This site contains the source code for two variants of the Electron version of Elite:
- The variant from the Acornsoft UEF on Ian Bell's website
- The variant from the Superior Software UEF on Ian Bell's website
The Acornsoft variant appears to be the very first release of Acornsoft SLG38 Elite, as it has the bug that stops the galactic hyperdrive from working. This bug was soon fixed and you could send your cassette to Acornsoft to swap it for the fixed version, and the Superior Software variant from Ian Bell's website is the version that includes this bug fix.
To play Elite with an SSD disc image, load the disc image into drive 0 and press SHIFT-BREAK. To play Elite with a UEF tape image, load the image into the cassette player and enter CHAIN "ELITE". The disc images let you load the game from disc, but you can only save and load commander files to cassette; this is because the game in the disc images is still the cassette version of Electron Elite, it's just loading from disc, so it has to revert to cassette once it's loaded.
If your Electron has sideways RAM, then I thoroughly recommend haerfest's enhanced version of flicker-free Electron Elite. This lets you save commander files to disc, which is a massive improvement. You can finds details and download links in this post on Stardot.
The Ian Bell Superior Software variant
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The Superior Software variant on Ian Bell's site is a bug-fix version of the original Acornsoft release. It was available as a replacement cassette for the original Acornsoft version, and was later released by Superior Software.
| Default build in repository | Yes |
| Product details | Acornsoft SLG38 (bug fix) Superior Software |
| Date | 1984/1986 |
| Build command parameter | variant=ib-superior (optional) |
| Source code variable | _IB_SUPERIOR |
| Verification checksums (crc32) | See the GitHub repository |
| Download SSD disc image | Original, Flicker-free |
| Download UEF tape image | Original, Flicker-free |
The Ian Bell Acornsoft variant
------------------------------
The Acornsoft variant on Ian Bell's site is the original Acornsoft release with the galactic hyperspace bug.
| Default build in repository | No |
| Product details | Acornsoft SLG38 (original) |
| Date | 1984 |
| Build command parameter | variant=ib-acornsoft |
| Source code variable | _IB_ACORNSOFT |
| Verification checksums (crc32) | See the GitHub repository |
| Download SSD disc image | Original, Flicker-free |
| Download UEF tape image | Original, Flicker-free |
It has the following features that differentiate it from the other variants:
- The galactic hyperspace bug is present, which prevents the galactic hyperspace from working (see Ghy).
- Galactic hyperspace does not work in the Acornsoft variant, but if it did, it would drop you at a randomly generated point in the new galaxy, rather than the closest system to galactic coordinates (96, 96), which is how all the other versions work (see Ghy).
- If the galactic hyperspace worked in the Acornsoft variant, it would be triggered by CAPS-LOCK-H rather than CTRL-H (see hyp).
- The Acornsoft variant contains the same "hyperspace while docking" as the original cassette and disc versions; the Superior Software variant contains part of the fix for this issue, but it isn't completely fixed (see Ghy).