
		  Finally, after 12 years, the wait is over!




		  		  Announcing

		  		 --- ELITE ---

		  		 for the C128!

		 	     by D.Braben & I.Bell

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Just kidding:-)

But there's some truth in the header - read on:
I've hacked Elite to utilize the faster CPU of the C128. This will give you
about 40% more speed - nothing great, but it's free:-)

Here's a list of new features (see below for a list of drawbacks):

  * Will run in 2MHz mode while outside the visible area of the screen.
    This means that the CPU will run with 2MHz for about 40% of the time,
    giving an increase of 40% in speed.

  * Default device is the disk, no need to switch from cassette.

  * Switch between fast and slow possible when game stopped. Hit Inst/Del
    to stop the game, then press 'T' (you will hear a beep). Press
    Clr/Home to continue with the game.

  * Joystick/keyboard handler changed to allow parallel working of both.
    No need to take your hands from the joystick when accelerating,
    activating a missile or similiar things.
    The original version did not accept any keys when the joystick was
    active.

  * Keep settings when ship gets destroyed or the game is restarted.

  * Enabled three previously hidden keys that control music and sound.
    In addition to the 'T' key mentioned above, there are now three more
    keys available:

        'B'   -->  Allow sounds *and* music. Do you remember your enemies
                   killing you because you did not hear them while the
                   docking computer was active?

    	'C'   -->  Continous music. The music starts when leaving the
                   station. Rather boring but you may give it a try...

    	'E'   -->  Switch between the original docking music and the intro
                   theme.

    All keys are toggle keys. Press them once to enable the feature, press
    them a second time to disable it again.



As you probably know, there's no such thing as free lunch:-)
So here's the dark side of the new version:

  * I used the german version because it had a second music theme. So, all
    text is in german.
    I've descrambled most of the text, so it should be possible to
    retranslate the german version into english, but the text uses some
    rather complex compression, which is difficult to do by hand. I will
    have to write an encoder to make that possible.

  * You win not much if you use the version on a "real" C64 or an emulator.
    I had to add a third raster line interrupt, so this version is even a
    (very) small percentage slower on the C64.

  * I've stripped several layers of compression and encryption from the
    code, changed the initialization, put part of the code in an overlay
    and changed parts of the code, so I may have introduced errors.


If time and mood allows, maybe I will add several more features:

  * Support other disks than the one with address 8 (seems to be trivial).

  * Make the messages an overlay (this is possible without problems). Have
    loadable messages in more than one language (translation and encoding
    is a problem - see above).

  * Remove unused code (commander file checksum, cassette routines, etc.) so
    there is room for improvement.

  * Allow a commander file to exist on disk when saving a new file with the
    same name. Currently, you have to use the (dangerous) '@name' notation
    or use a new name for every saved commander.

  * Add more music.

  * Speedup the code (don't know if this is really possible).

  * Add a fastloader.


Perhaps many of you out there are eagerly awaiting this release, so it
wouldn't be nice to hold it back any longer. And it's christmas, anyway:-)

Have a merry christmas '97!

						
