Date   : Sat, 26 Sep 1998 12:38:24 +0100
From   : Stuart William McConnachie <stuart@...>
Subject: Re: Master version of Elite.

In message <190EAA8120E6CF11A17708005ABA9BEA035428BD@...
smtp.galileo.com>, Hudd, Jim <Jim.Hudd@...> writes
>How did the master version differ from the BBC Disk version of Elite ?
The master version uses the shadow RAM and paged RAM available in the
master to give the following extra features:

Colour display - Just the same as the BBC 6502 second processor version,
with mode 1 for the vector graphics and mode 2 for the console.  The
status of ships and objects (eg cargo, friendly, thargoid etc) is then
shown on the viewer by using different coloured "sticks".

Full selection of ships - The BBC B only loaded a small subset of the
available ships each time you leave the space station.  This means that
you don't see some of the ships very often, since they only occur one or
twice in the 16 ship files (D.MOA - D.MOB).  The Master has more memory
and hence one big file containing all ships.  Therefore you should see a
wider selection of ships on each run out of the station.  A good example
is to look for the occurance of transports and shuttles in the two games
(you see these much more often in the Master/Second Processor version).

Several bug fixes - The debug code which resulted in asteroids not
appearing at all on the original BBC B version was removed.  Hence there
are asteroids in the Master, but not BBC B versions of the game.  The
"front pulse laser sell back" bug (which gains you credits) was removed.
There were probably some others too.  IIRC there was also a second BBC B
release which fixed the above problems.

Stuart.
-- 
Stuart McConnachie (stuart@...              )
43 The Hollows, Long Eaton, Nottingham, NG10 2ES, UK
Mobile: 0966 224307