Frontier Elite Developments
The entire universe of Frontier Elite fits onto 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 1.44 MB HD 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.
Braben originally programmed the Frontier Elite game for the Amiga in 68000 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 Elite 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. It also featured real sized planets.
The game features a selection of MIDI interpretations of classical music by composers such as Wagner, Mussorgsky and Grieg. Strauss’s The Blue Danube is played during any space station docking sequence, as in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
David Lowe provided two original classical style pieces, one of which was for the intro sequence.
Frontier Elite’s development was running behind schedule and, to meet their advertised release date, Gametek published the game before it was ready. As a result, there were some bugs left in the first release.
The most famous of these was the “wormhole” bug: Normally a ship’s hyperdrive has a range of about 15 light years 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 programme 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.
