In this special, feature-length episode, we sit down with elite creator Ian Bell. He is a true legend of programming and a pioneering figure in the history of video games. Bell takes us back to the early days of development, chronicling the ingenious process of creating the 1984 classic Elite. At a time when computer graphics were extremely basic, Ian Bell Elite game design broke the mold. If you are a fan of retro gaming debates, computer history, or game development, this is a must-listen.
He discusses how he and David Braben engineered a massive, procedurally generated universe. They accomplished this on the restrictive hardware of 8-bit home computers, such as the BBC Micro and the Acorn Electron. You’ll hear fascinating technical details. The developers managed to fit a complex, non-linear open environment into just 32KB of memory. This included eight galaxies and thousands of planets.
The Genesis of 3D Wireframe Graphics
The conversation delves deep into the game’s most revolutionary feature: its wireframe 3D graphics. Bell explains how Elite was arguably the first truly 3D space simulator on a home computer. This forced programmers to invent entirely new techniques to render space flight and combat. He reflects on how different those graphics looked upon release. We also discuss how they compare to modern titles.
Elite Creator Ian Bell on Docking and Design
No discussion of Elite is complete without addressing its notoriety. The Elite creator Ian Bell gives his thoughts on the infamous difficulty of the game’s docking sequence. This feature was so challenging it necessitated the creation of the docking computer just to save players’ sanity. Bell also shares insightful anecdotes about the game’s widespread success in the UK. He contrasts this with its slower uptake in the US. Finally, he explains how Elite’s philosophy contrasts with modern, story-driven titles.
Preserving Classic Game Code
The discussion touches on the essential, modern issue of game preservation. The Elite creator Ian Bell explains the challenges of keeping old source code accessible. He details what it takes to ensure classic titles remain playable for future generations. He offers an unmissable look at the creativity and resourcefulness required to push technology boundaries in the late 1980s. If you are a fan of retro gaming, computer history, or game development, this is a must-listen. This interview with Elite creator Ian Bell provides the ultimate look at how a groundbreaking 3D space adventure was born.
Full Transcript Outline (Quick Jumps)
00:00 Introduction and Description of Elite
02:57 The Challenge of Docking in Elite
06:02 The Sandbox Experience of Elite
07:59 The Importance of the Manual and Immersion
12:01 The British Gaming Scene and Development Time
28:32 Developing Elite on Different Platforms
29:04 Challenges and Differences in Programming
31:50 The Availability of Elite Source Code
35:26 The Changing Game Industry
41:01 Opportunities for Indie Game Developers
45:48 Ethics of Violence in Games
50:05 Following Your Own Vision in Game Design
Full Transcript
Cal & Hereward (00:01.794)
Good evening or afternoon or whatever time of day it is where you are and welcome to OH!CAST. It’s super exciting to be here. My name’s Herowood. And I’m Callum. Nice to be here, Herowood. Nice to have you here. It’s nice to be here too. And yeah, this is our first cast together and we are absolutely thrilled to be here, joined here with an absolute legend of programming.
the creator of groundbreaking game, Elite, Ian Bell.
Cal & Hereward (00:40.791)
It’s absolutely amazing to have you here. we, first of all, there are bound to be some youngsters out there who are not aware of elite. So how would you describe elite to them?
Ian (00:57.515)
Ian (01:03.015)
Retro space game.
Ian (01:08.395)
children are so used now to high resolution force graphics that it’s
Ian (01:22.997)
quite hard to understand how different the Elite graphics were when they came out to what was around, even though now they just look like nothing. It was…
Arguably the first truly 3D computer game.
and it did very well in the UK, less well in the US. Released in the late 19… Well, no, 1984 was the initial release. But throughout the second half of the 80s, it came out on the 8 -bit home computers of the time. And then the early 16 -bit…
he seized 386’s, the Amiga’s, sort of early home computer.
Cal & Hereward (02:31.154)
It’s absolutely brilliant to have you here. mean, my first experience of the game was on the BBC Micro. And it was at a computing club that was at my school. I think it would have been about 1986, 1987. And you’d stay behind after school and play on the computers. And I remember they had a
Selection of about eight games on discs and they come along and load them on One by one to the people that want them and every single time I tried elite but I have to confess I I would Be in awe of it and kind of a bit intimidated by it they it came if I remember rightly with a sort of pamphlet that had all the function key things on it and they’d sort of
you know, that would be shared between the three or four of us in the room that would be playing it on different computers. But I’d enjoy flying around and I’d enjoy shooting stuff. And I remember that at the time, the wireframe graphics, you were talking about the graphics, Ian, the wireframe graphics were, as you say, they were like nothing else out there. That kind of 3D look to it. But I have to confess that seven
years old, I never managed to dock my ship successfully and inevitably blew up and I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’d give up and I’d play something rubbish like code name droid or, or Repton or something. And it was only when I was, a bit older, I got a version for the Atari ST, which was my home computer when I was a little older. And I remember,
It was only then I began to figure out, how do you do docking and start to play the game in earnest? And I couldn’t believe what a vast, vast game it was. I think this is one of the things we don’t sort of talk about today. But my first question really is why was docking so hard?
Ian (04:42.73)
Well.
At seven you were quite young, Frilly. We were sort of aiming at…
11, 12, upward.
Ian (05:04.265)
wanted a game that challenged the player and
Ian (05:14.731)
I wanted to, because we were in 3D and games hadn’t really been in 3D properly before, I wanted to introduce the player to the notion of full 3D rotations. I find rotations fascinating from a mathematical perspective and I wanted to make the player
as familiar as possible with the notion of flying in 3D using just roll and pitch. the docking was a way of forcing the player to…
perform a particular maneuver. And of course, it was, we only did it because of 2001, a space odyssey, the docking in that. It was, it was doing that. And
having invested all the time and effort into getting the docking. It was…
It was partly a sort of educational thing and it was partly a
Ian (06:36.683)
of acquiring a sort of act of commitment by the player. A sort of hurdle, an initial hurdle to sort of tell them this wasn’t a normal sort of game. That this was something that we’re gonna have to work at. And we…
And of course, we didn’t have the docking computers on the cassette version, I think.
Cal & Hereward (07:03.352)
Yeah, I think that’s what I heard.
Ian (07:09.109)
So yeah, I mean, it was a…
Ian (07:17.023)
The trouble was, as soon as you, if we, it would have been hard to make the docking easier. As soon as you give us, we gave the docking computers, but obviously you had to pay for those. So you had to have made a certain amount of money before you could get them. But it was hard to.
The way to make docking easier would be to make it to be more forgiving. So you wouldn’t really need to be aligned with the slot too much or you could miss it and it would still allow it. But if you do that, then it
It becomes rather pointless.
We resisted the idea of just removing it and giving the player an easy out and just sort of left it there as a hurdle.
Cal & Hereward (08:15.89)
I think what you say is actually really interesting to have it there as an early hurdle that once players overcome and that’s certainly what I sort of experienced playing it on the Atari once I mastered docking then the game opened itself up and it was like my goodness this is seemingly limitless in what you could do and I think that was one of the things I mean one of the unique features at the time
Especially when you compare it to other games at the time. I mentioned code name Droid, know, which scrolls from one side of the screen to the other. Other games at the time were so linear. When you were programming the game, was that a conscious decision to make something that was just unlike anything else out there?
Ian (09:04.597)
See?
Ian (09:07.967)
We wanted to do 3D graphics.
because we thought it was possible. So obvious.
That meant we were going to be a different game. The nearest thing to it at the time was Battlezone in the arcades, where you had vector drawn tanks which were rotating around the vertical axis, but they were otherwise not rotating.
Cal & Hereward (09:30.882)
Yeah, I remember them.
Ian (09:46.045)
And then while the leap was being developed, Aviator, which was a flight sim also on the BBC and other flight sims on other platforms were starting to come out.
There was other 3D in the form of Aviator by the time Elite did come out. it was… Going into 3D meant that the game had to have a very different feel in terms of, let’s say, not scrolling a screen, but actually flying into a screen and changing your orientation.
But we also wanted to add opening out in the sense of broad gameplay. Because the galaxy is only two dimensional, simply because we didn’t think it didn’t need to be 3D. So the galactic chart is just two dimensional.
and you’re only moving over a grid essentially there.
Ian (11:10.143)
the way you move over the…
Ian (11:15.387)
over the grid. was a game at the time Castle Quest which was a side scrolling sort of adventure game where you’re wandering through a castle.
Ian (11:32.719)
2D but divided into rooms and so on. So you were taking some path through this castle but it was fairly limited what you could do. were solving a set of puzzles and we tried to, obviously there were non -graphic adventure games but they were, they tend to be just sort of roaming around discovering puzzles in a
fairly limited space. Whereas what we wanted to do was create an open environment.
Ian (12:14.315)
So it was different and nonlinear like that as well in terms of what you were actually doing as a player.
Cal & Hereward (12:25.046)
Yeah, I think, you know, the legacy of Elite is absolutely huge and the freedom of choice it offers you, as I said back then, just, it just was like nothing else. And actually, I’m trying to think of other games really, that sort of sandbox style freedom to go anywhere and do anything in it.
I’m trying to think of other games of the era and it was really not until sort of late 90s that games began to open themselves up like that. We’re wondering, you know, do you play modern games? Are you aware of other games that have that sort of openness?
Ian (13:12.331)
I’ve not the only game I play these days is hearths hearthstone
Cal & Hereward (13:20.118)
Mm
Ian (13:24.285)
I sort of vaguely keep track of space games, like even No Man’s Sky and so on, but mainly by reading reviews. I’ve not…
I’ve not played any of them.
Cal & Hereward (13:47.382)
One of our team, wanted us to ask if you have any thoughts about Elite Dangerous, the modern spin -off of the game.
Ian (14:03.477)
I mixed feelings about sleep tangles. On the one hand, I like the attempted astronomical realism.
Ian (14:16.595)
I think.
One of the differences between David Braben and myself is I always thought of the Elite Universe as a sort of…
Ian (14:34.633)
Keith Lauer -esque.
Ian (14:40.938)
larger than life, colourful aliens.
Ian (14:49.407)
type of space, more sort of Flash Gordon space where
Ian (14:57.355)
And Star Wars was like this as well. You look at their sort of dog fighting.
It’s not realistic. It’s not as space really is. And whereas David, he was more he’s more into sort of the astronomical purity of it.
Ian (15:28.275)
He hasn’t done that in Elite Dangerous. The trouble is…
The real essence of space is relativity.
and
The real drama of space is that once you start traveling near the speed of light,
And this comes back to my obsession with rotations again, because the space is essentially rotations in space time. Once you start traveling near the speed of light, you start aging slower than the people. Who aren’t traveling. With respect to you, actually, it’s more to do with acceleration, but essentially people who travel don’t age as seen by the people who stay at home. So.
Ian (16:26.461)
When you’re in that reality…
Ian (16:33.035)
It’s very hard to have a multiplayer game in which everyone keeps the same time base.
Your only real option is to do something like Star Trek where everyone’s on the same spaceship or Battlestar Galactica, or they’re all in a convoy or some way of keeping everybody together so they can all have a common clock. But if you’re going to do that, you’re not really in space. You’re not really presenting the reality of space and the sort of historical space opera dramas you can have unfold. It’s amazing how little in the literature
Cal & Hereward (17:00.984)
That’s a
Ian (17:14.069)
The space literature recognizes this. There was one, I can’t remember.
Cal & Hereward (17:17.358)
I’m thinking Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War does that. it’s, you know, the grunts go off into space and by the time they come home, it’s like 50 years later, all their families are dead and war has been abolished and they’re sort of creatures out of time and stuff. Yeah, I think that’s a really interesting point. And as you’ve been talking tonight, you’ve mentioned, you know, 2001 and, you know, Star Wars and
Ian (17:20.86)
Yes, yeah, yeah.
Cal & Hereward (17:47.514)
or Flash Gordon. Do you have any other sort of inspirations behind Elite?
Ian (17:56.411)
Chokers go to the galaxy we put in a lot of quotes from that
Ian (18:07.163)
alien a bit.
Ian (18:12.491)
Star Wars 2001 more
Ian (18:23.455)
I wasn’t
We didn’t have much code space to play with, we…
Certainly on the cassette version, we really didn’t have any room at all for.
narrative and fluff. So we had to, a lot of was in the manual.
That was very clever of Acornsoft to put all that, the novella and the manual, all that material by… Yeah.
Cal & Hereward (18:56.056)
was going to say there was a book packaged with it, wasn’t there, that told a story.
Ian (19:01.407)
Yeah, by Rob Holstock.
Cal & Hereward (19:03.47)
That’s right,
Ian (19:07.807)
That was very clever because it sort of served up the game world.
Ian (19:15.625)
in a way that we couldn’t within the game.
Ian (19:24.498)
it.
Ian (19:28.393)
One of the reasons I like Heat Triceratops of the Galaxy was because it worked so well on the radio. It was less well on television and film because…
You only had the words and the sound so the listener sort of built up pictures in their head. And similarly, when you were playing Elite, you only had essentially a few lines and pixels on the screen.
So the more the player could recreate in his head from having taken it from the manual and the book, the better it was. And the more real it felt, I don’t think it would have felt so real if it hadn’t had such a sort of official weighty looking manual.
Ian (20:26.901)
so much external fluff hanging off it, meant it.
Ian (20:35.627)
It gave the players somewhere to imagine themselves. I think that was important.
Cal & Hereward (20:44.088)
Having that kind of the big manual, the fold out thing that tells you what all the buttons and keys do and stuff like that, the novella, it made it just so much more of a mature product than a lot of the games at the time. And I think I still remember the box for the Atari ST version. was one of those, the Atari ST discs were only small things.
But it had this massive great box and a big, you know, it made a big clunk when you put it down and the box was all black and rather than having a kind of cheesy, you know, 1980s style comic book art on it, it was just the logo and it just, it just screamed class and, and sophistication, which I think is, you know, for a lot of gamers was just something they were really looking for at that time. We’ve had a question.
from one of the listeners come in, Callum. Yeah, it’s Retro Gamer 1985 asking what was the hardest part of fitting the game onto such a small bike limit?
Ian (21:54.443)
The hardest thing was BBC Cassettoli. Once we were on disc, essentially a lot of the pressures are off, not all of them, because we still only had a certain amount of RAM to store things in. And on the Commodore 64, we had twice as much memory.
So the BBC cassette.
was the hardest in terms of cramming it in and the game suffered. There was a lot of things that
I think were quite important for the full game in the asteroids, I think weren’t in the cassette version. I’m not sure actually now.
Cal & Hereward (22:56.13)
Right, was the music, you know.
Ian (22:57.092)
Mining lasers weren’t, I don’t think. I can’t actually remember now, but I’m…
Cal & Hereward (23:04.224)
I was the music on the original version or was that a later?
Ian (23:07.883)
there wasn’t on the BBC version. The music was added on the Farbird Commodore version.
Cal & Hereward (23:12.312)
Yeah.
Cal & Hereward (23:16.152)
All right.
Ian (23:29.425)
So what was the question? fitting it in, yes.
Cal & Hereward (23:31.086)
Yeah.
Ian (23:37.245)
I mean, in one sense it was…
Ian (23:46.353)
One difference I think between the disc and the cassette version is how many…
enemy ships you can have at one time. Obviously, as soon as you if we we ever ran out of RAM. Because you have to the code and the workspace in memory at the same time. And if we ever ran out of RAM, then we’d we just say, OK, we can only have seven rather than eight ships flying around. That there’s that sort of control on it.
Ian (24:24.831)
But the main problem was when we wanted to, because every code fix, every little feature meant adding a bit more code image. And that, in turn, meant we had less workspace. So we tended to pare down the workspace to the absolute minimum we could get away with. And then
So then we’re up against the limit of not having any more memory to code into. But you’re never in that state because there’s always a code saving. If you stare at the code for long enough and hard enough, you can always find some way of saving four bytes or eight bytes or 16 bytes, if you’re lucky. And because we develop the code.
over quite a while and two of us doing it. So there was some inefficiency, there was always a saving to be found. So that’s how we spent most of our time staring at the code to try and find a bit of shaving of memory so we could shoehorn something in.
Cal & Hereward (25:31.16)
You mentioned that it was quite a while. How long did it take to program? So the original version, the Acorn Electron one.
Ian (25:39.755)
I think we talked about it for a long time before we started coding it and we tended to work on it in the holidays, we were both at the university at the time, so we’d work on it in the holidays mainly and
Ian (26:01.095)
I think it took about, from what I can remember, I think it took a year and a half.
We sort of started.
halfway through a first year and I think we finished it.
towards the end of the second year. I think that’s how it went.
Cal & Hereward (26:29.738)
It’s also something younger folk probably now would realise is that was the British gaming scene was just one or two people just working on a project and just knocking out like the kind of more used to like you know massive teams of devs and all that.
Ian (26:44.819)
Yeah, now we were slightly unusual. There were two of us rather than just one of us back then.
Cal & Hereward (26:50.828)
Yeah
Cal & Hereward (26:56.895)
a year and a half as you say to you know for the actual programming is actually probably quite a long development time for them. right yeah.
Ian (27:04.627)
Well, we were doing degrees at the same time.
was a sort of.
Ian (27:16.863)
Well, it was hobbyist. We were. We. We weren’t full time coders and. We were doing it when we weren’t. Doing university work or.
Other things so.
but yeah, I mean it’s.
think it was a year and a half. and I was also working on Freeformers at the same time at the start of it.
Cal & Hereward (27:49.944)
Yeah.
Ian (27:54.251)
Yeah, yeah, it did take us a while.
Cal & Hereward (28:03.0)
And I’ve just got asked was the choice to use the BBC just one a necessity or preference to start off with?
Ian (28:10.123)
Well, it wasn’t that we chose the BBC to write a lead on. We wrote a lead on the BBC because I had a BBC already and David had an Atom which was pretty close to a BBC. So we did it on the BBC first because that’s what we had.
Cal & Hereward (28:21.038)
All
Ian (28:32.895)
I mean, the BBC was a programmer’s machine. was…
Ian (28:45.255)
It was the right machine to develop it on it. it was the right people who owned the BBC were going to like Elite. So.
Ian (29:04.187)
sort of
It. The machine came first, then the game came on it. It’s a way to put a look at it.
Cal & Hereward (29:15.584)
And just to follow on from that, did you ever meet the likes of Chris Currie or Herman Hauser? All right.
Ian (29:20.881)
Yes, yeah, and David Johnson Davies, was the head of Acornsoft when we were there. So, yes, I think we met them a few times.
Cal & Hereward (29:26.306)
No, yeah.
Cal & Hereward (29:33.134)
That’s my right.
Ian (29:37.109)
But the main point of contact was Acornsoft.
Cal & Hereward (29:40.227)
Okay.
You were also, I might have my facts wrong, but you were also responsible for the NES conversion, the Nintendo Entertainment System, the conversion of Elite for that, is that right?
Ian (29:55.915)
Yes, I did most of that. David did a few things. I think he did the save and load to cartridge. I think and someone whose name I’ve forgotten did the music.
Cal & Hereward (30:18.732)
Was that a different experience doing stuff for the Nintendo? I’m guessing it was a different language than the BBC. Okay.
Ian (30:29.515)
No, well it a 6 .502.
We had to have a different development system, which was, think, something called PDS, a programmer’s development system, by Jeremy San and Foud Catan of Argonaut Software. They put together a software that ran on the PC, but assembled and downloaded to
Cal & Hereward (30:36.834)
Yeah.
Ian (31:03.359)
the NES and I think that’s what we used. So we were typing on PCs by then and.
running it on the NES. But in terms of being a 6502, it was the same sources essentially.
Cal & Hereward (31:16.898)
I have to confess.
Cal & Hereward (31:21.76)
Okay. I had to confess, I’ve never played the Nintendo Entertainment System version. I actually heard there was one, was like, really? And I went sort of looking at prices on eBay and they sell for quite a bit. And I’m just wondering, how do you play it on the NES? mean, whenever I played Elite, I always needed the keyboard because there’s so many different buttons and commands and things. I mean, the NES has like four buttons. How is that possible?
Ian (31:50.059)
We have what we call the icon strip.
which a bit like the the F1 keys at the top of a keyboard. So you basically had some number, I can’t remember how many there were now, 12 or some such of these square icons above the dials and you could move.
The NES controller had sort of up, down, left, right buttons and a couple of selectors so you’d use your…
I think you had to press one selector to mean the up, down, left, right. I can’t actually remember now how you… There was some way of moving this icon selector along the icon strip. And then when you got it where you wanted it on the button you wanted, essentially you hit another button and it pressed it. So it was like having some function keys that you could choose between. And you didn’t…
With the possible exception of hyperspace, you didn’t need to access them quickly, typically. So it was a workable system.
Cal & Hereward (33:11.394)
By all accounts, it’s an absolutely brilliant port of it. I’m going to have to save up my pocket money and then shell out for a version because I’m absolutely intrigued to see it running on the NES. I think that would be a really interesting experience.
Ian (33:27.549)
Yeah, it was, I don’t think it ever came out on the NTSC, which was sad, but…
Ian (33:35.835)
It was, I think it’s my possibly my favorite port because everything everything sort of came together on it. Of course, we had so much we had so much code space because it was on a ROM that we could have all sorts of pretty pictures and eye candy and stuff, which we did basically just through a lot of memory just at that. It’s easy way to use it up. We didn’t we could have really upgraded the game with all that, but
It’s that sort of then you can’t then you’re sort of can’t import on something else without losing all of that. So we just use it in a fairly easy way. And it had it had much better use of color. So.
Yeah, it was a nice one.
Cal & Hereward (34:29.314)
think one of the things that I do love about Elite, and I was playing it the other day, there’s a number of websites that have the, I mean, your own website has the source code on, and there’s a number of websites that you can run it through a browser. And I was like, right, let’s have another go, see if I can remember docking. can’t. But it was great to be able to play it again. And actually, the wireframe graphics, the…
It feels as you said when you introduced it, it is a retro game now, but there’s something very elegant about it. I think it kind of feels almost like no frills and I think actually the aesthetic of it, it holds up to this day. I think that’s really remarkable because again, you play some games from 1984, they do not hold up to this day like that does.
So as I mentioned, you’ve got your website where the source code for pretty much every version of Elite is available. And it’s available to play on a number of different browsers. Would you consider the game now open source?
Ian (35:47.275)
That’s…
It’s not just mine, it’s David Braben’s as well.
Ian (36:11.369)
If people want to use it for self I don’t have any objection.
but
Ian (36:19.131)
I’m wary about giving permissions. So.
Ian (36:28.651)
Acorn soft and far bird are not without their rights as well. So.
Ian (36:42.815)
I put the…
The algorithm for this for the particular universe, is just one particular random number generator interpretation. Intertext delete on my website so you can you can you can recreate live and all of that.
Cal & Hereward (36:59.128)
Yeah.
Ian (37:07.955)
And I like the source to be out there because there’s a website. that’s terrible. I can’t remember the name.
He does deep dives into the algorithms and analyzes the way the code works. that’s when you start getting into the Nest version.
Cal & Hereward (37:24.152)
Mm.
Ian (37:32.967)
and the code timing. It’s nice for that to be not lost. It was quite hard to do.
Ian (37:47.893)
So that’s why I essentially put the sources out.
Cal & Hereward (37:52.427)
Game preservation is becoming such an important thing. a lot of, I used to collect lots and lots of retro games and sort of stopped when I realized actually they’re all gonna, you know, regardless of how well I keep them, all the hardware here is gonna degrade in time. I think the idea of having the source code available for people, I think is a really valuable part of game preservation.
calum there’s another question i’ll you take i’ll say this one i i’m particularly interested to hear what you say about this so the retro gamer 1985 has asked another question he’s asked did you ever get any inspiration from text -based games like colossal cave adventure or zork i’m interested in hearing what you say about this because i love zork a lot
Ian (38:42.699)
I didn’t play Zort, I play Colossal Cave Adventure and a few of the Acorn Soft ones. They had something called Philosopher’s Quest, Philosopher’s Cave, something like that.
Ian (39:04.088)
No, not really. I don’t think we even had any, we didn’t have any nods or anything.
Cal & Hereward (39:05.835)
you
Ian (39:16.966)
No, I don’t think
Ian (39:21.791)
We were both into role -playing games, tabletop role -playing games. I used to play Traveller and David used to Space Opera.
Cal & Hereward (39:28.974)
Fantastic.
Cal & Hereward (39:34.863)
I know both of them very well. Yeah, are you still into gaming? Do you still play games like that?
Ian (39:43.115)
I’m into games from a theoretical design basis so I read a lot of games reviews, keep up with things. I like card games.
What was that? of Cthulhu living card game? I used to play that.
Cal & Hereward (40:05.759)
Mm -hmm.
Ian (40:10.783)
I think card games are a very good metaphor for game design. think once we start having… Because card games are about building a narrative. Fantasy Flight have been doing that more with their latest Arkham. Arkham Hover the Card Game, was it? And what’s that? New One Earthborne Rangers there.
Cal & Hereward (40:20.023)
All right.
Cal & Hereward (40:26.55)
Yeah.
Cal & Hereward (40:35.149)
Yeah.
Ian (40:41.695)
That’s essentially about building up a narrative using cards and
Ian (40:49.819)
I think there’s potential.
there for a programming metaphor for generating narratives.
procedurally.
Ian (41:08.245)
But no, in terms of role -playing games, no. Just a sort of theoretical interest in rule sets.
Cal & Hereward (41:21.666)
You mentioned card games. think there’s a, the one that strikes me from the past few years, a kind of computer or game -based card game is Slay the Spire, which has some of the most brilliant mechanics. It’s a really, really compelling game. I’ve been really impressed with that one.
Ian (41:45.195)
So, Slave Aspire.
Cal & Hereward (41:47.284)
Slay the Spire it’s called, yeah. It’s on pretty much everything. You can get it on your Android or your Apple and Xbox and all sorts. But it’s a really good one. again, you know, it’s a simple concept, you’re going through a dungeon and the cards are what kind of attacks you use and stuff. But it becomes, the more you play it, the more different cards you unlock. So it becomes like a collectible card game where you’re building a deck.
Ian (41:48.843)
Okay.
Cal & Hereward (42:17.058)
that you can then go on to play in your next run. So you get better and better at it each time. And yeah, it’s one of those games that the hours can just slip by. There’s something I did want to ask. played my elite was on the Amstrad and I never actually mastered docking, but I still managed to get ahead of the game. Were you aware of that little bug that
If you just cashed into the space station and saved immediately, you just load up in that space station.
Ian (42:52.093)
I did, now that you say that, that is, that is, I do vaguely remember that, but that was the Amstrad version. We didn’t write that one. So that’d be someone else’s bug, but I do, yeah. But.
Cal & Hereward (42:55.106)
Yeah.
Cal & Hereward (43:02.722)
Was that you? Yeah. All right.
Cal & Hereward (43:10.232)
You
Cal & Hereward (43:14.2)
How long did you play that game for? Years. Just constantly crashing into space.
Cal & Hereward (43:26.094)
Ready?
Ian (43:28.309)
Yeah, I think we were told that at one point.
Cal & Hereward (43:31.512)
Yeah, I was just curious for that. Cause that was the, I got it with, I remember it was the Amstrad Action 100th issue I got Elite with. So I never even went out and specifically bought Elite. It was just voted the best game on the Amstrad. So that’s how I learned about Elite. I have to say it’s probably was the best game on most of the systems it was on. As you’ve been talking tonight, Ian, you know, I’m thinking of
games that create the illusion of freedom. I’ve been playing them Mass Effect games and you know they’re great and you can go to all these different planets you can do all this stuff but actually it’s the illusion of freedom that’s created there the actual whatever planet you land on you’re on a fairly linear path that you can do a few things. So still to this day you know a game like Elite because of its
sort of paired back narrative and stuff like this. It really does have that sense of you can take whatever shipment you want, you can fly to wherever you want and do whatever you want. I think that’s a remarkable achievement.
Ian (44:46.611)
Thank you. Yes, it will.
Ian (44:53.833)
I think because it
Ian (44:58.313)
It wasn’t offering you that many choices really, but it was.
Ian (45:04.789)
you could go in any direction with them.
Ian (45:10.769)
It doesn’t take much.
to if you run the illegal trade goods, you’re more likely to get attacked by police. That’s such a simple thing. It’s so simple to code. And yet it does.
Ugh.
Ian (45:37.811)
It does give the impression that there’s more there than
Ian (45:44.555)
than there really is.
So I we benefited because we were the first people who tried to do it. We didn’t need to do it very well to be doing something new.
Cal & Hereward (45:48.994)
Yeah.
Ian (46:04.021)
So I think Elite was sort of at the sweet spot where it all came together. But if we’d wanted to take it up to the next level, that would have been really hard. And with the
possibly impossible within the limitations. you know, I say impossible, there’s a guy, Alex Duggan, who did his, what’s he called it, Elite A, where he sort of rewrote it and crammed it down again and managed to make room for a lot of stuff, which is something we probably could have done if we’d had the time to do it, but we weren’t.
We were getting one version out the door and going on to the next one.
There’s always, there’s always spaces to improve code. There’s always some way you can tweak it and make it better.
but it’s when it’s diminishing returns doing it.
Cal & Hereward (47:13.57)
I’m just going to ask one question. This is probably the final one. I know RetroGamer quite well and he is wanting to pursue a career in games design. What advice would you give him?
Ian (47:28.821)
Well, my advice is somewhat out of date.
Ian (47:37.887)
When people asked me this when it wasn’t out of date, I used to say, you should always follow your own vision of what you think the game should be doing and what you think is the right thing, rather than what your publishers or other people telling you it should be.
Ian (48:08.415)
But it’s such.
Ian (48:15.615)
We now want the mobile phone. You can develop things on the mobile phone still, potentially with a fairly quick turnaround. So if you can get the right idea, sort of a new Tetris or something that just captures the imagination.
Ian (48:43.051)
problem now is that if you want to have a game that’s going to look like all the other games…
you’re going to be using
gaming libraries, you’re going be using an Unreal Engine or something. so when we were writing games, you wrote the games. We just coded everything up. And now it’s a case of using standard libraries and development kits and so on and so on. So it’s very different.
very different environment and I’m not going to, I don’t know how to navigate that realm.
Ian (49:33.163)
It all seems…
Ian (49:39.401)
I know I have views on the way the game industry is going and what the sort of titles that are coming out but…
Ian (49:49.149)
I’ve had arguments with people in gaming companies, but…
Ian (49:57.011)
I don’t know what the solutions are. don’t know the right way to.
Cal & Hereward (50:00.225)
Yeah.
Ian (50:02.763)
strike out in your own direction.
Cal & Hereward (50:05.942)
It’s interesting you say that. There is, you know, with the AAA titles that take eight years to develop and cost millions of dollars and teams of hundreds of people. And there seems less and less room for that kind of individual creativity that was around in the eighties with the sort of bedroom coding culture. But there, think there are still indie game developers out there who are doing
doing some really interesting innovative stuff. I was playing one just the other night that I think, I’m sure it must be somewhat inspired by Elite. Are you familiar with Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator? It has the best title ever. And it’s exactly what it is. They strip out the actual flying spaceships around, but it’s illegal organ harvesting and.
Ian (50:49.937)
No.
Ian (50:54.239)
Yeah, that’s cool.
Cal & Hereward (51:03.542)
sales of alien organs to different things. And it’s a pretty simple looking game, but it’s the unraveling narrative as you play it that becomes what’s quite gripping about the process. And the fact that you’re playing this game that actually makes you do awful things in the game’s story, I think is quite a fascinating thing.
Ian (51:29.673)
Yeah, that’s an interesting area. There’s some.
Ian (51:37.483)
There’s a sort of semi -role -playing game called Thousand Year Old Vampire.
where it’s essentially a writing exercise, I suppose, but you’re led into these sort of dark areas where the game sort of
compels you to do things. One of the things I liked about Elite was that you could set out to play ethically. You could have your own moral code and…
It might not be, you you might not optimally succeed in terms of making the most money the quickest or something, but you wouldn’t be too penalized for trying to sort of cut your own code out in the environment. I think that’s.
Ian (52:43.977)
There is a dark side to games, is the… …killology aspect, where you’re sort of normalizing realistic physical violence. And…
Ian (52:59.401)
That is, I think that has negative aspects. So I.
Ian (53:10.109)
I Chris, I like sort of elite was.
Ian (53:17.181)
Yes, you were blowing up spaceships with people in them and blowing up their scape capsules if you wanted, but it was all just abstract vector graphics. No blood, no humanoid forms.
Ian (53:43.827)
I don’t really like the sort of Assassin’s Creed type things where you’re killing multiple people as efficiently as possible. It’s just, it’s not healthy.
Ian (54:01.205)
But yeah, that’s just my view.
Cal & Hereward (54:05.619)
Ian, we’re conscious of the time and you’ve been absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on. Yep. Thank you very much. And being such a wonderful guest. yeah, on behalf of Ocon and OCAST, if you, I’m sure if you ever wanted to come up to the Outer Hebrides to come to the convention here, I’m sure we could make you very welcome.
Ian (54:31.947)
Well, thank you. I have been tempted to come out to the Outer Bridges. I’ve never been there.
Cal & Hereward (54:35.425)
well.
Ian (54:39.179)
We’ll see. OK.
Cal & Hereward (54:40.846)
Alright, but watch the space. Thank you so much. Thank you very much Ian. It’s been a pleasure.
Ian (54:44.255)
Thank you very much. Thanks. Bye now.
