Mark Moxon

I have just released Lander for the ARM Evaluation System. So that's the first ever ARM game running on the first ever ARM chip. See this Stardot thread for details: stardot.org.uk/forums/viewt... Fly safe! #retrocomputing #retrogaming #bbcmicro #archimedes

elite.bbcelite.comIndex of all deep dive articles - Elite on the 6502Index of all deep dive articles about BBC Micro Elite

New: Four interactive guides for building 8-bit Elite from Bell and Braben’s original source disks… all in your browser Covers the #BBCMicro, #Commodore64, #AppleII and 6502 co-pro versions of #Elite Links in the first section of my deep dives: elite.bbcelite.com/deep_dives #retrocomputing #8bit

Mark Moxon reposted

RISC OS London

@rougol.bsky.social

20 Sept

Join us in the pub (or online) on Monday 21st to chat with Mark about how he added two player duels to the original Elite. We will have a Beeb there so you can test your flying skills against others! rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/ind...

rougol.jellybaby.netRISC OS User Group Of London | Meetings

Mark Moxon@markmoxon.bsky.social

I am thrilled to announce the release of my latest Elite hack: Two-player Elite for the #BBCMicro This is the original 1980s Acornsoft Elite, but with split-screen, two-player, deep-space combat See the thread for links, downloads and details (1/10) #retrocomputing #retrogaming #elitedangerous

11 Sept

If you’re a fan of Revs, Geoff Crammond’s epic Formula 3 simulation for the #BBCMicro and #Commodore64, then this is absolute gold. It’s a modern launcher for the original game, and it adds so much - upscaling, controller support, track mods, telemetry, race view… It’s amazing. 👏 #retrogaming

Race Sim Central@racesimcentral.net

My Revs (1985) Launcher, including its emulator, is out now adding Telemetry, Steering Wheel and Mod Track support. racesimcentral.net/revs-launche... #simracing #retrogaming #revs #bbcmicro #ad

10 Sept

Wow, look at this - it’s Revs on the #BBCMicro with telemetry, a track view showing all the other drivers, and brand new tracks! What wizardry is this? 🤯 Well done @racesimcentral.net, this looks epic. #simracing #retrogaming

Race Sim Central@racesimcentral.net

The first mod track for Geoff Crammond's Revs (1985) ever. I'll release it with the launcher. #simracing #retrogaming #bbcmicro #ad

Two bona fide academic papers on #BBCMicro Elite have just been presented at the IEEE Conference on Games in Madrid I'm a co-author, alongside Michael Fairbank from the University of Essex They're a great read! And free to download Details in thread… #retrogaming #retrocomputing #elitedangerous

Paper 2 explores the epic Saturn loading screen, a mathematical work of art Fairbank, Michael and Moxon, Mark (2026) Analysing the Saturn Loading Screen from the Classic Computer Game: Elite. In: IEEE Conference on Games, 2026-09-01 - 2026-09-04, Madrid Free download: repository.essex.ac.uk/43578/

I hope you enjoy them; they were certainly fun to work on. And remember, it's now official: playing 8-bit Elite is academic research. Back to school, everyone! 😀

Paper 1 investigates the maths behind the rotating planets, and their glorious craters and meridians Fairbank, Michael and Moxon, Mark (2026) The Rotating Planets in the Classic Game: Elite. In: IEEE Conference on Games, 2026-09-01 - 2026-09-04, Madrid Free download: repository.essex.ac.uk/43577/

5 Sept

For #BBCMicro fans, the mode 7 teletext Acornsoft loading screen is iconic So I've been adding customised versions to some of my more sophisticated Elite hacks That's better - I should have done this ages ago! See elite.bbcelite.com/hacks/ for more hacking goodness #retrocomputing #acorn

I’m indebted to the Acorn team at @tnmoc.bsky.social who tried out the game and helped me track down some of the gnarlier bugs Although there will definitely be some issues left, it’s so complicated If you spot anything, let me know and I’ll see what I can do to fix it I hope you like it! (9/10)

If you do, here are some of my other Elite hacks: Elite Compendium elite.bbcelite.com/hacks/elite_... Elite Universe Editor elite.bbcelite.com/hacks/elite_... Teletext Elite elite.bbcelite.com/hacks/telete... Elite 3D elite.bbcelite.com/hacks/elite_... Until next time, Commanders! 🫡 (10/10)

The game requires a 6502 Second Processor fitted to a BBC Micro or BBC Master It supports the keyboard, joysticks, and all the buttons on the Delta 14B For one human player, you only need your computer For two human players, you’ll need at least one joystick Twin joysticks are great fun! (7/10)

It’s worth mentioning that this project is 100% AI-free, like all my projects I use a very minimal development environment and I hand-code absolutely everything The source code includes all the modifications I’ve made in this hack, and it’s all fully documented, both on-site and in-source (8/10)

Two-player Elite lets you choose each player’s ship from: * Cobra Mk III * Python * Anaconda * Viper * Sidewinder * Mamba * Krait * Moray * Thargoid Bigger ships are easier to hit, while smaller ones are a lot sneakier And, at last, you can choose to be a Thargoid, if that’s your bag (5/10)

You can also choose from the following: * Four types of lasers * Three types of energy unit * Missiles * Anti-missile E.C.M. And your fight can be to the death, or the first to reach a specific number of hits The latter is great fun and brings a whole new challenge to one-on-one combat (6/10)

I have also written an extensive article about how I hacked a second player into BBC Elite: elite.bbcelite.com/hacks/two-pl... It’s a very long read (15,000+ words!), but I wanted to explain everything properly This is my most complex Elite hack to date, so there’s an awful lot to cover… (3/10)

If you don’t have a human to hand, don’t panic: two-player Elite’s “AI Pilot” mode uses the game’s normal tactics routines to give you a proper deep-space fight for one For those of us who grew up playing the original Elite, it’s finally a chance to see things from the enemy’s perspective! (4/10)

Here are the links: About two-player Elite elite.bbcelite.com/hacks/two-pl... Downloads elite.bbcelite.com/hacks/two-pl... Instructions elite.bbcelite.com/hacks/two-pl... Play in a browser (press F10 to play) bbc.xania.org?coProcessor=... Code repository github.com/markmoxon/el... (2/10)

30 Aug

Status check for two-player #BBCMicro Elite: Development… [Done] Testing… [Done] Website… [Done] Technical deep dive… [Overdone] Code repository… [Done] Document all mods… [Done] Confirm date… [Done] Releasing this Thursday, 3 September Get your twin joysticks ready! #retrogaming #retrocomputing

24 Aug

I love it when projects include side quests Two-player #BBCMicro #Elite (releasing next week) was having Delta 14B joystick issues, so I built a test tool This proved the hardware was bad, not the code (phew!) And I've released the code for others to use A fun detour! github.com/markmoxon/de...

github.comGitHub - jmcd/lander-gbaContribute to jmcd/lander-gba development by creating an account on GitHub.

9 Aug

This is brilliant - it’s a conversion of David Braben’s classic game Lander for the Game Boy Advance. github.com/jmcd/lander-... Do yourself a favour and read John’s project explanation in the README. It’s fascinating! Exceptional stuff. 👏 #retrocomputing #retrogaming #arm #archimedes #gameboy

7 Aug

Two-player Elite on the #BBCMicro is finally feature-complete. Phew, that was a long road! Got a few bugs to fix, but the Acorn team at @tnmoc.bsky.social have road-tested and given it a thumbs up, so that's a good sign. September release, I hope... #retrocomputing #retrogaming #8bit #elite

github.comGitHub - markmoxon/elite-3d: Anaglyph 3D version of the classic BBC Micro game EliteAnaglyph 3D version of the classic BBC Micro game Elite - markmoxon/elite-3d

29 July

Two years ago I released Elite 3D - the #BBCMicro classic, in anaglyph 3D (for red-and-cyan glasses) But I failed to give the project a repository, so here it is, only 22 months late: github.com/markmoxon/el... So you now can see every change I made to Elite to drag it into the third dimension 🚀

24 July

Two-player #BBCMicro Elite has just become the first game ever to support all the buttons on twin Delta 14B joysticks So two players can dogfight in Elite without either of them needing the keyboard For some of us, this is a dream come true! And it justifies all this hardware I keep buying... 😀

24 July

Happy memories from my days as a magazine editor - this issue was definitely a high point of my tenure at Acorn User! I still can’t believe I had a job that combined all my favourite hobbies into one. I mean, writing about Elite and Acorn computers for a living? It’s all been downhill since then. 🤣

FrontierAstro@frontierastro.bsky.social

The #AcornArchimedes version of #Elite was released by Hybrid Technology in 1991. Four years later, the full game was included on the August 1995 cover disc of #AcornUser magazine, edited at the time by software archaeologist extraordinaire Mark Moxon 🙂 @markmoxon.bsky.social elite.bbcelite.com

16 July

Missiles are now working in two-player #BBCMicro Elite. This clip shows player 1 firing a missile at player 2 (in the bottom view) and then player 2 retaliating (in both views). This was really difficult to build! But it's important; see the thread for details. #retrocomputing #retrogaming (1/3)

16 July

Until now, I've only had to draw the two ships, the planet and the sun. There are shortcuts we can take for all of these: the sun and planet are so distant that we can ignore their orientations, and each ship is the origin of its own space view, which simplifies a lot of the maths. (2/3)

16 July

Missiles, however, represent arbitrary objects in 3D space, so getting the maths working for them means we can add any objects to space and draw them from the perspective of any other objects. So this means that multiplayer Econet Elite should be possible - mathematically, at least. Nice! (3/3)

14 July

This is quite wonderful. James has taken Level7’s epic disassembly of #BBCMicro Exile and has not only converted it into TypeScript so it runs in browsers, but he’s also annotated the disassembly with notes on the TypeScript conversion *and* started writing a bunch of deep dives. Amazing work! 🫡

James@jamesrandall.bsky.social

I've been spending some time analysing the code and systems of the epic 1988 BBC game Exile resulting in a (I hope) bit perfect recreation in TypeScript and a set of @markmoxon.bsky.social inspired deep dives into its working. bbcexile.com #retrocomputing #bbcmicro #gamehistory

25 June

To help me test two-player #BBCMicro Elite, I’ve added “AI Pilot” as an option It uses the game’s 1984 tactics routines to fly player 2 (bottom view) It’s really interesting to watch Elite’s original “AI” from inside the other ship’s cockpit - in this case, an NPC Python #retrocomputing (1/3)

25 June

The top view is a human player, the bottom view is the AI You can see the AI’s view jumping around quite a bit This is because pitch and roll are either fully on or fully off for AI ships - there is no fine control To make up for this, AI ships don't have to be 100% accurate to make a hit (2/3)

25 June

In this configuration, two-player Elite is effectively the same as standard single-player Elite, but with the bottom view showing the cockpit of the computer-controlled AI ship So this is what the world looks like for Elite NPCs! I'll definitely be leaving this feature in - it’s great fun (3/3)

21 June

Two-player #BBCMicro Elite will be a deep-space dogfight game The rest of Elite wouldn’t be that exciting with two players, so I’m sticking to the core combat experience When you fire it up, you can choose what kind of contest you want Here's the all-new config screen 🚀 Game on! #retrocomputing

I’ve been beavering away at two-player #BBCMicro Elite These videos show the most recent improvements: laser beams, hit counters, two-player dashboard, planets, suns and more accuracy It’s quite difficult to film! See the thread for a tour of what’s new… (1/6) #retrocomputing #retrogaming #8bit

And finally, the game is now noticeably more accurate I originally used the game’s 8x24-bit dot-product routine to calculate ship positions, but that only uses half of each 16-bit orientation vector I’ve now built a 16x24-bit routine, and it’s a fair bit smoother Slowly getting better! (5/6)

My next task is to apply the game’s enemy AI routines to player 2, as it’s really difficult to demonstrate or test two-player Elite with just one pair of hands Then I can add missiles, game configuration, a game over screen and Delta 14B support, and we’re pretty much there It’s going well! (6/6)

The two-player dashboard is now wired up to show each player’s status Each compass points to the other player, so you can track down a faraway opponent The scanner is shared using different colours for each player - it works well The only part that doesn’t work (yet) is the missile counter (3/6)

Another improvement is that both players now get to see both the planet and the sun This wasn’t easy to add for player 2, as the accuracy of matrix maths at big distances is a challenge in 6502 But they’re an important part of the immersion, and those mode 1 suns are just so darn pretty… (4/6)

The headline feature is that two-player Elite now has frickin’ laser beams And there’s a hit counter too So dogfights can either be “last one standing” or “first to 100 hits” (say) And the laser types are configurable - military lasers really make that hit counter go brrrr Game on! (2/6)