Is the Stars! community dying? I was gone for a few months and there seem to be less and less posts here. Newsgroups shrunk. Websites disappeared. etc. etc. etc....

I see there are new members, but did they buy Stars! or did they inherit their packages from dying Stars! relatives. Salvage from burnt houses and sunken ships? Surely every Stars! player has left his prize CD in his will?

Can you still purchase serial numbers? The threads posted here seem to be old and outdated too.

Will there ever be a Stars! replacement or upgrade or anything to help revive it and restore it to its once great elite status.

That brings to mind my first space game... when was it... back in 1999 or around there... when I first searched the internet for a space strategy game to replace my all-time favorite. I remembered playing the game Elite, which I had also become very fond of, until my Commodore and Atari ST systems went their way and the PC world invaded me. Elite also had a wide following in its time. This search is how I ran across the Stars! game.

Elite. Anyone remember that. Last time I searched it still has a wide following. Something like a million downloads. Yikes! How would you like to sell those for $5.00 a pop.

http://www.frontier.co.uk/games/elite/faq.html

http://www.eliteclub.co.uk/

Ah, those good ole days. I don't know. I may have told this story before. At my age, sonny, you never know, you never know for sure. If it was more than a couple of weeks ago, this could be true. There comes a time when you have to keep a joke list so you can remember what decade you told what to whom.

AND WHAT'S WITH this AutoHost site? It has turned foreign. Look at the moderators: Micha, Madam Ashlyn, Donjon, EDog. The whole damn place is run by foreign peoples.

[Updated on: Fri, 06 January 2006 22:36]

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BlueTurbit wrote on Fri, 06 January 2006 22:34

Is the Stars! community dying? I was gone for a few months and there seem to be less and less posts here. Newsgroups shrunk. Websites disappeared. etc. etc. etc....

You just noticed after 3 months ?
Consider this:
about 3 years ago there were about 100 games, 1000+ unique players running on AH, a couple years ago I started to notice ~70/700 ratio - now it is Jan. 7,2006: 50 games, 326 active players (276 unique).
The trend is clear...

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I see there are new members, but did they buy Stars! or did they inherit their packages from dying Stars! relatives. Salvage from burnt houses and sunken ships? Surely every Stars! player has left his prize CD in his will?

I guard my serial as a most valuable treasure - had almost lost it a couple of times during the moves between states...

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Can you still purchase serial numbers? The threads posted here seem to be old and outdated too.

I believe there was some site - we could prob locate it here...

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Will there ever be a Stars! replacement or upgrade or anything to help revive it and restore it to its once great elite status.

Well, I am currently working on a mod - just to test new ideas etc. - similar to VML mod, but more changes, more strategies etc... if that mod has any success, I may devote some time to a full re-write.

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That brings to mind my first space game... when was it... back in 1999 or around there... when I first searched the internet for a space strategy game to replace my all-time favorite.

I think, I discovered Stars! sometime in 1995 or so... those good ole days...
...10+ years later, I now have 3 P4 computers at home instead of one in the university lab where I first ran Stars!. I have one with P4EE 21 inch LCD - to run some stupid FPS , but I still play Stars! on it mostly!!!

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I remembered playing the game Elite, which I had also become very fond of, until my Commodore and Atari ST systems went their way and the PC world invaded me. Elite also had a wide following in its time. This search is how I ran across the Stars! game.

I think, my parents still have my first commodore128 somewhere in their home. I believe it was still working last time I packed it - I asked my parents not to throw it away under any curcumstances - this might be priceless in another 10-20 years

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Elite. Anyone remember that. Last time I searched it still has a wide following. Something like a million downloads. Yikes! How would you like to sell those for $5.00 a pop.

I liked that game too ...

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Ah, those good ole days. I don't know. I may have told this story before. At my age, sonny, you never know, you never know for sure. If it was more than a couple of weeks ago, this could be true. There comes a time when you have to keep a joke list so you can remember what decade you told what to whom.

welcome to the club! - just kidding

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AND WHAT'S WITH this AutoHost site? It has turned foreign. Look at the moderators: Micha, Madam Ashlyn, Donjon, EDog. The whole damn place is run by foreign peoples.

Uhm, well, what is wrong with that ?

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BlueTurbit wrote on Fri, 06 January 2006 20:34

AND WHAT'S WITH this AutoHost site? It has turned foreign. Look at the moderators: Micha, Madam Ashlyn, Donjon, EDog. The whole damn place is run by foreign peoples.

Uh, Turb, I suppose that being from Texas, EVERYBODY is furrin to you. However, I'm just a few hundred miles northwest of you at the base of the Rockies, and believe me, I get a perverse pleasure knowing you're downstream from me.

EDog

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BlueTurbit wrote on Sat, 07 January 2006 16:34

Can you still purchase serial numbers? The threads posted here seem to be old and outdated too.

I think this might be the death knell if it is the case, as it would eventually mean no new players.

I know I can't recommend Stars to any new players if I can't be sure they can then get a registered copy.

As usual, I seem to get involved in something when it is already past most of its popularity

BlueTurbit wrote on Sat, 07 January 2006 16:34

Will there ever be a Stars! replacement or upgrade or anything to help revive it and restore it to its once great elite status.

I must say I'm getting more and more tempted to contribute to the FreeStars project if I ever find that sort of time (although I hate programming in C++).

There's simply nothing out there I've found that is as good as Stars. The Rock-Paper-Scissor loops in the design are just brilliant, and it is a shame to let it die.

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Madman wrote on Sat, 07 January 2006 13:17

BlueTurbit wrote on Sat, 07 January 2006 16:34 Can you still purchase serial numbers? The threads posted here seem to be old and outdated too. I think this might be the death knell if it is the case, as it would eventually mean no new players. I know I can't recommend Stars to any new players if I can't be sure they can then get a registered copy. As usual, I seem to get involved in something when it is already past most of its popularity

The Empire Interactive Store that has been showing a LIMITED STOCK warning for some time now has reached the bottom of the stock pile and gone out of Stars! business.

http://uk.store.empireinteractive.com/default.aspx?MID=82A07 BE0AEB0&PID=7B550F5D-2BED-4D5A-8ADE-78B9D6528995

That was the last on-line seller I have known to exist. I'd like to be corrected as soon as possible though. Anybody?

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there are still new people coming here. sure, the overall trend is clear... there were days, you had to wait for a looong time for an autohost slot, people hosted the games on their own, rgcs was the main forum/newsgroup... there were days, there was no autohost at all.

one killer is that the game _is_ slow compared to some others like RTS... the other killer is, that there is almost nothing undiscovered/undiscussed in this game anymore. it's becoming like chess over the galactic distances. i like chess... but most people somehow don't.

as for the serials... that's bad if they are all gone. maybe some quitting players could pass/sell their serials along with their knowledge in the future? OTOH, you never know if you never gonna play it again...

i'm sure i saw a stars! keygen years ago. don't know if such a thing still exists? i'm _not_ advocating for it's usage! just wondering...

well, as long as there are people here, the game is still alive. come on, it's more than 10 y.o. now! tell me other game besides board games that lasted that long!

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[Updated on: Wed, 11 January 2006 09:17]

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Iconian wrote on Thu, 19 January 2006 07:47

Last January and February I started getting into Stars! again, playing the demo I'd downloaded years ago and such. I searched the net for keygen, a hacked version, anything, to no avail. I'd already taken a look on the store mentioned above, but I think they were out of stock. So I finally turned to the last place I could think of in March 2005: eBay. Sure enough, I quickly found a copy for sale and bid on it, but someone else got it (and it said it came with the manual and everything). I didn't give up though, and continued searching for another copy of Stars! I found yet another and this time put in a bid for $15, I think, and got it. I was extremely happy. Anyway, Stars! is still available on eBay. http://cgi.ebay.com/STARS-PC-game-by-XPLOSIV_W0QQitemZ825256 7540QQcategoryZ11053QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem People are probably getting bored of their old games and selling them, so now a few new people can pick them up. But by and large, it doesn't seem that Stars! has a lot of time left. It's not the first game that despite being excellent is eventually doomed to go the way of all the world.

Just a heads up, Iconian - I had a look on ebay myself yesterday and saw this particular entry as well (along with another one in the uk selling for 50p.)

Be warned that the image the seller posted included the serial displayed *legibly*. I warned the seller and he removed the picture, but please be aware that there's a potential risk that in the couple of days that it was sitting up there someone unscrupulous could've used the serial just by looking at the picture. Should be fine though, I doubt someone like that would join a SAH hosted game, but just be aware...

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[Updated on: Wed, 18 January 2006 21:59]

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It's not at all uncommon for old games to continue to be restricted.

For example I came across this site recently "http://www.zxspectrum.homeactionreplay.org/tour/history/hist ory01.php" - you can see on this page that they've clearly been told to stop distributing "Enduro Racer" for the ZX Spectrum by Activison some time on or after 2001...

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Of course, luckily, we have some talented coders in the community and they are writing their own source code - FreeStars.

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