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''Frontier: Elite II'' is a space trading and combat simulator video game written by
David Braben David John Braben (born 2 January 1964) is a British video game developer and designer, founder and CEO of Frontier Developments, co-creator of the '' Elite'' series of space trading video games, first published in 1984. He is also a co-found ...
and published by
GameTek GameTek was an American video game publisher based in North Miami Beach, Florida known for publishing video game adaptations of game shows in the late 1980s and early 1990s. GameTek was a trade name for IJE, the owner of electronic publishing rig ...
and
Konami , is a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Chūō, Tokyo, it also produces and distributes trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, pachinko machines, slot machines, and arcade cabinets. Konami has casino ...
in October 1993 and released on the Amiga, Atari ST and
DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...
. It is the first sequel to the seminal game '' Elite'' from 1984. The game retains the same principal component of ''Elite'', namely open-ended gameplay, and adds realistic physics and an accurately modelled galaxy. ''Frontier: Elite II'' had a number of firsts to its name. It was the first game to feature procedurally generated star systems. These were generated by the game aggregating the mass of material within an early solar system into planets and moons that obey the laws of physics, but which have slightly randomised material distribution in order to ensure each system's uniqueness. It was followed by '' Frontier: First Encounters'' in 1995 and another sequel, '' Elite: Dangerous'' in 2014.


Gameplay

There is no plot within ''Frontier'', nor are there pre-scripted missions (as there are in its sequel, ''
First Encounters ''Frontier: First Encounters'' is a space trading and combat simulator video game developed by Frontier Developments and published by GameTek in 1995 for DOS. The player pilots a spaceship through a universe pursuing trading, combat and other ...
''). 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", and players instead decide what to aspire to and set out to achieve it. 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, these are very modest resources, and are intended as a spur to encourage players to earn money by whatever means they feel is appropriate. Though the plot is minimal, some background information about the universe of ''Frontier'' is provided. There are 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 have established a tense 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. 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 Barnard's Star is a red dwarf about six light-years from Earth in the constellation of Ophiuchus. It is the fourth-nearest-known individual star to the Sun after the three components of the Alpha Centauri system, and the closest star in t ...
- 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 the police attacking you 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 Classical mechanics is a physical theory describing the motion of macroscopic objects, from projectiles to parts of machinery, and astronomical objects, such as spacecraft, planets, stars, and galaxies. For objects governed by classical mec ...
: 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 In science fiction, hyperspace (also known as nulspace, subspace, overspace, jumpspace and similar terms) is a concept relating to higher dimensions as well as parallel universes and a faster-than-light (FTL) method of interstellar travel. ...
exit-point to a desired planet or space-station and docking can be handed over to a ship's
autopilot An autopilot is a system used to control the path of an aircraft, marine craft or spacecraft without requiring constant manual control by a human operator. Autopilots do not replace human operators. Instead, the autopilot assists the operator' ...
. Travel within a star system occurs across realistic distances at realistic speeds, and therefore even with the fastest ships capable of more than 10G of acceleration, intrasystem travel can take many hours. Therefore the game provides an "accelerate time" function that makes game time pass at 10, 100, 1000, or 10,000 times the normal rate. The issue of interstellar navigation is solved by the use of a hyperdrive to travel between stars. The player can select a system from the star map and "jump" to it, provided they are reasonably far from a settlement. They then arrive at the outskirts of that star system and must make their way to their destination. A ship's maximum range is calculated according to its mass, so small, light ships can have impressively large ranges. The time taken to travel the maximum range is always exactly one week, with shorter jumps taking less time. Unlike the rest of the game's travel, these jumps are not experienced in some multiple of real time and appear almost instantaneous (theories range from
suspended animation Suspended animation is the temporary (short- or long-term) slowing or stopping of biological function so that physiological capabilities are preserved. It may be either hypometabolic or ametabolic in nature. It may be induced by either endogen ...
to extreme
time dilation In physics and relativity, time dilation is the difference in the elapsed time as measured by two clocks. It is either due to a relative velocity between them ( special relativistic "kinetic" time dilation) or to a difference in gravitational ...
). A hyperspace jump leaves a visible remnant, a "hyperspace cloud", at the entry and exit points. These are visible for some hours afterwards, ostensibly 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 being the most hazardous ("Riedquat" and " Phekda" are amongst the most notorious anarchies in the game). Combat is handled completely realistically. In practice, this means both ships taking slingshot thrusts at each other,
lasers A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fir ...
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". The game's
copy protection Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, describes measures to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media. Copy protection is most commonly found o ...
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" of their ship's manual (which the game manual ostensibly was). If the player entered a wrong letter on three occasions, he would be arrested and his ship impounded, at which point the game ends.


Comparisons with ''Elite''

''Frontier'' has more advanced graphics than '' Elite'', but this is mostly due to the differences in the underlying computer platforms, as the Amiga, Atari ST and IBM PC offered much more power than the
BBC Micro The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an emphas ...
and Commodore 64. The graphics engine was advanced for its time, featuring curved Bézier surfaces, and
texture mapping Texture mapping is a method for mapping a texture on a computer-generated graphic. Texture here can be high frequency detail, surface texture, or color. History The original technique was pioneered by Edwin Catmull in 1974. Texture mappi ...
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 slingshot In orbital mechanics and aerospace engineering, a gravitational slingshot, gravity assist maneuver, or swing-by is the use of the relative movement (e.g. orbit around the Sun) and gravity of a planet or other astronomical object to alter the ...
s 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'' differs in other aspects as well. It is possible to freeform seamlessly land on planets, something not possible in the first '' 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 Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. Its name is derived from the Greek word , or , meaning 'glowing' or 'scorching'. The star is designated α Canis Majoris, Latinized to Alpha Canis Majoris, and abbreviated Alpha CM ...
. Other brighter stars such as
Altair Altair is the brightest star in the constellation of Aquila and the twelfth-brightest star in the night sky. It has the Bayer designation Alpha Aquilae, which is Latinised from α Aquilae and abbreviated Alpha Aql ...
,
Antares Antares is the brightest star in the constellation of Scorpius. It has the Bayer designation α Scorpii, which is Latinised to Alpha Scorpii. Often referred to as "the heart of the scorpion", Antares is flanked by σ Scorpii and τ ...
, 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, although these other galaxies are simply duplicates of the first, and not accessible in any version of the game. Similarly to the original ''Elite'', ''Frontier'' offers dozens of ships, from small but fast fighters like the Eagle, multi-role traders like 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).


Development and release

Braben originally programmed the game in
68000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Secto ...
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. 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, plus it also featured real sized 1:1 scale planets and star systems. ''Frontier: Elite II'' was published on 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 720 KB double density 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 In computing, procedural generation is a method of creating data algorithmically as opposed to manually, typically through a combination of human-generated assets and algorithms coupled with computer-generated randomness and processing power. In ...
. With a 9-year sequel gap since the original Elite in 1984, Frontier was described by
CU Amiga ''Commodore User'', known to the readers as the abbreviated ''CU'', was one of the oldest British Commodore magazines. With a publishing history spanning over 15 years, it mixed content with technical and video game features. Incorporating ''Vi ...
in 1993 as "the longest-awaited sequel of the decade". The game featured a famous "
wormhole A wormhole ( Einstein-Rosen bridge) is a hypothetical structure connecting disparate points in spacetime, and is based on a special solution of the Einstein field equations. A wormhole can be visualized as a tunnel with two ends at separate p ...
" bug: Normally a ship's hyperdrive has a range of about 15
light years A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometers (), or 5.88 trillion miles ().One trillion here is taken to be 1012 ...
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 game 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 MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and ...
interpretations of classical music by composers such as
Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
,
Mussorgsky Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky ( rus, link=no, Модест Петрович Мусоргский, Modest Petrovich Musorgsky , mɐˈdɛst pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ ˈmusərkskʲɪj, Ru-Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky version.ogg; – ) was a Russian compo ...
and Grieg.
Strauss Strauss, Strauß or Straus is a common Germanic surname. Outside Germany and Austria ''Strauß'' is always spelled ''Strauss'' (the letter " ß" is not used in the German-speaking part of Switzerland). In classical music, "Strauss" usually re ...
’s ''
The Blue Danube "The Blue Danube" is the common English title of "An der schönen blauen Donau", Op. 314 (German for "By the Beautiful Blue Danube"), a waltz by the Austrian composer Johann Strauss II, composed in 1866. Originally performed on 15 Februa ...
'' is played during any space station docking sequence, a homage to the film '' 2001: A Space Odyssey''. Particularly, to make stronger futuristic impression, " The Great Gate of Kiev" and "
In the Hall of the Mountain King "In the Hall of the Mountain King" ( no, I Dovregubbens hall, , In the Dovre man's hall, link=no, italic=no) is a piece of orchestral music composed by Edvard Grieg in 1875 as incidental music for the sixth scene of act 2 in Henrik Ibsen's 1867 ...
" in the game are very close to electric organ interpretation by ELP. In addition to this, David Lowe provided two original classical-style pieces, one of which was for the intro sequence. The game has since been released as shareware and is available as a
free download Digital distribution, also referred to as content delivery, online distribution, or electronic software distribution, among others, is the delivery or distribution of digital media content such as audio, video, e-books, video games, and other so ...
, although being a
DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...
game, users of post-
Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released to ...
operating systems may have difficulty getting it to run. Primarily this was because of the game using EMS type memory rather than XMS. The
expanded memory manager In DOS memory management, expanded memory is a system of bank switching that provided additional memory to DOS programs beyond the limit of conventional memory (640 KiB). ''Expanded memory'' is an umbrella term for several incompatible techn ...
EMM386 EMM386 is the expanded memory manager of Microsoft's MS-DOS, IBM's PC DOS, Digital Research's DR-DOS, and Datalight's ROM-DOS which is used to create expanded memory using extended memory on Intel 80386 CPUs. There also is an EMM386.EXE availa ...
had to be configured to use it. Using emulation such as
DosBox DOSBox is a free and open-source emulator which runs software for MS-DOS compatible disk operating systems—primarily video games. It was first released in 2002, when DOS technology was becoming obsolete. Its adoption for running DOS games i ...
will get the official shareware version of the game to run on modern operating systems such as
Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...
,
Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...
,
Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...
and
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...
. Also, around 2005 Tom Morton
reverse engineered Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...
a platform-neutral C version from the game, called ''GLFrontier'', making the game natively and fast playable on modern OSes again.


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. '' Computer Gaming World'' in April 1994 favorably discussed the game's "ENORMOUS universe" with "many, many hours of exploratory game play ... less of a game, and more a way of life". A longer review the next month reported that the game compensated for the Amiga version's 16-color palette with "a surprising amount of graphic detail". The magazine concluded that "''Frontier'' should offer months, or even years, of galaxy-trekking fun" as players explored the "incredibly immense" universe. 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 The Amiga 1200, or A1200 (code-named " Channel Z"), is a personal computer in the Amiga computer family released by Commodore International, aimed at the home computer market. It was launched on October 21, 1992, at a base price of £399 in the ...
). ''Amiga Power'' later ranked ''Frontier'' #100 in the magazine's top 100 games list. In 2004, readers of ''
Retro Gamer ''Retro Gamer'' is a British magazine, published worldwide, covering retro video games. It was the first commercial magazine to be devoted entirely to the subject. Launched in January 2004 as a quarterly publication, ''Retro Gamer'' soon became ...
'' voted it as the 20th top retro game, with the editors commenting: "More so than its predecessor, ''Frontier'' was a game you either loved or hated. Some found it far too dull and were unable to get to grips with it, while fans just couldn’t get enough. This was lucky really as ''Frontier'' was staggeringly huge on a mind-bending scale. The game universe contained millions of planets, and coupled with the ‘do what you like’ gameplay, this was a game that could take over your entire existence." It was named #77 on '' PC Zone'''s "101 Best PC Games Ever" list in 2007. In 1994, ''
PC Gamer UK ''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games ma ...
'' named ''Frontier'' the 16th best computer game of all time. The editors called it "a worthy successor to ''Elite'', and another classic in its own right." The official ''Frontier'' website puts sales at about 500,000 copies sold. Braben received royalties for 350,000 copies.


Legacy

''Frontier'' was succeeded in April 1995 by ''
First Encounters ''Frontier: First Encounters'' is a space trading and combat simulator video game developed by Frontier Developments and published by GameTek in 1995 for DOS. The player pilots a spaceship through a universe pursuing trading, combat and other ...
'', which was available for DOS. 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, even though
Amiga 1200 The Amiga 1200, or A1200 (code-named " Channel Z"), is a personal computer in the Amiga computer family released by Commodore International, aimed at the home computer market. It was launched on October 21, 1992, at a base price of £399 in the ...
and
Amiga CD32 The Amiga CD32 (stylized as Amiga CD32, code-named "Spellbound") is a 32-bit home video game console developed by Commodore and released in Europe, Australia, Canada, and Brazil. It was first announced at the Science Museum in London on July 16, ...
versions were planned and previewed in many magazines of that time, they were eventually cancelled. A further sequel, '' Elite: Dangerous'' was
crowdfunded Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by crow ...
through a Kickstarter campaign and released on 16 December 2014.


References

{{Authority control 1993 video games Amiga games Amiga 1200 games Atari ST games Amiga CD32 games DOS games GameTek games Elite (video game series) Frontier Developments games Games about extraterrestrial life Assembly language software Space flight simulator games Space trading and combat simulators Video games scored by David Lowe Video games set in the 4th millennium Video games with 6 degrees of freedom Virtual economies Video games developed in the United Kingdom