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!
