 This is Witch Based News for Friday the 15th of December 2023, I'm CMDR Buur. In Elite Dangerous News this week, we go 80's nostalgia heavy with some original Elite Deep Dives, there's free arcs for the live game in the run up to Christmas, the interim patch arrives in the game and more. You know how this bit goes, please like, subscribe and ding that little bell so that YouTube shows you all our content and if you'd like to help directly support our work here at the Burpit you can also support us through Patreon, links to that and everything else are in the description below. We start this week with a brief reminder that as it's the run up to Christmas, Frontier are doing their usual daily free arcs drops into the live version of the game. All you need to do is log in to your account once a day and get as far as the cockpit or on foot, don't stop at the menu, log all the way in and then an increasing amount of free arcs will be added to your account every day right up until the 25th of December. Also, just as we were going to press today it seems this year's Christmas in-game event started in the live version of the game. Check your mailbox and you'll see a message entitled Help Needed at Angel Station. We won't post any spoilers but suffice to say, following up these messages at Christmas invariably results in gifts in one form or another as well as being fun so they're absolutely worth doing. You have until the 4th of January to complete the quest. Two fantastic pieces of technical elite nostalgia passed across our desks this week that could help pad out a long super cruise journey or two at the very least with both pieces going a long way toward explaining why elite had such a cultural and technical impact on everything that came after it, an effect that continues to this day. The first is by UK based web developer, producer and journalist Mark Moxon. It's a series of very technical deep dives into how Ian Bell and David Braben managed to cram a game as huge as the original elite and its various versions onto some of the machines of the time, specifically the BBC Micro and the Nez console. The deep dives cover a multitude of subjects in fine detail from memory usage in the BBC Micro, the program flow of the main game loop and generating the galaxy and even all the way through to drawing satin on the game's loading screen. There are more Nez specific deep dives being released in the run up to Christmas all the way up to the 22nd of December, so be sure to check back for the latest ones. You can also follow Mark on the artist formerly known as Twitter as he's announcing the releases there when they go live. The second piece this week is a just as fascinating video essay from YouTuber Alexander the OK, entitled The Game That Couldn't Be Written. That similarly breaks down the creation of elite starting with the birth of its first host machine the BBC Micro and following through with some slightly more easily digestible chapter breakdowns of how procedural generation works, elite's many gameplay innovations and the closing chapters which I found particularly interesting regarding elite's lasting cultural impact. Alexander himself says that the story surrounding elite is much better known here in the UK but gaming culture on the whole tends to be viewed through the lens of the US and Japan so viewers from outside the UK may not be fully aware of the games initial impact and lasting legacy. Both pieces are a fascinating look back and highly recommended. The promised interim and stability patch updates 1701 dropped into the live game this week bringing with it a number of bug fixes, gameplay tweaks and optimizations of particular note for me personally transferring cargo to fleet carriers and SRV's no longer needs a re-log to see the desired effects show up in the UI. After accepting a mission from the mission boards you will now be returned to the same previously selected mission category screen rather than the all category screen significantly reducing the amount of required UI navigation if you're picking up multiple missions of the same type and authorised class Thargoids engaged in scanning at spire sites will now attempt to jump out if attacked making that scenario somewhat less of a turkey shoot. As you'd perhaps expect there were also a few bugs and glitches around the still fairly newly implemented Thargoid spire sites that were stomped with 1701. You'll find the full patch notes posted by Paul Crowther to the FDF official forums linked in the description below this video if you want to check them out for yourself. As we reported last week Frontier did confirm that update 18 is still in our future and when we hear any more about that we will of course let you know right here. In a perhaps not entirely unexpected move this week community manager Paul Crowther took to the forums to announce that the annual Christmas live stream from Frontier for Elite Dangerous had been cancelled this year. As we've covered in the last few editions of this show Frontier is in some tricky financial waters right now and this situation has resulted in the company instigating a wave of cost cutting staff redundancies right across their titles including Elite Dangerous. In such circumstances it would make hosting a public celebration of the holiday season on a live stream somewhat inappropriate and insensitive at best. Clearly in very uncertain times for Frontier for Elite Dangerous and for the wider community right now and the cancellation of what has been a live stream calendar highlight every year is not going to ease that uncertainty. All I would say is to reiterate again that quite correctly FDF's first priority must be with the people at the sharp end who are being directly affected by what's happening in the company right now and in January FDF will be reporting back on how the cost cutting measures have progressed. Frontier did state just last week that they intend to continue to support and develop their existing library of titles including Elite Dangerous and we think it likely that following that report will start to get a better idea of what shape that future support and development will take. Indeed Paul's post does go on to say that they plan to return in January with more news on Elite Dangerous. Were you playing Elite on the BBC Micro on Nez in the 80s? Was your favourite bug squashed in the interim patch and what would you like to see for Elite Dangerous in 2024? Let us know in the comments below. That's it for now, thanks very much for watching, we'll be back later this week with more videos, until then 07 Commanders follow the Greens on the way out and do keep clear of the toast rack, we very much look forward to seeing you next time.