EliteGL

What's New

Downloads of EliteGL v1.0.0 have been disabled as per Christian Pinder's request. The project is not completely dead, however. I'm currently working on a planet rendering demo codenamed 'Journey' that could be incorporated into an elite-style game in the future. The images above are development screenshots of that project. In the meantime, please visit the following sites for information on related projects.

Summary

This is the homepage of EliteGL, an OpenGL port of Christian Pinder's Elite: The New Kind. My immediate goal with this project is to create a complete conversion of E:TNK to OpenGL, restructuring the source code as necessary but keeping the behavior of the game as similar to the original as possible. This means I'm not adding any new features or improving the graphics yet, but instead making sure the game works and is fully playable. With a solid code base it would then be possible to for me or other game developers to add features and improve the graphics.

Version 1.0.0 - Release

This is the second release of EliteGL. It is based on version 1.0 of E:TNK, so it inherits any bugs/issues/missing features that are in that release. Some of the major changes are the following:

• SDL: I've decided to use the Simple DirectMedia Layer as the cross-platform library for EliteGL instead of Allegro/AllegroGL. All of the graphics, sound, joystick, and keyboard input code had to be modified.
• Smooth framerates: Framerates from 60-120fps instead of 10fps with the original. I've written code that interpolates object positions between each 'simulation frame' using quaternion math.
• Multiple resolutions: In the newkind.cfg you can choose your resolution and whether you'd like to run fullscreen or windowed.
• Music: This version now supports both hardware MIDI and the Commodore-64 sidtune music (downloaded from the High Voltage SID Collection).
• Save/Load: I added a save/load screen. The load screen shows stats on each saved commander as you cycle through the list of commanders. All saved commanders are located in a single directory.
• GNU Build System: I've organized the code to use GNU Automake/Autoconf to make it easier to build on different systems. I've successfully built EliteGL on GNU/Linux (Redhat 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3).

EliteGL Patches

The following are patches to EliteGL done by other people:

• Mr J.'s Patch - This patch adds new sound effects, music, a new scanner image, and a font to match. Click here for a screenshot of what it looks like. To install simply extract the archives provided on his website to your EliteGL directory and replace the original files.

Contact

Please E-Mail any comments, suggestions, or bug reports to mef123@geocities.com.

Links

The following are links to various sites that I got ideas from while developing EliteGL.

EliteGL Derivatives

• X-Elite
• Elite: Reconstructed

Elite

• Ian Bell's Elite Pages
• Christian Pinder's Elite Page

Other 'EliteGL' Projects

• Timo Suoranta's glElite
• Aleksander Kenton's EliteGL
• Darren Bullivant's EliteTNG (formerly known as EliteGL) [old page]

Other Elite-related or Space Simulation projects

• Vegastrike
• Orbiter
• Millenium 3: Future's End
• Galileo Projects
• Parsec
• The Elite Project Page
• TuxFleet
• Orbit
• GoGL
• SpaceThing
• Mote
• Celestia
• The Video Games Directory

Cross-platform Libraries

• SDL
• Allegro
• AllegroGL

Commodore 64 Music

• Sidplay2 homepage
• HVSID Collection

OpenGL and 3d Graphics

• OpenGL Home
• Nehe's OpenGL Tutorials
• The Underground Mine
• Hugo Elias' homepage

Cross-platform games

• Tuxracer