Oolite planet list
Overview
Although this list was taken from Oolite the data applies well to the BBC Micro version of Classic Elite, and some other versions.
Each entry shows the system number, name, coordinates, tech level, inhabitants, government and a comment on the system.
For OXP writers, note that references to a particular galaxy in Oolite (in a Planetinfo.plist entry for example), should subtract 1 from the galaxy number – Galaxy 1 is referred to as 0, etc. In the original planet lists posted, references to a planet must subtract 1 from the planet number. The Technology Levels in the original planet lists posted already have the 1 subtracted as required by the plist , whereas that displayed to the player has 1 added. In the revised planet lists and table summaries posted the Technology Level has the 1 added that the player sees; whereas the planet numbering starts at zero (indicated by the # symbol) to agree with the charts posted.
- A spreadsheet of all galaxies can be downloaded in Excel format or Open Document format.
- A related spreadsheet showing useful trading routes is also available for download.
Where do these crazy names come from?
If you read through the source code and/or binary for either Elite or Oolite, you will not find any text containing the list of planets and their properties. The entire universe (including the famous edible poet) is constructed programmatically (using a truncated Fibonacci function) from a handful of seed numbers and the strings "ABOUSEITILETSTONLONUTHNOAL" (used by the planet description string) and " ' 'LEXEGEZACEBISOUSESARMAINDIREA'ERATENBERALAVETIEDORQUANTEISRION" which is used both by the planet description string and to generate all the system names in the 8 Galaxies (the single quotes indicate placeholders where the planet name generation can be terminated early). The algorithm was reverse-engineered from the original BBC disk by Christian Pinder, and implemented in Objective-C for Oolite. Further details are given in the discussion of Elite's random number generators.
In this spreadsheet (please note that this spreadsheet is in OpenDocument format and can be read by OpenOffice.org and many others applications including Microsoft Excel with the appropriate plug-in) you can see some of the algorithms in action where they are used to calculate the names, positions, inhabitants and other parameters for all 256 planets for a selected Galaxy plus a plot of the Galaxy (Sorry, but no links between worlds are plotted). You can also use this to view what could have been if a different seed number was used for the Galaxies.
