Landmark Day
- In 2014, I bought into the Kickstarter Beta for Elite: Dangerous.
- In 2015, I took a journey to the center of the galaxy, Sagittarius A.
An epic journey that ran from Jun 19th, to July 27th. - In 2021, Covid destroyed my memory.
After a month-long bout with Covid, had to give up Elite because I couldn't remember,
nor re-learn, the commands and how to play.
(Plus...Odyssey...) - In 2024, September 30, I began the the monumental task of (re)learning
how to play Elite Dangerous. - In 2025, Jan 22, I finally finished all the research; blood sweat and tears were spent recreating (and improving) my original command chart. Took almost 4 months. It was time well spent, helping me to understand the game again.
On Jan 23 2025... I played Elite.
11 years after buying into the Kickstarter, I'm actually playing again.
It's cause for celebration, and seemed the perfect point in time to create a brand new blog, dated today in honor of this landmark. To be clear, I'm not out swashbuckling through the universe just yet. Rather, I'm running through the tutorials. But it counts.
I'm 64, my memory and reflexes aren't what they used to be. In 2021 Covid hit. When it was over, I couldn't remember how to play the game, and couldn't seem to learn it again. Even just reading a normal book became a difficult chore, instead of the fun it used to be.
3 years later in July of 2024, I noticed reading was starting to be fun again. In many small ways, my mind was finally improving. My physical health has been improving also.
Not 100%, but the difference feels wonderful.
A few months later, I felt confident enough to try Elite Dangerous again, but when I looked at it, it was overwhelming. There was a lot of tedious detail involved.
This blog is my celebration of finally being back in the black.
I'm in-game, flying, fighting, supercruising... learning the basics all over again. Because it would be discouraging to jump right in and die repeatedly, I'm taking it slow and using the tutorials. Last night, the previous 3 months plus finally paid off.
All that time spent researching, collecting data, struggling to understand...
- Cataloguing the 600 possible keybinds. (Will share the list in another post)
- Building a spreadsheet of the commands, the bound HOTAS and keyboard controls, and the in-game definitions.
- Correlating multiple online reference sheets against my actual command chart from pre-2021.
- Making sure I haven't missed something, comparing other outputs, adjusting details that were changed by game updates, adding Odyssey commands.
- Rebuilding my own custom Command Reference Sheet. Finding the best software for the job. (Libre Office Draw. Tedious but capable.)
- Retyping all the commands into their location in the reference sheet, including color coding. Tediously matching colors to functions, following EdRefCard process.
It's done. Today, I undocked, flew the obstacle course, fought the training ships... it felt beyond amazing. It feels like I can fly to Infinity, and beyond.
I want to share all that work and post it here. Not just for everybody's use, but as a safe place to keep my files. I need a backup location that's not vulnerable to physical accident or file loss. Over time, I'll add all the files to this blog. Maybe they'll help someone.
Being back feels good. At my age, it feels miraculous. I feel like a kid again.
