Drew Wagar

Quick Links

Status Quo - The Oolite Novella

Schism - An Oolite Short story based on the 'Generation Ships'

Mutabilis - A second Oolite Novella, and sequel to Status Quo - (Currently being written)

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 early in 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

Fiction Contributions to Oolite

Inspired by the Oolite game itself, Drew has written a 'Novella' for Oolite, called Status Quo. 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.

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

A Sequel to Status Quo, entitled Mutabilis is currently in the works...

Game Contributions to Oolite

Drew has also written a small OXP for Oolite which features the Tianve Star System in the North East area of Galactic Chart One, where some of the action in Status Quo takes place. This creates the features mentioned in the story and the player can thus go sight seeing. The Tianve OXP can be downloaded from here.

Miscellaneous

Drew is married with two young sons. It's reported that he does not live in Essex, and does not require any double glazing or a conservatory.

Drew's website/blog can be found here.