappy about my current build. I can tell just by looking that the state of my waistline is due more to spending far too long sat down and, to be honest, slightly slouched (sedentary office work is clearly the scourge of modern life). I know I'm not completely unfit because I don't get desperately out of breath too easily. I know I'm not overeating because, while I'm working, at least, I don't get (or give myself) the opportunity.
In many ways, this is a follow up to - or a continuation of - the previous post: I like my life... and I'm pretty happy in my skin.
Who'd have thought?
As an aside, I noted a distinct upswing in visitors to this blog the day the new series of Doctor Who started. Apologies for not getting onto that (and other things) immediately... as you may have gathered, other things have been going on... Normal service will be resumed soon. Ish.
Wednesday, 10 September 2014
Sunday, 7 September 2014
I Like My Life
OK, I'm slipping again - over two months since my last post here... But, in a way, that's kind of a good thing.
Work has been a bit manic recently, August being one of two properly busy months in their calendar (the other, coincidentally, being December... and it all seems to be through exceptionally poor scheduling). When I say 'manic', what this amounts to is about an hour and a half of overtime spread over three days a couple of weeks ago... and I have only two deadlines this month. Compare and contrast to my last full-time job, which would keep me there till 6 or 7pm almost every night because there were six deadlines per team, per month, plus the minutia of keeping it all going.
My counterpart hasn't had it quite so easy, but it seems that his Sales teams just aren't as reliable or helpful as mine (for example one title manager was still selling on his press day, today, and giving advertisers till 5pm to get their copy in... amusingly, this led to one advertiser being very proud of himself for getting his copy in at 4pm - "an hour early!"). Even so, his overtime has been comparatively minimal, just a bit more frequent.
Making matters more interesting, our boss was on holiday during the busy period, and yet remained in just enough contact with the office to be irritating without being in the least bit helpful. Emails regularly flood in issuing edicts and stirring up trouble, but enquiries go unanswered.
The rest of the team are ticking along, getting stuff done, working late where necessary... I felt quite guilty walking at almost on time while things were 'manic', but I'm always up to date... and, with a week's holiday booked after the last deadline in August, I made a point of making a start on this month's work just after sending my last August magazine to press, just so I wasn't leaving anything for the others to do on my behalf while I'm away (quite unlike our boss, who ignored a couple of important marketing projects and moved one of her regular magazine press days so we had even more work to do during the busy period and while she was away. Classy).
But the thing is, I'm really enjoying it. The increased sense of urgency this month has made it - bizarrely - more fun. It's not hectic enough to trigger my workaholic tendencies, but it's certainly keeping me occupied.
When I got back to work after my holiday (another visit to my girlfriend's family) I found that things somehow managed to go horribly wrong in my absence. Based on what went wrong and how/why, I'm certain it would have gone wrong even if I was there, but it's an interesting echo of my last full-time job, not least because, following a short meeting, my counterpart and our boss decided (jokingly) that it was all my fault. I hadn't the heart to tell them that joke follows me around...
And, out in the real world, I'm slowly getting used to having my girlfriend living with me. After about five years of living on my own, in my own place, it felt a bit weird to begin with. Part of me kept sort-of expecting her to go back to her own place eventually (despite knowing full-well that, now she's quit university, 'her own place' would have to be her parents' home) and was inwardly bemoaning the lack of privacy (which, let's face it, was my motivation for buying a home of my own and moving out of my parents' house in the first place), but I can't deny the benefits of having her around.
It's not just the practical stuff - for example, she'll invariably have prepared dinner so that it's ready to serve when I get in from work. Despite being a bit of a loner (some would say 'hermit') by nature, it's nice to have company... someone to talk to in the evenings, someone with whom to share my favourite movies and TV shows (some of which we already had in common), someone to exchange hugs with, someone to snuggle up with in bed. I've never really felt that I'd be entirely comfortable sharing my life with someone to this extent, but it's been far easier than I'd expected. Having someone else around means I'm (slightly) less prone to wasting all my time doing nothing, and am generally a little less self-absorbed. We often come up with ideas of things to do together, but we're also doing our own thing occasionally, so everything seems that much more fulfilling. By the time the end of the day comes, both of us (usually) feel ready to get some kip in preparation for the next day.
That said, living with someone who suffers from Depression and anxiety isn't the simplest life one could imagine. Most of the time, things are fine... but there have been episodes were, having arranged to go out and meet friends, she's had an anxiety attack at the last minute (though, I suspect, they could have been brewing for days before they actually became evident to me) and either not gone out at all or come back within a few minutes. On one recent occasion, I actually caused a meltdown one evening. For almost of full 24 hours, she denied that anything I'd done was wrong and said that everything was her fault - pretty much the usual mantra when Depression takes hold. When I got home from work the following day, she could barely look at me or talk to me, and the hug that usually greets my arrival was delivered with elbows and clenched fists. Then, just when I started worrying that our visit to her family would end with me coming home alone, she seemed to just snap out of it... realising - she said - that the situation wasn't her 'fault' and that I could have been a bit more sensitive about things the night before.
And when I later mentioned my fear of her returning home, she actually laughed at the idea. "It's much better here."
Communication is at the heart of all relationships, and it's a constant learning process. Very little of my previous relationship experience is applicable to this one and, while my girlfriend and I are very similar in many ways - we may not finish each other's sentences, but we're often thinking of the same context-related joke - she's not quite at the point where she can comfortably ask for things (other than an occasional back-rub) or make suggestions or talk about all of the things that are bothering/worrying her... though that seems to be more to do with things in her past than it is anything in our current home environment.
And, by and large, she does seem to be in a better place these days - both geographically (home was always too quiet, with too little to do, compared to London) and emotionally. Having quit university earlier this year, she's quietly excited about her upcoming OU courses and, despite experiencing some writers' block on some additional, unrelated work, she's clearly raring to go.
Even better, she's getting involved in some voluntary work in one of her myriad areas of interest and speaking openly with her new GP about her illness. As a result, she is due to partake in some group therapy soon. While I'm not expecting to become involved in that, talking with other people should help our communication indirectly.
On a semi-related note, it could be argued that I'm the kiss of death for her sister's relationships. Each time I've met one of her boyfriends on our visits to the family home, they've broken up shortly after. The 'current' boyfriend broke up with her (again?) by phone, while we were there (literally in the next room, as it happened) but they've since got back together again (much to the displeasure of the parents) and are already arguing. Now, I know none of that is actually my fault - the younger sister's taste in boys could be charitably described as 'picking up strays' - but the timing has been uncanny...
It also highlights one of the other benefits of my current relationship: we don't argue. There are times that I sense some of my behaviour hasn't been received especially well... but it's evidently not bad enough to cause any significant problems and, despite my girlfriend constantly blaming herself for anything that goes wrong and describing herself as 'rubbish' and/or 'lazy', she's really anything but, and continues to be as positive an influence in my life as I hope to be in hers.
Work has been a bit manic recently, August being one of two properly busy months in their calendar (the other, coincidentally, being December... and it all seems to be through exceptionally poor scheduling). When I say 'manic', what this amounts to is about an hour and a half of overtime spread over three days a couple of weeks ago... and I have only two deadlines this month. Compare and contrast to my last full-time job, which would keep me there till 6 or 7pm almost every night because there were six deadlines per team, per month, plus the minutia of keeping it all going.
My counterpart hasn't had it quite so easy, but it seems that his Sales teams just aren't as reliable or helpful as mine (for example one title manager was still selling on his press day, today, and giving advertisers till 5pm to get their copy in... amusingly, this led to one advertiser being very proud of himself for getting his copy in at 4pm - "an hour early!"). Even so, his overtime has been comparatively minimal, just a bit more frequent.
Making matters more interesting, our boss was on holiday during the busy period, and yet remained in just enough contact with the office to be irritating without being in the least bit helpful. Emails regularly flood in issuing edicts and stirring up trouble, but enquiries go unanswered.
The rest of the team are ticking along, getting stuff done, working late where necessary... I felt quite guilty walking at almost on time while things were 'manic', but I'm always up to date... and, with a week's holiday booked after the last deadline in August, I made a point of making a start on this month's work just after sending my last August magazine to press, just so I wasn't leaving anything for the others to do on my behalf while I'm away (quite unlike our boss, who ignored a couple of important marketing projects and moved one of her regular magazine press days so we had even more work to do during the busy period and while she was away. Classy).
But the thing is, I'm really enjoying it. The increased sense of urgency this month has made it - bizarrely - more fun. It's not hectic enough to trigger my workaholic tendencies, but it's certainly keeping me occupied.
When I got back to work after my holiday (another visit to my girlfriend's family) I found that things somehow managed to go horribly wrong in my absence. Based on what went wrong and how/why, I'm certain it would have gone wrong even if I was there, but it's an interesting echo of my last full-time job, not least because, following a short meeting, my counterpart and our boss decided (jokingly) that it was all my fault. I hadn't the heart to tell them that joke follows me around...
And, out in the real world, I'm slowly getting used to having my girlfriend living with me. After about five years of living on my own, in my own place, it felt a bit weird to begin with. Part of me kept sort-of expecting her to go back to her own place eventually (despite knowing full-well that, now she's quit university, 'her own place' would have to be her parents' home) and was inwardly bemoaning the lack of privacy (which, let's face it, was my motivation for buying a home of my own and moving out of my parents' house in the first place), but I can't deny the benefits of having her around.
It's not just the practical stuff - for example, she'll invariably have prepared dinner so that it's ready to serve when I get in from work. Despite being a bit of a loner (some would say 'hermit') by nature, it's nice to have company... someone to talk to in the evenings, someone with whom to share my favourite movies and TV shows (some of which we already had in common), someone to exchange hugs with, someone to snuggle up with in bed. I've never really felt that I'd be entirely comfortable sharing my life with someone to this extent, but it's been far easier than I'd expected. Having someone else around means I'm (slightly) less prone to wasting all my time doing nothing, and am generally a little less self-absorbed. We often come up with ideas of things to do together, but we're also doing our own thing occasionally, so everything seems that much more fulfilling. By the time the end of the day comes, both of us (usually) feel ready to get some kip in preparation for the next day.
That said, living with someone who suffers from Depression and anxiety isn't the simplest life one could imagine. Most of the time, things are fine... but there have been episodes were, having arranged to go out and meet friends, she's had an anxiety attack at the last minute (though, I suspect, they could have been brewing for days before they actually became evident to me) and either not gone out at all or come back within a few minutes. On one recent occasion, I actually caused a meltdown one evening. For almost of full 24 hours, she denied that anything I'd done was wrong and said that everything was her fault - pretty much the usual mantra when Depression takes hold. When I got home from work the following day, she could barely look at me or talk to me, and the hug that usually greets my arrival was delivered with elbows and clenched fists. Then, just when I started worrying that our visit to her family would end with me coming home alone, she seemed to just snap out of it... realising - she said - that the situation wasn't her 'fault' and that I could have been a bit more sensitive about things the night before.
And when I later mentioned my fear of her returning home, she actually laughed at the idea. "It's much better here."
Communication is at the heart of all relationships, and it's a constant learning process. Very little of my previous relationship experience is applicable to this one and, while my girlfriend and I are very similar in many ways - we may not finish each other's sentences, but we're often thinking of the same context-related joke - she's not quite at the point where she can comfortably ask for things (other than an occasional back-rub) or make suggestions or talk about all of the things that are bothering/worrying her... though that seems to be more to do with things in her past than it is anything in our current home environment.
And, by and large, she does seem to be in a better place these days - both geographically (home was always too quiet, with too little to do, compared to London) and emotionally. Having quit university earlier this year, she's quietly excited about her upcoming OU courses and, despite experiencing some writers' block on some additional, unrelated work, she's clearly raring to go.
Even better, she's getting involved in some voluntary work in one of her myriad areas of interest and speaking openly with her new GP about her illness. As a result, she is due to partake in some group therapy soon. While I'm not expecting to become involved in that, talking with other people should help our communication indirectly.
On a semi-related note, it could be argued that I'm the kiss of death for her sister's relationships. Each time I've met one of her boyfriends on our visits to the family home, they've broken up shortly after. The 'current' boyfriend broke up with her (again?) by phone, while we were there (literally in the next room, as it happened) but they've since got back together again (much to the displeasure of the parents) and are already arguing. Now, I know none of that is actually my fault - the younger sister's taste in boys could be charitably described as 'picking up strays' - but the timing has been uncanny...
It also highlights one of the other benefits of my current relationship: we don't argue. There are times that I sense some of my behaviour hasn't been received especially well... but it's evidently not bad enough to cause any significant problems and, despite my girlfriend constantly blaming herself for anything that goes wrong and describing herself as 'rubbish' and/or 'lazy', she's really anything but, and continues to be as positive an influence in my life as I hope to be in hers.
Wednesday, 2 July 2014
Adventures in Space Trading
Well, I've remembered one of the things I wanted to blog about!
People of a certain age might remember an ancient computer game, released first on the Acorn/BBC computer (on a 5 1/4" floppy disk, no less) then converted to just about every imaginable format (otherwise known as 'the popular ones') over the next few years. That game was so wildly popular that a documentary was made about it, presented by Peter Snow, which revealed that it had been rejected by several publishers before being taken on by Acornsoft.
That game, that seminal experience, was Elite.
I don't mind admitting that, back in the day (and once my father had sorted out a copy of the game that loaded in just after the horrific LensLok copy protection perpetrated upon owners of the Spectrum conversion) I spent many hours playing that game... many hours over many days, over many weeks, over several years, in fact. It wasn't so much a game as a way of life, for a while. I amassed a fair old fortune and achieved a combat rating of Dangerous... One of the things I admired most about the game was its ranking system which (very sensibly) suggested that an 'Average' pilot (and an 'Above Average' one, for that matter) was still not considered 'Competent'.
But the 48K Spectrum version was substantially cut-down. Several ships were missing, there was only ever one kind of space station (the Coriolis) and I'm not sure any of the 'missions' were included. It had all eight procedurally-generated galaxies, but I only ever ventured a short distance away from Lave, and increased my combat rating the cheaty way: force-failing a hyperspace jump between two very close systems and shooting the crap out of the Thargoids that invariably awaited me in Witch Space.
I played that game so damned much I started dreaming about wireframe space battles. I still remember one particularly vivid dream in which I found (and battled) a mythical giant space snake.
Many years later, David Braben came up with a pair of sequels - Frontier and First Encounters. These were released before they were entirely ready due to pressure from the publisher, and never quite lived up to the promise of being "The Sequel to Elite". I played them... or at least the first of them... but didn't enjoy them half as much, despite the option to buy bigger and better ships, and the massive galaxy based loosely upon our own (and including an accurately-modelled Sol system!). Frontier's reach far exceeded its grasp, and the introduction of 'true' physics to the spaceflight effectively crippled the game for many players, not just me. Frontier's docking computer was a fully functional automatic pilot which could take you from arrival in a new system to docking with a space station or landing on a planet, all of which could be switched into super-fast-forward to avoid the tedium of flying through space for several months of real time. Unfortunately, it could easily fall victim to the game's bugs and/or physics, and was just as likely to crash through a planet in an attempt to land on the opposite side. My abiding memory of Frontier is attempting to land on a planet in a binary star system using the docking computer. Due to the complex gravities in the system, the docking computer was unable to plot a course that got anywhere near the planet before my fuel ran out, leaving me stranded in space, forever orbiting the binary stars as an unwilling satellite.
First Encounters reintroduced the Thargoids, added more new starships and 'improved' on the graphics engine, offering an early, very rough attempt at texture mapping. I believe it garnered better reviews than the first 'sequel', but it was still underdeveloped. At the time, my computer wasn't up to the task of running the game, so I skipped on it entirely.
Aside from brief experiments with emulators - both for the Spectrum and BBC - I haven't played Elite for absolutely ages... Probably something approaching two decades, considering the last version I spent any time on was the Amiga remix, with its super-colourful shaded vector graphics and graphical user interface in the space stations.
A couple of years ago, David Braben announced that he and his team at Frontier Developments were starting to work on the first 'true' Elite sequel, Elite: Dangerous. Going back to the more fluid, fly-by-wire faux-physics of the original and taking advantage of the massive improvements in processor and graphics hardware that have turned up since the original game, this would be a massively-multiplayer online space trading and combat game. I've been keeping half an eye on the development of the game but, again, I lack the hardware to really make use of even the Beta-testing stages.
At some point earlier this year, I discovered Oolite, which is a complete update of the original game. With freely-downloadable extensions it can run using texture mapping, bump mapping and all kinds of lovely graphical tricks... or it can run in BBC-like wireframe mode. It really is that game I played so much all those years ago, just with more contemporary visuals... And it's basically the game I've been waiting for all this time (no disrespect intended to Braben and Co. and I'm sure I'll love ED if I ever get to play it).
I knew this when I first tried to dock with a space station without a docking computer, and felt that familiar lurch in my stomach as the docking port filled the screen (now a 1920x1080 widescreen monitor, rather than a TV screen at 256x192 pixels!) while I tried - and, many times, failed - to match my ship's rotation to that of the station.
I knew this when I was first attacked by pirates - though such occurrences seem less frequent in Oolite than they did in the Speccy version of Elite - and realised that my underpowered Cobra Mk III was no match for a Python and a pair of Kraits, so I'd have to figure out how to avoid pirates until I could upgrade my armaments (tip: Pirates hover along the direct route from the hyperspace entry point buoy and the local space station, so fly away on a perpendicular course, at least until the buoy is off your scanner, then aim back toward the planet).
I knew this when I first realised that many space stations are actually visible, hovering around the planet, the moment you arrive in a new system... Hell, you can even see them rotating on a 1920x1080 monitor!
Above all, I knew this was the game I'd been waiting for when, having amassed enough money to allow me to venture forth through the first galaxy, I started heading toward the galactic centre to strike off in a new direction... and encountered Thargoids in the wild.
I should mention also that it's quite possible to see a battle raging in the distance, between your point of entry to a system and the planet, because laser fire is visible at incredible distances in this version of the game. When I first saw a Thargoid ship, I wasn't even sure what it was, just that its laser beams were an interesting new colour, and that it was very aggressive - seemingly wrecking asteroids just as keenly as it did any ship unwise enough to approach it. Like mine... Because once you have a Thargoid's attention, you'd have to be a far better pilot than I to stand a chance against it. You certainly can't escape.
And, just like the original, each Thargoid ship can launch a series of drone craft to increase their firepower, so you go in thinking you're only tackling one ship, and soon find yourself in the middle of a swarm.
It's been a long time since any game caused the sort of gut-wrenching fear and the absolute dread of a new location that Oolite has elicited, and for a rather interesting reason, too... Elite and Oolite suggest I may actually get space sick, even though I don't suffer from any other form of travel sickness. And clearly I experience a much more visceral fear in docking with a simulated space station or facing combat with another spacecraft when I am hopelessly outmatched, than I do while guiding my human avatar through a haunted, ice-stricken town... a fear that's not even eased by the sampled voice of Bill Paxton proclaiming "Game over, man... Game over!", which is the only 'penalty' for dying in Oolite.
I'd heartily recommend Oolite to any fan of the original game, and it might be worth downloading if you've heard about Elite: Dangerous, but aren't sure it's the game for you. Personally, I've had to force myself to stop playing, as I'd started to obsess about the commodities markets, and had been spending far too many evenings in space, rather than getting important things done...
...And if that isn't a recommendation, I don't know what is!
People of a certain age might remember an ancient computer game, released first on the Acorn/BBC computer (on a 5 1/4" floppy disk, no less) then converted to just about every imaginable format (otherwise known as 'the popular ones') over the next few years. That game was so wildly popular that a documentary was made about it, presented by Peter Snow, which revealed that it had been rejected by several publishers before being taken on by Acornsoft.
That game, that seminal experience, was Elite.
I don't mind admitting that, back in the day (and once my father had sorted out a copy of the game that loaded in just after the horrific LensLok copy protection perpetrated upon owners of the Spectrum conversion) I spent many hours playing that game... many hours over many days, over many weeks, over several years, in fact. It wasn't so much a game as a way of life, for a while. I amassed a fair old fortune and achieved a combat rating of Dangerous... One of the things I admired most about the game was its ranking system which (very sensibly) suggested that an 'Average' pilot (and an 'Above Average' one, for that matter) was still not considered 'Competent'.
But the 48K Spectrum version was substantially cut-down. Several ships were missing, there was only ever one kind of space station (the Coriolis) and I'm not sure any of the 'missions' were included. It had all eight procedurally-generated galaxies, but I only ever ventured a short distance away from Lave, and increased my combat rating the cheaty way: force-failing a hyperspace jump between two very close systems and shooting the crap out of the Thargoids that invariably awaited me in Witch Space.
I played that game so damned much I started dreaming about wireframe space battles. I still remember one particularly vivid dream in which I found (and battled) a mythical giant space snake.
Many years later, David Braben came up with a pair of sequels - Frontier and First Encounters. These were released before they were entirely ready due to pressure from the publisher, and never quite lived up to the promise of being "The Sequel to Elite". I played them... or at least the first of them... but didn't enjoy them half as much, despite the option to buy bigger and better ships, and the massive galaxy based loosely upon our own (and including an accurately-modelled Sol system!). Frontier's reach far exceeded its grasp, and the introduction of 'true' physics to the spaceflight effectively crippled the game for many players, not just me. Frontier's docking computer was a fully functional automatic pilot which could take you from arrival in a new system to docking with a space station or landing on a planet, all of which could be switched into super-fast-forward to avoid the tedium of flying through space for several months of real time. Unfortunately, it could easily fall victim to the game's bugs and/or physics, and was just as likely to crash through a planet in an attempt to land on the opposite side. My abiding memory of Frontier is attempting to land on a planet in a binary star system using the docking computer. Due to the complex gravities in the system, the docking computer was unable to plot a course that got anywhere near the planet before my fuel ran out, leaving me stranded in space, forever orbiting the binary stars as an unwilling satellite.
First Encounters reintroduced the Thargoids, added more new starships and 'improved' on the graphics engine, offering an early, very rough attempt at texture mapping. I believe it garnered better reviews than the first 'sequel', but it was still underdeveloped. At the time, my computer wasn't up to the task of running the game, so I skipped on it entirely.
Aside from brief experiments with emulators - both for the Spectrum and BBC - I haven't played Elite for absolutely ages... Probably something approaching two decades, considering the last version I spent any time on was the Amiga remix, with its super-colourful shaded vector graphics and graphical user interface in the space stations.
A couple of years ago, David Braben announced that he and his team at Frontier Developments were starting to work on the first 'true' Elite sequel, Elite: Dangerous. Going back to the more fluid, fly-by-wire faux-physics of the original and taking advantage of the massive improvements in processor and graphics hardware that have turned up since the original game, this would be a massively-multiplayer online space trading and combat game. I've been keeping half an eye on the development of the game but, again, I lack the hardware to really make use of even the Beta-testing stages.
At some point earlier this year, I discovered Oolite, which is a complete update of the original game. With freely-downloadable extensions it can run using texture mapping, bump mapping and all kinds of lovely graphical tricks... or it can run in BBC-like wireframe mode. It really is that game I played so much all those years ago, just with more contemporary visuals... And it's basically the game I've been waiting for all this time (no disrespect intended to Braben and Co. and I'm sure I'll love ED if I ever get to play it).
I knew this when I first tried to dock with a space station without a docking computer, and felt that familiar lurch in my stomach as the docking port filled the screen (now a 1920x1080 widescreen monitor, rather than a TV screen at 256x192 pixels!) while I tried - and, many times, failed - to match my ship's rotation to that of the station.
I knew this when I was first attacked by pirates - though such occurrences seem less frequent in Oolite than they did in the Speccy version of Elite - and realised that my underpowered Cobra Mk III was no match for a Python and a pair of Kraits, so I'd have to figure out how to avoid pirates until I could upgrade my armaments (tip: Pirates hover along the direct route from the hyperspace entry point buoy and the local space station, so fly away on a perpendicular course, at least until the buoy is off your scanner, then aim back toward the planet).
I knew this when I first realised that many space stations are actually visible, hovering around the planet, the moment you arrive in a new system... Hell, you can even see them rotating on a 1920x1080 monitor!
Above all, I knew this was the game I'd been waiting for when, having amassed enough money to allow me to venture forth through the first galaxy, I started heading toward the galactic centre to strike off in a new direction... and encountered Thargoids in the wild.
I should mention also that it's quite possible to see a battle raging in the distance, between your point of entry to a system and the planet, because laser fire is visible at incredible distances in this version of the game. When I first saw a Thargoid ship, I wasn't even sure what it was, just that its laser beams were an interesting new colour, and that it was very aggressive - seemingly wrecking asteroids just as keenly as it did any ship unwise enough to approach it. Like mine... Because once you have a Thargoid's attention, you'd have to be a far better pilot than I to stand a chance against it. You certainly can't escape.
And, just like the original, each Thargoid ship can launch a series of drone craft to increase their firepower, so you go in thinking you're only tackling one ship, and soon find yourself in the middle of a swarm.
It's been a long time since any game caused the sort of gut-wrenching fear and the absolute dread of a new location that Oolite has elicited, and for a rather interesting reason, too... Elite and Oolite suggest I may actually get space sick, even though I don't suffer from any other form of travel sickness. And clearly I experience a much more visceral fear in docking with a simulated space station or facing combat with another spacecraft when I am hopelessly outmatched, than I do while guiding my human avatar through a haunted, ice-stricken town... a fear that's not even eased by the sampled voice of Bill Paxton proclaiming "Game over, man... Game over!", which is the only 'penalty' for dying in Oolite.
I'd heartily recommend Oolite to any fan of the original game, and it might be worth downloading if you've heard about Elite: Dangerous, but aren't sure it's the game for you. Personally, I've had to force myself to stop playing, as I'd started to obsess about the commodities markets, and had been spending far too many evenings in space, rather than getting important things done...
...And if that isn't a recommendation, I don't know what is!
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