Elite

Perhaps my number one all time favorite game is the C64 version of Elite. The legendary game by Braben and Bell. I remember playing it as a kid, trading goods between planets, occasionally trying some piracy, battling thargoids, mining asteroids, and dying a lot. The sheer richness of the universe is mind boggling, considering the simplicity of the game.

Of course there isn't any chatting with the pilots of the other ships, you cannot talk with the merchants, and you cannot woo the governor's daughter (that reminds me of another all time favorite, so another blog post will be in the works), but what you can do is to try to maximize your profits, improve your ship, and grow your reputation.

"Right on Commander", says the ship's computer after a particularly well executed kill shot of a viper trying its best to avoid your military grade front laser, and you almost cannot help but feel a little proud of yourself.

What makes Elite so compelling and seemingly rich? There is after all only a couple of special missions, and mostly you are just buying and selling things, and battling space pirates. Sometimes a run from planet to another is as simple as this:

• Exit the station
• Activate hyperjump
• After arriving at target system turn ship towards planet
• When you're close enough, system will detect the station, so fly to the station
• Dock with the station

This is through the roof excitement. Usually there's some asteroids, and some other ships flying around too. Also as soon as you can afford it, the docking computer usually makes the docking process smoother and you get to listen to the beautiful rendition of "The Blue Danube" by Johann Strauss II.

And all of it actually follows fairly simple logic. If you have a cargo hold full of stuff that is very expensive, and the system you've jumped to is on the bad side of the tracks, the pirates will show up in large numbers. If you are carrying less expensive cargo, and flying towards a rich planet, you are less likely to be bothered by anyone.

What our brain does is it adds motivations and additional complexity to the actions of the computer controlled ships. In our minds, we think about the pilots flying those ships, and why they are doing what they are doing.

image source: https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Elite

About writing

I wrote a book when I was a kid. Started writing when I was about 12 years old, and it took me 3 years to finish the story. The story features Tarzan, some wild savages, explorers and of course human sacrifice.

The way I approached this project was that I basically started by collecting some background information, for example listing some words in the language of the great apes, creating a list of the characters with some basic information such as their motivations etc. I also created an overview of the story, so I knew the main turning points and the general progress, and divided the overview into individual chapters.

I must have also estimated how many pages each chapter would take, because the way I created the book I pretty much committed to a certain number of pages. Now I suppose I could have added a few more but looks like I didn't. I haven't read the story in years, so I'm not sure if it reads like I had to try to stretch things towards the end, or alternatively try to close things up more quickly. I'll report back when/if I get around to reading the book again.

I don't know exactly where I got the ideas for how I approached the writing process though, but I suppose I must have read about it in a book or a magazine or something. Regardless, it's interesting to realise I was able to take a very structured and professional approach to the writing process back then. Something I seem to have lost the ability to do in my personal projects these days.

The story itself is fairly standard for a Tarzan book, full of cliches. From what I remember, there's a tribe that abducts Tarzan't wife Jane, and intends to sacrifice her. Tarzan has to find and rescue her. At the same time there's a group of explorers, some of whom are evil and some are nice. The nice ones help Tarzan, and the evil ones have other aims. In the end the good guys prevail and the bad guys get what they deserve.

The story starts like any traditional Tarzan story.

The total number of pages is just over 100 pages, which I guess is not bad. In the beginning I also wrote very neatly, as can be seen in the picture. Later in the book, the handwriting becomes a litte more messy, though still nothing like it looks like now. Again, something where my young self was able to exercise control and patience to produce more consistent quality results.

What I'm planning to do is to try to scan this book, so I'll update here if I do. Also as I do that I'll likely also manage to read the story again.