Uploaded December 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Mark Moxon, Software archaeologist, was a guest speaker at our hack::soho in May 2024. He discussed the phenomenal game design of 'Elite,' arguably the first truly open-ended open-world game.
ABSTRACT:
Back in 1984, Acornsoft released Elite for the BBC Micro. Arguably the first truly open-ended open-world game, Elite blew people's minds, and was ported to every major home computer system, spawning an entire genre - the space sim.
Software archaeologist Mark Moxon fell in love with Elite all those years ago, and recently spent lockdown documenting every single byte of this seminal game. In this talk, you’ll find out how Ian Bell and David Braben, the authors of Elite, managed to squeeze an entire 3D graphics engine, 2000 star systems, 8 galaxies and a full galactic economy into just 23K of beautifully crafted machine code. If there is a definition of coding genius, it looks an awful lot like this...
Learn more and visit our website: ioactive.com
Mark Moxon, Software archaeologist, was a guest speaker at our hack::soho in May 2024. He discussed the phenomenal game design of 'Elite,' arguably the first truly open-ended open-world game.
ABSTRACT:
Back in 1984, Acornsoft released Elite for the BBC Micro. Arguably the first truly open-ended open-world game, Elite blew people's minds, and was ported to every major home computer system, spawning an entire genre - the space sim.
Software archaeologist Mark Moxon fell in love with Elite all those years ago, and recently spent lockdown documenting every single byte of this seminal game. In this talk, you’ll find out how Ian Bell and David Braben, the authors of Elite, managed to squeeze an entire 3D graphics engine, 2000 star systems, 8 galaxies and a full galactic economy into just 23K of beautifully crafted machine code. If there is a definition of coding genius, it looks an awful lot like this...
Learn more and visit our website: ioactive.com
