Editing Frontier: Elite II (section)

== Development and release ==
Braben originally programmed the game in [[68000]] [[assembly language]]. It had roughly 250,000 lines of code, which were ported from 68000 assembler to the [[Personal computer|PC]]'s 80286 assembler by [[Chris Sawyer]].<ref name="frontierPage"/><ref name="mobyfe2">{{cite web |title=Frontier: Elite II |website=MobyGames |url=https://www.mobygames.com/game/802/frontier-elite-ii/ |date=August 30, 2023 |access-date=April 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240127192248/https://www.mobygames.com/game/802/frontier-elite-ii/ |archive-date=Jan 27, 2024}}</ref> Frontier also had some features that had never been seen before: it was the only game at the time to do a palette-fit every frame to get best use of colours, plus it also featured real sized 1:1 scale planets and star systems.<ref name="frontierPage"/>

''Elite II'' was originally slated to be released in November 1992 for the Atari ST.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Lowe |first1=Andy |title=Elite 2 set for November release |journal=[[ST Format]] |date=September 1992 |issue=38 |page=26 |url=http://www.atarimania.com/atari-magazine-issue-st-format-issue-38_1200.html |publisher=[[Future plc]]}}</ref>

''Frontier: Elite II'' was published on a single [[floppy disk]]. For the Amiga version, this is a single 880 KB disk (disk 2 was only a selection of interesting saved games), and for the PC/DOS platform a 720 KB [[Floppy disk|double density floppy]]. For the Amiga version, the actual executable file was only around 400 KB (uncompressed), its small size partly due to the entire game being written in [[assembly language]] while its universe was mostly [[procedural generation|procedurally generated]].

With a 9-year [[sequel gap]] since the original Elite in 1984, Frontier was described by ''[[CU Amiga]]'' in 1993 as "the longest-awaited sequel of the decade".<ref>{{cite web |title=Frontier: Elite 2 review from CU Amiga (Nov 1993) |url=http://amr.abime.net/review_3406 |website=Amiga Magazine Rack |access-date=4 August 2022}}</ref>

The game featured a famous "[[wormhole]]" bug: Normally a ship's hyperdrive has a range of about 15 [[light years]] at most, so [[planetary system]]s dozens of light years away are too far to reach in one hyperspace jump. However, if the player happened to find a system 655.36 to 670.36 light years away, it would be counted by the game as within the "15 light year" range. This would also happen for systems slightly beyond 1310.72 light years, 1966.08 light years, and other multiples of 655.36. With a bit of careful triangulation it was usually possible to get near or directly to a destination system any distance away by means of just two such "wormhole" jumps.

The game features a selection of [[MIDI]] interpretations of classical music by composers such as [[Richard Wagner|Wagner]], [[Mussorgsky]] and [[Edvard Grieg|Grieg]]. [[Johann Strauss II|Strauss]]’s ''[[The Blue Danube]]'' is played during any space station docking sequence, a homage to the film ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001: A Space Odyssey]]''. Particularly, to make stronger futuristic impression, "[[Pictures at an Exhibition#No. 10 "The Bogatyr Gates (In the Capital in Kiev)"|The Great Gate of Kiev]]" and "[[In the Hall of the Mountain King]]" in the game are very close to electric organ interpretation by [[Emerson, Lake & Palmer|ELP]]. In addition to this, [[David Lowe (video game music composer)|David Lowe]] provided two original classical-style pieces, one of which was for the intro sequence.

The game has since been released as [[shareware]] and is available as a [[Freeware|free download]],<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.sharoma.com/frontierverse/game.htm | title=Frontierverse > The Game | access-date=20 June 2013}}</ref> although being a [[DOS]] game, users of post-[[Windows 98]] operating systems may have difficulty getting it to run. Primarily this was because of the game using [[Expanded Memory Specification|EMS]] type memory rather than XMS. The [[expanded memory manager]] [[EMM386]] had to be configured to use it.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.frontier.co.uk/games/frontier/support.html | title=Frontier Elite 2: Official support | year=2001 | access-date=13 August 2007 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070810055629/http://www.frontier.co.uk/games/frontier/support.html | archive-date=10 August 2007 | df=dmy-all }}</ref> Using emulation such as [[DosBox]] will get the official shareware version of the game to run on modern operating systems such as [[Windows 7]], [[Windows XP]], [[Mac OS X]] and [[Linux]]. Also, around 2005 Tom Morton [[reverse engineered]] a platform-neutral [[C (programming language)|C]] version from the game, called ''GLFrontier'', making the game natively and fast playable on modern [[Operating system|OS]]es again.<ref>[http://tom.noflag.org.uk/glfrontier.html GLFrontier Project Page!!!1] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151110120955/http://tom.noflag.org.uk/glfrontier.html |date=10 November 2015 }} on noflag.org.uk ''"This WAS the Atari ST version of the game Frontier: Elite 2 [...]. It was disassembled, OS calls and hardware access removed, and originally run on a stripped down ST emulator (Hatari). Now it is compiled to C or native x86, and run much faster without 68K emulation. Most recently it has been modified to draw stuff with OpenGL at any shiny resolution with 8xAA, etc."''</ref><ref>[http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/12/06/back-to-frontier-pioneer/ Back To Front(ier): Pioneer] on [[Rock, Paper, Shotgun]] by Craig Pearson on 6 December 2011</ref>