I'm delighted to announce a brand new release for the BBC Micro: the Elite Universe Editor.
Full instructions and download links can be found on the project website.
The Elite Universe Editor allows you to create your own playable universes in classic BBC Micro Elite. It works on the BBC Micro with a 6502 Second Processor, and on the BBC Master (128 and Turbo).
The Universe Editor lets you customise pretty much every aspect of the Elite universe, from the ships around you to the seeds used to generate the game's systems and galaxies. Here's what you can do, all within the original game engine:
- Compose your universe by placing ships, planets, suns and space stations anywhere within the local bubble, with a fully featured 3D editor that uses the game's original interface and key presses that will be familiar to players of BBC Micro Elite.
- Edit the many different attributes for each ship, such as AI, ship personality, speed, turn rates, laser fire, missiles, E.C.M., station type, planet type and so on.
- Save and load universe files.
- Play your universes by jumping straight into the game engine with your chosen universe laid out around you. Build a scenario and watch it come to life, or load one of the sample universes that come bundled with the editor, like the iconic screenshot from the back of the box.
- Edit the galaxy seeds to explore the 281,474,976,710,656 different galaxies that the engine supports.
I have also released a GitHub repository containing the fully documented and buildable source code for the Universe Editor, so you can see exactly how I modded the original Elite:
https://github.com/markmoxon/elite-universe-editor
It's great fun. I really hope you like it!
Mark