EXILE REMAKES - NeXuS23 Brøderbund

Exile is a single-player action-adventure video game originally published for the Acorn Electron and BBC Micro in 1988 by Superior Software and later ported to the Commodore 64, Amiga, CD32 and Atari ST, all published by Audiogenic. Exile’s game physics engine qualifies it to be the first game to have a complete Newtonian motion model. At the time of its release it was considered to push the boundaries of what was possible on home computers, particularly on the 8-bit platforms. It remains probably the most complex game available for the BBC Micro. The game was designed and programmed by Peter Irvin (author of Starship Command, a space shoot-em-up with an innovative control system) and Jeremy Smith (author of Thrust, a game based on cave exploration with a simpler physics model).

The player takes the role of Mike Finn, a leading member of a space-exploration organisation called Columbus Force, who have been ordered to the planet Phoebus as part of a rescue mission. Finn is tasked with abetting Commander David Sprake and the surviving crew of the disabled Pericles ship from a psychotic renegade genetic engineer, Triax (the titular Exile), who appears briefly at the very start of the game removing a vital piece of equipment called a Destinator from Mike’s ship, the Perseus. As with Elite, a novella (written by Mark Cullen, with input from the game’s authors) was included to set up the story, and to provide some clues as to the nature of the planet Phoebus’ environment. The novella implies the events take place some time in the 22nd century.

Exile permits a degree of nonlinear gameplay – challenges may be overcome in a number of possible orders and not all events have to be completed. The player is awarded points depending on goals achieved and time taken to complete the game. However, in some scenarios it becomes impossible to complete the game.

A major feature of the game is the single large and detailed world it offers for exploration. The subterranean setting is explained through the backstory in which the crew of the Pericles have set up a base in a natural cave system, with Triax having his own base in caves deep below.

The artificial intelligence features innovative routines such as creatures demonstrating awareness of nearby noises, line-of-sight vision through the divaricate caves and tunnels, and memory of where the player was last seen, etc.

Game physics

Exile contains a physics model with gravity, inertia, mass, explosions, shockwaves, water, earth, wind, and fire. The game engine simulates all three of Newton’s laws of motion, with many puzzles and gameplay elements emerging from a few physical principles. For example, the player may experience difficulty when attempting to lift a heavy boulder across a windy shaft with a jet pack, or of trying to keep a glass of water from spilling while being pushed around by a pestering bird.

The game was designed and programmed by Peter Irvin (author of Starship Command, a space shoot-em-up with an innovative control system) and Jeremy Smith (author of Thrust, a game based on cave exploration with a simpler physics model). Jeremy Smith died in an accident several years after Exile was published and it is his last known game.^[1] William Reeve executed preliminary conversions of the earlier 8-bit versions to the Amiga and Atari ST. These were then upgraded and completed by Peter Irvin and Jeremy Smith. Tony Cox did a preliminary conversion of the game from the Amiga to Amiga CD32. Paul Docherty was involved in the graphics for the Commodore 64 version and Herman Serrano created some of the artwork used in the game and manual. Henry Jackson composed the title music for the Amiga and Atari ST versions and Paddy Colohan remixed this for the CD32 release.

Due to the limited memory of 8-bit computers, the large subterranean world is procedurally generated. ^[3] This is achieved using a compact but highly tuned pseudorandom process with a fixed seed number to generate the majority of the caverns and tunnels – augmented with a few custom-defined areas. The later Amiga and Atari ST release use a more conventional tiled map to allow greater customisation and variation in the landscape.

Years later the source code of the BBC Micro version was reconstructed and analysed for educational purposes by disassembling.