Elite (video game)

Elite is a Video game of space trade published originally by Acornsoft on Micro BBC in 1984 then related to many of other computers. Writing and developed by David Braben and Beautiful Ian, Elite is generally regarded as one of the plays more innovating of the history of the video game.

Principle of play

The play takes seat in a universe made up of a great number of planets and space stations. The player incarnates a tradesman equipped with an armed cargo liner. The player has any latitude to practice a legal or illegal trade, while knowing that each planet and station with his own laws about the subject. An illegal trade sometimes more lucrative, but is made take risks with the player, who will have then to face police force, and pirates interested by his cargo. Legal trade, as for him, request more of ways and a thorough study of the supply good of first need, equipment, etc of each station and planet. Each goods and arm has its own obstruction, which asks for an effort of management to the player.

One never gains in Elite . One can simply progress to grow rich and acquire better vessels and weapons (according to the versions). One can on the other hand lose, while being poor, destroyed by a crash landing, or cut down during a combat with pirates and/or police force.

Programming

The great question is to know how made David Braben and Ian Bell to make hold the gigantic universe (eight galaxies and 2000 stars) of Elite in 20 KB.

For that, they applied the principle of the numbers Pseudo-aléatoire S: starting from a Seed and of a Algorithm, it is possible to generate a known succession of numbers. Elite uses this principle to generate the names of planets, their coordinates, cuts, type of economy. Each galaxy is generated starting from a different seed, of 6 bytes. To still reduce the size necessary, the seeds of the galaxies are calculated by making a rotation bit with bit of the seed of the first galaxy.

Versions

Other versions of the play exist, in particular on Archimedes, NEC PC-98 and SAM Coupé. Developers amateurs sometimes carried out conversions, for example to Commodore Plus/4, or brought modifications to the original play. Elite Advanced on Amiga, developed by AmiGer in 2003, thus brings new vessels, equipment and corrects some “bugs” original.

Elite More is a version improved official exit on DOS in 1991 .

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    • Anecdote

    The sequences of Arrimage take again the musical topic of the Beau the Danube blue of Johann Strauss, recalling to the memory the film 2001: the odyssey of space .

    The series

    • 1984 - Elite
    • 1991 - Elite More
    • 1993 - Frontier: Elite II
    • 1995 - Frontier: First Encounters
    • Elite 4 (announced since 2001, confirmed in 2004)

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