Anyone remember Stars!? Want to make a mod?

I remember Stars!
I used to play it all the time with my twin brother (ahahaha reverse-terraforming ftw)

Trouble with Stars! is that it had lots of things which wouldn't port well - like the movement (overloading your engines - interception - etc etc) not to mention the weird race option who lived only in starbases.

It's a nice idea, but I don't think most of it would be possible... you could do the tech-tree stuff tho I guess.
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I think I just had an evilgasm.....
The (now official?) Space Empires 4 Mod Launcher V2.26

It wouldn't work.

Stars! is Stars! and SE is SE - different beasts and not compatible. Stars! was brilliant and was insanely well balanced, but only really playable with humans - the AI was ridiculous. And it didn't support the kind of moddability SE does. SE has different strengths.

Oh, those were the days.

I too remember Stars! It would be nice if a mod were possible, but I am not a modder in any way at all.

Stars! Supernova Genesis looked awesome until it suddenly disappeared in a puff of vapor.

I loved Stars! -- only thing I hated were those stupid planet names (nothing like having your home planet assigned a name like "Brillo Pad" or something equally stupid). I still have my CD and serial number and play around with it occasionally. I don't see how a mod in SEIV or SEV would be able to capture the feel of Stars! though. The Tech Tree could be recreated fairly easily and ship design could be the same. But the sector/system based mapping and instant movement of SEIV and SEV are completely different from Stars! and would create a completely different feel. Star system developement is also completely different. And even with a huge map in SEIV or SEV it couldn't come close to a large map in Stars!

A mod I would like to see would be a mod recreating the Traveller role-playing game known universe. The Fifth Solomani Rim War or any of the Frontier wars would make interesting mods.

I've never understood why Stars Super Nova never made it off the ground.

I remember stars!, I even managed to get my hands on two copies with two serial numbers and I always wished that they would make a sequal. I still play the game now and then, though I never realised until recently that so many people do still play it.

I did come across a project called freestars which was supposed to try and be a open source version of the game but it seems to be defunct, or at least not worked on all that often (the project files can be found over at sourceforge).

Maybe instead of a Stars Mod for SE5 people could get together and try and create thier own Stars! clone?

I always felt star! was taken as far as it could go without crossing the barrier between numbers and graphics. And making the conversion on a game of such scale would have been huge.

I'm just glad that MM are making the move from 2d to 3d.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

I sold my copy of Stars! Too bad for sure.

Anyone here ever play Malkari?

ekolis:
is this possible? I've heard talk about the system screen going funky at sizes too large. If it is, though...
Man, so many possibilities

It's possible but it would take a bit of effort to set up properly and there would be possible issues with the random placement of stars and not having systems overlap etc.

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

The people that had it going funky weren't modding it quite right. I've doubled the size with no issues.

This really is good news.
Maybe to the point of having a Stars!-like system (with colonizable 'stars' representing systems) over just stupid big system maps, then having warp points at the very edges to simulate travel to other galaxies.
I guess I'll have to wait until release to see what, exactly, is and is not possible, but I may have to make a minimod to see just how far I can push it.
Thanks for the responses.

The biggest problem is the scrolling. There's no minimap for the system map, so you have to scroll around to see things. And things like the Resupply Depot will supply a system no matter how big, the star killers kill it, etc.

Pheonix:
The scrolling problem is a very good point. We'll need something clever to get around that. As far as the Resupply Depots and Star Killers go, though, they would both only be planet-based (planets representing systems)

No idea little ol' Stars! was so popular, I remember getting hold of the 1.0 shareware version when I got my first pentium machine back in the day, then getting the new improved 2.7i version. I actually bought this game about the same time I bought SE3, and switched between playing the two often. I loved the stargates of Stars! and having wormholes pop up that I could send a little expedition to the other side of the universe and start "back up" colonies there.

I'd really love to see a mod of a Stars! style universe, complete with mass drivers, MT's (Mystery Traders) and not at in the least, random warp points ala wormholes.

The problem with Stars! Supernova was that the original Stars! was pretty much a one man show (Jeff Johnson had gottent he ball rolling by developing the game's mechanics). I traded emails back like 7 or 8 years ago with the Jeff McBride, who stated that he did the game as both a learning experience, and because he couldn't find a game on the market that did what he and Johnson wanted.

Being one who also creates programs that interests me to learn new programming languages (presently working on C# with .net), I could empathize. The one big (at least in his eyes) problem with Stars! was that it ran in a window and (in his words) "looked like a spreadsheet". He made it his mission that if there were to be a next version, that it would run using DirectX, full window mode. Problem was that at the time, DirectX SDK's were changing every 4 to 6 months. It's pretty daunting task to learn something from scratch when the darn technology changes faster than you can learn it. At two points during the development, first with Empire Interactive, and second with Mare Crisium, other programmers were brought on to the project to help move it along (which accounts for why the product looks almost finished), both times the money ran out and the extra programmers were let go. Despite an almost fanatical following, the project languished for another year before Mare Crisium finally folded.

Sincerely,
Kahn

I would like to get the full version of stars 2.7i. I can only find the shareware version of it now. I would have liked to have bought the when it came out but didn't have the money. by the time I thought about buying it again and the money to do so. It was no longer available.

If any one knows where I can download the full version of Stars! 2.7i I would appreciate it.

Thanks

http://www.stars.stc.ru/windows-1251/filez.html

the site is in russian. cut and paste the url in to this site for a loose translation:

http://babelfish.altavista.com

i had to get the 2.7f ship version and then a patch from 2.7f-2.7i, then the keygen. all 3 are on the site as well as other versions and all the patches and even a few tools that i didnt really look at. if anyone knows where i can actually buy a copy on CD, please post it,

thanks.

im running an antivirus, i wouldn't go to a site like this unless you have protection.

I wouldn't mind seeing an Stars! modification for Space Empires V. I remember playing that game long ago, tossing packets of minerals at my not-so-close neighbors, sending ships to intercept the mystery traders, and ship design...heh, it has been a long time.

There is a deadware GPL project called stellar legacy out there. Some rough code exists, but it was an attempt to recreate Stars! to run on Linux/'doze/whatever, using C++ and IIRC KDE.

Eventually, it's goals got too ambitious. I've got the code in a tarball if anyone wants a copy.

I recently downloaded Stars and its Supernova sequel for free. Unfortunately, I have no idea where it was, I stumbled onto it by accident.