[sambojin]

Hi, I’ve made up a handy-dandy little overlay for the much beloved space strategy game Stars! from 1995/1997. It does require win3x, but you can quite easily get the whole package (with game included) from the Stars! Autohost website (here: https://wiki.starsautohost.org/wiki/Get_Stars! )

It includes all the buttons you’ll need to play:

F3 for planet reports
F4 for ship design
F5 for research
Left-ctrl for +-100/waypoint dragging
Long left mouse for adding objects to ships
Left shift for waypoint adding
Long right mouse for production/ transport orders
</> for +/- warp speed on selected ship
Del for deleting waypoints
F9 for next turn.

I mostly made this because I loved playing this many years ago, and no other emulator except Magic has the options to play it reasonably on mobile. So, now you can 🙂

Here’s a mediafire link to the .mgc file that will hopefully work:

https://www.mediafire.com/download/is5plqhu23btwf6

And here’s a quick YouTube video of it in use:

I hope it’s useful to someone. If anyone has ideas of what else to add to it, I’d be happy to do so.

[admin]

Hello, many thanks for sharing the layout with for perfect guide. I never heard about this game, but I know what I will play next:) i like all kinds of turn based strategies. It looks to me likr master of orion.

[Al ex]

You should also try Spaceward Ho! if you like these kind of games. ?

[sambojin]

I also should have put platform/ resolution details. It was made on an Oppo F1s, in landscape mode, at a 1280×720 pixel screen resolution. With the normal (relative?) mouse settings (not the pointy-clicky one). Magic Dosbox *should* scale it appropriately, but I can redo it for larger tablet displays if requested. Might add hidden buttons for the various types of planet scanning (habitat%, mineral concentration, ships in orbit, etc), but I’m not sure how well they’ll scale on various win3x resolutions. This was done at stock-standard 640×480, and the buttons are side-flung so they’ll still work on various mobile device resolutions, but when you’re changing the emulated windoze res, it would probably get screwy. I’ll make up an 800×600 and 1024×768 overlay if proper scanner buttons are wanted on larger devices with higher native res. Yay! Three versions of something!

It’s a very simple overlay, but functional. There is SO MUCH POWER hidden under the hood of Magic, that I’m just barely beginning to learn what’s possible. I’ll try and track down the Dos version of DoomRL again and re-make an overlay for that soon, for extra awesome, and mediafire it up for consumption soon(‘ish). Because awesome shotguns are 🙂

@admin: think of it as the hardcore version of MoO2. It’s very spreadsheety looking, but has plenty more things to do and to think about. I mean, read the Stars!AutoHost strategy article database. There is a LOT to learn. It had OK’ish (but pretty broken) AI opponents for its time, but it still has a small multi-player community even today, which is where the game shines. It’s complex, but that damn-good that it’s still alive in multi-player in 2020!
https://wiki.starsautohost.org/wiki/Article_Library

[Author]

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