This is my all time favorite DOS game. It felt open world before people used that phrase. Amazing game.
I believe this is only the second game I ever finished. But also the first I used the internet to finish.
Reversed engineered game Starflight (1986)
31–40 of 54 posts
Re: Reversed engineered game Starflight (1986)
#32Awesome! I got this game for Christmas in 3rd grade and was completely hooked! It really captured my imagination and immersed me into this seemingly limitless world. It took me a couple of years to complete, and I kept of journal of exploration experiences.
Thank you for posting this!
Re: Reversed engineered game Starflight (1986)
#33Early in the 2000's one of the original authors of Sfarflight posted a massive dump of information online: design documents and source code. That is the "Technical Articles Saved from Oblivion" link in this repository. Sadly no one seems to have managed to save a full copy! This is one I kick myself about: I browsed this back when it was up but didnt think to download. These days I make a point to request Internet Ar…
I'm not sure what you're referring to since the files T.C. Lee posted on that geocities site are the only design documents he (or anyone else) ever released, and those are preserved in the SFFiles.zip found at the oocities mirror linked from the github there. That zip contained only a partial dump of some source code, while that sonic.net page contains a more complete copy (but lacks any kind of design documents what…
I seem to recall browsing what appeared to be the complete source back in the day. I put in a bit of an effort to get it compiling, but it was only released as poorly scanned printouts of the source code and OCR wasn't so good then so the project was bigger than I hoped.
Re: Reversed engineered game Starflight (1986)
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure what you're referring to since the files T.C. Lee posted on that geocities site are the only design documents he (or anyone else) ever released, and those are preserved in the SFFiles.zip found at the oocities mirror linked from the github there. That zip contained only a partial dump of some source code, while that sonic.net page contains a more complete copy (but lacks any kind of design documents what…
I seem to recall browsing what appeared to be the complete source back in the day. I put in a bit of an effort to get it compiling, but it was only released as poorly scanned printouts of the source code and OCR wasn't so good then so the project was bigger than I hoped.
That would be the source code posted to that sonic.net site. It was a mix of raw dumps of FORTH blocks and printouts converted to PDFs. It wasn't the full source code, and there weren't any design documents in there.
Re: Reversed engineered game Starflight (1986)
#35Hard to convey how effective Starflight’s game design was within the limits of the day. The embedding of the story within what was almost entirely free-form exploration & adventure across a huge galaxy was masterful. You could feel how close the creators were to the edge of what was possible with the save game system: Basically, the disk was a memory image. As you played the game would rewrite itself, so if you got s…
O cool! This approach was used in WASTELAND too, on four floppies (the progenitor of the FALLOUT series).
Re: Reversed engineered game Starflight (1986)
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I seem to recall browsing what appeared to be the complete source back in the day. I put in a bit of an effort to get it compiling, but it was only released as poorly scanned printouts of the source code and OCR wasn't so good then so the project was bigger than I hoped.
That would be the source code posted to that sonic.net site. It was a mix of raw dumps of FORTH blocks and printouts converted to PDFs. It wasn't the full source code, and there weren't any design documents in there.
You can see on archive.org where it captured directory info for files which were not stored:
https://web.archive.org/web/20031218202130/http://www.sonic....
When you navigate those directory archives many of the files are missing. E.g.
https://web.archive.org/web/20030529230704/http://www.sonic....
Some design documents ARE there, e.g. "Specification of 3d display for starquest" : https://web.archive.org/web/20030719111039if_/http://www.son...
Re: Reversed engineered game Starflight (1986)
#37Wow, so cool! I did not know Starflight was written in Forth.
Starflight was my first experience with game patching. When I got my copy it would not run on my PC. I believe it was because I had an EGA graphics adapter. I wrote a letter explaining my problem and mailed it to Electronic Arts. They mailed a letter back. It said there should be a program on my computer named debug.com, and gave instructions about how to load the Starflight executable in it, replace a couple of bytes, and save it out. I followed the patch instructions and it got the game working! After which I spent many happy hours with my friends exploring the Starflight universe.
Re: Reversed engineered game Starflight (1986)
#38Loved this game as a young kid. Great to see it. Somewhere I also found a web implementation of that black and white codewheel that came with it.
Re: Reversed engineered game Starflight (1986)
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone goes on about Elite, but Elite was just a sandbox… (an amazing sandbox) This was crazy! World gen is hard. Proc world gen is NP hard. Story driven proc world gen with persistence in 1986 was Kaku level brilliance.
I loved Starlight but I'm not sure it was procedural world generation. I mean there was a map of stars printed with the game so they weren't changing. There was a small bit of variation in terms of what one found on planets and so on...the key was it felt like an open world because it was big enough and there was nothing stopping you from doing what you liked and when (except resources).
Procedural generation can use a fixed seed, it's not too uncommon. For instance, Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall's map was procedurally generated, but is the same for every player.
Re: Reversed engineered game Starflight (1986)
#40This is the way. Best thing since the reincarnation of Wall Street Raider.