Drew Wagar

Elite Bio

Drew Wagar, Courtesy of www.wagar.org.uk

Drew Wagar first played Elite a month after it was first released on the BBC Model B. He was 13. A friend (with rich parents) had given it to their son as a Christmas present. His most vivid recall is the wireframe presentation but with addition of a new technique - 'hidden line removal', making the objects appear solid. A remarkable achievement he'd not seen before. He played it mostly on a ZX Spectrum. He originally had a 16k model and bought the extra 32k mostly in order to play Elite. He genuinely became 'Elite' after many months of playing, despite lensloks and the occasional "R: Tape Loading Error."

Somewhere in the open ended game play, the vast nature of the universe portrayed, the encouragement for you to put your own imagination into the game and the novelisation that set the scene.... was the magic that is Elite. Drew considers that the game, combined with some of the TV and books of the time (Ulysses 31, Hitch Hikers Guide, Blakes 7 etc), was a perfect moment in time.

He was never too enamoured with computers in the 16 bit age, and pretty much ignored the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. His next machine was a 386 SX PC. He enjoyed FE2 immensely. As an astronomy buff, the realistic physics was actually more fun to him. Drew considers FFE to be a backwards step in many ways. But neither of them were 'Elite'. Elite didn't come back into his conscious thought until he came across "The New Kind" a few years ago. He was very disappointed that the Palm version of Elite was never released. Then on a search for an 'Elite' that would run on Linux he discovered Oolite earlier this year(2006).

Non Elite interests

• Avid Amateur Astronomer (Owns an observatory and computer controlled 8" Newtonian telescope equipped with CCD Imagers)
• Plays the piano tolerably well
• Plays the guitar and clarinet tolerably less well, in that order
• Enjoys Karate and Cycling
• Classic VW Golf Mk1s, currently chairman of the Mk1 Golf Owners' Club.
• Writing Fiction

Contributions to Oolite

Inspired by the Oolite game itself, Drew has written a 'Novella' for Oolite, called Status Quo and is working on a second - Mutabilis. Status Quo was an attempt to provide a link between the back stories of Elite, Oolite and the later events of FE2/FFE, giving a newcomer to Oolite some information on how things differ from Elite in a narrative context, reminiscent of the original Elite novella, 'The Dark Wheel' by Robert Holdstock.

Mutabilis is a direct sequel to Status Quo, with the characters reprising their roles in a somewhat dark story, concerned with the legend of Raxxla.

Drew has also written a short story about the Generation Ships, called Schism.

Miscellaneous

Drew is married with two young sons. He does not live in Essex, and does not require any double glazing or a conservatory.

Drew's website can be found here.