Elite for Emacs

http://sami.salkosuo.net/elite-for-emacs/

by Immortalin • 10 years ago

257 46 10 years ago

sami.salkosuo.net

jimmcslim2• 10 years ago

I've always wondered if there is scope for a MMO version of Elite that is less ambitious (especially graphically) in some ways than the current Elite: Dangerous but still has the essence of Elite; I'm thinking 3D graphics with a retro vibe, maybe primarily text based menus for in-station activities (and certainly no desire for on-planet or first person shooter components). Even keep the generative universe of the original with its nutty planet descriptions.

kleiba• 10 years ago

Slightly unrelated: if you're into "3D graphics with a retro vibe", check out "Return of the Obra Dinn" by Lucas Pope (of "Papers, please" fame):

https://dukope.itch.io/return-of-the-obra-dinn

It has nothing to do with Elite or space adventures or anything like that, though.

RBerenguel• 10 years ago

His development blog is awesome too, I specially liked when he was working out the best way to create effective looking dithering for 3D objects.

cstross• 10 years ago

Doesn't EVE Online scratch that itch for you?

jimmcslim2• 10 years ago

I'm thinking something that still has a meaningful dogfighting experience (like the original Elite - whereas EVE Online when I last played was more like an RTS?) and generally far more accessible.

But a 'casual' and accessible mix of Elite and EVE with a MMO persistent universe and retroish graphics is what I have in mind.

Whereas the new Elite: Dangerous as impressive as it looks (and I'd love to play it... just don't have a beefy PC or Mac at the moment) misses something I think by not having everyone flying in the same universe (I know the simulation is shared and that there is also a solo play mode available). I've wondered why they didn't adopt a monthly subscription approach to support the servers to make that possible?

jimjimjim• 10 years ago

yes, a mud version of elite could be quite interesting and without the expense of aaa level graphics.

astrobe_2• 10 years ago

Not MMO, OOlite can be "retro" with the right options on.

Extensions (aka "OXP" or "OXZ" in Oolite lingo) can give you in-station text based activities (the extension is named "Life in the Frontier" IIRC) and planet descriptions, among other things (there are about 400 extensions available from the integrated package manager, not counting older ones that haven't been ported).

Extensions are written mostly in Javascript and the community is very friendly and helpful. Last but not least, it's free and open source.

vidarh4• 10 years ago

I second Oolite. And in terms of adding networking, a game following the original Elite model should be fairly "MMO friendly" in that each system is basically closed - players can jump in and out, but there's no continuous flight between systems (unless they've added that to Oolite since I last checked it out), so e.g. scaling it to multiple servers can be done on the star-system level up until there's quite a lot of players.

I haven't looked at the extensions mechanism - it'd be interesting if players could "claim" systems and dynamically control gameplay capabilities in their system. Would create challenges with e.g. the economy/trading etc. (preventing users from setting up a server that gives them infinite credits to bring back to other systems) - perhaps that'd actually be a suitable use for a blockchain...

(Not that I have time to spend on something like this, but I'll back it in spirit if someone hacks Oolite or similar into a MMO... I might back it with money too if someone where to want to crowdfund something like it)

boyce• 10 years ago

I'd love a modern remake of Space Rogue

Annatar3• 10 years ago

Space Rogue was such an awesome game: it had action, it had (for Commodore64) revolutionary filled 3D vector graphics, but most importantly, it had an involved, mysterious, and compelling story. And it was a challenging game which made one play hard, but it rewarded that with lots of generated Endorphine. Anyone remember getting the neurostabilizer boosters, without the personal shield?

That is a game truly worthy of a remake, as is Battle Tech: the Crescent Hawks' inception. I'd also finally like to find my father with his Phoenix Hawk mech in a sequel to that game...

scrollaway• 10 years ago

I know what you mean. Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos [1] is very representative of that. Unfortunately, it's single player (there is a multiplayer arena but it's not great).

A few years ago a friend and I were working on a spiritual successor to EoC. When the Star Citizen kickstarter was announced, we gave up - no chance to compete with that, and we found they could apply our vision with a lot more money and a much more serious team.

[1] GOG: https://www.gog.com/game/independence_war_2 - Highly recommended if you're into space sims.

Shivetya• 10 years ago

Privateer would be fun transformed into a MMO, but I don't think graphics are much of an issue these days as you can pretty much scale for need.

The issue I see with Elite/Privateer/etc is that its hard to encourage group play which tends to be a near requirement for most MMOs to succeed.

If ships are the primary draw how do you group people up? Surely many would not want to just play a specific role or share a ship and even if they did there would be only so many cool positions to go around.

astrobe_2• 10 years ago

The issue I see with Elite/Privateer/etc is that its hard to encourage group play which tends to be a near requirement for most MMOs to succeed.

I don't think it would have to be "massive", multiplayer with a dozen of players or so could be just fine if we talk about coop (aka PvE) only: you could form convoys with escorts, attack/defend bigger objectives than in solo play, etc.

Competitive multiplayer (PvP) brings a lot of issues, compromises and downsides; one of them being the ability to customize your game. I casually play Oolite, and it's key feature is precisely the ability to modify almost anything in the game. Those mods for instance let you escort an AI ship or be escorted by AI wingmen, which compensates a bit for the lack of multiplayer.

If ships are the primary draw how do you group people up

When you look at it, this genre is not very different from an ARPG: you upgrade your ship just like to equip your character; your ship can be a freighter or a light fighter and it is similar to character classes. If you need more variety you can for instance introduce distinct damage types (energy damage with lasers and kinetic damage for missile) with specific defences (shields vs lasers and armour vs missiles). Or you can reserve certain capabilities like interstellar jumps to certain ships.

moscaf• 10 years ago

I played that version in 1985.

ZenoArrow2• 10 years ago

You did? There was a MMO space trading/combat game in 1985? What was it called?

stcredzero4• 10 years ago

I'm currently working on an MMO that's in the same spirit but much less graphically ambitious. (2D 1980's "Arcade Space" -- especially vector graphics.) However, it's very ambitious non-graphically. Not only is there a procedurally generated universe of 2^100 locations, there will also be crafting involving a procedurally generated Tech Tree that's just as vast as the world. I'm also planning on incorporating user-scripting of most entities in-game and compiling those scripts to a format which can be subjected to Genetic Algorithms. The scripts and crafted items will be "productized" to be sold or licensed to other players with in-game currency. I currently have a server running on AWS, capable of supporting 70 players comfortably in the same instance, all at the same location. (You get O(n^2) when all ships are in the same location.)

The project is called "Emergence Vector."

https://www.reddit.com/r/gogamedev

vityaz_• 10 years ago

I've always wanted to play a space mmo with some nice low poly graphics like this for example: http://kennethfejer.deviantart.com/art/lowpoly-spaceship-450...

looks cute

cha5m• 10 years ago

They also just released "Getting work done" for vim

imglorp• 10 years ago

True, I think half the point of emacs is _not_ doing work but hacking on emacs instead :-)

See also:

M-x butterfly

M-x doctor

M-x tetris

M-x hanoi

etc. etc.

acomjean• 10 years ago

also M-x dunnet

is a text based adventure game in most versions of emacs.

zeveb• 10 years ago

That one can write elite in elisp is why one can write gnus, eww, CEDET, slack-mode, magit and thousands of other packages yet unwritten in elisp.

jobesian4lyfe• 10 years ago

How elitist.

twoquestions• 10 years ago

This is amazing.

Anyone know of any other text-based trading style games? I think there could be a market for this, as even Eve Online is nicknamed "Spreadsheets in Space", and I wonder if there are other games that have embraced that and left out the quasi-dogfighting mechanics.

technomancy3• 10 years ago

I'm working on a spaceflight game that features trading and can be operated from a text interface, though it features graphics by default. My vision is to be a bit more story-based than the procedurally-generated or MMO-type games would be, but it might be what you're looking for: https://technomancy.itch.io/bussard

It features programming as one of its core mechanics on top of the piloting features. I made a trailer for it here: https://p.hagelb.org/bussard-1.3.webm

My goal for the next beta is to make it so you can purchase an upgrade for your ship's computer in-game that would allow you to connect to it from an external program like Emacs over the nREPL protocol: https://gitlab.com/technomancy/jeejah You start the game without an autopilot routine, but eventually you find/write one, and at that point you can play from Emacs or Vim or the CLI or whatever. Right now the external connection only provides you with a REPL, but the protocol is extensible, and I plan to add features that would allow you to run more of a HUD-style REPL in your client of choice.

DigitalJack2• 10 years ago

Moving away from clojure? I can't get to the itch.io site from work for some reason, but saw an older version github. What were some of the factors in choosing lua? Has it been weird, difficult, or liberating?

Annatar3• 10 years ago

Elite in LISP, showcasing both serious coding skill and the power of LISP. If LISP can do this, what else would be possible if it could talk to one or more 3D accelerators, and send synthesised, mixed sound to one or more audio devices?

This article finds me in a middle of a dilemma, pondering whether to develop my web application with AWK through cgi-bin (functionally of course), or use ANSI common LISP...

fouric• 10 years ago

Common Lisp can do all of those things, as it has bindings for SDL 2.0 (https://github.com/lispgames/cl-sdl2) and OpenGL (https://github.com/3b/cl-opengl). As a newly converted Lisp programmer, I think that, after you get past the unusual syntax, you'll be much more productive and have much more fun with Lisp than any other language. You should try it!

justinhj• 10 years ago

I worked on this for a few years with some others. A fun experience to make a cl library for games that would work on the three major platforms and several cl implementations. We got bored and abandoned it though. https://github.com/lispbuilder/lispbuilder/blob/master/READM...

technomancy3• 10 years ago

Can you give an example from the code of how this shows the power of lisp? From reading the article it sounds like it's a port from the C version.

moron4hire2• 10 years ago

The second sentence leads me to believe we are being trolled here.

Annatar3• 10 years ago

I mean that he was able to do this at all it shows what LISP can do, not literally. If you want to see the power of LISP though, http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/practical-an-mp3-database.ht..., and look how trivial it is to add functionality without changing the structure or semantics of the program.

qwertyuiop924• 10 years ago

That's pretty magical.

outworlder• 10 years ago

Oh, this is fantastic!

I've toyed with the idea of creating a browser-based version of the original Elite. Went as far as the galaxy generation, based on the C version. Then had trouble, because the algorithm is pretty much obfuscated (unintentionally) behind layers of bit manipulation. And you need to do it the exact same way, otherwise you won't get the iconic galaxy, starting on Lave and with Riedquat as the nearby anarchy.

From a quick glance, the elisp version is slightly more readable in some places. I guess I should try again.

Also, will dig up my Portal Ending recreated in Emacs, as I didn't know there were other crazy brains that found this sort of thing interesting. I wonder if I need to get Valve's permission first.

Elite for Emacs

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