There's Thargoids On The Starboard Bow [Elite 3D]

A trip down memory lane: Elite 3D, a version of Elite hacked by Mark Moxon to use anaglyph 3D, playable on a BBC micro emulator (standard BBC B with 6502 second processor). This was one of my favourite BBC games back in the 80s.

Elite was first released for the BBC Micro 40 years ago, on September 20th 1984. At a time when every other game involved three lives and a hi-score table, Ian Bell and David Braben, produced something original and unique - an imaginative 3D sci-fi universe in which you could fly your spaceship from star to star, docking at space stations, trading legal or illegal goods, upgrading your weapons and ship systems, fighting pirates or becoming a pirate yourself. 

Elite was both a creative achievement - the first true open-world game, and a technological achievement - realtime 3D graphics for stars, planets, spaceships, space stations and asteroids, AI for enemy ships, an economic and political simulation, eight galaxies to discover, and a few "surprises" all crammed into 32K for the original BBC version - in fact there's even a 16K Electron version with only a few less features. That's less bytes than an e-mail.

Versions of the game appeared on other home computers and early PCs, each with their own quirks and twists. Braben went on to write two excellent PC sequels, Frontier and Frontier: First Encounters, and (much, much later) successfully returned with the MMO Elite: Dangerous.

The original Elite was known for a steep learning curve, particularly for combat and docking skills. I had forgotten just how hard this game could be: on my first flight I emerged from hyperspace and was immediately attacked by swarms of pirates - there's only one on screen here but look how many are on the scanner. I didn't stand a chance, but at least managed to take three or four down before they got me.

I've never forgotten the sound from this game - particularly the screeching as my shields are worn down by enemy lasers, followed by the crashing sound of hull damage.

Also among the pirates was a Thargoid - I'm quite sure I saw it. I didn't get a screenshot because I was too busy dying.

On the other hand, a few flights later I survived to reach the safe zone, and managed to successfully dock with a space station - this was another hard-earned skill when first playing the game. Inspired by the film 2001, docking involves lining up with the space station entrance, then matching the rotation of the space station.

The trading aspect of the game is also quite hard - even after several more flights buying and selling goods I'd only managed to earn a few extra credits, nowhere near enough for the upgrades I want.

You can play Elite 3D in your browser here. There's more information about it here.

Mark Moxon, the one-time editor of Acorn User, can be found on Mastodon (@markmoxon@universeodon.com) where you can read about his Elite-related and other projects. I love the 3D anaglyph hack - it doesn't change the game at all but adds to the experience while remaining firmly grounded in the 80s. Silly hacks are also part of Elite lore - the best of these was the hack for the Archimedes version that added fluffy dice and a bumper sticker.

BASICally speaking

A long time ago, before blogging was a thing, the Sci-Fi Gene has fond memories of learning to program on an early home computer, the BBC Model B. My efforts were written mainly in BASIC IV, with only a few very minor excursions into machine code. They were stored on C90 cassettes and later on 5" floppy disks - buying the double-sided disk drive was a major life event.

Most of my games and other programming experiments would be of interest only to myself. However one or two made it to the pages of user magazines and their monthly giveaway disks, and a few appeared on public domain lists. I was recently surprised to find that some of these games have been preserved at the Complete BBC Games Archive here - where they are playable online!

I present the games here not because they're particularly good - they're not, they're basic, derivative and barely playable - but because they're part of my journey and experience of the digital world, and because as a geeky teenager I learned a lot by writing them. The challenge of cramming a game into such limited memory (32K, minus anything from 1K to 20K for screen memory) and the limited graphics meant you had to try to be creative.

"Break Down"

"Supersonic Snail Racing"

"Myriapod"

"Telephone Mania"

"Space Detective" (apparently, in the future the word "apartment" is spelled differently)

"Wallaby Wrestling Federation"
Please note that no simulated wallabies were harmed in the making of this game.

Over the years I've experimented with other programming languages including Inform, C and Python as well as other BASIC-based languages including Scratch. I've come to realise two facts: firstly, I'm never going to be the next David Braben, and secondly, my brain's native language appears to be BASIC.

With thanks to the BBC Games Archive, and all who are responsible for maintaining it.

My games are playable here. Thank you for joining me on this pleasantly indulgent trip to nostalgiopia.

You can reach the main archive here. It's an extraordinary collection of full commercial releases - including classics such as Elite and Exile - as well as magazine giveaways, indie and amateur efforts such as my own, and, amazingly, games that are still being written for the Beeb right now.

Dig For Victory [Review: Waking Mars]

"Amani, this is Liang. I've been exploring these Martian caverns for ten hours now and I'm reaching a conclusion about the nature of this game. The discovery of a smooth-walled vertical cavern running through many layers of the map confirms my hypothesis: this is not a naturally occurring structure but a tribute to the classic BBC Micro era game Exile."

Waking Mars is a game for mobiles, tablets etc. with impressive scope. As astronaut Liang, you explore a network of caves with your jetpack, searching for a missing robot and discovering an ancient ecosystem as you go. In order to progress, you'll need to understand the relationships between the different life forms (your computer assistant, ART, is keen to point out that they are not technically plants or animals), and use this knowledge to increase the biomass in each area.

Gameplay video by Youtube user 1Retrodroid

The gameplay area is huge, and after you've taken the first few steps the game becomes non-linear, allowing open exploration and free travel between areas of the map you've visited. There's something new to discover in most zones, and plenty of memorable moments. The non linear play also means it's possible to "complete" the game, reaching one of the alternate endings, without making all the possible discoveries, and different players will have different experiences. That said, in about 15-20 hours of play I think I was able to explore the entire map and as far as I know I have found all the discoveries and possible endings.

Physically the game plays like Exile in terms of exploring a 2D cave system by jetpack, avoiding hazards such as molten lava, rockfalls and some of the more vicious plants. However the game mechanism of solving puzzles through planting seeds and managing ecosystems - third person gardener? grow-em-up? - is perhaps unique. I love the fact that while some puzzles are scripted or set up, some arise naturally from your own actions and mistakes. You can introduce a species of plant to an area that rapidly colonises and kills other species, and regaining control can be hard work.

There's some decent characterisation too. Liang, your character is cynical and prone to silence. He is assisted from base by Amani who is much more chatty and open minded, leading to some great Mulder-and-Scully banter. ART provides a comic element - he communicates through smiles (a little like GERTY) and suffers from a malfunctioning language module, as well as a habit of stating the obvious.

For comparison, gameplay video of the original Exile (BBC Master version) with comments by YouTube user Lord Triax

It's good to see that epic computer games are still being made, even if mobile gaming as a whole is skewed towards casual games. Yes, Crossy Road, I'm talking to you. There have been other exceptions - I previously reviewed the excellent Deep: Submarine Odyssey here - and of course there are newer gameplay styles such as Minecraft that reward longer play in different ways.

It Takes 6502 To Tango [Review: Micro Men]

Many of my childhood memories were written in Basic IV so for me the BBC's drama Micro Men, broadcast on Thursday, brought on some tears of nostalgia with a heavily dramatised version of the story of the microcomputer and it's inventors. If you're reading this before 15th October 2009 you might still be able to catch this one-off on iPlayer.

Alexander Armstrong has a ball as shouting, swearing, bullying, telephone-hurling, electric-car-obsessed Clive Sinclair. Martin Freeman plays mild-mannered former employee Chris Curry who left Sinclair to form rival company Acorn. The two men went head to head in a race to develop cheap home computers - leading to the brief success of the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro.

This is a great production, from the Matrix-styled titles to the 80s period detail. Characters are all exaggerated to comic effect - in addition to Curry and Sinclair there's uber-geek Roger Wilson and the Austrian wine-heir Hermann Hauser who gives up his family heirdom to start up Acorn - "Have you tasted Austrian wine?" "If you had, you would understand why." This is melodrama unfettered by any hint of subtlety but with plenty of nice touches such as Curry's team working around the clock to complete the BBC prototype, eating their takeaways with pliers and soldering irons. Sinclair's C5 gradually takes shape in the background and is used to good effect in the highly symbolic ending sequences.

A weaker link is the attempt to "sex up" the drama: while the high-spirited office parties fit in well, scenes such as the trio of girls hitting on Sinclair at MENSA, or Curry in the back seat of a limo with two blondes - and looking completely at home - don't quite ring true.

The script tries to give the impression that these two men literally lived parallel lives and this is often both comic and tragic - for instance Sinclair's disgust at being indirectly responsible for "Jet Set F**king Willy" is mirrored by Curry's despair at finding only one Acornsoft game in his local shop.

Both companies made the wrong decisions following the Spectrum and BBC. Acorn struggled on for a few more years after being bought out, developing the RISC-based Archimedes which was a respectable machine but couldn't stop the mighty onslaught of the PC. (The ARM chip, developed for the Archimedes, is another story and remains the basis of many mobile phones.)

At least according to this version of history, the point is that almost every decision Curry and Sinclair made was in response to the other - despite being rivals, it was the relationship between the two that led to both the rise and the fall of the microcomputer. Hilarious and also compelling viewing, and cleverly done.

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike

The Great Maze at Blake End is an annual event - a labyrinth grown in a 10-acre maizefield, one of the many maize mazes that springs up around the UK at this time of year. Exploring it brought back a lot of memories, such as playing text adventures on a BBC Micro as a child. Mazes were a common element of Sphinx Adventure, Philosopher's Quest and similar games: usually the various parts of the maze were joined non-logically (if you go north from point A and reach point B, going south won't necessarily bring you back to A) so you either had to come up with a way to map the locations or some other out-of-the-box solution.
I later graduated to PC games such as the original Colossal Cave or Zork. The genre has continued to grow and develop and there are scores of indie games on the net. However while mazes are still found in more recent interactive fiction, they often take fourth place to characters, atmospheric settings and other kinds of puzzles.
Running through maizefields is almost a cinematic subgenre of it's own - Children of the Corn and the more recent Signs being obvious examples.

I was also reminded of two of my favourite cinematic mazes, Labyrinth and Cube. Both films are structured around the maze, with it's hazards and puzzles - they're basically non-linear road movies. The Cube is a little more deadly but sadly lacks a Bowie soundtrack or any Jim Henson inhabitants. Being a good logician would help you survive the Cube but might actually endanger you in the Labyrinth which is all about subverting your assumptions and preconceptions.