MarkMoxon

7 ms·

1.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
Thank you, that's a good point. The site started off with just the BBC Micro version, and I never expanded the book references to be clearer. Anyway, I have reworded every reference to books in the commentary so they now contain the fu
2.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
Glad you like it! I’ve been working on this for nearly five years, along with my other software archaeology projects - I started in May 2020, back in lockdown. It’s a true labour of love. Here’s a timeline of the project so far: https:&#x2
3.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
Thank you! I came at it from the BBC Micro angle, which was the system I grew up with, and I have to say that analysing Elite been a brilliant way to learn about other 8-bit platforms. I’ve documented the NES version and now the Commodore 6
4.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
I keep a list of everything that isn’t 100% clear in my commentary, here: https://elite.bbcelite.com/about_site/to-do_list.html This is not a big list, and these are all pretty subtle aspects of the game. After 4 years
5.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
Well, exactly. This project is a hobby, and I’d like to try to keep it as my happy place! Besides, I’ve published PDFs of my travel writing sites, and the thought of trying to keep a code repository, a website and a PDF in sync fills me wit
6.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
Honestly, for me personally and on this specific project with its specific history of copyright issues (look it up!), that would be crossing the line into disrespecting the copyright situation. Websites are ethereal, in a sense, as they are
7.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
Yeah, it's a bit tricky when the code you are documenting is copyright, and you aren't the copyright owner. Website is one thing, but publishing a book? I suspect that is asking for trouble. Also, books can't be updated, and
8.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
This should answer your question: https://elite.bbcelite.com/about_site/about_this_project.htm... Some parts of Elite were documented prior to my project, particularly the procedural generation and ship data blocks. Bu
9.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
Oolite is normally quoted at this point. I think it's in Objective C? But exactly how much it relates to the original game's code, I don't know. https://github.com/OoliteProject/oolite
10.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
The original Elite was reverse-engineered into C by Christian Pinder as part of the Elite: The New Kind project. The source is out there. It's a brilliant bit of work. You can use a search engine to find it.
11.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
Yes. The original Elite was reverse-engineered into C by Christian Pinder as part of the Elite: The New Kind project. The source is out there. It's a brilliant bit of work.
12.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
All NOPs should be explained in the commentary, apart from the ones in the fast loader routine in the elite-gma1.asm file. Are these the ones you mean? If so, I haven't documented the fast loader as it's not really a feature of El
13.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
No, the Cougar is nothing to do with missions (in the 6502 versions, anyway - the other platforms have different mission code). It's just a rarely called part of the random spawning routine. Very rarely called. The mission-related ship
14.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
It is in-game, but it is astonishingly rare. Specifically, there is a 0.011% chance of spawning a Cougar during each ship spawning routine, which is around 1 in 9000 ship spawnings And it's got a cloaking device so it doesn't appe
15.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
Yup. "Never fly without a rebuy", as they say!
16.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
That's not fear, it's an indication of the respect in which I hold the original authors (whom I believe are still the copyright holders). If Bell or Braben asked me to take it this down, I'd roll with it. Same if Geoff Crammo
17.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
Unfortunately it isn't that simple. Check 3 only looks to see if we are moving backwards into the station slot. This is a bit pointless to calculate as falling backwards would mean that a number of the other checks (e.g. angle of appro
18.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
I love the BASIC assembler on the BBC Micro and Archimedes. It is a work of art. Incidentally, the fully buildable Lander source code in the website's accompanying git repository is also in BBC BASIC format - as an attempt to imagine w
19.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
OK, I guess if Braben says it's a demo, then it's a demo - fair point! I still think it's a harsh term, especially when Lander has features that Zarch doesn't, and a really different atmosphere. Ah well, me and Lander wi
20.
by MarkMoxon 2y ago
I've always felt that calling Lander a "demo" was harsh. It's a fully featured game in itself, and has features that Zarch doesn't (such as falling rocks and hover mode). Yes, Zarch was the result of continued devel
21.
by MarkMoxon 3y ago
That's a good point - I wondered what the correct term was, and Fourier synthesis makes a lot more sense! I will update the article accordingly; thank you for pointing that out.
22.
by MarkMoxon 3y ago
It is procedurally generated (of course it is, this is David Braben we’re talking about!). I’ve written a deep dive on how it works, here: https://lander.bbcelite.com/deep_dives/generating_the_landsc... It’s basically
23.
by MarkMoxon 3y ago
Yeah, I’ve had to add the same disclaimer to all my analyses of old code (e.g. Elite, Revs, Aviator). I’m not sure there’s any other solution - the original copyright owners still hold the copyright, and that’s just how it is. You can’t gra
24.
by MarkMoxon 3y ago
In terms of scale, there is the concept of the tile size, which is set to 0x01000000, and everything uses the same coordinate units, so it’s possible to extrapolate this to give some sense of scale. You can see the configuration variables h
25.
by MarkMoxon 3y ago
The coordinates of the shadow are calculated here: https://lander.bbcelite.com/source/main/subroutine/drawobjec... and they are drawn here: https://lander.bbcelite.com/source/main/su
26.
by MarkMoxon 3y ago
Technically, Lander was written for the ARM1, as it originated on an Acorn ARM Evaluation System. As a result there are no MUL instructions in Lander, as they only got added in the ARM2. That makes Lander first ever ARM game, and probably t
27.
by MarkMoxon 3y ago
It is indeed different on PAL vs NTSC. The code relies on the NMI being called at 50Hz - as a result a number of timings are wrong on the NTSC version, so the music is too fast, the combat demo auto-play doesn't work properly, the time
28.
by MarkMoxon 3y ago
A shout-out is definitely due to Ian Bell and his website. This is where you can find the original source code for the BBC Micro version. Those original disks form the basis for all my Elite commentaries, including the NES project we'r
29.
by MarkMoxon 3y ago
The quote is: My greatest published achievements technically would have to be fitting BBC Cassette "Elite" into 32K of RAM including the screen, and later the Nintendo Entertainment System conversion of "Elite" that
30.
by MarkMoxon 3y ago
Indeed - "slaves" got changed to "robot slaves", while "narcotics" became "rare species" and "liquor/wines" became "beverages". You can still trade firearms, though, so its no

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