Elite for the VIC 20 (32K + 3K RAM) as an unofficial port by Aleksi Eeben!

I’ve all the time had a smooth spot for Elite ever since I performed ‘Frontier Elite II’ on the Amiga in 1993. Though Elite and Frontier Elite II was vastly completely different in graphical high quality, it nonetheless gave a space-sim sci-fi expertise like no different! Permitting the consumer to battle in house, commerce, full missions and even in Frontier Elite II land on planets. Actually I am not the one one to get pleasure from Elite, as a coder by the title of Aleksi Eeben, has launched an unofficial port of Elite for the VIC-20 (32K + 3K RAM).

This is the total dev from the web site. “VIC 20 Elite is predicated on the C-64 supply. VIC 20 particular graphics, textual content, keyboard & joystick enter, and sound routines had been written from scratch to exchange the corresponding C-64 code. After all, the entire enhanced Elite received’t match throughout the VIC 20’s restricted reminiscence, so some options needed to be overlooked. Following the unique 1984 BBC Cassette and Acorn Electron model, the VIC 20 model omits prolonged planet descriptions, planetary particulars (craters and meridians), and the missions that seem additional on within the recreation. The pause mode choices are dropped, and there’s no Discover Planet possibility in Galactic Chart (that will be solely actually helpful throughout missions).

“Three ship blueprints have been eliminated: Moray, that by no means spawns as a consequence of a bug; Constrictor, that solely seems in a mission; and Cougar, which is so uncommon it’s seen perhaps as soon as in a lifetime. Ships that seem as each pirates and merchants are optimized to share blueprints. This made it potential to incorporate 30 completely different ships, 27 of that are distinctive design. Additionally, each Coriolis and Dodo Area Stations are in. For reference, the BBC Cassette and Acorn Electron variations solely had 11–13 ships, so the VIC 20 model is arguably greater and higher! Even the suns are saved in, though they do sluggish issues down a bit”.

“This port depends closely on Mark Moxon’s digital archaeology undertaking about Elite on numerous 8-bit platforms. Try his work at https://elite.bbcelite.com. Elite for the Commodore 64 was written by Ian Bell and David Braben and is copyright D. Braben and I. Bell, 1985. Mark Moxon’s completely documented and analyzed supply code is predicated on the supply disks launched on Ian Bell’s private web site: http://www.elitehomepage.org“