This repository contains the Inform 7 project folder for Peerless, an Interactive Fiction story set in the original Elite universe.
Peerless is an experiment in procedural generation and free-space travel. In a departure from usual IF convention, the story of this game is a secondary concern. The real meat of the matter lies in the pursuit of two objectives:
- The faithful recreation of (or, if you will, homage to) the in-game universe of the original Elite.
- The development of an I7 extension system facilitating the concept of multi-room vessels and stations.
You will need the Inform 7 package, version 6M62. Inform 7 is available for Windows, OS-X and Linux.
Once Inform 7 is installed, either place the folder in the Inform/Projects/ folder, or copy the source code (stored in source/story.ni) into the editor. Next, go to the Settings tab and select the Glulx story file format, which is the larger type of Inform 7 projects (Inform 7's use of the z-Machine format is locked to using signed integers, which makes them too small for the purpose).
Cloning the repository gives you all you need to run this as an I7 project. However, on first run, I7 needs to recreate a bunch of documentation, which may cause the IDE to freeze for up to half a minute. Simply letting the IDE work until it's done is enough to resolve the issue.
None, at present. Peerless is written in I7 version 6M62 for Glulx, and the intent is to keep it up to date. No additional extensions are required. It does employ a bit of Inform 6, which may break the game under future versions of I7.
When the game loads for testing purposes, it runs a regression test on the first galaxy. Test uses the output from the C version of Text Elite as its dataset, which should be sufficiently accurate. There's currently no tests exist for the other galaxies, but that will likely change.
At the momnent, the automatic tests do not validate the Goat Soup string. It is unlikely that tests will be made for the Species Name string, as that information was missing from Text Elite.
At present, we can travel from star system to star system using the JUMP TO [name of star system] mechanic. We can also LOOK UP any star system in our galactic gazetteer for its information. The galactic hyperdrive is still unimplemented, as is the trading and in-system travel bits.
These are notions that may find use at a later stage. Some of them are off-the-wall, some almost a shoo-in.
As it is, the Elite universe is really rather samey. I'm therefore considering the addition of more pseudorandom variation in the various solar systems, such as more planets, moons, planet visual descriptions, et cetera. As this represents a departure from the actual Elite universe, this will either have to be a togglable mode, or possibly an entirely new game built on the same basic principles.
Eventually, the player will be piloting the Cobra. Right now, the Cobra is the actual player-object.
Docking to the Coriolis station should be trivial. Trading engine is straightforward.
I believe this could be made workable, but I haven't gotten the details sorted in my head yet.
This covers a few ideas that were intriguing, but ultimately rejected as being beyond the scope of the project.
I'm uncertain if this could actually be done. The IF format is famously poor at presenting timed challenges or detailed spatial relationships. It's possible this will recur in some form, but not as a main part of the game.
The game could be made compatible with z8, but it's hard to see a point to it. Recent versions of I7 impose a size overhead that renders the z-Machine almost obsolete. Still, if someone wants to make the bit-shifting and so on more generic and thus useful, that would be appreciated. I can't see a trivial way of using unsigned values without dropping down to z-machine assembly, however, which I'm not sure is practical. Therefore, compatibility with the z-Machine is not planned.
Ian Bell and David Braben wrote the original Elite on the BBC Micro. They are its captains still.
In addition, I am indebted to Richard Carlsson, whose GCC-compliant version of Text Elite provided not just a compiling version of TE, but also the kick in the pants I needed to do something with my idea.