1. Frontier Elite For Mac Pro
2. Frontier Elite For Mac Computers

Frontier: First Encounters is a space trading and combat simulatorvideo game developed by Frontier Developments and published by GameTek in 1995 for DOS. The player pilots a spaceship through a universe pursuing trading, combat and other missions.

First Encounters was the first game to use procedural texturing to generate the vegetation, snow and other features on the planet surfaces.^[1] Mountain ranges, cliffs and alien landscapes and visual effects all contributed to the atmosphere of the game.

Including Elite Dangerous, the Elite Dangerous: Horizons Season Pass, and an additional 1,000 Frontier Points for use for purchasing game extras via the online store. Does Elite Dangerous for PS4™ work on PS4™Pro? Will Elite Dangerous support PlayStation®VR? Elite Dangerous is a flagship VR game on PC so of course, VR is important to us. Games like Frontier: Elite II for Mac OS X in order of similarity. Our unique A.I considers over 10,000 games to create a list of games you'll love!

This third game in the Elite series is the direct sequel to Frontier: Elite II, and was followed by Elite: Dangerous in 2014.

Gameplay[edit]

First Encounters carried over the gameplay features from its immediate predecessor Frontier: Elite II, in that the game is a combination of trading, fighting, espionage, bombing and a variety of other military activities; the combat ratings were also carried over from the previous games. Like Elite II, First Encounters features realistic Newtonian physics, the ability to seamlessly land on 1:1 scale planets in authentic 1:1 scale star systems, and rival factions for which the player can perform missions, gaining or losing standing accordingly. The game's graphics were an improvement on the previous game, introducing Gouraud shading and more extensive use of texture mapping. As well as employing the same open-ended gameplay of its predecessors, First Encounters also features a storyline which takes the player through a series of events starting with the 'Wiccan Ware Race' and missions concerning an alien race called the Thargoids. Some of these missions can only be completed under specific circumstances, or with specific combat ratings. The missions take place between 3250 (the start-date of the game) and approximately 3255.

Comparing First Encounters to earlier games in the series, creator David Braben said that where the original Elite was 'basically just trading' and Elite II positioned the trading as 'something to do while doing missions', the developers had done 'almost no work' expanding the trading for First Encounters, as it was not seen as the focus of the game. The player's objective is instead to explore, have fun and 'find out what's happening with the aliens', although how they achieve this would depend on how they played the game.^[2]

In addition to these now-established tenets of the Elite series, First Encounters added full motion video BBS character faces in the CD-ROM version and journals which report on happenings within the game's known universe, occasionally mentioning the player's exploits. The game also allows the player to earn special ships that are not available to buy. These ships are given as rewards for completing missions; the ships are the Turner-class Argent's Quest, the Stowmaster-class fighter (which comes with the Argent's Quest, equipped as the escape pod) and the Thargoid Warship, given to the player by the Thargoids at the completion of the Thargoid missions.

History[edit]

First Encounters was the sequel to Frontier: Elite II. It was released by the financially struggling publisher, GameTek in Easter 1995. Due apparently to being published in an incomplete state, the game was significantly flawed in a number of respects on release.^[3] As FFE was originally riddled with many bugs, the game was extensively patched, later reissued as shareware (like Elite II) but finally withdrawn from sale. This was followed by a lawsuit brought by David Braben against GameTek, accusing the publisher of forcing the studio to release the game too early.^[4] The lawsuit was settled out-of-court in 1999.^[5]

Frontier Elite For Mac Pro

As the official support has ended and the game being a DOS game, First Encounters has difficulty running with post-DOS operating systems such as Windows 95, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Only with DOS-emulators like DOSBox the game was playable.

In 2000 Frontier Developments announced that FFE would be open-sourced under a GPL-similar license allowing ports,^[6] but this never happened.^[7] In response the community took up the support of the game, which was successfully reverse engineered by John Jordan and ported for modern operating systems in October 2005.^[8] JJFFE was updated until December 2009 and was later, due to the source code availability, taken up by other community developers with improved ports like FFED3D^[9] or GLFFE.^[10][11]

Reception[edit]

First Encounters was well reviewed, despite being released before the development team thought it was ready.^[3] While the game employed an advanced and realistic Newtonian mechanics flight model, rather than the original arcade-style engine, many players found it frustratingly difficult, particularly in combat.^[3] In a negative review, Computer Game Review's Tasos Kaiafas wrote, 'If another Elite is planned for the future, this baby should be thrown out the window with the bath water.'^[12] According to Frontier Developments the game shipped around 100,000 units.^[13]

References[edit]

1. ^'Guinness World Records - First use of procedural generation in a video game'.
2. ^''Life, The Universe And First Encounters' - PC Gamer (c) , Issue 18, 1995'.
3. ^ ^abc'The history of ... Elite', Retro Gamer, Imagine Publishing (47): 23–31, February 2008
4. ^'Getting to know... David Braben'. That VideoGame Blog. 10 November 2009.
5. ^Gaming, Henry Winchester 2014-05-12T14:50:00 131Z. ''The tech caught up to our ambition': David Braben on the return of Elite'. TechRadar.
6. ^News on eliteclub.co.uk, 8 November 2000. 'Following much discussion on the subject of open-source by the Elite community, we have decided to make some alterations to our previous plans for the Elite Club - we are going to relax some of the restrictions we were intending to put on the distribution of the source code. The source code will now be distributable more freely, under a licence agreement similar to the GPL (GNU Public Licence).'
7. ^'Welcome Commander, to the AmigaFFE Project'. '... after I have seen the announcement of a release of the Sources of Frontier Elite II and Frontier First Encounters on the Eliteclub-Website http://www.eliteclub.co.uk, I was very happy with it. Now it is 2001 (around 2 years since the announcement) and they still haven't released it'
8. ^Jordan, John (1 December 2009). 'JJFFE Central'. jaj22.org.uk. Archived from the original on 3 March 2011. Retrieved 6 November 2015. What is JJFFE? JJFFE is set of recompiled replacement executables for the 1995 Frontier Developments game Frontier: First Encounters. There are currently versions that run under Windows 95/98/ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows NT4, OS/2, Linux and Mac. As well as running on many more operating systems than the original, JJFFE also includes minor improvements and bugfixes.Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
9. ^FFED3D at frontierastro.co.uk
10. ^GLFFE on alioth.net (archived)
11. ^GLFFE - Nic Mod on nic.dnsalias.com
12. ^ ^abHoneywell, Steve; Chapman, Ted; Kaiafas, Tasos (July 1995). 'There is No Escape'. Computer Game Review. Archived from the original on 21 December 1996.
13. ^'Frontier: First Encounters - Official site'. Archived from the original on 23 January 2015.

External links[edit]

• Penn, Gary (1995). 'Life, the Universe and First Encounters'. PC Gamer. Future Publishing (18).

Frontier: Elite II is a space trading and combat simulator video game written by David Braben and published by GameTek in October 1993 and released on the Amiga, Atari ST and DOS. It is the first sequel to the seminal game Elite from 1984.

The game retains the same principal component of Elite, namely open-ended gameplay, and adds realistic physics and an accurately modelled galaxy.

Frontier: Elite II had a number of firsts to its name.^[2] It was the first game to feature procedurally generated star systems. These were generated by the game aggregating the mass of material within an early solar system into planets and moons that obey the laws of physics, but which have slightly randomised material distribution in order to ensure each system's uniqueness.^[2]

It was followed by Frontier: First Encounters in 1995 and another sequel, Elite: Dangerous in 2014.

Gameplay[edit]

There is no plot within Frontier, nor are there pre-scripted missions (as there are in its sequel, First Encounters). Instead, players explore space while 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', and players instead decide what to aspire to and set out to achieve it.

In Frontier, the player begins in the year 3200 and assumes the role of one of Commander Jameson's grandchildren, having inherited one hundred credits and an Eagle Long Range Fighter from him. By the game's standards, these are very modest resources, and are intended as a spur to encourage players to earn money by whatever means they feel is appropriate.

Though the plot is minimal, some background information about the universe of Frontier is provided. There are 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 at the time of the game they have established a tense cease-fire, akin to the Cold War. Players are free to side themselves with the Federation, the Empire, both, or neither; the game does not restrict one's political career. Both sides have military forces that a player can run freelance missions for, with successes leading to a military promotion. The ranks of the Federation and Empire are independent of each other. Playing for both sides adds to the difficulty to acquire a rank promotion for either.

Frontier Elite For Mac Computers

As with Elite, much of Frontier is concerned with trading: players can buy and sell a variety of goods—from food and computer parts to guns and slaves—with the aim of making the most profit possible from each trading run. Thus, learning to compare prices in various systems is essential for profitability, and calculating overheads for each trip (such as fuel, missiles, and hull repair) 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 trade goods (particularly narcotics, nerve gas, weaponry and slaves) are illegal in many systems and attempting to trade in these can result in a fine from the police, which can often escalate into the police attacking you if not paid. However it is often worth the risk as illegal goods generally carry a very high price on the black market.

Frontier substitutes Elite’s arcade flying style for one based rigidly on Newtonian physics: momentum must first be neutralised to bring the player's craft to a stop, and turning 180° has no effect on the direction of travel until 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 a hyperspace exit-point to a desired planet or space-station and docking can be handed over to a ship's autopilot. Travel within a star system occurs across realistic distances at realistic speeds, and therefore even with the fastest ships capable of more than 10G of acceleration, intrasystem travel can take many hours. Therefore the game provides an 'accelerate time' function that makes game time pass at 10, 100, 1000, or 10,000 times the normal rate.

The issue of interstellar navigation is solved by the use of a hyperdrive to travel between stars. The player can select a system from the star map and 'jump' to it, provided they are reasonably far from a settlement. They then arrive at the outskirts of that star system and must make their way to their destination. A ship's maximum range is calculated according to its mass, so small, light ships can have impressively large ranges. The time taken to travel the maximum range is always exactly one week, with shorter jumps taking less time. Unlike the rest of the game's travel, these jumps are not experienced in some multiple of real time and appear almost instantaneous (theories range from suspended animation to extreme time dilation). A hyperspace jump leaves a visible remnant, a 'hyperspace cloud', at the entry and exit points. These are visible for some hours afterwards, ostensibly making 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 will run into enemies, most likely in the form of space pirates. The different star systems have differing government and social structures, meaning that some systems are safer than others. The Core worlds are usually the safest, with anarchic systems being the most hazardous ('Riedquat' and 'Phekda' are amongst the most notorious anarchies in the game). Combat 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 destroyed count towards the player's combat rating, starting at 'Harmless' and progressing towards 'Elite'.

The game's copy protection was worked into the game in the form of police spot-checks, making sure the player is the legitimate owner of his ship. At certain intervals in the game, the police would ask the player to 'please enter the first letter of word X, row Y on page Z' of their ship's manual (which the game manual ostensibly was). If the player entered a wrong letter on three occasions, he would be arrested and his ship impounded, at which point the game ends.

Comparisons with Elite[edit]

Frontier has more advanced graphics than Elite, but this is mostly due to the differences in the underlying computer platforms, as the Amiga, Atari ST and IBM PC offered much more power than the BBC Micro and Commodore 64. The graphics engine was advanced for its time, featuring curved Bézier surfaces, and texture mapping in the PC version.

Frontier operates on a very large scale compared to previous games, and most games since. It is, for example, possible to do realistic gravitational slingshots around supermassive stars and large planets, 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 as well. It is possible to freeform seamlessly land on planets, something not possible in the first Elite. Most stars also have a system of planets around them, while in the previous game there would only be a single planet and space station in every system. In addition to this some real stars had been placed in the Frontier universe, mostly near Sol, such as Alpha Centauri and Sirius. Other brighter stars such as Altair, Antares, Betelgeuse and Polaris, which are much further out, are also included. All planets and most major moons in the Sol system can also be visited. On zooming out, other galaxies are visible, although these other galaxies are simply duplicates of the first, and not accessible in any version of the game.

Similarly to the original Elite, Frontier offers dozens of ships, from small but fast fighters like the Eagle, multi-role traders like the Cobra to huge cruisers such as the Anaconda or the Panther. Players may own only one ship at a time, so when a new ship is purchased, the old ship is part exchanged (i.e. traded in with most of its trade value deducted from the new ship's price).

Development and release[edit]

Braben originally programmed the game in 68000assembly language. It had roughly 250,000 lines of code, which were ported from 68000 assembler to the PC's 80286 assembler by Chris Sawyer.^[1] Frontier also had some features that had never been seen before: it was the only game at the time to do a palette-fit every frame to get best use of colours, plus it also featured real sized 1:1 scale planets and star systems.^[1]

Frontier: Elite II was published on a single floppy disk. For the Amiga version, this is a single 880 KB disk (disk 2 was only a selection of interesting saved games), and for the PC/DOS platform a 720 KB double density floppy. For the Amiga version, the actual executable file was only around 400 KB (uncompressed), its small size partly due to the entire game being written in assembly language while its universe was mostly procedurally generated.

The game featured a famous 'wormhole' bug: Normally a ship's hyperdrive 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 would be counted by the game as within the '15 light year' range. This would also happen for systems slightly beyond 1310.72 light years, 1966.08 light years, and other multiples of 655.36. 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.

The game features a selection of MIDI interpretations of classical music by composers such as Wagner, Mussorgsky and Grieg. Strauss’s The Blue Danube is played during any space station docking sequence, a homage to the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Particularly, to make stronger futuristic impression, 'The Great Gate of Kiev' and 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' in the game are very close to electric organ interpretation by ELP. In addition to this, David Lowe provided two original classical-style pieces, one of which was for the intro sequence.

The game has since been released as shareware and is available as a free download,^[3] although being a DOS game, users of post-Windows 98 operating systems may have difficulty getting it to run. Primarily this was because of the game using EMS type memory rather than XMS. The expanded memory managerEMM386 had to be configured to use it.^[4] Using emulation such as DosBox will get the official shareware version of the game to run on modern operating systems such as Windows 7, Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux. Also, around 2005 Tom Morton reverse engineered a platform-neutral C version from the game, called GLFrontier, making the game natively and fast playable on modern OSes again.^[5][6]

Reception[edit]

Frontier was generally well received by the media. Most magazines were awestruck by its sheer scale and accurate depiction of real-world physics, and gave it high ratings.^[8]Computer Gaming World in April 1994 favorably discussed the game's 'ENORMOUS universe' with 'many, many hours of exploratory game play ... less of a game, and more a way of life'.^[9] A longer review the next month reported that the game compensated for the Amiga version's 16-color palette with 'a surprising amount of graphic detail'. The magazine concluded that 'Frontier should offer months, or even years, of galaxy-trekking fun' as players explored the 'incredibly immense' universe.^[10] 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% on the faster Amiga 1200).^{[citation needed]}

Amiga Power later ranked Frontier #100 in the magazine's top 100 games list.^{[citation needed]} In 2004, readers of Retro Gamer voted it as the 20th top retro game, with the editors commenting: 'More so than its predecessor, Frontier was a game you either loved or hated. Some found it far too dull and were unable to get to grips with it, while fans just couldn’t get enough. This was lucky really as Frontier was staggeringly huge on a mind-bending scale. The game universe contained millions of planets, and coupled with the ‘do what you like’ gameplay, this was a game that could take over your entire existence.'^[11] It was named #77 on PC Zone's '101 Best PC Games Ever' list in 2007.^[12] In 1994, PC Gamer UK named Frontier the 16th best computer game of all time. The editors called it 'a worthy successor to Elite, and another classic in its own right.'^[13]

The official Frontier website puts sales at about 500,000 copies sold. Braben received royalties for 350,000 copies.^[1]

Legacy[edit]

Frontier was succeeded in April 1995 by First Encounters, which was available for DOS. No Amiga or Atari versions were released as by the time of its publication these platforms were no longer as profitable as they had once been, even though Amiga 1200 and Amiga CD32 versions were planned and previewed in many magazines of that time, they were eventually cancelled.^[14]

A further sequel, Elite: Dangerous was crowdfunded through a Kickstarter campaign and released on 16 December 2014.

References[edit]

1. ^ ^abcd'Frontier: Elite II official page'. 2007. Archived from the original on 23 September 2010. Retrieved 2 July 2010.
2. ^ ^ab'Guinness World Records - First use of procedural generation in a video game'.
3. ^'Frontierverse > The Game'. Retrieved 20 June 2013.
4. ^'Frontier Elite 2: Official support'. 2001. Archived from the original on 10 August 2007. Retrieved 13 August 2007.
5. ^GLFrontier Project Page!!!1Archived 10 November 2015 at the Wayback Machine on noflag.org.uk 'This WAS the Atari ST version of the game Frontier: Elite 2 [...]. It was disassembled, OS calls and hardware access removed, and originally run on a stripped down ST emulator (Hatari). Now it is compiled to C or native x86, and run much faster without 68K emulation. Most recently it has been modified to draw stuff with OpenGL at any shiny resolution with 8xAA, etc.'
6. ^Back To Front(ier): Pioneer on Rock, Paper, Shotgun by Craig Pearson on 6 December 2011
7. ^Olafson, Peter (March 1994). 'Frontier: Elite II'. Electronic Entertainment. 1 (3): 82.
8. ^Reviews of Frontier from various Amiga magazinesArchived 19 December 2006 at the Wayback Machine
9. ^'Taking A Peek'. Computer Gaming World. April 1994. pp. 174–180.
10. ^James, Jeff (May 1994). 'So Many Star Systems, So Little Time'. Computer Gaming World. pp. 18, 20.
11. ^'Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)', Retro Gamer, Imagine Publishing (9): 58, 1 October 2004, #20
12. ^'The 101 best PC games ever'. PC Zone. 12 May 2007. Retrieved 20 June 2008.
13. ^Staff (April 1994). 'The PC Gamer Top 50 PC Games of All Time'. PC Gamer UK (5): 43–56.
14. ^'Frontier 2: First Encounters : Hall Of Light – The database of Amiga games'. Hol.abime.net. 10 June 2011. Retrieved 9 August 2014.