Starflight 1 Remake Project

[Chinese Jetpilot]

I've been away from forums for quite some time, so I apologize if this has been mentioned already.

I'm a huge fan of Starflight, and occassionaly skim through the major fan sites. Someone by the name of Stainless has embarked on the task of producing a Starflight remake, stradling that fine line between holding true to the original game while greatly improving the graphics and interface (though the latter does borrow too much from Star Trek, but I don't mind that much). I know that there have been many attempts at doing this already, only to have fallen off the face of the Earth at some point. I think that's going to change with this one. He has released several builds already, and while its still in the early Alpha stage, it is playable and does show a lot of promise. Some screenshots:

Direct Link to Starflight Alpha 2 build download: http://cid-51c26c5112311ab0.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/starflight_alpha_2.exe (though you may need a Live account to download).

Starflight Remake forum: http://icc.starflight3.org/index.php?board=26.0

This build was released sometime in August I believe, and supposedly a new build will be released shortly, so keep an eye out. If for whatever reason the download link won't work for you, I guess I can find someplace online to post it, or can send it through a messenger program.

 

[Jeff Graw]

Starflight is possibly my favorite game. Very cool. Downloading now.

 

[Slylandro]

Excellent find. I'm not sure though whether Starflight would classify as a simulation. At the least there is significant overlap with the RPG genre.

 

[Au naturel]

Never played this one. Can someone give a rundown on how it works? Does it have any quests? etc?

 

[Cthulhugoat]

Any relation to this Stainless? Thanks for the find, I loved Star Control 2 and I'm sure I'll like this.

 

[Jasede]

Very nice. This is a lot more difficult than Star Control 2, though. And harder to get into. But the rewards are great!

There's also a really good-looking Sega Genesis version of it if you have an emulator.

 

[Trash]

There's also a really good-looking Sega Genesis version of it if you have an emulator.

Which along with the buck rogers game provided some of my fav game time on the megadrive. Both are great games!

PS I believe the sega starflight game was called starflight 2 though.

 

[Jeff Graw]

You believe wrong. Starflight 2 never made it onto Genesis.

 

[Trash]

Yup, my mistake.

 

[elander_]

Starflight was a great game. I can't say how much i played this game obsessively.

Here's some info on Starflight but be careful with the spoilers.

http://www.starflt.com

 

[Jeff Graw]

Alpha 3 is out:

http://homepage.mac.com/jh4music/Downlo ... ring9.html

 

[tindrli]

i wonder is this dead??

 

[Metro]

 

[Zeus]

Awesome GIF. I'll just leave this here:

Starflight - The Lost Colony. https://sites.google.com/site/starflighttlc/

 

[tindrli]

worthless and utterly inefficient remake.. at least that are my first impressions ...fuck.. well.. back to the old starflight

 

[Zeus]

Wow, really? What did they change to ruin it for you?

I'm not that familiar with the original.

 

[tindrli]

well.. First of all, my English is very bad and sadly is not getting better but i will try


they changed the the main view of the main Staport from this (ULTRA MEGA EFFICIENT compared to the new one)

to this o_O

as you can see, the view is zoomed in, and the movement of the android seems to be slowed down or at least it seems to be. and when you add this to the countless tutorial missions and countless walking from one door to another apart that you don't see shit (especially if you are used to the old version). Im still trying to figure out why did they do it..Maybe they were happy to make this remake and they didn't give a shit about efficiency or they were just happy about newly made the animation of android. don't know.

now, They discarded alien races in a creation crew section .. Now you can hire only humans and they replaced skill numbers with skill progress bars .. its not a big deal but IMO makes game more.. more.. shallow.. i don't know how to say it..

Next thing, is system flight and fuel. In this game as you already know exploring planets is one of the primary objectives. But for some reason in this remake they made traveling from one planet to another painfully slow in a sense that before, in old game you could run from one planet to another in a matter of sec and now you need 15 mins to visit every planet in a home system at least with first engine and for another unknown reason there is no more auto entering orbit option so now its another countless and countless enter orbit, leave orbit clicking in a way.. approach planet .. click navigational panel. click orbit planet, which leads to, click navigational menu again, and then finally click dock with fuckin starport.
The good thing is that they added fuel while doing in-system flight but it burns out too darn quickly at least with first class engine which ultimately leaded me to write all this in a first place coz i was on a tutorial mission to collect some mineral from a nearby planet and i spended most of my fuel just to get there FFS and i couldn't land on planet coz there was no enough fuel to descend and ascend and for some god damn unknown reason the game didn't register that i had one container of a god damn ENDURIUM (fuel) in cargo hold. The game actually register that container pretty well if you run off fuel while system traveling..(while writing this i noticed that there is a manual injecting fuel option in engineering section) so i will give it another shot but i still think its inefficient and could me made a WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better coz im strongly opposed if you make your game complexity based on adding more and more mouse clicking.

 

[octavius]

Play the Amiga version of Starflight instead. Of all the old games I've played the past couple of years, I think Starflight was the game where the Amiga version was most superior to the DOS version. UI, graphics and saving system is much better.
EA was very good at making good Amiga versions of their games, while SSI managed to make Amiga version of some of their games that were actually inferior, like Star Command.

 

[Zeus]

well.. First of all, my English is very bad and sadly is not getting better but i will try.

Thanks for the long reply. I thought you might just not like the graphic style, but man, those are some serious changes. Why would they force you to pick an all human crew? That makes no sense to me. It'd be like a Star Trek sim with no option for Vulcan officers. Just weird.

The Genesis version is the one I played most. But from the sound of it, it's not much more accurate than this fan remake:

GENESIS VERSION
The Genesis version of Starflight 1 is a drastically different game than the previously mentioned versions. The basic plot and communications are essentially the same, but planets, combat, graphics, artifact functions, and the entire space flight interface is drastically different. Two annoying bugs exist in this version. Planetary weather has a tendency to literally blow away the terrain vehicle, and the quest method to "cripple" the Uhlek simply does not work. Other than the arcade feel and rough edges, this version is by far the most advanced version of the game available and is very playable.

But at least it lets you hire an alien crew.

 

[Jasede]

I'm glad this was necro'd, I didn't know there was an Amiga version.
There should be a version of WinUAE that's easy to set up and not a hassle, so I can quickly try it. I don't feel like dusting off my old Amiga. (HAH! Yeah right, I wish I'd kept that beauty...)

 

[Blake00]

Well it's gonna get necro'd again lol..

I did a tour video of Stainless's failed remake a couple of years back using his final Alpha 3 build. I did it as part of a video series where I search for long lost Starflight fan game demos and try them. Stainless got a pretty far so it's a shame he didn't finish it. I've tried to contact him a number of times but had no luck.



Over the last few years a much better remake has been in the making by an ex-bethesda programmer named Marvin.. although he's been too busy to work on lately sadly.



Oh and since Lost Colony got talked about (fyi it's not a Starflight remake, it's a spin off game) in this thread too I also did a video on that. To this day it's still the only finished Starflight fan project out there sadly... they dev came back 2 years ago and released an enhanced beta that fixes some of the issues in the original but sadly it didn't get much interest so it's not been touched since.



Also of note is that fellow named John is modding Lost Colony to look and behave more like the Sega Genesis/MegaDrive version of Starflight 1. Here's test video I did of his early build years ago.. need to get my hands on his latest build as he hasn't released it.



Oh and finally if there's any huge Starflight fans reading this then you might be interested in this post about Starflight 3 here:
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/starflight-3-a-sequel-from-original-series-creator-greg-johnson-now-on-fig.123634/page-2#post-7433275

.

 

[Curratum]

Why would you necro an 8-year old thread, to post videos that are now 3 and 4-years old in it?

Oh, just as an excuse to plug your YT channel, got it...

 

[Blake00]

Literally the second video down isn't even mine lol.

At least my post is on topic.. yours isn't.. nuff said.

 

[gaussgunner]

Why would you necro an 8-year old thread, to post videos that are now 3 and 4-years old in it?

Oh, just as an excuse to plug your YT channel, got it...

It's a 14 year old thread.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Just for the record, I would happily play a fully rebooted and professional quality remake of Starflight, but with every feature of the original included and then some, and, of course, plenty of QoL perks (that fan made remake above, btw, doesn't cut the mustard, only the cheese). It is one of my great gaming disappointments in life that I never got to finish Starflight on my C64 when I got cock-blocked by a corrupted floppy disk. I played Star Control Origins last year to completion and while it was okay, I didn't feel the compulsion to discover every little nook and cranny of its universe, despite it being the closest thing to SC2 we ever got. Maybe someday.