Starflight 1 Remake Project

[Trojan_generic]

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.

You know very well we cannot have this. We just cannot.

 

[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.

You know very well we cannot have this. We just cannot.

Eh, we can still dream. Maybe they'll do a Starflight 3 someday and hire Krome or something to do the remaster of Starflight 1-2 to include in the package.

 

[Trojan_generic]

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.

You know very well we cannot have this. We just cannot.

Eh, we can still dream. Maybe they'll do a Starflight 3 someday and hire Krome or something to do the remaster of Starflight 1-2 to include in the package.

We can dream, but dreams are pretty limited as long as EA owns the rights. Also, they would never remake this game without multiplayer, customizable player character and other faggy stuff, microtransactions and Origin.

 

[NoSoup4you]

I played Starflight on a Genesis emulator years ago and it felt fine... Actually, the low-bitrate sounds and lack of music really created a cool atmosphere. I tried Starflight 2 in DOSbox after that and couldn't get into it.

 

[gaussgunner]

I played Starflight on a Genesis emulator years ago and it felt fine... Actually, the low-bitrate sounds and lack of music really created a cool atmosphere. I tried Starflight 2 in DOSbox after that and couldn't get into it.

SF2 was the first game of its kind I ever played. Me and my friends played the shit out of it, but it really wasn't that great. Star Control 2 blew it out of the water. After that I couldn't get into the original Starflight when I finally found it, but I remember it being pretty sweet compared to the sequel. They tried to do too much in SF2 and it had no soul.

 

[Irata]

Maybe they'll do a Starflight 3 someday

There was a "Kickstarter" for Starflight 3 on Fig a few years back. It didn't make its goal.
https://www.fig.co/campaigns/starflight-3

 

[Blake00]

Nice to see some Starflight fans here afterall.. and yup there was indeed a failed Starflight 3 attempt 3 years ago that almost no one heard about...
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/starflight-3-upcoming-sequel-from-original-developer.122954/

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 would be AMAZING.. sadly I fear that'll never happen as Starflight seems so forgotten about these days. Hardly any reporters on the major game media sites covered the Starflight 3 crowdfund a few years back and all the old the fan communities are gone or dead. Over the last few years I created a Starflight fan Facebook & Reddit groups and there's also the official Starflight Discord left from the failed crowdfund all of which I've been working to grow and get the old community back together again which would hopefully help to make things different the next time they try a new starflight game but there's no guarantee sadly.

that fan made remake above, btw, doesn't cut the mustard, only the cheese

Which one? The stainless one or the Marvin one? The stainless one is showing its age big time and is pretty primitive looking, but the newer Marvin one is quite impressive, but yeah not perfect. He only wanted to remake the original dos version so he complete ignored everything from the Amiga and Mega Drive/Genesis remakes sadly, and of course by going completely 3D it's not a 1 to 1 conversion. His planets are amazing though as he was able to recreate the entire SF1 galaxy by using a converted copy (extracted by another fan) of the original game's Forth planet generator code that generated all the planet land maps and then applied all this crazy stuff to the maps including simulated 'hydraulic erosion' and then did all this simulated atmosphere stuff using the games science officer scan data. Lead to some pretty cool results...

(note1: not my video and not my channel just in case anyone feels like being a smart ass again)
(note2: there was a bug that made the ground look shiny and wet which has since been removed)

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

Ignore this part of my previous message as the post got moved (as there's 2 starflight 3 threads at the codex) so if any lurking Starflight fans here are curious about what's happening with Starflight 3 and also about the new Starflight book that's just been released then that post is here now:
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...original-developer.122954/page-2#post-7433275

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Which one? The stainless one or the Marvin one?

Whichever one this monstrosity is.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Anyone ever read the Robert Silverberg short story that was included in the Sega Genesis/MD version's manual from 1991? Kind of funny. It's told from the perspective of a crew that goes out on these Starflight runs looking for artifacts or whatever and to get rich but they're total losers. They can never profit from their explorations and can't even afford proper equiment to accurately scan planets for resources or detect gravitational conditions. They recount getting caught into a planet's gravity well that almost kills the whole crew and it takes over a year and a half to limp back to civilization where they need to buy replacenent limbs and body parts. Not typical sci-fi heroes in a wondrous Roddenberrian universe Their luck changes however when they get contracted for a mysterious salvage mission by one of Starflight's alien species from the game.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Btw, after looking at the Marvin footage above and on the Dev Diary website , I won't deny that that guy is certainly heading in the right direction. Looks slick as fuck. Hope he completes it because I'd certainly give it a go. Shows you what a professional-quality game designer can do. Just imagine - a Starflight remake as a labor of love from a competent fan programmer instead of a money grubbing official remake from EA. I'm keeping my eyes on this one so thanks for the heads up, Blake00.

 

[Blake00]

Which one? The stainless one or the Marvin one?

Whichever one this monstrosity is.

Ahh right.. that one.. yeah Starflight The Lost Colony isn't one of remakes I was talking about as it's not really a remake, it's a spin off game with a whole different story about another earth Noah colony ship.. was made by Jon Harbour and a team of people back in the 2000s. And yes it's graphics aren't everyone's cup of tea haha! That's why I'm excited about the fan project called Heroes of Arth by John Weaver that's replacing all the graphics in Lost Colony with ones from the Sega Genesis/Megadrive version. I helped him get started and he's been working away on it on his own over the last couple of years since. Isn't finished yet and he's been pretty quiet lately though sadly, but he usually comes back from his 'breaks' and does a whole lot more. In fact he's given me lots of newer stuff (including a demo) than whats on his moddb page so I should upload it all there since he probably won't bother.

Eg people might think this is a video of the Genesis/Mega Drive game but its not.. it's Lost Colony, the same game as that cartoony picture above haha.

Btw, after looking at the Marvin footage above and on the Dev Diary website , I won't deny that that guy is certainly heading in the right direction. Looks slick as fuck. Hope he completes it because I'd certainly give it a go. Shows you what a professional-quality game designer can do. Just imagine - a Starflight remake as a labor of love from a competent fan programmer instead of a money grubbing official remake from EA. I'm keeping my eyes on this one so thanks for the heads up, Blake00.

Yeah Marvin is super talented. Used to work for Bethesda on their graphics engines and runs his own software company these days. Ahh cool you found the dev diaries.. yeah he's written like a hundred or so blog posts detailing all the crazy work he did with the planet modeling etc so I helped him out and organised all his blog posts into grouped dev diaries on moddb for people to enjoy. Marvin has sadly been pretty quiet lately too but he likes taking big breaks too lol. Anyway if any other SF fans lurking here want to check out the dev diaries here they are (I particularly recommend all the planet ones!):

https://www.indiedb.com/games/starflight-the-remaking-of-a-legend/articles

 

[Atrachasis]

I'm particularly eager to see a decent remake or remaster of Starflight 1 because I used to play it on an Atari ST back in the day. I'm not asking for any level of graphical fidelity beyond that... but I can't get myself to stoop below that either and deal with the DOS version that's available on GOG. That's imprinting for you!

Unless one of those remake projects comes to fruition eventually, I might have to fiddle with an Atari or Amiga emulator in my old days.

Incidentally, does anyone know if the DOS version differs in any way from the Atari or Amiga versions other than graphics (planetary map size etc.)?

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Incidentally, does anyone know if the DOS version differs in any way from the Atari or Amiga versions other than graphics (planetary map size etc.)?

No mouse support in the MS-DOS version of Starflight 1. No "3D" viewports of the planet's surfaces as you descend from the mothership in your terrain vehicle in the Amiga version. tbh, I wasn't a fan of the Amiga version and even stopped playing before too long. I was weaned on the Commodore 64 version and would have completed it had I not encountered the bad floppy, though I got no error message, just severely scrambled graphics when encountering one of the aliens I hadn't encountered before, which makes me wonder if it was perhaps some kind of bug; the game, not the alien

 

[Blake00]

Because I started with the Mega Drive / Genesis remake of Starflight before seeing the originals (didn't even know I was playing a remake as a kid lol) I really struggled to get into them. Can pretty much only stomach the Amiga versions as they have the nicer graphics and mouse support. Man I wish they had remade SF2 on the mega drive too. Over in the codex Starflight 3 thread I posted about how I recently got to take part in a podcast that Starflight creator Greg Johnson was on and SF2 on MD Genesis was one the questions I wanted to ask him but we ran out of time sadly. Might still email him about it as he gave out his email at the end of the podcast for SF fans to talk to him.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I'm having a yen for Starflight goodness lately so I think I'll try Starcom Nexus. Anyone play this? Supposedly the closest thing to Starflight since- well, Starflight. But despite rave reviews from fans who've played it, I'm a little concerned that its difficulty will be potentially unsatisfying - at least on default - according to YT videos I've watched where I saw players not even having to aim; enemies seem to start getting blasted with some type of auto aim-assist when they're within range. Not good. But the game supposedly has numerical values of difficulty from 1 to 32 or something that you can enter through the console. So what's the sweet spot? Star Control Origins was just about right for me in the difficulty department.

 

[Arrowgrab]

according to YT videos I've watched where I saw players not even having to aim; enemies seem to start getting blasted with some type of auto aim-assist when they're within range.

One particular weapon does that, and IMO it's the most powerful weapon once you fully (or near so) upgrade it. Having said that, nothing forces you to use that weapon, you can just stick to other weapon systems as a challenge. In fact, you won't get enough resources to fully upgrade everything in a single playthrough, so by staying off the lasers you'll be giving yourself more upgrade opportunities for other stuff.