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I followed dosraider's advice and successfully launched the game. But after playing through the tutorial I am struck down by disorder. It prompts me to enter the serial code. I have tried all the codes from the download at Abandonia but none of them worked.

Thanks

[Oskatat]

Originally Posted by Unregistered12345

I followed dosraider's advice and successfully launched the game. But after playing through the tutorial I am struck down by disorder. It prompts me to enter the serial code. I have tried all the codes from the download at Abandonia but none of them worked.

Thanks

Sometimes when playing with a costum race, or for some other reason, an earlier game may demand a password. In the game, open the file (game name).hst
This opens host options where you can set the password. Its usually something you set before anyway. This is not the same as the serial code, its a way to make sure noone can steal your race designs etc

As an edit, really read that wiki page, or those pages
this game is from a time when they had to make a game interesting in some other way than graphics and easy interface. With the wrong specs you'll have your back against the wall in no-time

And even on easy the AI expands fast, real fast, AND into your "territory" too


well, lets add some more
When you choose a major characteristic, think of this: Jack of all trades gives you big, big penetrating scanners. "no advanced scanners is no big deal
Inner strength... Transports in orbit will HELP your colony grow. A galleon minelayer with some defences is deadly to AI AND helps to build your colony
Build minelayers, lots of them
Beam Weapons are better than Missile in the beginning
Missiles rule as soon as you get better computers and the ships with the elect to hold em
Matter Packets hurt, get a defender with some transport capacity on all border planets. better, get 10
Matter packets HURT, send them to anyone you suspect of not being able to catch em. they get 1/3rd of the matter and suffer a big bomb. Unless you picked the major trait related to this, since your packets may terraform planets
Again, more minefields. 3 minelayers a place is better than one time 3

most things i picked are also on the wiki/help pages for this game, but i thought i make it shorter

Turns out that I could have just run the game on XP natively with 95 compatibility mode xD. So far the code I entered seems to have worked...

[Eagle of Fire]

The codes provided in the arvhive will only work with the 26i version of the game. If you managed to find another version, like the 26j version which is the lattest version in use, it simply won't work since the serials provided in the archive are banned serials which were leaked in the 26i version era.

As for STARS!, it works like a charm on a native XP installation. There is no reason it would not, unless you use a cracked 64bits version like it was discussed earlier in this thread.

Greetings,

I was an avid stars player for many years. I was even involved in the Golden age of Stars where the Blitz group tested some of the most devastating race designs. The base standard for a powerful race became 25k production by turn 50, before that became the vogue thing 5-10k production by that point was considered rather slick.

To Clarify the game types and I'm not being pedantic.

Solo - against the AI's is fun and a great way to test out races and race traits.

pbem - the standard version was as a turn based game played every day or 3 times a week if you wanted to have a life, once a game gets going with 16 playsers you can end up spending a few hours on a turn and emails.

Lan, or 1comp based. you and some friends sit around and play for and evening or a weeekend.

Blitz
Blitz games were commonly played on the IRC we had the starsbot set to roll the turns every 5 min and you either had your turn in or you missed it. The games lasted 6-12+ hours and we usually had at least 6 players.

2 player games were done but in the blitz environment race design was the key. If you could build your fleet before the other guy and hit his planet you had the game. More players added the volitility, if you sent your fleet to kill player x then player m could stomp on you while you were killing player x and thus game over. a fleet with no colonists means a slow sad death.

The thing about Stars! is that you need to manage your growth, colonization, technology and production power all at the same time while making sure you don't get outdone by any of your neighbors. Each race has many games of surprises in it.


Stars! is an incredibly complex and graceful game. In many respects it all comes down to race design. If you are going to try stars I think you may wish to do some research on race design, I think there may even be some races available for download.

It really should work just fine on xp as I've run it on xp off a stick numerous times.

this site also still hosts Stars! games, http://starsautohost.org/

[TurinX]

You know it's gotta be good if it's got an exclamation point in the title!

[Eagle of Fire]

Well, a little late but I am here nonetheless.

You simply need to follow the instructions in the readme of that archive.

If it doesn't work, you'll need to figure out how to mount drives with DOSbox. We'll be happy to help you in Troubleshooting if you need help.

BTW, the STARS! Wiki site has moved since I made this review. You can now find it here.

[TotalAnarchy]

Did you people read the readme?

[Luchsen]

Originally Posted by atom79

for virtualpc it needs Windows 7 pro

there are other ways ?

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Virtual Windows XP on Windows 7

.

[Eagle of Fire]

At last!

I'd like to point out that I left a lot of details by purpose in my review. I didn't want to write an essay of 10 pages, so I left it simple...

If someone have any question about how to play the game, I'll be happy to answer to the best of my abilities.

I have 64bit Win7 and it doesn't work with any compability mode

I am afraid that this is not a problem with the game itself, but more a problem with Micro$oft deciding to retire compatibility with old systems... Every 64 bits systems which got out recently are not compatible with 16 bit programs, such as old DOS games and... Any program made for Win 3.11.

To be able to play STARS! in such a situation, you need to use either:

• DOSBox along with a copy of Win 3.11 (you can find a pre-made DOSBox/Win3.11 version here (download DOSBoxStars.rar 4.92MB))
• Realise that 64bits OSes are incompatible with old games, and are thus useless ()
• Use en emulator other than DOSBox to be able to get the compatibility you need via another system (anything up to XP works way past fine).
• Partition your HD with another kind of OS simply to play old games.

This game doesn't require an entry in the registery to work, but will try to write a configuration file in the default Windows directory. This was standard procedure in Win3.11. If your OS forbid STARS! from writing a file in your Windows standard directory then the game will still work but with default settings, and you will need to enter your serial key every single time.

-EoF