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Fully documented source code for Elite on the BBC Micro
- louthy 4y agoThe work Mark Moxon has been doing on this is incredible, as an ex-Beeb programmer it’s really great to see. Defo worth a Follow on twitter: https://twitter.com/markmoxon https://twitter.com/markmoxon
- LeoPanthera 4y agoHe's also on Mastodon. https://universeodon.com/@markmoxon https://universeodon.com/@markmoxon @markmoxon@universeodon.com
- Lio 4y agoAs soon as I saw this article I was trying to think how I knew the name. He was the editor of Acorn User magazine back in the day. Thanks for the Mastodon link.
- andrewstuart 4y agoI'd love to see the source code for Turrican 2 on the Commodore 64/Amiga. How Manfred Trenz got so much out of the C64 I cannot imagine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS6rBNhHNnU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS6rBNhHNnU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1lOUaFjGxs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1lOUaFjGxs Manfred Trenz seems to have dropped off the face of the earth otherwise I'd ask if he'd be willing to release the code.
- jacquesm 4y agoAnother person in the same league: Jeff Minter aka Yak. He too could make the C64 do incredible tricks.
- gsinclair 4y agoYou’d think (and I’d wish) that Trenz’s achievements would have been dissected in conferences and/or YouTube videos. If only. I want to know in advanced layman’s terms how he did it.
- pjmlp 4y agoMaybe something is described here. https://amostagreeablepastime.com/2020/11/24/the-history-of-turrican-a-ten-page-retro-gamer-special/ https://amostagreeablepastime.com/2020/11/24/the-history-of-... He also gave other interviews.
- JKCalhoun 4y agoThat was the game (I saw it first on an Apple ][) that seemed to take computer gaming to a whole other level. It may have actually been the game, even though I played it so briefly, that made me see the computer game as a beast that was suddenly unlike anything you might see in the arcade at the time. It could be escapist and a simulation at the same time — you could play at living some sort of Star Wars adventure.
- gerdesj 4y agoI had a C64 (still do, it has a USB interface and some new caps. these days). Elite was jaw dropping stuff when it came out. For me the tactical display - the oval thing with two pixel objects and elevation plotted from the current nominal plane was an absolute game changer. You could literally (OK graphically) see what the heck was going on around you. For me the Wing Commander series of games (PC) improved on that somewhat with more clues wrt velocity as well as position. I'm sure there are others - I grew up a bit! As well as an amazing HUD thing, the scope of the game was incredible. I've read write ups on how the universe was done and it is very impressive.
- jacquesm 4y ago> Elite was jaw dropping stuff when it came out. Indeed, my first response was: "That's not possible". The second was: Let's take it apart and see how it works. That was something Braben and Bell had foreseen, Elite was very hard to reverse engineer, layer upon layer of tricks to stop you from getting to what actually ran. Very impressive stuff. The whole idea that someone can make the computer that you think you know absolutely inside-out do stuff in real time that you'd have trouble doing at all no matter how much time you've got is what made it so intriguing. One of the more interesting moments in trying to crack the copy protection that stopped you from seeing the naked assembly in the loader is that at some point the game code contains the string 'does your mother know that you are doing this?' or something to that effect. That was more effective than the last 10 hours or so of decryption stepping through the code in Exmon because I realized I was utterly outclassed...
- Roxanne5 4y ago[dead]
- abraxas 4y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/18/features.weekend https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/18/features.weeke... A great background read about the game's conception and its authors. It's a long read but it's really worth your time to get the gist of the atmosphere in which many eighties classics were made.
- jacquesm 4y agoGreat article. > 1. These games are crap, but sell for money. > 2. My games are not crap. > 3. Therefore my games could sell for money. That really is asking for a > 4. Profit!
- msla 4y agoMeditate on how many people followed that precise chain of logic to financial ruin.
- brokenmachine 4y agoSurvivorship bias encourages the successful ones to preach.
- dang 4y agoDiscussed a couple times: Backroom Boys (2003) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8904587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8904587 - Jan 2015 (2 comments) The making of Elite - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6604478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6604478 - Oct 2013 (56 comments)
- riidom 4y agoIf I may add :) In the '80s, Elite was magic. The annotated source code shows how it was done - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29254763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29254763 - Nov 2021 (6 comments)
- 4y ago
- jacquesm 4y agoI would have paid the weight of the disk in gold to get this when I was 17... This game was so good that I had to delete it, it ate into my productivity to a degree that really wasn't healthy so one fine morning after I saw a viper on the wall of my little Amsterdam studio I decided enough was enough and wiped the disk. I have a serious problem with that kind of addiction and need to do radical stuff to keep myself on the straight and narrow and this was the first time that I ran into my lack of self discipline. Kudos to Braben and Bell for what they built, they really set a new standard for video games on 8 bit personal computers.
- sprkwd 4y agoStill the best game I have ever played.
- patrickmcnamara 4y agoI never played the older Elite, but Elite Dangerous was/is the same for me. I love that game. I haven't played in years because I don't want to get sucked in again. I imagine the source code is significantly larger and less interesting though.
- foruhar 4y agoProbably the weight of the cassette if we are talking about the beeb. I just recalled the “DIN to DIN” cable for the first time in 30+ years.
- jacquesm 4y agoI actually had a pair of 360K drives by that time. They cost as much as my car, but it was well worth it.
- hota_mazi 4y agoIt's hard to understate how groundbreaking Elite was when it came out, let alone on the kind of processor and processor speed it came out on. Dave Braben is a god on the same level as Carmack. He created a new game generation for decades, which we're still living in.
- japanman425 4y ago[dead]
- jacquesm 4y ago> Dave Braben is a god on the same level as Carmack. I don't think they're at the same level. The restrictions that Braben & Bell were working under were orders of magnitude more limiting than what was available by the time 'Doom' rolled around. Doom was definitely also a game changer but the quantum leap between Elite and what came before it was in my opinion of a different magnitude. That does not diminish Carmack in any way, what he did was amazing. But what Braben & Bell did was considered absolutely impossible from a cycles budget perspective. And Doom never struck me as 'impossible' on the hardware that it was run on. Doom got you a great game, Elite got you a career. That said: it is next to impossible really qualitatively compare people born at different points in time. Given the same limitations who knows what Carmack would have some up with and if Braben & Bell were born a few decades later it may well have been the reverse. One thing I know for sure: creativity thrives under constraints.
- prox 4y agoI agree. One of the problems I hear sometimes as an Elite Dangerous player is that the game is a “mile wide” , yet an inch deep. The game relies a lot on text (from the galnet news to the station boards) to convey what is happening. While that keeps things manageable from a time and money angle, the problem is that in this day and age it’s better/expected to show and let the players experience it. It also doesn’t trust the players with a lot of agency beyond visiting places and shooting/trading things. I think the game relies a lot on its legacy rather than new bold moves that elevate to the same status as its forbear. That said, there is nothing like E:D out there right now, and it’s still a great achievement.
- esbeeb 4y agoBut will it run on a PicoMiteVGA? (RP2040-based computer with 16 colors, 320x240 graphics, in "mode 2")? "PicoMiteVGA: Raspberry Pi Pico Boot-to-BASIC Microcomputer": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZaWYgIYgd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZaWYgIYgd8
- jacquesm 4y agoNo. Elite relied very heavily on being able to reprogram the video chip on the fly at different scanlines to produce custom modes. If you don't have the exact same video arrangement there is almost no chance that it will run unmodified.
- esbeeb 4y agoThat's straight-up "god-level" indeed. "Elite" is a suitable name for the game, when the coding prowess is considered as the truly "Elite" thing about it.
- justinlloyd 4y agoFlipping modes on the VDU at specific scan lines on the Beeb was a standard thing that quite a few games and demos and applications did, e.g. Mode 4 or Mode 0 for B&W high resolution text, and Mode 2 or Mode 5 with some clever HAM for low-resolution but colourful graphics. The only mode switch that didn't work well was switching back and forth between Mode 7 (Teletext), it was mostly a timing issue, coupled with the fact the teletext character generator did weird things to the Beeb's video output.
- jacquesm 4y agoI was pretty active in the BBC Scene at the time and had a front row seat to a whole pile of the backstory here, and yet I do not recall anybody that pulled this off in a stable and reproducible manner (T1 + some 6845 register hacks). The problem was that timing the switch point in software was fraught with trouble because you just might end up making the switch at the wrong moment which caused it to jump vertically (or garble a part of your screen). The other problem was that if you wanted perfect timing it was possible but that left you without enough cycles to run your game. Braben & Bell solved this to the point that it was considered stable enough for inclusion in production. Similar hacks had been done on the Atom prior to the BBC so it wasn't as if the knowledge wasn't out there but no game publisher had - as far as I know - seen fit to release a game that used it. It would be great if you could answer this and point out exactly where this was used prior to Elite on the Beeb, that would set the record straight on this once and for all.
- dang 4y agoRelated. Others? In the '80s, Elite was magic. The annotated source code shows how it was done - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29254763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29254763 - Nov 2021 (6 comments) Fully documented source code for Elite on the BBC Micro - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24611341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24611341 - Sept 2020 (125 comments) A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20353734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20353734 - July 2019 (106 comments) Elite's crazy tokenized string routine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8950288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8950288 - Jan 2015 (17 comments) Backroom Boys (2003) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8904587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8904587 - Jan 2015 (2 comments) The Making of Elite - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7892462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7892462 - June 2014 (38 comments) The making of Elite - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6604478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6604478 - Oct 2013 (56 comments) Elite: Dangerous will support Oculus Rift - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6526783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6526783 - Oct 2013 (16 comments) Elite video game reboot hits funding target - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5001968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5001968 - Jan 2013 (43 comments) Elite Dangerous - Mac Version Stretch Goal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4973367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4973367 - Dec 2012 (12 comments) Elite: Dangerous - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4746646 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4746646 - Nov 2012 (71 comments) BBC interview with creator of Elite - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2331701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2331701 - March 2011 (29 comments)
- implements 4y agoHopefully ok to hang Ian Bell’s Elite pages off here: http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/index.htm http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/index.htm and http://www.elitehomepage.org/archive/index.htm http://www.elitehomepage.org/archive/index.htm (file archive) Bit of a time capsule, but some interesting curios in there.
- rwmj 4y agoAnd the infamous history of Ian Bell's website: http://www.ntk.net/1999/09/17/ http://www.ntk.net/1999/09/17/
- codewiz 4y agoThere is an actively developed project called Elite Harmless which includes a fully commented disassembly of the original C64 version plus various improvements: https://github.com/Kroc/elite-harmless https://github.com/Kroc/elite-harmless I was able to build it from sources on Linux after fixing a typo, but the"fastlines" binary appears to be buggy: https://codewiz.org/pub/elite-harmless-fastlines-screenshot.png https://codewiz.org/pub/elite-harmless-fastlines-screenshot....
- zabzonk 4y agoi do have some fond memories of the bbc micro - in the 80s i wrote an implementation of the kermit file transfer protocol for it in basic, but it was glacially slow. a bit later i rewrote it in 6502 assembler, and incorporated a vt100 terminal emulator. everything was much faster - the 6502 could be pretty quick once you understood its addressing modes, which were peculiar. i was always crap at elite though.
- psychphysic 4y agoMy first thought was what a gorgeous website. My second was oh it made my phone unresponsive.
- MarkMoxon 4y agoAuthor here, sorry to hear that. The side menu is quite large so there is a bit of a delay on loading - the project has grown pretty big, and so has the nav! It works OK on my ancient iPhone 6, so it shouldn't really be unresponsive anywhere, but I'm clearly going to have to look into it. Apologies.
- psychphysic 4y agoThanks, it hangs after the page seems loaded. I'm using a Motorola g31w with the chromium based adblock browser 3.2.4 If that helps.
- MarkMoxon 4y agoThere are no ads or trackers on my site, so it can’t be that - it is just the page content and some JavaScript, nothing more. I suspect it’s because I’m using an old off-the-shelf script for the navigation, and the size of the nav has grown too big for it to run reliably on all devices. So I need to recode it more efficiently, which won’t help you right now, but will hopefully do so next time. This is what you get when you get a site author who would rather be coding in 8 bits than in HTML. ;-)
- jlarcombe 4y agoThe disassembly and analysis itself is impressive enough but the things he's done with it since are simply incredible for anyone who grew up playing the game... i mean a teletext version!! just ridiculous
- nickdothutton 4y agoThere is a whole list of 8-bit games I'd love source code for, and a code walkthrough. Starglider, Driller/Freescape, TauCeti/Academy.
- mav88 4y agoI reverse engineered Starglider for DOS to put in a cheat just to convince myself that I really had seen a hopping robot as an enemy once above a certain game score.
- jacquesm 4y agoNeat. I put a really funny Easter egg in the ST version of 'Flightdeck' and we got the most confused calls to the helpdesk for that one. Good times :)
- mysterydip 4y agoTangentially related, but the theming of that site really hits my nostalgia, the web equivalent of reading a book in a chair next to a fireplace.