Sunday 31 January 2016

Introduction

When Elite for the BBC Micro was released, I played it to the death, spending hours upon hours in my bedroom, attacking stations and popping all the Police that came out to defend it, to increase my rank, which finally got the coveted "Elite" status. In those days the graphics were very rudimentary and simple line drawings, but the game play was pretty awesome.


Since those early days I have played many MMO and single player sandbox games such as Eve Online, X Beyond the Frontier, Wing Commander, and host of other Flight/Space Simulators. Perhaps the most memorable for me was X Wing, and Tie Fighter, along with their add-ons'.


I was lucky enough to be born early enough to watch and remember the first space flights and later on, all the Apollo Flights. I never told anyone at the time or in later years, that I had always wanted to have become an astronaut. Sounds laughable now with the UK having it's first British Astronaut, Tim Peake doing a long stint on the International Space Station, but in those early days, one didn't admit to having stupid dreams as there would be a lot of ridicule. So playing Space Flight Simulators fills those dreams.


I never really did follow all of the Elite generations, but having found the link to Elite Dangerous and doing some research, I soon discovered that it would probably suit my style of play. I didn't join the community until a short while before the expansion "Horizons" was released having waited for the game to become stable and a lot of the initial bugs were ironed out. So to date, my total game play is only about 2 ½ weeks, so I can be considered both a new comer and a casual player.


I have spent a lot of my time learning the game, especially combat, but hauling commodities, smuggling, and mining, I have tried, but found either a little on the boring side, or difficult. Bulletin board missions have certainly helped a lot with gaining ranks and reputation. Exploration I have found to be interesting and some of the views of planets, systems, suns, etc. have been astonishing, so the idea of going of an exploration trip has been in the planning stage for quite a while now.


This diary will be musings, ramblings and a log of what I have found which has been notable with pictures and anything else that could be construed as being interesting along the way.


If you happen to stumble across this blog, I hope you find it interesting, but if not, you enjoy some of the stunning planets that have been created procedurally but the developers of this immense game/simulator.


View of a gas giant from one of it's icy crevassed moons.