Oolite Bulletins

Here's a link to some visuals from the past: different versions of elite, they're downloadable too!

Spectrum 128 for me. Then Amiga Elite, the Frontier Amiga, then FE2 on the PC then Elite PLus (blech) on the PC then TNK on the GBA then tried all the emulated versions (including Elite A) then found Oolite.

Not that I play Oolite much. I just run it to test OXPs. I miss the simple life.

Commander McLane wrote:

C64 for me, and I also would guess it was in 85, perhaps 86.

Later I moved on to Atari ST (why isn't that on the voting list, we ST-users are not just "other"s :? !

well, first your vote should be C64 if that was the first version you played, which was the question :P and second, i actually did have Atari ST and a couple others on the list, but the poll wouldn't let me use so many options, the amount of options you see there is the maximum the forum will do, unfortunately.

and thank you for the "get well soon"s! i'm sure i will, it's nothing life threatening :)

and now i know i'm too addicted to oolite when i was walking along the street one night, got stuck behind some people walking really slowly, and instinctively thought "mass locked"...hehehe

:-D
fantastic.

i played wads of versions. remeber walking into one of the puter shops in Eldon Square (long since gone) looking boredly around the demoing platform games and then walking around the display to see a rotating Cobra. i was literally gobsmacked - fast, hidden-line 3d graphics!! started playing it on the BBC at school, got myself an Electron and played it off tape, then got a bbc myself (anyone remember the ian mcnaught-davis programs ona sat morning?!) Then at college i played the BBC disc version, more ships and stuff, yay, never did track down a dredger tho. later in life, got an Amiga 500, then an Amiga 1200, elite was bought w/ the machine, heh. since then, i got Frontier which i thought was stunning re the planet-landings etc, and FFE, which was bugg(er)ed to the eyeballs and ruined it for me.

The good old Speccy first introduced me to Elite, complete with the dreaded 'Lenslok' security system, guaranteed to screw up your eyes!

The joys of waiting 7 minutes for it to load - those wonderful chirruping tapes - and then not be able to get the Lenslok to let you in... ...then the amazement when I treated myself to a twin 80k floppy disk drive, and ripped it to disk, ready to play in 30seconds!!!

Next up was an Amiga 600 and Elite - 'Frontier', a whole new kettle of fish!

Killer Wolf wrote:

Then at college i played the BBC disc version, more ships and stuff, yay, never did track down a dredger tho.

forgive me if i'm pointing out the obvious, but have you since found out that space dredgers and generational ships (while mentioned in the manual) weren't actually in the original version of the game? think they were just added in to give the fictional setting a little more depth :) later versions *may* have added them, i'm not sure, and hell, now someone could just OXP them if noone has already :)

no, the dredgers were in the BBC disc version apparently. a few people mentioned coming across them, apparently the tip in the booklet was abut them hanging around war zones and one of the planets where they were was "ravaged by civil war" or such. i think they were supposed to be somewhere around the sun area.

i dunno, the tutor at college said he'd seen one, this was 1985, dunno if that qualifies as a later version.

come on then people - this is gonna be a debate! Were they actually there, or was my tutor lying?!

Star Gazer wrote:

The joys of waiting 7 minutes for it to load - those wonderful chirruping tapes - and then not be able to get the Lenslok to let you in... ...then the amazement when I treated myself to a twin 80k floppy disk drive, and ripped it to disk, ready to play in 30seconds!!!

Chuckle, me too matey, my first pooter was Vic20, not one of those superfast whizzy C64's. ape loading....WAAAAAH.

When I got the Amsrad 6128 was when I decided to get Elite, and yes disc loading was heaven.

marianne wrote:

Killer Wolf wrote:

Then at college i played the BBC disc version, more ships and stuff, yay, never did track down a dredger tho.

forgive me if i'm pointing out the obvious, but have you since found out that space dredgers and generational ships (while mentioned in the manual) weren't actually in the original version of the game? think they were just added in to give the fictional setting a little more depth later versions *may* have added them, i'm not sure, and hell, now someone could just OXP them if noone has already

Well, all of them, dredgers and generation ships, are available as OXPs! And rock hermits even in the basic game.

Elk version of Elite first, followed by Speccy Elite. Took a break from game and caught up with Frontier on the PC (and was very disappointed) - then The New Kind and X-Elite remakes followed by the glorious version of Oolite.

It's the only version that has captured the feel of Elite and 'being' in another place and time.

BBC B ( tape version )

Still some things about that version I miss. Maybe it's nostalga talking but for all the extra bells & whistles of the newer versions the exposions in the original seemed more 'real'.

Wouldn't go back now I've discoverd Oolite.

I played the BBC Disc version and never ran into a dredger. Then again, on mine the Thargoid Plans mission never started, and I always wondered whether the fact I had a model B+ rather than a model B was causing aspects of the game not to work (IIRC some games didn't run on a B+ due to changes in the operating system).

I first played on a Spectrum 64K. The TV was too big so that the lenslok didn't work. This got me to buy a monitor.

This then got me to mod the Speccy to get an CV signal rather than a TV one.

The 7 minutes loading time was a major factor in my buying an Interface2 which enabled me to rip the game to microdrive and bypass the lenslok.

Incidentally does anybody know how the protection worked? I was unable to disassemble the code to bypass the protection. This was at a time when I used to have more fun breaking the protection of a game than playing it!

Did anybody try playing Frontier elite II on the St, I did but it seemed like such a let down because everything was so slow and jerky on my St.

Cos

Agree with Charlie - the original explosion effect is the best and is still (slightly) better than the Oolite version. I can remember thinking when I got the Speccy version: Yeah, it's got more ships, missions and suns - but the ships look rubbish when exploding).