Elite-A: now working on the BBC Master 128 and BBC Master Turbo (at last!)

[MarkMoxon]

For us fans of Acornsoft Elite, Elite-A is legendary and the author, Angus Duggan, is a bona fide legend. However, BBC Master owners can't bask in the brilliance of Angus's amazing reworking of the original Elite, because Elite-A doesn't work on the Master. It possibly should work - there is code in there specifically to make it run on the Master - but unfortunately the game just crashes.

Until now!

I have updated my bug fix variant of Elite-A to incorporate fixes for the BBC Master and BBC Master with 6502 Second Processor. You can find download and in-browser links here:

https://www.bbcelite.com/elite-a/releases.html#bug-fix

The bug fix variant is available in two flavours - normal and flicker-free. The latter only contains flicker-free ships and not planets, as the same game runs on both the BBC Micro and BBC Master, and there is just no spare room in the former. Still, the ships look good!

There is one quirk with this version; on the Master, the disc catalogue and file delete screens are drawn quite slowly, character by character, though they do work. I may fix this at some stage, but at least they're not broken, and the speed is a consequence of me wanting to take Angus's original Master code and make it work, rather than starting again. It isn't perfect, but I'm not sure it matters too much.

Note that you may have trouble accessing the extra features if you use JSBeeb, so you might like to stick to desktop emulators or real hardware (e.g. CTRL-f6 for the encyclopedia doesn't seem to work in the browser for me, though this could be a Mac thing). This problem isn't related to my hack, and happens with the original too.

There could well be issues with this fix as it's a pretty gnarly hack, so if you do run into problems, please let me know. I hope you enjoy it anyway!

Mark

[dominicbeesley]

Hi Mark, another much appreciated update!

I tried this out an a real Model B with mmfs and a Beebfpga with mmfs but I don't seem to be able to get the encyclopedia or other disc accessing stuff working. Is it a known problem with mmfs (before I start stripping back my setup to eliminate other possible causes).

D

[MarkMoxon]

Hi Mark, another much appreciated update!

I tried this out an a real Model B with mmfs and a Beebfpga with mmfs but I don't seem to be able to get the encyclopedia or other disc accessing stuff working. Is it a known problem with mmfs (before I start stripping back my setup to eliminate other possible causes).

D

Just checking - do you mean a real Master, or a real Model B? The new version should work on both, in theory, but if you are on a Model B, then it would be interesting to know if the original Elite-A also fails on your MMFS setup. Also, it would be good to know if you are on the standard or second processor version, as they are completely different binaries.

I've not tried running any version of Elite-A on MMFS, but I know some versions of Elite can be a bit fiddly on it. The * commands used by Elite-A are *R. and *L. to run and load binaries, and *.:0 to catalogue a drive. Do you know if these shortcuts work normally on MMFS? I can't see any *DISC commands in the source code, which can sometimes cause problems, and the only other command is *DIR e, which I assume works the same on MMFS. So in theory it should work on MMFS - there's no clever DFS-specific code that I can see, anyway.

Are you seeing any errors when cataloguing a disc/loading a file/running the encyclopedia, or does nothing happen at all? And can you launch from the station? If you can do the latter but not load the encyclopedia, that's very odd, as they use the exact same code (*R.1.F is used to run the flight code on pressing f0, *R.1.E is used to run the encyclopedia code on CTRL-f6, and the code simply alters the command string to load the correct part). If something else is trapping the *DIR, *R., *L. or *. commands, then that might cause problems.

I do have an MMFS around here somewhere that I can fish out if you can't track down the cause...

Mark

[dominicbeesley]

Thanks Mark.

I'll try these out this evening. I can't remember all the combinations I tried.

On the model B it was real hardware and I was running without 2nd proc. I did have other ROMs installed so maybe something was affecting *L.

I could get into and out of flight mode by launching and docking but pressing ctrl-f6 either put me back at the load new command prompt or crashed. Sometimes with a load of random text appearing in the bottom half of the screen.

Don't spend any time on this yet as it is most likely something in one of my ROMs interacting with it!

D

[dominicbeesley]

I've just grabbed half an hour to check. I've stripped down my model B to just MMFS 1.5.2 and BASIC. Page is at 1900


Here's the result of trying the encyclopedia from the different SSDs. I did a power cycle between each trial

Code: Select all

Elite-A Original: ctrl-f6 brings up the first level menu, select ships A-G (1), select any ship i.e. 13 - main screen play area is blank for approx 0.5s then goes back to load new commander
Elite-A Flicker free: as above
Elite-A with bug fix: ctrl-f6 either crashes completely or goes back to load new commander Y/N after drawing some random text or lines.
Elite-A with bug fix, flicker free: as above

I can get a bit further with the non-ship parts of the encyclopedia in the original versions but the ships won't work in any of the versions. i.e. looking at controls works in all versions

I noticed that if I load an original game, enter the encyclopedia then ctrl-break then try a bug-fix game I can sometimes get the top-level menu, indicating maybe that something is not getting loaded properly in the bug fix ones?

I'm quite busy this week (work and prepping for abug). If you remind me next week I'll try getting these SSDs onto floppies or a gotek and test with DFS.

D

[MarkMoxon]

Thanks Dominic. I've tested the bug-fix version on my own Beeb... and it goes horribly wrong for me, too! I could have sworn I tested that part on a Model B, but obviously I did a rubbish job of it. Apologies.

That said, the original version of Elite-A works fine on my Beeb, so not sure why that one is jumping back to the load screen from the encyclopedia for you, as that's not right. This might indicate an incompatibility with MMFS - I'm loading from a Gotek and it works fine.

I will look into the problem with the bug-fix version and will hopefully issue a fix soon - thanks for the detailed bug report, and apologies for the inconvenience. Fingers crossed it's a quick fix! Once I've repaired it, we can look at getting it working on MMFS, if there are still problems...

Mark

[MarkMoxon]

Code: Select all

Elite-A with bug fix: ctrl-f6 either crashes completely or goes back to load new commander Y/N after drawing some random text or lines.
Elite-A with bug fix, flicker free: as above

OK, I've fixed the issue with the encyclopedia on a standard DFS-based BBC Micro - new versions of the bug fix variant can be downloaded from here:

Standard graphics: https://www.bbcelite.com/versions/elite ... ug-fix.ssd

Flicker-free: https://www.bbcelite.com/versions/flick ... leased.ssd

Turns out I was accidentally running the Master font relocation code on a Beeb - that will have messed things up quite a lot! I don't know if the fix will help with MMFS at all, but it should fix the issue with loading the encyclopedia.

Let me know if this helps!

Mark

[dominicbeesley]

Thanks Mark,

I've not tried on a real beeb yet but it seems to work well in BeebFPGA and MMFS which is what I first tried on. All the encyclopeadia stuff seems to work well.

Thanks for looking at this and thanks for all the Elite work.

It really does look delicious with all the fancy extra craft running flicker free in the encyclopeadia.

D

[MarkMoxon]

I've not tried on a real beeb yet but it seems to work well in BeebFPGA and MMFS which is what I first tried on. All the encyclopeadia stuff seems to work well.

Great. I suspect my dodgy code was always to blame rather than MMFS, so that's sounding good. Do shout if you run into any other problems - hacking Elite always involves bit of code-Jenga, especially in such a compact version as Elite-A, and it's always difficult to be sure that everything still works.

It really does look delicious with all the fancy extra craft running flicker free in the encyclopeadia.

Glad you like it! I think that's always been my favourite part of Elite-A, and the flicker-free really does it justice. It was worth the effort!

Mark

[noskcaja]

Wow, congratulations Mark … followed by many thanks. Amazing work and mind-blowingly clever to those of us (me) who are dabblers only.

Cheers
Andrew

[dominicbeesley]

I've just tried it in Tom Seddon's beeblink and it works fine there too.

D

[MarkMoxon]

Wow, congratulations Mark … followed by many thanks. Amazing work and mind-blowingly clever to those of us (me) who are dabblers only.

Thank you! It’s always so gratifying to know people like the results. I’m really glad you like it.

I've just tried it in Tom Seddon's beeblink and it works fine there too.

That’s a good sign. Sounds like it’s happy with quite a few filing systems, which is a relief, especially as Angus did away with one of the more important filing system routines (CATD) to make room for his enhancements, and that can make things a bit unpredictable on DFS. We are hacking on a hack here, after all!

Thanks for all the feedback, it’s much appreciated.

Mark