Vega Strike

About

Elite is a 1984 space trading game written by David Braben and Ian Bell and originally published by Acornsoft for the BBC Micro, noted for its open-ended gameplay and pioneering 3D graphics as a genre-founding classic. Vega Strike is an open-source space flight simulator in which players explore, trade, and fight across multiple interconnected star systems, starting out in a beat-up cargo ship. It uses entirely original, non-derivative art assets and an original soundtrack, features programmable AI and a full XML-based mission-scripting system, and runs on Linux, with a separate required asset repository providing the game data.

How it differs from the original

Unlike Elite, Vega Strike uses entirely original ships, systems, and audio rather than any content from the source game, and expands into a fully scriptable multi-system universe with programmable per-ship AI and a dedicated mission format.

Getting started

After building, run vegasettings to configure the game and point it at a separate assets repository, then launch it with vegastrike-engine, specifying that same data directory. Flight uses the arrow keys to turn, backslash for full throttle, Space to fire guns, Enter for missiles, and 'j' to engage the jump drive at green donut-shaped jump points.

History

The engine's executables were renamed from their 0.5.x-era names to vegasettings and vegastrike-engine so the same engine could run multiple separate asset sets, including spinoff games like Upon the Coldest Sea and PWCU.

Media

Additional notes

Windows quirk

On Windows, version 0.11.0 additionally requires installing Python 3.12.10 separately — without that exact version, the game exits silently as soon as it starts.