Mark, this is an exceptional talk! Your enthusiasm is properly infectious, and describing 6502 assembly code as "controlling the electrons" is a beautiful image. Awesome stuff!
Thanks Mark, that was fascinating. I am old enough to have "run barefoot on the grass" many times, Z80 back then (I was a Spectrum owner) but PIC and STM32 up to today. All programmers should try assembly language at least once as it really makes you think about what is going on deep inside the hardware. I am, or was, a big fan of Elite Dangerous in VR too, at least up to the point where the stupid fleet carriers were brought in. I tried to persist with it after that but the winding down of VR support, the complete rewrite of the planet surface algorithm and finally "space legs" killed it for me. Such a shame. My gaming nirvana would be a release of ED:Horizons, offline with VR just before fleet carriers.
Well spotted, they are indeed wrong for the #7 on the right. Oops! They should of course be 0v 0v 0v 0v and 0v 5v 5v 5v to go with the binary 0000 0111. I have corrected my slide deck for the next time, but unfortunately my rookie cut-and-paste mistake is now captured forever. Never mind, it wouldn’t be a RUclips video without at least one howler. 😂
Elite 3 (Frontier 2 - First Encounters) was the best game in the series, assuming you waited for the patch to come out to make it playable - and back then you had to get patches on the CDs that came with game magazines, because the internet didn't really exist. Newtonian physics ruled! As did 3d planet surfaces that you could seamlessly land on from space. I'm surprised you dissed Newtonian physics, it made the game so much fun, even if combat was basically high-speed "jousting". I've never been able to get into "Elite Dangerous" because of the speed limit. It's like racing F1s but they're limited to 60kph... Sure the physics is accurate, but what's the point with the speed limit? Good video on the tech, but completely disagree with you on the physics! EDIT: Elite 2/3 led me into KSP, the best physics game I've ever played...
Fair enough! The Newtonian physics in Frontier and FFE are really polarising, and loads of people disagree on this one. 😊 For me, as a huge Elite fan, I felt really disappointed in the Newtonian flight model, so much so that I gave up and skipped the franchise until Elite Dangerous. I tried, I really did, but the whole jousting thing and general difficulty of flight was too much. I really missed the original feel of flying in 8-bit Elite. I missed being able to master manual docking. I never even got close in Frontier, sadly. I really envy your skills! E:D, of course, lets you fly in the model of your choice, which is great (for me, anyway, 1000+ hours in and I still love it). The vast majority of players use the standard Elite flight model rather than turning off flight assist, which says a lot, though I do use FA off when turning during combat, and that’s great. Horses for courses! I didn’t mean to sound quite so harsh on Frontier and FFE in my talk, though, so apologies if it sounded like a diss, I was just ad-libbing in front of an audience. Though I still think the OG Elite is the best. Hands down. 🫡
@@markmoxon Completely agree, back in the 80s with a C64, Elite was the the most awesome game on the system (special shout out to "Mercenary" as my 2nd favorite). And your break-down expertly showed how advanced and optimized it was for its day. Still, "Dangerous" limits the max speed of ships in the local reference frame, which obviously isn't Newtonian accurate (or even Einstein accurate), so I can't get engaged with it. I remember trying to break light speed in Elite 3 (using the massive but fast Thargoid ship, with max fuel load and max time warp across many hours). It turned out that the speed increases just stopped at light-speed (299km/sec) without any dilation, but was awesome to see the developers included this limit at the time. Anyway, I'll still be playing the original KSP from now rather than Elite, but Elite will always hold a special place in my heart for its Newtonian physics. As you say the OG Elite was the most impressive, Hands down!
mind-blowing what david and ian were able to do on such limited hardware
Mark, this is an exceptional talk! Your enthusiasm is properly infectious, and describing 6502 assembly code as "controlling the electrons" is a beautiful image. Awesome stuff!
The dude who laughed his head off at the 'bit of docking' comment made me laugh my ass of too. 😂
Great video! Thanks to Mark for his amazing work!
Thank you so much for checking it out!
Awesome video, thank you!
Thank you so much for checking it out!
Thanks Mark, that was fascinating. I am old enough to have "run barefoot on the grass" many times, Z80 back then (I was a Spectrum owner) but PIC and STM32 up to today. All programmers should try assembly language at least once as it really makes you think about what is going on deep inside the hardware. I am, or was, a big fan of Elite Dangerous in VR too, at least up to the point where the stupid fleet carriers were brought in. I tried to persist with it after that but the winding down of VR support, the complete rewrite of the planet surface algorithm and finally "space legs" killed it for me. Such a shame. My gaming nirvana would be a release of ED:Horizons, offline with VR just before fleet carriers.
Great talk! Those literal voltages 11:01 are a bit off for value 7 - copy / paste, the bane of all coders
Well spotted, they are indeed wrong for the #7 on the right. Oops! They should of course be 0v 0v 0v 0v and 0v 5v 5v 5v to go with the binary 0000 0111.
I have corrected my slide deck for the next time, but unfortunately my rookie cut-and-paste mistake is now captured forever. Never mind, it wouldn’t be a RUclips video without at least one howler. 😂
Let's think about using these techniques with 32GB RAM ;-)
Elite 3 (Frontier 2 - First Encounters) was the best game in the series, assuming you waited for the patch to come out to make it playable - and back then you had to get patches on the CDs that came with game magazines, because the internet didn't really exist.
Newtonian physics ruled! As did 3d planet surfaces that you could seamlessly land on from space. I'm surprised you dissed Newtonian physics, it made the game so much fun, even if combat was basically high-speed "jousting". I've never been able to get into "Elite Dangerous" because of the speed limit. It's like racing F1s but they're limited to 60kph... Sure the physics is accurate, but what's the point with the speed limit?
Good video on the tech, but completely disagree with you on the physics!
EDIT: Elite 2/3 led me into KSP, the best physics game I've ever played...
Fair enough! The Newtonian physics in Frontier and FFE are really polarising, and loads of people disagree on this one. 😊
For me, as a huge Elite fan, I felt really disappointed in the Newtonian flight model, so much so that I gave up and skipped the franchise until Elite Dangerous. I tried, I really did, but the whole jousting thing and general difficulty of flight was too much. I really missed the original feel of flying in 8-bit Elite. I missed being able to master manual docking. I never even got close in Frontier, sadly. I really envy your skills!
E:D, of course, lets you fly in the model of your choice, which is great (for me, anyway, 1000+ hours in and I still love it). The vast majority of players use the standard Elite flight model rather than turning off flight assist, which says a lot, though I do use FA off when turning during combat, and that’s great. Horses for courses!
I didn’t mean to sound quite so harsh on Frontier and FFE in my talk, though, so apologies if it sounded like a diss, I was just ad-libbing in front of an audience. Though I still think the OG Elite is the best. Hands down. 🫡
@@markmoxon Completely agree, back in the 80s with a C64, Elite was the the most awesome game on the system (special shout out to "Mercenary" as my 2nd favorite). And your break-down expertly showed how advanced and optimized it was for its day.
Still, "Dangerous" limits the max speed of ships in the local reference frame, which obviously isn't Newtonian accurate (or even Einstein accurate), so I can't get engaged with it. I remember trying to break light speed in Elite 3 (using the massive but fast Thargoid ship, with max fuel load and max time warp across many hours). It turned out that the speed increases just stopped at light-speed (299km/sec) without any dilation, but was awesome to see the developers included this limit at the time.
Anyway, I'll still be playing the original KSP from now rather than Elite, but Elite will always hold a special place in my heart for its Newtonian physics. As you say the OG Elite was the most impressive, Hands down!