In anticipation of the TNMOC Econet LAN Party, I have just released a big update to Elite over Econet.
Not only does it now run on all 8-bit BBC machines (including the unexpanded BBC Micro), but I have added live multiplayer scoreboards to the mix.
Here's an example scoreboard:
Here you can see six players competing live on three different bridge-connected Econet networks (1, 2 and 12). The scoreboard updates as players play, with Elite itself transmitting live player stats to a central scoreboard machine. The scoreboard shows kills, deaths, credits, legal status, ship condition and more, all updated as it happens.
The idea is that you can run competitive Elite events between groups of players, all connected by Econet. You don't need any modern equipment - this all runs on standard 1980s kit - but if you use a PiBridge to connect networks over the Internet, you can even run live international competitions.
The scoreboard can be ordered by kills or by credits, so you can run combat or trading/bounty competitions, or you can just hook up with friends for a bit of high score fun (e.g. sudden death, first to reach a certain credit score, first to spend all their credits - whatever floats your boat).
You simply run the scoreboard on one machine, and then configure each participating Elite game to transmit live updates to that machine via a new in-game network screen:
- network_configuration.png (5.14 KiB) Viewed 256 times
Multiple scoreboards can be chained to pass data from one to another, and there's a simple debug tool for checking Elite network traffic. I've also added insta-docking to all versions, as I had to remove the docking sequence from BBC Micro Elite to get it working with Econet, so this levels the playing field.
Full details can be found here:
https://www.bbcelite.com/hacks/elite_ov ... board.html
and downloads and installation instructions are here:
https://www.bbcelite.com/hacks/elite_ov ... loads.html
A massive thank you to Mark Usher for testing this new feature, and for providing lots of Econet coding tips that have been incredibly helpful in getting this working. And for proving that this works across international borders, which is really something to behold!
Note that this is a fairly experimental feature, and there are going to be bugs. If anyone has time to have a play, I'd be really interested to know how you get on. For example, one thing I haven't been able to test is the network number shown in the top-right corner of the scoreboard, when the scoreboard is running on a BBC Micro. On the Master and Archimedes the network number is correctly shown, as ANFS fetches it for you, but I haven't been able to test this on a standard Beeb with NFS (I only have one network at home, and don't have a bridge to test the bridge query code!). I am also interested in knowing whether data transmission works with lots of players - each data transmission is only 20 bytes, but there's no test like a LAN Party test.
The LAN Party is imminent. Time to hone your Elite skills, Commanders!
Mark