Elite / Frontier What is the best way to play Frontier: Elite II and Frontier: First Encounters

Lord_Kane

L
So after playing Elite Plus for a while I wanted to play Frontier: Elite II and Frontier: First Encounters

so I acquired them, via a family member who owned the CD versions of these games (PC DOS)

So for FE2, what is the best way to play it? DOSBOX? are there patches? fan patches? I know of GLfrontier but I want to experience it as it would have been originally released I.E on DOS.

What about FFE? I am aware of FFED3D but like above I want to experience the dos version first, are there fan patches for any of the remaining bugs or do I have to use FFED3D?
 

Zieman

Zieman
As for FFE, DosBOX wasn't 100% compatible at least a few years ago, haven't tried with 0.74 though.
There was also a thing called WinJFFE (which needs original files to run), again not sure if it works with W10 (at all or using compability mode).
 

Lord_Kane

L
Zieman said:
As for FFE, DosBOX wasn't 100% compatible at least a few years ago, haven't tried with 0.74 though.
There was also a thing called WinJFFE (which needs original files to run), again not sure if it works with W10 (at all or using compability mode).
Click to expand...

I am using Windows 7, do you happen to have a link to this WinJFFE? google turned up nothing
 

Steve

Steve
Frontier Elite 2 runs pretty well with DOSBox, there's a step-by-step guide here.
Frontier First Encounters is quite buggy in its original DOS form, but again there's a step-by-step guide here.
 

Arioch

Arioch
There are some useful files and info here:

Sharoma > Frontierverse - Frontier: Elite 2

Frontier: Elite 2 website, with files, links, ship info and pictures, information, save games, bug lists, and much more.
www.sharoma.com www.sharoma.com

...particularly “Patches/Control Mod” which adds vertical and lateral thrusters and makes combat much more fun, I found.
 

gunbladelad

gunbladelad
JJFFE runs fine on most versions of Windows - I still use it myself - and it's pretty much true to the original game as it's literally a reverse-engineered executable designed to run in Windows.

I believe GLFrontier is based on the original release of FE2 (at least the version I've tried had the Gametek logo rather than the more familiar Frontier one I was used to from the shareware FE2) - but you also have the option of emulating a Commodore Amiga and running eitherthe Amiga or CD32 (which was simply a keyboardless Amiga with an optical drive) versions of FE2.
 

Arioch

Arioch
gunbladelad said:
...I believe GLFrontier is based on the original release of FE2 (at least the version I've tried had the Gametek logo rather than the more familiar Frontier one I was used to from the shareware FE2)...
Click to expand...
GLFrontier is based on a reverse-engineered Atari ST version of the game, so the top original graphics mode is equivalent to next-to-top for the DOS version (you lose the texture mapping on some surfaces and the skybox).

I’ve always thought it a pity that GLFrontier went for plain shaded spheres instead of what the original planets looked like, I’d like to play a higher resolution version of FE2 without any other “improvements”.

Although I play the DOS version for nostalgia reasons (and what an amazing frame rate upgrade from my Amiga it was!), the most complete version gameplay-wise is the Amiga CD32 one - it has a “Navigation Computer” for quick autopilot destination selection and power lines & wind turbines at planet bases. Most importantly, the password protection has been removed :)
 

MickyG1982

M
Lord_Kane said:
So after playing Elite Plus for a while I wanted to play Frontier: Elite II and Frontier: First Encounters

so I acquired them, via a family member who owned the CD versions of these games (PC DOS)

So for FE2, what is the best way to play it? DOSBOX? are there patches? fan patches? I know of GLfrontier but I want to experience it as it would have been originally released I.E on DOS.

What about FFE? I am aware of FFED3D but like above I want to experience the dos version first, are there fan patches for any of the remaining bugs or do I have to use FFED3D?
Click to expand...

All depends on what you want.

For FE2, the easiest is going to be DOSBox, the graphics are better than the Amiga version and is less fiddly to set up. The Amiga version really has the soundtrack advantage however and is my preferred way to play (the frame rate is easily fixed by emulating a better Amiga, on the A500 it was simply amazing it worked at all).

F2FE, well, it's authenticity vs more modern graphics. I loved the original version on the P75 I owned back in the day (I owned the very first floppy edition, bugs and all).

Play either version however, & you will realise just why the autopilot in ED occasionally kills you.
 

vercingtorix

V
FE2 has several ways to play thatd id say are adequate.

DOS version on DOSBOX imo is best, since there are useful patches availible for it, for bugfixes, manual translation thruster control, etc. At 8000-10000 cycles with 2nd best graphics quality, it runs smooth enough. With knowing how to config midi device emulators with dosbox, you can have great music too. Dos needs bugfixes, but these exist and can be found at sharoma frontierverse.

Amiga version has superb framerate, but has many bugs and no patches. If you can deal with random crashes and all of that, then go for it.

Gl frontier exists, but is unfinished, atari st had horrible sound, and there seem to be bugs here and there. weird ones too. I had a strange situation once where clock time was advancing, but the game wasnt accelerated, and stardreamer was off.

FFE:

FFE pagefaults on loading the titlescreen menu on dosbox .74 without using the HX dos extender...which is windows only, since it hooks into the windows kernel to provide protected mode features.

If youre running windows, id say just go for one of the jjffe variants out there. Jjffe exists in source, but i cant get it to compile, so it seems windows only for practical purposes.
 

AndyJ

AndyJ

vercingtorix

V
@AndyJ

I ended up getting things to mostly work with some binaries I'd found, but ended up in dependency hell to the minimum point of me not being willing to continue trying. I'm not particularly concerned about it though.

I did end up running a windows binary in WINE, but it was...problematic. Dunno if WINE's fault or the application's, but it had several issues that caused random crashes.
 
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