Commodore 64 Elite

About

This repository is the fully documented original source code for Elite on the Commodore 64, written by Ian Bell and David Braben (copyright 1985) and annotated line-by-line by Mark Moxon as a companion to the elite.bbcelite.com website. It builds four historically accurate variants — the Firebird GMA85 NTSC and GMA86 PAL releases, plus two variants matching the original BBC Micro-based build/source-disk process — using BeebAsm, Python, and the VICE emulator's c1541 tool, and verifies output against reference binaries via checksums.

Getting started

Building requires BeebAsm, Python 3.x, c1541 from the VICE emulator, and (on Windows) editing a batch file to point at those tools; running `make` (or `make.bat` on Windows) produces a d64 disk image that can be loaded into a real Commodore 64 or an emulator. A separate `flicker-free` branch builds a version with backported flicker-free ship-drawing routines from the BBC Master.

History

Commodore 64 Elite is a conversion of the 6502 Second Processor version, itself descended from the original 1984 BBC Micro/Acorn Electron release; because all the 6502 ports were originally built and assembled on a BBC Micro, this repository still uses the BBC Micro assembler BeebAsm to build the Commodore 64 version today. The repository carries no explicit license — by default copyright, only reading and forking are permitted, though the maintainer states an educational, non-profit intent.

Licensing & legal

• No LICENSE file is included; per GitHub's default-copyright rules this means all rights are reserved by the original copyright holders, who retain the right to request the repository be taken down.