Just over a year ago, Mark Moxon visited the RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) to talk about how he had added econet support to Elite. He had been taking a deep dive into the game for a while, analysing the code and how some of its clever tricks were implemented, adding his own improvements to it – such as ensuring the graphics were flicker free – and at the time of that meeting, network support was his latest innovation.
The depth of Mark’s investigation into Elite’s inner workings was such that he has co-authored two academic papers, in conjunction with Michael Fairbank from the University of Essex, about some of the techniques used in the game – ‘Analysing the Saturn Loading Screen from the Classic Computer Game: Elite’ and The Rotating Planets in the Classic Game: Elite’, both of which were presented at the 2026 IEEE Conference on Games in Madrid.
He’ll be joining the group again at their next meeting, which takes place on Monday, 21st September, to show off his latest addition to the game – a split screen two player mode.
Each player in this mode is able to choose the type of ship they want to fly – which can even be one belonging to the game’s resident aliens, the Thargoids – and how it is equipped. With everything set up, the game plays as a dogfight between the two players’ ships, the view from one in the top half of the screen, the view from the other in the bottom.
As Mark will be joining the group in the pub there will be a BBC computer set up with dual joysticks, so those in attendance can participate in some live gameplay, to find out who amongst them truly is Elite, and who merely deserve the title ‘also ran’ (or ‘also flew – and got blown to bits’).
If you think you’re good enough, you can join in the battle to become Elite by joining the group in person at:
The Duke of Sussex
(Upstairs in the Chichester or Petworth Room)
23 Baylis Road,
London,
SE1 7AY.
There are directions to the venue on the ROUGOL website, and you can expect to find members lurking from around 6:30pm. The meeting proper will commence from around 7:45pm.
The meeting will be a hybrid one, though, so if you can’t make it to the pub, you can use Zoom if you have a device that can run the software. You’ll also need the log-in credentials, which remain the same as previous meetings – so if you’ve already joined one you should have them, but if not you can get them by contacting ROUGOL. The Zoom meeting should be open for people to join from around 7:30pm.
RISC OS London Show
ROUGOL is also responsible for the annual London Show, which this year will take place in just over a month’s time on Saturday, 24th October, at the Harrow District Masonic Centre, in Kenton, London. Keep your eyes peeled for more news over the coming month!
