Whatever happened to Elite for Atari 8bit conversion project?

[oky2000]

Elite was one of the greatest games of all time, the code for the C64 version apart from the bitmap screen rendering engine should be identical but I have never heard anything for years.

 

Who is working on this, if anyone, right now?

 

If it is not being worked on I need to purchase a BBC Master 128 to play it on but the A8 should be able to do a version 90% the speed of the BBC as it doesn't have Commodore's ridiculous bitmap screen layout (which is effectively nothing more than 40x25 UDGs). The problem is the Acorn computers never had D9 joystick ports and playing this game with keys on the BBC Micro series isn't as fun but all other released/homebrew versions are too slow.

[Magic Knight]

The problem is the Acorn computers never had D9 joystick ports and playing this game with keys on the BBC Micro series isn't as fun but all other released/homebrew versions are too slow.

Jurgen (aka on here as: tf_hh) sells D9 adaptors for the beeb, which allows D9 joysticks to plug in and work with BBC micros and Masters.

[oky2000]

Jurgen (aka on here as: tf_hh) sells D9 adaptors for the beeb, which allows D9 joysticks to plug in and work with BBC micros and Masters.

 

Cheers. There is also a rare Competition Pro joystick for the BBC controller port which is much the same as the one they did for PC DOS era also analog game ports (resistors to hard wire hard left/right/up/down) but Elite on Acorn BBC only really works with analog input for playability unlike all other 8 bit ports for machines with Atari digital joystick interface which is a problem and down to the fact in 1984 BBC users only had the choice for those analog Phillips Videopac/Pong console type joysticks with no self centering.

 

More of a software issue just like A8 Elite is a software [MIA] issue

[popmilo]

Elite was one of the greatest games of all time, the code for the C64 version apart from the bitmap screen rendering engine should be identical but I have never heard anything for years.

 

Who is working on this, if anyone, right now?

 

If it is not being worked on I need to purchase a BBC Master 128 to play it on but the A8 should be able to do a version 90% the speed of the BBC as it doesn't have Commodore's ridiculous bitmap screen layout (which is effectively nothing more than 40x25 UDGs). The problem is the Acorn computers never had D9 joystick ports and playing this game with keys on the BBC Micro series isn't as fun but all other released/homebrew versions are too slow.

Wrathchild is behind one of the best attempts to port this to Atari imho.

Think problem turned out to be "simple" stuff like keyboard reading etc.Will ask him for details and why it isn't done yet

[Wrathchild]

Fixes to the keyboard handler were been put in place, though the A8's keyboard is still not ideally suited to the game as keyboard only.

 

With the C64 port I've enabled the launching of the ship from the space-station but the circle drawing routine needs sorting out and the star plots don't see right either so need addressing.

 

 

[Edit] I might have also patched the key fixes to the BBC port in the version attached here

elitebbc.rom

Edited February 24, 2019 by Wrathchild

[oky2000]

Wrathchild is behind one of the best attempts to port this to Atari imho.

Think problem turned out to be "simple" stuff like keyboard reading etc.Will ask him for details and why it isn't done yet

Thank you

 

I never liked the 16bit conversions, artistically they are horrible and even identifying ships at a distance useless (they are simple circles until it is too late). With a nicer bitmap memory layout and fast 6502 it is as ideal a machine for Elite as it is for the awesome Rescue on Fractalus.

[oky2000]

Fixes to the keyboard handler were been put in place, though the A8's keyboard is still not ideally suited to the game as keyboard only.

 

With the C64 port I've enabled the launching of the ship from the space-station but the circle drawing routine needs sorting out and the star plots don't see right either so need addressing.

 

elite_wip_feb2019.png

 

[Edit] I might have also patched the key fixes to the BBC port in the version attached here

Beat me to it, thanks for the update

[Wrathchild]

as it [bBC] doesn't have Commodore's ridiculous bitmap screen layout

 

As a far as I know it shares the same layout, i.e. bit pairs giving 4 pixels per byte although in a different order than the C64/A8, IIRC "H3 H2 H1 H0 L3 L2 L1 L0" rather than "H3 L3 H2 L2 H1 L1 H0 L0".

Screen offsets (Hex) therefore look like:

 

First line:

 

00 08 10 etc to 138

01 09 11

02 0A 12

03 0B 13

04 0C 14

05 0D 15

06 0E 16

07 0F 17 etc to 13F

 

Second line:

 

140 148 150 etc

141 149 151

etc

On the A8 I went Antic F (Gr.15) bitmap rather than using Antic 2 (Gr. 0) so would have remapped the 3D ship plotting / line drawing etc and hence why the circle / stars are on the ToDo list

Edited February 24, 2019 by Wrathchild

[Mclaneinc]

Just keep nibbling at it, best way...

 

You do like a challenge M.

 

It would be nice to see it on the old Atari one day even if its not my sort of game (requires a brain)

 

Happy dev'ing

[+slx]

 

There is also a rare Competition Pro joystick for the BBC controller port which is much the same as the one they did for PC DOS era also analog game ports (resistors to hard wire hard left/right/up/down) but Elite on Acorn BBC only really works with analog input for playability unlike all other 8 bit ports for machines with Atari digital joystick interface which is a problem and down to the fact in 1984 BBC users only had the choice for those analog Phillips Videopac/Pong console type joysticks with no self centering.

 

 

Philips videopac wasn't analog, just looked the part

 

AFAIK there were some self-centering joysticks for the Beeb as well, EBay UK is probably the best place to find them.

 

I do have a Beeb but nevertheless Elite for the Atari would be a great addition.

[Xebec]

Wrathchild - just wanted to say thanks for working on this port!  So good even just to see screenshots for the Atari 8bit

 

Just curious - why is the A8 keyboard less than ideal for Elite compared to other 8bitters?  

[Wrathchild]

You're welcome.

 

For the majority of keys, the A8 is interrupted to say 'this key is pressed'.

So if keys are held simultaneously or another is subsequently pressed whilst another is down then the A8 cannot know this.

So the obvious exceptions for that are the Shift and Control keys whose statuses are additional bits supplied with the key-code, plus the Console keys.

The break key also can be configured to generate an interrupt.

 

So in Elite where you would want to use diagonal directions in flight then this wouldn't be possible, you would toggle quickly between the X and Y direction keys to do this but not ideal.

Similarly if you wanted to fire you'd need to release the direction key (although this could be moved to Shift from 'A' for example). None of this is ideal in a fire fight!

 

So the default setup will be to use the joystick as that is what most people would be doing anyway I think.

[_The Doctor__]

so, make the darn keys in the corners diagonal keys like every other proggy did in plato, or old dos days... why make it harder than need be?

[+Philsan]

I never used keyboards to play games (additional commands and text adventures apart), all my computers had joystick ports, even my first PC in 1996 (Soundblaster with game port) so it's not a problem.

 

All Atari computers had 2-4 joystick ports.

 

That would have been a big issue for computers without joystick ports like Sinclair, Apple, BBC.

 

Thanks for the info and... please give some love to Elite port! ?

[kogden]

On 2/24/2019 at 3:52 PM, oky2000 said:

 

If it is not being worked on I need to purchase a BBC Master 128 to play it on

 

I'd love to see this for the 8-bit as well.  I've been playing the ST version off and on.  The Atari 8-bit could certainly do better than the C64.  

 

The BBC Master seems like an interesting machine but I've never seen one in the US.  If I was going to get a mutant British machine it would probably be an Archimedes or RISCpc.  

[+slx]

 
The BBC Master seems like an interesting machine but I've never seen one in the US.  If I was going to get a mutant British machine it would probably be an Archimedes or RISCpc.  

With all the modern upgrades available for the BBC Micro you can probably make it almost as good/capable as a Master and they are easier to find.


Gesendet von iPhone mit Tapatalk

[JamesD]

16 hours ago, kogden said:

 

I'd love to see this for the 8-bit as well.  I've been playing the ST version off and on.  The Atari 8-bit could certainly do better than the C64.  

...

The C64 version was a bit slow.  The conversion someone did for the Plus/4 works a lot better at the faster clock speed.
Funny thing, the recent Oric clone runs pretty well even though it's also clocked at 1MHz

 

[Wrathchild]

With the Uno cart's help we could have a filled vector version

[R0ger]

17 hours ago, Wrathchild said:

With the Uno cart's help we could have a filled vector version

Yeah, and my PC can run GTA5. So what

[+Philsan]

I read that Elite is on the Guiness World Records because it has the record of being the most converted space trading videogame (I think official conversions).

 

I hope one day we'll see an A8 conversion too.

space trading videogame

 

[Jetboot Jack]

On 4/11/2020 at 1:18 AM, Wrathchild said:

With the Uno cart's help we could have a filled vector version

I like it!

 

sTeVE

[LessNick]

Recently, the source code for Elite (https://www.bbcelite.com/) was posted openly for BBC Micro, in which every line of code is documented, and most of it is explained.

 

Any chanche to complete the story?

Edited September 28, 2020 by LessNick

[fantômas]

38 minutes ago, LessNick said:

Recently, the source code for Elite (https://www.bbcelite.com/) was posted openly for BBC Micro, in which every line of code is documented, and most of it is explained.

A truly interesting site, cf. https://www.bbcelite.com/explore/indexes/deep_dives.html

Thanks for the heads up!

[Wrathchild]

If you look closer its a fork of an older kieranhj/elite-beebasm that applies a commentary, so yes a nice addition.

(e.g. there is also the C64 disassembly Kroc/elite-harmless in which the acknowledgements cover the above and others)

[+CharlieChaplin]

On 4/11/2020 at 2:18 AM, Wrathchild said:

With the Uno cart's help we could have a filled vector version

 

And what about the AVG cart. or the Ultimate cart ?

 

I would still prefer a standard (non-filled) vector version running on standard 48k or 64k computers. But if you can program it in such a way that one can choose between filled vectors (with UNO/AVG/ULT) and non-filled vectors, just do it...