EPT - Memories
EPT was an infamous solid 3D space game that was in development for a year or two between 1987-1989. The acronym (a working title) stood for Elite Piss Take.
Andy Beveridge and Adrian Stephens were the original developers behind EPT. Andy worked for Metacomco and Adrian had written a number of classic BBC computer games, including Micro Power's Killer Gorilla and setting up a small games publisher called Arcana. They originally met through a mutual college friend, Martin Day.
After experimenting with an ST development kit, Adrian wrote his first hi-res (monochrome) polygon renderer on the Atari ST, and then added shaded polygons through various stippling effects. With a basic 3D engine up and running, Andy then approached Rainbird with the idea of them writing a 3D game for the ST and Amiga, despite the fact that they no design or even a basic idea of what the game would be about.
After seeing a demo of their 3D routines, Rainbird (and more specifically, Paul Hibbard) came up with a basic game idea set in deep space to kickstart the project. Adrian then began work on the graphics whilst Andy concentrated on the gameplay. Adrian wrote a circle renderer (used for planets, parts of space stations, etc.) as well as an elipse renderer (for non-polygonal rings around planets). It was during this phase in the development that the game was given the temporary (and tongue-in-cheek) working title of EPT.
The early versions of EPT featured a basic rudimentary cockpit graphic and spacecraft designs. Despite officially being signed up to write the new space game, Andy and Adrian still had no actual game design to work from - ideas were simply thrown in as and when they came up. They both hoped that somewhere along the line the actual game would emerge from the ensuing creative chaos. Unfortunately, this only resulted in development versions that gave the testers at Rainbird very little that they could actually test!
I can remember a few people within Telecomsoft thinking that EPT was a little ambitious for a game intended to run on an Amiga and ST. A few doubts were raised as to whether a game would actually emerge from any of the 3D demos.
Later development versions (based on the new design document) allowed the player to fly off to a new destination within the solar system, shoot at a variety of demo spaceships, dock with Skywheels (aka spacestations), fiddle with the interface that allowed purchases and bank loans, and switch between spaceship cockpit designs (the default cockpit was for a Mangoran Starhawk).