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''Frontier: Elite 2'' is a computer game written by David Braben and published by Gametek . It is the first sequel to Ian Bell and David Braben's earlier game '' Elite '', and is available for Commodore Amiga , Atari ST and PC computers. ''Frontier'' (or ''FE2'' as it is commonly referred to) retained the same principle component of ''Elite''—namely completely Open-ended gameplay—and added to this realistic physics and an accurately modelled galaxy. There is no plot within ''Frontier'', nor are there pre-scripted missions (as there were in its sequel, '' First Encounters ''); instead you are free to play as you please, either by trading legally or illegally, carrying out missions for the military, ferrying passengers from system to system, engaging in piracy or any combination of the above. As a consequence, ''Frontier'' cannot be completed or "won"—instead, you have to decide yourself what to aspire to and set out to achieve it. The game has since been released as game, users of Windows 2000 and Windows XP may initially have difficulty getting it to run. {Link without Title} GAME PLAY )]] )]] In ''Frontier'', you play the part of one of Commander Jameson 's grandchildren, having inherited from your grandfather one hundred credits and an ''Eagle Long Range Fighter''. By the game’s standards, this is incredibly modest, and is used as a spur to encourage you to earn money by whatever means you feel are appropriate. As with ''Elite'', much of ''Frontier'' is concerned with trading: you can buy and sell much—from food and computer parts to guns and slaves—with the intent of making the most profit from each trading run. Thus, learning to compare prices in various systems is essential for profitability, and calculating overheads for each trip—usually just fuel, but sometimes missiles or hull-repair if you venture into dangerous regions—are essential skills. It often becomes apparent that a particular trading route is profitable, such as the Barnard’s Star-Sol route. It is worth noting that some items (particularly narcotics, weaponry and slaves) are illegal in most systems and attempting to trade these in a system in which they are illegal will result in being fined by the police, which can often escalate into violence. It is often worth the risk, however, as illegal goods generally have a very high price on the black market. ''Frontier'' substitutes ''Elite''’s “arcadey” flying style for one based rigidly on Newtonian physics: momentum must first be neutralised to bring you craft to a stop, and turning 180° has no effect on the direction of travel until your previous momentum has been counteracted. The craft’s control is largely left to the player, but often day-to-day tasks—such as navigating from your Hyperspace exit-point to your desired planet or space-station and docking—can be handed over to your Autopilot . The issue of interstellar navigation is solved by the use of a Hyperdrive to travel between stars. The use of hyperspace in the ''Elite'' series is somewhat different to '' Star Trek ''’s Warp Drive ; whereas the warp drive accelerates the ship to translight speeds, hyperspace in ''Frontier'' appears to be a form of dimensional shifting, “jumping” into another, more compressed dimension then exiting it at a point equating to the desired destination. In this respect, hyperspace is treated in a similar manner to the hyperspacial travel utilised in '' Babylon 5 ''. Each jump takes approximately a week in relativistic terms, and to counteract this the duration of the flight is spent in a form of Suspended Animation . A hyperspace jump leaves a visible energy signature, the "hyperspace cloud" at the entry and exit points, visible during the duration of the jump and for some hours afterwards. This makes it possible for pirates and assassins to track a ship through hyperspace, arrive at its destination first and attack without police intervention. Sooner or later the player is bound to run into enemies, most likely in the form of space pirates. The different star systems had differing government and social structures, meaning that some systems were safer than others. The Core worlds were usually the safest, with anarchic systems ("Reidquat" and "Phekda" as arguably the most notorious anarchies in the game) being the most hazardous zones. Combat inevitably ensues, and is handled completely realistically. In practice, this means both ships taking slingshot thrusts at each other, Lasers being fired constantly at each other, until one of the ships is destroyed. All enemy ships you destroy count towards your combat rating, starting from “Harmless” and progressing towards “Elite”. There is something of a “background story” to ''Frontier'', establishing two major factions in the galaxy: The “Federation”, based in the Sol system, and the “Empire”, based in the Achenar system. These two factions are bitter enemies, but for the current time (the whole duration of the game, it seems) they are in some kind of cease-fire, akin to the Cold War in the 1960s . You are free to side yourself with the Federation, with the Empire, with both, or with neither. The game does not restrict your political career. Both sides have a military force that you can run freelance missions for, and if you succeed, you may be awarded a military rank. The ranks of the Federation and the Empire are independent of each other. Of course playing for both sides can get you in trouble if one military begins to think you are too closely affiliated with the other (in game terms: it will often take much longer to achieve your next promotion). COMPARED WITH ''ELITE'' ''Frontier'' has better graphics than ''Elite'', but this is mostly due to the differences in the underlying computer platforms—the Amiga , Atari ST and IBM PC offer much more power than the BBC Micro and Commodore 64 . The graphics engine was advanced for its time, featuring curved polygons, and texture mapping in the PC version. The range of scales covered is surpassed only by the yet to be released '' Spore ''. It was, for example, possible to do realistic gravitational slingshots around supermassive stars, and in the same engine fly close enough to the ground to read the (accurate) time from the face of a clock. ''Frontier'' built on ''Elite'' in other aspects too. It was now possible to land on planets in your space craft, something not possible in ''Elite''. Most stars also had a system of planets around them, when in the previous game there would only be one planet and a space station in all the systems. In addition to this many were impressed that some real stars had been placed in the ''Frontier'' universe, mostly near Sol , but other brighter stars such as Antares and Polaris which are much further out, were included. Planets in Sol could also be visited such as Earth , Mars and the Moon . The biggest improvement in the actual gameplay is that you are no longer confined to the same ship (the "Cobra Mk. III") for the whole game. ''Frontier'' offers dozens of ships, from small but nippy fighters like the ''Eagle'' and the ''Cobra'' to huge cruisers such as the ''Anaconda'' or the ''Panther''. You can only have one ship at a time, so every time you buy a new ship, your old ship is traded in, with its trade value deducted from the new ship’s price. Some people feel that ''Frontier''’s strict realism and totally open-ended structure made the game less interesting than ''Elite'', as there is less opportunity for intense action and combat. Indeed, while ''Elite'' can be properly described as a space combat game with trading elements attached, ''Frontier'' might be better classified as an RPG , in that the focus is on exploring worlds, upgrading the ship, enhancing weaponry, amassing cash, increasing skill levels, and fighting random enemies. MUSIC Perhaps taking a cue from the film '''', the game used a selection of classical music to provide background. Pieces (in fact, MIDI -reinterpretations) by Wagner , Mussorgsky , Grieg joined Strauss ’s “ The Blue Danube ”, the latter being played during any space station docking sequence, as in ''2001''. David Lowe also provided two original classical style pieces, one for the Intro Sequence . BOX CONTENTS As was common in the mid-1990s, the game box included more than just the disk. It included a quick start guide, a detailed manual, a fictional gazetteer of some star systems from the game, a book of short stories set in the game universe, and a very large fold out map of the local part of the galaxy. Copy-protection system The manual formed an integral part of the copy-protection system. At certain intervals in the game, the player had to type text of certain pages of the manual. The police would ask the player to: 'please type word X at row Y at page Z', as a check-up. If one mistyped a few words, or didn't have access to the manual, the game would stop. This was handled in the context of the game as a police spot-check, verifying that the player did indeed own his vessel legally. If the player fails 3 spot-checks, he is arrested and his vessel impounded, and the game ends. BUGS ''Frontier''’s development was running behind schedule near its slated release date, and, to meet their advertised release date, Gametek published the game before it was totally completed. As a result, there were some bugs left in the first release. The most famous of these was the “ has a range of about 15 Light Years at most, so Planetary Systems dozens of light years away are too far to reach in one hyperspace jump. However, if the player happened to find a system 655.36 to 670.36 light years away, it was suddenly within the '15 light year' range! The same would happen for systems slightly beyond 1310.72, 1966.08, and other multiples of 655.36 light years. With a bit of careful triangulation it was usually possible to get near or directly to a destination system any distance away by means of just two such 'wormhole' jumps. Die-hard fans have tried to explain this with a wormhole theory, but the most probable explanation is that the game only uses 16-bit math instead of 32-bit when calculating system distances for hyperspace jumps, and its internal variable rolls over when reaching 655.36 (2 to the power of 16, divided by 100). Indeed, this bug has been fixed in later versions of the game (at least for the PC). Another bug causes a passenger to sometimes want to go to a system with no Planets , making a successful delivery impossible. ''FRONTIER'' IN THE MEDIA ''Frontier'' was generally well received by the media. Most magazines were awestruck by its sheer volume and accurate depiction of real-world physics, and gave it similar awesomely high ratings they had originally given ''Elite''. One notable exception was Amiga Power , who viewed the game not as a successor to ''Elite''’s throne, but as a space flying game on its own right, and were disappointed by its lack of action. This made them dismiss the game as boring, rating it 65% (75% for A1200 users) ranking #100 in their top 100 games list. They were also critical of the game’s bugs, and its slow framerate on non- AGA Amigas, hence the 10 percentage points higher for players lucky enough to own an Amiga 1200 or 4000. TRIVIA
SUCCESSORS ''Frontier'' was succeeded by '' First Encounters '', which was available for PC (no Atari version was released as by the time of its publication it was no longer profitable to create games for the Atari, and for similar reasons the Amiga version was also canceled). EXTERNAL LINKS
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