Frontier: Elite II

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'Frontier: Elite II'

Developer(s)	Gametek
Publisher(s)	Gametek, Konami
Designer(s)	David Braben
Platform(s)	Commodore Amiga, Amiga CD32, Atari ST, PC
Release date	October 1993^[1]
Genre(s)	Space trading and combat simulator
Mode(s)	Single player
Rating(s)	ESRB: Not Rated (NR)
System requirements	1MB RAM (Amiga/Atari ST)
Input methods	Keyboard, mouse, joystick

Frontier: Elite II is a space trading computer game written by David Braben and published by Gametek in 1993. It is the first sequel to Ian Bell and David Braben's earlier game Elite, and is available for Commodore Amiga, Atari ST and PC computers.

Frontier retains the same principal component of Elite—namely completely open-ended gameplay—and adds to this realistic physics and an accurately modelled galaxy. There is no plot within Frontier, nor are there pre-scripted missions (as there are in its sequel, First Encounters); instead players explore space while trading legally or illegally, carrying out missions for the military, ferrying passengers from system to system, engaging in piracy or any combination of the above. As a consequence, Frontier cannot be completed or "won"—instead, players themselves decide what to aspire to and set out to achieve it.

The game has since been released as shareware and is available as a free download^[2], although being a DOS game, users of post-Windows 98 operating systems may have difficulty getting it to run.^[3]. Using emulation such as DosBox will get the official shareware version of the game to run on modern operating systems such as Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux.

1 Development
2 Game play
3 Compared with Elite
4 Reception
5 Successors
6 External links
7 References

[edit] Development

Braben originally programmed the game for the Amiga in 68000 assembly language. It had roughly 250,000 lines of code, which were ported from 68000 assembler to the PC's 80286 assembler by Chris Sawyer.^[1] Frontier also had some features that had never been seen before. It was the only game at the time to do a palette-fit every frame to get best use of colours. It also featured real sized planets.^[1]

The entire universe of Frontier fits onto a single floppy disk. For the Amiga version, this is a single 880 KB disk (disk 2 was only a selection of interesting saved games), and for the PC/DOS platform a 1.44 MB HD floppy. For the Amiga version, the actual executable file was only around 400 KB (uncompressed), its small size partly due to the entire game being written in assembly language while its universe was mostly procedurally generated.

Frontier’s development was running behind schedule and, to meet their advertised release date, Gametek published the game before it was ready.^{[citation needed]} As a result, there were some bugs left in the first release.

The most famous of these was the "wormhole" bug: Normally a ship’s hyperdrive has a range of about 15 light years at most, so planetary systems dozens of light years away are too far to reach in one hyperspace jump. However, if the player happened to find a system 655.36 to 670.36 light years away, it would be counted by the programme as within the "15 light year" range. This would also happen for systems slightly beyond 1310.72 light years, 1966.08 light years, and other multiples of 655.36. With a bit of careful triangulation it was usually possible to get near or directly to a destination system any distance away by means of just two such "wormhole" jumps.

The game features a selection of MIDI interpretations of classical music by composers such as Wagner, Mussorgsky and Grieg. Strauss’s The Blue Danube is played during any space station docking sequence, as in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

David Lowe provided two original classical style pieces, one of which was for the intro sequence.

[edit] Game play

Screenshot of Frontier (Atari ST)

Screenshot of Frontier (Commodore Amiga)

In Frontier, the player begins in the year 3200 and assumes the role of one of Commander Jameson's grandchildren, having inherited one hundred credits and an Eagle Long Range Fighter from him. By the game’s standards, this is incredibly modest, and is used as a spur to encourage players to earn money by whatever means they feel is appropriate.

As with Elite, much of Frontier is concerned with trading: players can buy and sell a variety of goods — from food and computer parts to guns and slaves — with the aim of making the most profit possible from each trading run. Thus, learning to compare prices in various systems is essential for profitability, and calculating overheads for each trip (such as fuel, missiles, and hull repair) are essential skills. It often becomes apparent that a particular trading route is profitable, such as the Barnard’s Star - Sol route. It is worth noting that some trade goods (particularly narcotics, nerve gas, weaponry and slaves) are illegal in many systems and attempting to trade in these can result in a fine from the police, which can often escalate into violence if not paid. However it is often worth the risk as illegal goods generally carry a very high price on the black market.

Frontier substitutes Elite’s arcade flying style for one based rigidly on Newtonian physics: momentum must first be neutralised to bring the player's craft to a stop, and turning 180° has no effect on the direction of travel until previous momentum has been counteracted. The craft’s control is largely left to the player, but often day-to-day tasks such as navigating from a hyperspace exit-point to a desired planet or space-station and docking can be handed over to a ship's autopilot.

The issue of interstellar navigation is solved by the use of a hyperdrive to travel between stars. Hyperspace in Frontier appears to be a form of dimensional shifting, “jumping” into another, more compressed dimension then exiting it at a point equating to the desired destination. In this respect, hyperspace is treated in a similar manner to the hyperspatial travel utilised in Babylon 5. A ship's maximum range is calculated according to its mass and the distance capable in exactly one week, so small, light ships can have impressively large ranges. To counteract this the duration of the flight is spent in a form of suspended animation and appears to pass almost instantly. A hyperspace jump leaves a visible remnant, a "hyperspace cloud", at the entry and exit points. These are visible for some hours afterwards, making it possible for pirates and assassins to track a ship through hyperspace, arrive at its destination first and attack without police intervention.

Sooner or later the player will run into enemies, most likely in the form of space pirates. The different star systems have differing government and social structures, meaning that some systems are safer than others. The Core worlds are usually the safest, with anarchic systems ("Riedquat" and "Phekda" are amongst the most notorious anarchies in the game) being the most hazardous. Combat is handled completely realistically. In practice, this means both ships taking slingshot thrusts at each other, lasers being fired constantly at each other, until one of the ships is destroyed. All enemy ships destroyed count towards the player's combat rating, starting at "Harmless" and progressing towards "Elite".

There is something of a background story to Frontier, establishing two major factions in the galaxy: The "Federation", based in the Sol system, and the "Empire", based in the Achenar system. These two factions are bitter enemies, but at the time of the game they are in some kind of cease-fire, akin to the Cold War.

Players are free to side themselves with the Federation, the Empire, both, or neither. The game does not restrict one's political career. Both sides have military forces that a player can run freelance missions for, with successes leading to a military promotion. The ranks of the Federation and Empire are independent of each other. Playing for both sides adds to the difficulty to acquire a rank promotion for either.

The game's copy protection was worked into the game in the form of police spot-checks, making sure the player is the legitimate owner of his ship. At certain intervals in the game, the police would ask the player to: "please enter the first letter of word X, row Y on page Z". If the player entered a wrong letter on three occasions, he would be arrested and his ship impounded, at which point the game ends.

[edit] Compared with Elite

Frontier has more advanced graphics than Elite, but this is mostly due to the differences in the underlying computer platforms — the Commodore Amiga, Atari ST and IBM PC offer much more power than the BBC Micro and Commodore 64. The graphics engine was advanced for its time, featuring curved polygons, and texture mapping in the PC version.

Frontier operates on a very large scale compared to previous games, and most games since. It is, for example, possible to do realistic gravitational slingshots around supermassive stars and large planets, and in the same engine fly close enough to the ground to read the (accurate) time from the face of a clock.

Frontier built on Elite in other aspects as well. It is possible to land on planets, something not possible in Elite. Most stars also have a system of planets around them, while in the previous game there would only be a single planet and space station in every system. In addition to this some real stars had been placed in the Frontier universe, mostly near Sol, such as Alpha Centauri and Sirius. Other brighter stars such as Altair, Antares, Betelgeuse and Polaris, which are much further out, are also included. All planets and most major moons in the Sol system can also be visited. On zooming out, other galaxies are visible.

Another improvement is that players are no longer confined to the same ship (the Cobra Mk. III) for the whole game. Frontier offers dozens of ships, from small but nippy fighters like the Eagle and the Cobra to huge cruisers such as the Anaconda or the Panther. Players may own only one ship at a time, so when a new ship is purchased, the old ship is part exchanged (i.e. traded in with most of its trade value deducted from the new ship’s price).

[edit] Reception

Frontier was generally well received by the media. Most magazines were awestruck by its sheer scale and accurate depiction of real-world physics, and gave it high ratings^[4]. One notable exception was Amiga Power, who viewed the game not as a successor to Elite’s throne, but as a space flying game on its own right, and were disappointed by its lack of action. This made them dismiss the game as boring, rating it 65% (75% on the faster Amiga 1200). It later ranked #100 in their top 100 games list. They were also critical of the game’s slow framerate on non-AGA Amigas, which were an issue for owners of Atari ST and Amiga 1000/500/600 machines with 7MHz CPUs.

The official Frontier website puts sales at about 500,000 copies sold. Braben received royalties for 350,000 copies.^[1]

[edit] Successors

Frontier was succeeded by First Encounters, which was available for PC. No Amiga or Atari versions were released as by the time of its publication these platforms were no longer as profitable as they had once been.

Elite 4 has been delayed multiple times since development started in 2000. Production ceased shortly after due to technical limitations at the time.^[5]