A custom virtual machine for the Stars 4X game

A custom virtual machine for the Stars 4X game nullprogram.com

110 points•ibobev•12 days ago•38 comments•

#game #machine #stars #custom #virtual #custom virtual #virtual machine #custom virtual machine

38 comments

> the authors couldn’t afford to build a sloppy, wasteful UI, and so by modern standards the game UI is remarkably fast and responsive. They don’t make ‘em like they used to.

I also miss this aspect of old windows games. "Castle of the Wind" the RPG is another example of a game that unashamedly uses Windows' built-in UI elements just fine. I wish more games just stuck to them. Then things like pressing tab to cycle focus to different UI elements still works and developers wouldn't have to worry about introducing bugs in their custom UIs.

hotsauceror9 days ago

I know someone downthread already mentioned this, but if Stars!, deep complexity and native Windows UI is your cup of tea, then you should absolutely check out Aurora 4X. Native Windows UI cranked up to 11, dialog boxes with dozens of tabs, frames, buttons, the whole enchilada.

https://aurora4x.com/

RomanKornev9 days ago

You should also check out Rule the Waves 3 for some in-depth naval strategy

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2008100/Rule_the_Waves_3/

philipov10 days ago

Wow, Stars! I loved this game so much as a child. Back then, after upgrading from shareware I had to wait for a floppy disk to arrive in the mail.

mike_hearn10 days ago

Ha, same! As teenagers me and my friends got into it and we'd play by sneakernet. Every day at school we'd exchange floppies with that day's turn. It sounds insanely slow but turns in Stars! could easily take an hour to prepare one the game got going because of all the micromanagement required to handle a large empire. So it fitted OK around homework and dinner.

I played a lot of it back in the day... makes me nostalgic to play again. But this emulator requires Intel and I have ARM Macs.

Probably these days it wouldn't be hard to vibe up a modern equivalent especially with the MCP the author talks about.

altairprime9 days ago

Works perfectly fine in Crossover. Enable Hires in a bottle, Configure Wine to 217ppi under Display tab, copy Stars-x86.exe to C:/Prog(x86)/Stars/, simulate reboot, wait a minute for Crossover to rescan, double-click Stars-x86 icon. It launches behind other open windows so click the dock icon or cmd-tab to it once it’s running.

Majromax10 days ago

Wasn't the shareware version fully featured, such that only the key was necessary?

MaulingMonkey10 days ago

The final shareware version (2.6) was fairly comparable to the retail version (2.7). This says the shareware version just lacked some sound effects...? https://web.archive.org/web/20091129230733/http://wiki.gible...

However, I believe the first shareware version I had was 1.x (distributed via CD that was packed full of shareware) which was significantly different. I remember mining fuel, which tracks with the above link.

Stars! was one of my very first video game purchases. I remember mailing a money order, and recieving a copy in the mail - I didn't have internet at the time. I'm not sure I even knew the internet existed then, although I would soon after if not.

giantrobot10 days ago

AFAIK this was the case. I played a lot of Stars! (almost exclusively the shareware) and it had all the races and tech trees. It showed higher level tech trees but those were only available in the registered game. Map sizes were also limited in the shareware. Later versions might have required additional resources for the retail upgrade but I believe the version I had (2.5?) could become the full registered copy with just a key.

philipov10 days ago

The shareware version I had was missing stuff until I upgraded. It was before 2.0 came out, but I don't remember the details after all this time. I believe it didn't have all the techs? Something important wasn't available.

jauntywundrkind10 days ago

I forget whether it was steam or GE-Proton I ran it under but ran just fine on Linux. Have to say, I did crash out after 40 turns though, which is ridiculous, after thinking so much about Stars! for so long.

News here: there's an MCP server!! Oh snap!! This is great. I really love the idea of games that have external interfaces. There's a ton of tiny macro to stars, and being able to say, get every warship in the sector over to that planet at the same time with efficient fuel usage would be a lovely awesome thing to watch happen.

I look forward to more and more games having MCP (or other external interfaces). I'm sure there's others out there already, but definitely happy to see Stars! pointing the way forward yet again, decades latter.

tetha10 days ago

It's funny. My experience of running Win95-Era Games, especially more wonky one like Cavelands on Linux with Wine is far better than on Windows. And DosBox is a given. So e.g. both Civ 2 and Civ 1 are just standard launchers on my Linux box.

And with something like Lutris, it's not a lot of tinkering. "Install game from setup.exe". Done in a lot of cases, needs a few winetricks or dll overrides in some cases for the wonky ones.

programd10 days ago

The star map screenshot looks very similar to star map in "Remnants of the Precursors" [1], which is a modernization of 1993 "Master of Orion" [2]. Convergent evolution, or was 1995 Stars! an homage/clone of Orion?

1. https://rayfowler.itch.io/remnants-of-the-precursors

2. https://store.steampowered.com/app/410970/Master_of_Orion_1/

Hussell10 days ago

Remnants of the Precursors resembles Stars!, but Stars! doesn't seem to much resemble Master of Orion 1 or 2. Seems to be convergent evolution. If I recall correctly, there were many similar 4X in space games at the time, and Master of Orion 1 didn't stand out much - it was Master of Orion II that was a big hit, relatively speaking (4X in space were/are a bit niche).

Majromax10 days ago

I can't speak for the authors' mindsets, but the Stars! map had pointwise movement rather than via strict stellar/planetary waypoints. When fleet interceptions can happen midcourse[1], there's not a whole lot of design room within the Win16 style.

[1] — If I remember correctly, there even was some special-case code for ship pursuit cycles.

tomsonj10 days ago

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